College and Meeting Your Future Spouse

[Anonymous]

DH seems to believe that a factor to be considered in weighing colleges is the meeting-your-future spouse factor. Thus he is dissuading our DC from looking at single sex schools, is focused on male-female ratios at the coed schools, is pushing schools with a heavy Greek life, checks that our religion is well represented on prospective campuses, is even showing us polls of most attractive student bodies!

Yes, it so happens that we met in college, but he was a grad ad student so not sure that even "counts."

I am curious how many of you out there met your now spouse in college.

I guess I am also curious whether there are any other parents out there who tell their kids that odds are they'll meet their future spouse in college so weigh that factor accordingly. Or is my DH the only nut out there.

[Anonymous]

Your DH is nuts. Really.
We didn't meet in college.

[Anonymous]

Your DH is batshit crazy.

[Anonymous]

I didn't meet my spouse in college although I dated a lot in college.

Your daughter needs to be the one to choose what is important to her in a college. This is her turn.

[Anonymous]

Your DH is crazy for MANY reasons.

Signed,

A Bryn Mawr graduate who has many friends who met their husbands at Haverford, Penn, and Swarthmore.

[Anonymous]

So he's in the market for some frat boy for your DD? Is he cool with them meeting the morning after their first sexual experience?

[Anonymous]

I met my spouse in college. My dad joked that I should be sure to pick up an MRS when I was there but it wasn't a consideration when choosing a college.

[Anonymous]

You DH is living in the 70s or before. You may "meet" them at college but not get together for years later. Please let him now that the people who do meet in college, often live together for up to a decade while doing masters/PhDs and building a career, and buy a house. Marriage is for kids or when the couple decides they are stable in their career or finances. I feel a little bad for your daughter. There are way more important things like her major, career, and traveling, and getting to know herself as a person.

[Anonymous]

I met my DH in college and have many friends who did as well. I think your DH is a little nuts, though I don't love the idea of same sex schools. Part of college is learning to navigate romantic and social relationships. As long as your DC goes somewhere normal and not, like, an uber-evangelical school or something like that, the pool of potential significant others will be fine. The odds are that your DC won't meet his/her spouse in college anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my DH in college and have many friends who did as well. I think your DH is a little nuts, though I don't love the idea of same sex schools. Part of college is learning to navigate romantic and social relationships. As long as your DC goes somewhere normal and not, like, an uber-evangelical school or something like that, the pool of potential significant others will be fine. The odds are that your DC won't meet his/her spouse in college anyway.

^ By the way, though we met at 18, we married at 28. I only know one couple who married before 27, and they were high school sweethearts. They married at 24.

[Anonymous]

I chose a school with a 60:40 female to male ratio and after a visit I thought the student body was the ugliest I'd seen. Additionally, the majority of students were on the opposite side of the political spectrum and there was a high gay student population. Then I met my husband my sophomore year. He's great. Yours is crazy.

[Anonymous]

what if DC is gay? Has your husband factored this into his calculations? He's absolutely insane.

[Anonymous]

Wow. I know very few people who met their spouse in college.

I had a serious boyfriend for most of college; we broke up right before graduation. I like to joke that in my parents' era, he would have been my "starter husband" and I would have been divorced by age 25.

[Anonymous]

I think some people with $$ or that want their kids to be well off financially do think this way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my spouse in college. My dad joked that I should be sure to pick up an MRS when I was there but it wasn't a consideration when choosing a college.

Ha! My dad had the same conversation with me the day before I left for college. As it turns out, I did meet my husband in college but, as another poster also related, we didn't marry until I was 28 and he was 29. I know people in our generation (we're in our 50's now) started marrying later, we were among the first in our set to get married, and many of our friends didn't marry until their mid-30's but I wonder if the pendulum will start to swing back some.

It is funny to think about now because we have two in college this year to be joined by a third next year. We find ourselves wondering each time we hear about a new love interest if 'this is the one'? We're not in a rush to have them get married but we wouldn't not support it if they seemed compatible. On the other hand, I remember that letter/article from the Princeton grad five or ten years ago that caused such a stir and I wonder if she is right on some level?

I also don't think that going to an all-women's school necessarily precludes meeting young men. I don't have any experience in this but I do know maybe 5-6 women who attended women's colleges and are married now. In fact one such couple, in their 30's, lives down the block from us.