Replies

The idea that one must have lots of relationships to properly prepare for and appreciate marriage...

Ouch - hope I never said this, especially not the "must". Me thinks that everyone needs to find his or her own path, and the correct path may well look very different for different people. And there is an obvious gender difference here: Women are more inclined to go for commitment, while men usually need more time to get around to it. Whether this is a biological difference or conditioning or whatever else I don't know, but my experience and observations make me think that it is correct.

Again this should not be read as applying to every woman or every man, but as a broad statement about averages. Here's an interesting observation which I think backs up what I've been talking about: On a different discussion here on FR a few months ago someone put up some statistics showing that divorce rates are highest in the Bible Belt states, and by a pretty high margin.

The freeper who posted this was trying to make a point about fundamentalist Christians all being hypocrites, but that's not my interpretation of this statistical finding. The other statistic that needs to be taken into account is that the average marriage age in these States is much lower than in the rest of the country. Given their beliefs, folks there seem to be marrying early, going right away for the commitment path. The fact that a scary number of them gets divorced a few years later tells me that it might have been better if they had taken things a wee bit less serious for a few years.

I got married at the ripe age of 31, and have now been happily married for 12 years. Had I actually married the first woman I thought I was seriously in love with, I would have gotten married about ten years earlier, and I would have been a disaster. Ok, enough of that, I really appreciate your thoughtful replies....

And I appreciate your thoughtful replies, as well.

And the statistics in the bible belt are terrible, but I think a lot of that is a cultural thing. Early marriages not necessarily based on the good book. Where I grew up, there wasn't anything to do but get married. :( However, one of the highest markers for a future divorce is cohabitation, so what does that really tell you about the whole issue? Just that it's complicated.