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Comment by swozey | Hacker News Reader

> they're all waiting until they're past their 20s to find a partner and they expect them all to be complete people by the time they meet them.

I'm in my 30s and never married. I fully expect someone to come as a full person with an education and career. I am beyond glad that I didn't get married to my high school sweet heart or someone I dated in my early 20s when I was still a kid. I am nothing like I was when I was 20, or 25. Maybe even 30.

I know way, way too many people who did that and are now divorced. And a lot of the women in those relationships had children very early and didn't have a chance to get an education or start a career so now that they're divorced and on their own they're having a very hard time securing good income.

Women are definitely not "asking for too much." I would rather be happily single than compromise heavily on my expectations, and I'd wager the sort of women we're talking about feel the same.

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No one is. It doesn't make you unique or more true to yourself by waiting later in life. You'll get married and _still change._

My point is that people are deluding themselves into this idea that you need to be a finished person before finding a partner.

You will grow together and effect one another. And if you're a committed partner, you'll build each other up.

If you think hard times are a limit for you personally and divorce is always an option in regular everyday struggles, you're going to face some real hard realities one day when you realize options that you had are no longer available while life passes you by.

I think definitions of "a finished person" are being mismatched here. in my experience most people just want a partner that is a functional adult. Knows how to eat properly. Understands taxes. Can speak intelligently about cost of living topics like budgeting groceries and entertainment. Can drink moderately on a weeknight knowing they have to go to work the next day.

Edited to add: In my experience, if you don't date someone who "can adult", you will have to parent your partner, which doesn't go all that well if you're not kinky like that.

Yeah, and all of that sounds totally reasonable until you have a working knowledge of lots of interactions between tons of real people you've actually spoken with and had connections with to learn how life actually works.

Your requirements per a "functional adult" are an example of people asking for too much because they have no practical understanding of reality:

Americans don't eat properly. The average American is overweight.[1]

Americans don't know anything about taxes.[2]

Americans don't understand cost of living. Barely anyone knows what the CPI-W is or how it differs from the CPI-U.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm

[2]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/americans-dont-know...

I wouldn't consider weight to be a good indicator of capacity to make meals. I know thin people who I wouldn't trust to make me a cup of water and I know fat people who can adhere to a strict diet for their children.

I also wouldn't consider CPI-W and CPI-U to be cost-of-living concerns. I consider being able to say "hey, honey, we can't spend 500$ on your mobile game because eggs cost 7 for a dozen at the grocery store this week, we need to revise our budget" to be adult behavior.

Missing the forest for the trees.

Fat people truly adhering to proper eating don't stay fat. Cost of living and budgets are two separate but related topics.

I think you're kind of missing the point I'm trying to make. There's no point in someone who can define a term for broader trends if they cannot balance a personal budget. The capacity to define a broader trend can inform budgets, but I wouldn't date someone who is shocked when they have no money left for food because they spent it all on a shoe sale. I wouldn't consider that person a functional adult even if they happened to be thin and understood nuances between cost of living statistical measurements.

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I never said people don't get budgets wrong. I merely said it's reasonable to try to prioritize dating people who can sensibly budget according to their income and their cost of goods and services in their area. It shouldn't be a consistent problem that you run out of rent money because you didn't budget for paying rent. I think you're misunderstanding my words because you're conflating these sets of preferences like some kind of demand for idealized humans. I think I'm pointing out that people's desires aren't unreasonable and exaggerating them is just strawman behavior.

Savings rates being at all-time lows doesn't mean that people don't know how to budget. It might be that budgeting has become much harder. Similarly, I don't think someone being fat means they don't understand how to cook a healthy meal. It might be that keeping thin has become much harder.

Personal swipes will get you banned here, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points without any of that?

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> I know way, way too many people who did that and are now divorced. And a lot of the women in those relationships had children very early and didn't have a chance to get an education or start a career so now that they're divorced and on their own they're having a very hard time securing good income.

My parents talked about how when they were married 'they were just kids' even though they married in their mid 20s.

I wonder if this trend of marriages happening more into the late 20s to early 30s has a large source from the difficulty of obtaining financial stability, and additionally if it is part of the causes of the US low fertility rate.

Would we still wait to mid/late 20s to get serious if all else were equal but the financial stability to buy a house etc. were there as easily as it was for previous generations?

I think a big part of it is a huge portion of millennials are the children of divorced families. I have zero desire or itch to be married. If a partner of mine really wanted to be married I'd be fine with it. I also have no desire to have children.

The other poster mentioned that eventually I'll get married or "life will pass me by". At least that's how I'm reading it. I don't need a partner or to be married to enjoy life. I don't feel that I'm missing anything. I can do whatever I want.

I think it is just your bubble. There is nobody who is divorced in my social bubble. Young and old, all manage it somehow. I am also a millennial.

> my early 20s when I was still a kid

You were not a kid. There's an old lady on my road whose (late) husband built their house when he was 18. Maybe he was still a kid.

> I am nothing like I was when I was 20, or 25. Maybe even 30.

It would be very weird if you did not change at all between 20 and 30 but nothing precludes doing that with someone else. 99% of modern relationship advice is bad because it tries to convince people that needing to show up to life with everything figured out is superior to figuring things out together. For almost everyone, the latter is a lot more workable. That doesn't mean it will be free from hardship, but it opens up enormous advantages. Time is not free.

I'm obviously not using "kid" in the legal sense. I cannot believe I'm having to write this. I'm referring to maturity and wisdom, experience.

If I want to call my 20 year old self a kid, I'm going to do so without any concern for your input.

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