When it comes to marriage and age, there’s a serious double standard for men and women. Men are often told to wait to get married until they feel ready — until they’re mature, financially secure, established in their careers and comfortable with themselves. My own husband was counseled by both of his parents to not even consider marriage until he was 35 years old. He took their advice to the next level and married at 40. He was praised for his measured and mature decision.https://b0f6cf1a9bc7471818134e5c80ba108a.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
This allows men both an extended adolescence and more time to find the right person. But women are not granted the same privilege. Movies and fairytales prime women to think about weddings from childhood, and the majority of romantic comedies promote the proposal as the happy ending, with most heroines just pushing the three-decade mark — but rarely surpassing it.
The pressure to “settle down” mounts when women hit their 20s, and if a woman’s 30th birthday passes without a proposal, she can be made to feel as if she’s missed her moment.
My own future as a spinster was close at hand. Then I met a man thousands of miles from home on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on a work trip in the Galapagos Islands. He proposed three months later, and we got married right on my 35th birthday. Thank the matrimonial gods! Seriously. Here’s the thing: Women who get married after the age of 35 might actually be setting themselves up for happier marriages than women who marry in their 20s. And isn’t that what we all want? A real happily ever after.
The majority of my own friends got married at 28. Less than a decade later, half of them are divorced. Many marriage therapists, the people who help fix unhappy marriages, believe this is because wisdom truly does come with age.
“After a certain age, women tend to have a higher level of emotional maturity. You have a wider range of experiences to evaluate a potential mate,” Dr. Peter Pearson, co-founder of the Couples Institute, told me. “You’re more independent, less clingy, less needy. You are emotionally resilient, you’re smarter at separating the wheat from the chaff.”
