College and Meeting Your Future Spouse

[Anonymous]

My friend is sending her daughter to a school where there are more males than females. The girl is quite experienced for a 19 year old which will become handy once she meets a good candidate. She wants to be a housewife. I was really surprised when she told me this it is a calculated move which will probably happen.

[Anonymous]

Ha! Not for me. I was a mess in college. I didn't date, was sort of a hot mess in terms of hooking up, and just sort of live life like Parker Posey in Party Girl. It was NYU in the 90's.

I got into law school in California and met some great guys, but again, it was nerd city in Palo Alto. So, mostly hot mess hook ups, partying with drag queens in San Fran and just doing me.

I had a funny period where I "pretended" to be a serious person when I first moved to DC and clerked and worked in big law. Got a severe bob haircut, wore conservative clothes, worked crazy hours and went through a period of nunnery. Serious dry spell, but working 70 hours a year makes dating and hooking up difficult.

Ended up getting laid off and spent six months traveling before landing a new job in-house. Met my husband the first week I got back into town. He was my neighbor.

Life's funny. Have fun, live and let things fall where they may.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my DH in college and frequently think to myself that people should not marry their college sweethearts.

Because?

[Anonymous]

Neither my sister nor I married men we met in college. I met my husband at my 2nd job after grad school. Of my college friends, only one married a man from college, though one married a guy she met during college but he went to a different school. Another friend married a guy from med school.

I do think college is a unique time when you'll have the most access to same aged peers with similar interests.

[Anonymous]

I wish I had met my soouse in college. Dating sucks

[Anonymous]

I went to a northeast slac where it was not uncommon for couples to meet and then marry later (although no one seemed to get married for several to many years later since most people went on to grad school, etc). Of my closest 6 friends from college (plus me makes 7), zero of us met our spouses in college. Two of them did eventually meet their spouses via introduction/set up from friends in our group, so I suppose you could say if not for college they would not have met their spouses

My sister went to college in the midwest where lots of people married (whether to someone they met in college or their high school sweetheart) within a couple of years of graduation. Of my sister's closest friends from college, 2 met their spouses in college, and later divorced. The rest of them met their spouses after college and remain married.

This has been fun to reminisce. However, it is ridiculous to use this when deciding where to go to college and your husband needs to join this millenium .

[Anonymous]

there was already a thread a few months ago on this - the op said "lets be serious, many of us are wanting our kids to go to elite schools so they can get into elite dating pools".

it absolutely shapes your dating pool even after graduation.

op's dh is smart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was recently at a college reunion, most of us 20+ years out of college. A handful of the group had married their college boy/girlfriend but the great majority did not.

In my circle of friends I know a lot more people who met their spouse in grad school than in undergrad. I did not meet DH in school.

Meeting spouse in college or grad school is pretty much the same thing. 18-22, 22-26. And you got into that grad school partially because of where you went to undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was recently at a college reunion, most of us 20+ years out of college. A handful of the group had married their college boy/girlfriend but the great majority did not.

In my circle of friends I know a lot more people who met their spouse in grad school than in undergrad. I did not meet DH in school.

Meeting spouse in college or grad school is pretty much the same thing. 18-22, 22-26. And you got into that grad school partially because of where you went to undergrad.

But OPs question was about considering gender ratio, social life, etc. for undergrad because DH assumes their child will meet spouse in undergrad. So undergrad is not the same thing as grad school in that context.

Grad school, IME, was completely different from undergrad. And I and most of my friends were in our late 20s when we went, not 22-26, more like 26-30.

[Anonymous]

There's something to be said about appropriate gender ratios at college

I remember the article about serious gender skew at certain colleges and all the girls getting desperate for boyfriends

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html?referer=

[Anonymous]

Your DH is def going overboard.

But, I would look at gender balance/ratios. I remember reading an article about hook-up culture and how the more equally balanced schools (and especially those with more men than women) don't have this as much. There is more actual dating at schools with higher male populations. I'm not a prude, face it, there will be hooking up in college, but I do think that an over-the-top hook up culture can end up very demeaning to women (and many/most women do not enjoy this atmosphere in the end).

[Anonymous]

Your DH is crazy. I met my DH after college and even after grad school. He needs to get a grip.

[Anonymous]

I have two college age sons. I wish they would meet spouses in college. I met DH first year of grad school right out of college. I think it's a healthy way to get to know someone because you can spend a lot of time together when you are in school without the pressures of work. I never had to endure the dating and bar scenes and wish for my shy sons that they could avoid that also.

[Anonymous]

There is nothing wrong with hoping to meet a future spouse in college, cut it seems really bizarre (and pretty creepy) to make a calculated effort to do so. I did happen to meet a former fiance and my spouse while in college/grad school, and I'm happy it worked out since I have since worked in offices of mostly women and I'm not a very social person - I would have hated the normal dating scene and ended up a cat lady.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there was already a thread a few months ago on this - the op said "lets be serious, many of us are wanting our kids to go to elite schools so they can get into elite dating pools".

it absolutely shapes your dating pool even after graduation.

op's dh is smart.

Does this hold true even for the SLACs? Seem like such a small pool to begin with.