The average time, we are told, between when a couple first meet, and when they get married, is 58.7 months. Much of this consists of a “virtual marriage,” of cohabitation, averaging 3.5 years. An astonishing 20 months typically passed between when a couple decided to get married, and when they actually did.
This is ridiculous. In the past, you didn’t have sex before marriage, but courtships often didn’t last more than a few months. Sometimes, they would be longer, perhaps for a girl to reach an acceptable 18th birthday, or perhaps a man was in school and not ready to support a household. But, sometimes courtships were three days long. When courtship is just a transition process to marriage, like a job interview, not a permanent state of “dating,” you end up with a yes or a no pretty quickly.
But, this also means that, if the median age of marriage is 28, already the highest in American history, then those women first met their husbands around age 23. They were gone. No longer single. Off the market. Women over Age 26 are leftovers. There is usually a reason they are left over. Mostly, it is because they couldn’t maintain a stable relationship, or didn’t want to, or are just too fugly.
Cornerstone 
A big reason for interminable delays in marriage is that the woman wants a bank-busting “dream wedding” in which she’s the center of all the attention. Suggest that she dial it back and remember that the wedding is one day, but the marriage is a lifetime and that she should start thinking big picture and long term, and she blows up, sometimes even ending the relationship. Guys who get dumped in this way are dodging lethal bullets and should be grateful to have such women out of their lives.
LikeLike
That is a good test. A good woman would also support a cheap and simple marriage. If you end up with a bigger wedding, it should be because the parents insist on it, and are willing to pay for it. Even then, the new couple would be better off with a new car, or the downpayment on a house.
LikeLike
I told my wife that the small inexpensive wedding is what we will counsel our sons to do. She didn’t like the idea which means that it is spot on for avoiding marital hardship.
LikeLike