My wife and I dated for five years before we ever had any serious talks about getting married. Kids? They came after we had stable jobs, bought the house, the cars and had a decent bank account.
We never understood the rush to get married or become parents that we saw in so many of our friends. When we got married all our friends were positive she was pregnant because we announced it in October and got married in December. I'll bet lots of folks were upset that we didn't have any children for five more years. LOL
my hubby and i "dated" (it was more like a courtship) about 5-6 months before getting engaged, and married 11 months later... he was 36 and i was 31... we had 6 terrific years of marriage before becoming parents... it was lots of fun, just the two of us (and our dogs)... of course, we had the house and careers before we married (since we were "older").
now we are in a different stage--the parenting stage... and it's lots of fun, too... we were ready for it in many ways...
Not us. we did it the hard way, met one day in a 7-11 parking lot, went on a date and got married a couple months later. I was 20. Fortunately I was already owned my first house, so between 23 years of army, going to collage and starting a business we managed, with kids comming at 21. They were very busy years for a while, but nothing in life is easy. Now we have plenty of time to ourselves and we are still young enough to enjoy it. Things were a little different and affordable 26 years ago though.
My hubby and I knew each other two weeks and got married. That was 33 years ago. It works for some people.