Anonymous wrote:No substance abuse
Wants to be employed
Good sense of humor
Good follow through - calls when promised, helps others when committed to doing so

At first sight this seems small, but it is an excellent filter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had a f*cked up childhood--a parent was an alcoholic or a serial cheater...RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO matter how much they swear they won't turn out that way...wait 20 years and tell me what happens.

Man here. My dad was a serial cheater on multiple wives. I am 55, been married once for 23 years, haven’t cheated yet.

I’m not him.

Beautiful

Anonymous wrote:If they had a f*cked up childhood--a parent was an alcoholic or a serial cheater...RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO matter how much they swear they won't turn out that way...wait 20 years and tell me what happens.

DH has a seriously abusive father and he is the sweetest father to his children and good husband. I knew when I saw the way he treated animals. So you can be wrong.

older imo is 29-34

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wait until you are older before getting married. have your education, have a job and a way to support yourself

I married older (late 30s) and it’s one of the bigger challenges in our marriage that we’re each so used to being independent. Maybe that’s just us but I don’t think marrying older is the answer necessarily. Plus while we were able to support ourselves independently before we built a life together that requires both incomes.

Sweet spot to marry is
27-32

I am early 40s. Married 10 years and recently divorced.

My advice to young women is seriously this:

Do not get married.

There is literally no advantage nowadays to marriage for women. None whatsoever. The only exception is if you want to be a mother and a husband is willing to support you as a SAHM for the marriage.

Understand that every trait, including the ones you admire, can have a "negative" side. I admired my now DH's passion for justice but didn't realize that meant he has a very strong sense of right/wrong in all areas (low tolerance threshold). DH liked that I had a more relaxed personality, but now gets frustrated that I don't care as much about a neat house.

Anonymous wrote:Compromise on looks and status, do not compromise on kindness, decency, and compatibility.

Marry mostly for love, but marry a leeeeeetle bit for money. As in, make sure he has a plan for his career. And make sure you have a plan for yours.

Watch how he interacts with waitstaff, small children, and animals. If he treats any of these poorly, he is a garbage type of person.

Yep. I knew my husband was a good guy when I saw he had 3 pets and adored them, and when I found out he volunteered to be a peer counselor for victims of sexual assault at his college.

Anonymous wrote:Compromise on looks and status, do not compromise on kindness, decency, and compatibility.

Marry mostly for love, but marry a leeeeeetle bit for money. As in, make sure he has a plan for his career. And make sure you have a plan for yours.

Watch how he interacts with waitstaff, small children, and animals. If he treats any of these poorly, he is a garbage type of person.

So true, especially the last paragraph. Didn’t steer me wrong with my husband.

Compromise on looks and status, do not compromise on kindness, decency, and compatibility.

Marry mostly for love, but marry a leeeeeetle bit for money. As in, make sure he has a plan for his career. And make sure you have a plan for yours.

Watch how he interacts with waitstaff, small children, and animals. If he treats any of these poorly, he is a garbage type of person.

My husband (who in many ways is an exceptional spouse and parent) had an idyllic childhood. I did not. In some ways I think he has a sort of bizarre naïveté about people’s motives etc. I don’t have that problem. While I agree that family dysfunction can reappear in successive generations, sometimes some contact with imperfection can bring wisdom.

I think we all know the big red flags but smaller flags IMO... a parent still makes their medical appointments, does their taxes, hires someone to clean their house, over involved in very basic adult responsibilities, etc. These tasks will all fall on you once you are together. Another (if you value special occasions or gifts) they never remember birthdays, they don’t shop for gifts, never think to bring a dish or a gift if they are a houseguest.

Basically just a failure to launch. I dated someone with an engineering graduate degree who was very smart but was basically looking for a replacement parent not a spouse. A lot of the issues I see mentioned are smaller things that actually increase your emotional labor later on. This is true for both genders.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had a f*cked up childhood--a parent was an alcoholic or a serial cheater...RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO matter how much they swear they won't turn out that way...wait 20 years and tell me what happens.

My husband's mother was an alcoholic and he's an amazing person and father and I wouldn't trade him for anything. You are wrong about this.

My father was an alcoholic. Are you saying that I should bear the punishment of having to spend the rest of my life alone? What a horrible, mean, insensitive thing to say!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the same time, young women are told to not be too picky because they will miss their window.

Don't listen to this. Yes you shouldn't be too picky about things that don't matter, but for the core important things, like temperament, work ethic, worldview, you should not compromise.

With the amount of people married at 24/25 and divorcing at 32/33, I agree with this.

Yes, marry the love of your life young if you find them. But I have found the dating pool of single guys in their mid-30s quite sweet. They have established jobs, a financial portfolio, and aren't staggering out of bars at 2am.

The only mild hiccup is kids from the previous marriage but if they're young ones, its fine.

No substance abuse
Wants to be employed
Good sense of humor
Good follow through - calls when promised, helps others when committed to doing so