That’s a loaded statement if there ever was one. I got started thinking about this topic today as I was talking to a client of mine (I run a branding/marketing business in my non-blogging life) who is in her mid-20s and has the next 3 weekends booked to attend 3 friends’ weddings. I thought back to my mid-20s and, in that fog of activity, I hazily remember weddings ticking off as regular as hours on the clock. I grew up in Ohio and then lived in DC for a fair amount of my 20s, so attended both friendly potluck receptions with amazingly decadent downhome cooking along as well as estate/country-clubby lobster-and-steak affairs thrown by some of my wealthier friends’ parents. Both types were fun and memorable in their own ways, but I digress.
How many candles will be on your wedding cake is sort of a silly question
We were talking about age and the question of what is the right time to get married. Of course the answer is different for everyone. Most of my guy friends who have daughters say that the appropriate age to wed is around 63, give or take a few decades. Most of my female friends have a very fluid stance on this, as many of them have stated to me that it was important to them to gain a sense of self-awareness before getting married. I think this is a great philosophy, as it’s an asset to the relationship if at least one individual has a dose of self-awareness. Again, I digress.
What I’m putting off here is talking about my own age. I’m 41, and I’ve never been married, which makes me at best a wild-card and at worst a freak who could never get his s**t together or who lives with his mother. I don’t consider myself either, as I’ve come close to being married once before and am not really a difficult person or frighteningly ugly, and, for the record, I stopped living with my dear parents when I graduated from college. I just hadn’t yet found the right person until I met Groomasaurus Gal. We’ve dated 9 years now and although we’ve been fully committed to each other the whole time, we haven’t felt the need to get married until the last year or two. Now just feels like the right time, so 41 is the right age for me.
As for everyone else, I think different ages feel different pressures. When I was 25, I was in a relationship that I thought was heading toward marriage, and had certain ideas in my head about being a husband and father and such. I also think if I had a biological clock beating me into a panic that definitely would have swayed my thinking, too. On the other end of the spectrum, I have friends in their late 50s who have lived together for 24 years and never gotten married but love each other dearly and are just as committed to each other if they had.
So the answer to that question is that there isn’t an answer … just find the person for you, follow your heart and pursue what makes you both happy.
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