Why some women never get married

At first, we had young single men do the interviews, but so many of the interviewees gave macho answers that we doubted their reliability. In fact, we threw out the entire study and started again. The second time we tried teams composed of men and women, but that produced mainly politically correct answers, which we also questioned.

Finally, we had men in their sixties ask the questions, and that solved the problem. The responses they elicited were generally straightforward. The single men apparently did not feel an obligation to give these interviewers macho or politically correct answers. This survey uncovered some interesting facts. The first was that there is an age when a man is ready to marry-the Age of Commitment.

The age varies from man to man, but there are patterns that are easily identified:. Still, there is no one-to-one correlation. For example, when a man goes to law school, which takes three additional years, he usually starts considering marriage around age 27 or The single men we interviewed explained that when they get out of school and get a job and start making money, new possibilities open to them. For the first time, a majority of them have some independence. All of a sudden, they have a nice car and an apartment and an income.

Many look at time spent as a carefree bachelor as a rite of passage. If a woman is seriously trying to find a husband, she should date men who have reached the age of commitment. Even among men who are positively inclined toward marriage and are from identical educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, 20 percent will reach the age of commitment a year or more before our estimates, while another 20 percent will only consider marriage as a real option two to four years later.

This is usually an arrangement agreed to by the man but devised by the woman. When we conducted a focus group with 12 men who had just proposed to women, we learned that men were far more likely to marry when they got tired of the singles scene. Our original intent was to determine how men at different ages reacted to single women they met at social gatherings. We started by asking the men about their lives before they met their future wives. How often and whom had they dated, where had they met the women, had they gone to singles places and, if so, how often?

The first thing that struck us was that about a third of them said that for six months to two years before they met their brides-to-be, they were not dating or going to singles places as often as they had been just a few years earlier.

They had not stopped dating. Picking up women was no longer their main reason for going out. They told us the singles scene was not as much fun as it used to be. Four of them used one phrase or the other, and ten of twelve men in our focus group said they felt the same way: The singles scene had lost some of its appeal.

Many men reluctantly admitted that for more than a year, they had felt uncomfortable in the singles world where they had been hanging out for the past five years. The singles world for professionals obviously is an older and more sophisticated crowd than that for men whose formal education ended in high school, but eventually men from both groups had the same experience.

Three young men who had graduated from the same high school were in one focus group made up of men who were about to marry. One was a plumber, one worked repairing computers, and the third was a store manager. Each said he had begun to feel uncomfortable in his favorite singles place about two years earlier. For two of them, their singles place was a bar and pool hall where they and their single friends hung out and met women. The third man was a very active member of a large Baptist church.

For him, the singles scene was church meetings and church singles functions. Interestingly, he and the fellows who frequented bars and pool halls made the same comment.

One said that the singles bar he used to visit was filled with teenyboppers, and he felt out of place. They had simply gotten too old for the crowd. It surprised us when they reported feelings identical to those of the younger high-school-educated men.

The places the professional single men went drew an older crowd. Among the professionals, the youngest women were college graduates and probably at least Some people simply cannot afford the great financial risk that's involved in getting married.

There are also instances where some do not feel comfortable linking their finances to another individual, potentially due to credit, tax considerations, or other concerns. Social worker and therapist Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW, also cites government-sponsored benefits as a strike against marriage for some. For those receiving disability, the individual being "deemed to be a dependent of another" can negatively affect their income.

Studies have shown that the working middle class is more concerned about the fiscal impact of a divorce, especially considering the economic state of our country. Previously, legal matrimony was seen as the only way to commit your life to another person. Sarro says some couples no longer see the need to have a government's approval for their relationship: "They feel marriage is an institution that often bears no legitimacy on the foundation between them and their partner s.

There are expectations that come with marriage that may push people to not want to get married. There are some antiquated and problematic tropes that come with getting married, akin to your sex life declining or your freedom being limited.

Plenty of married couples would argue with this, but considering the popularity of bachelor and bachelorette parties, there's certainly some people that think fun and games are completely over once you say, "I do. While some value commitment outside of legal matrimony, there are some who simply are uninterested in relationships in general.

Some aromantic or asexual people may be inherently uninterested in relationships in general. Other people might simply have the desire to expend energy on other things. Most people who've been in any relationship, healthy or unhealthy, can attest that it's no easy feat. So we should also be able to accept that not everyone values the outcome in the same way! Sometimes marriage isn't even on the radar because there's no desire to be in a committed relationship.

For some, this is hard to understand. We've been conditioned to believe that there is someone for everyone and that you couldn't possibly be content living into old age without a romantic life partner.

We're seeing more of a refusal of this idea, with folks being completely comfortable having a lifetime of solely casual relationships. Some people are open to marriage but don't actively seek it. They may not want to get married in any active way, but that isn't to say that they're actively opposed to marriage. In other words, if they found themselves in a meaningful relationship with someone who wants to get married, they'd be willing to do it.

But otherwise, marriage isn't a personal goal or desire of theirs. For some people, there's not much difference between a long-term commitment and marriage. The primary difference is the legality.

So for some people, whether or not they are bound by law does not determine their dedication to one person or their willingness to put in the effort to make a relationship work. In terms of satisfaction between couples, integral parts of relationships like communication, sex, and work-life balance are very similar between married and unmarried long-term couples.

A shining example: Actress Goldie Hawn has been in a long-term relationship with actor Kurt Russell since Hawn and Russell were both previously married but have not made the decision to "legalize" their commitment in almost 40 years. Be wary of making decisions about marriage based on fear or family expectations.

Everyone has ideologies that are passed down from their families of origin, some based in religion or tradition. Sometimes people are survivors of unhealthy family dynamics, and in an effort to avoid recreating those cycles, they opt to avoid getting married completely. Jagoo says this is an instance where it's helpful to pause and interrogate one's aversion to marriage. She recommends therapy as a potential way to process these experiences and clarify your real feelings on the matter.

Some people who do not care for the institution of marriage may still find some benefits to getting married anyway, particularly legally and financially. For some, considerations like insurance or tax breaks may sway your decision. Most still lived in the family home, where their financial contributions were no doubt greatly appreciated.

The term bore no stigma and was used almost as a surname, like Smith or Mason or Taylor. Spinsterhood was accompanied by unusual legal and economic freedoms.

And yet it was ultimately the Victorians who, with their indefatigable sense of purpose and powers of association, rescued the spinster, championing in her the rebel spirit that fanned feats of political and social reform. Out of impoverished necessity, never-married women pioneered the way to the first female professions, from governess to nursing, and expanding to typing, journalism, academia and law.

They became philanthropists and agitators, educators and explorers; some rejected sexual norms while others became quiet allies of the homosexual community. Of all the anxious experiences of spinsterhood, one of the most debilitating is the sense of a life on hold, incomplete.

As Roseneil argues in her book, membership of grown-up society is marked by coupling. When Professor Paul Dolan , a behavioural scientist at LSE, published research claiming that single women without children were happier than married ones, he was taken aback by the response.

Whether a spinster is happy with her state depends, of course, not just on her personality, her circumstances, and her mood at the moment you ask her, but an ambivalent definition of contentment. It is time, surely, to change the rules, and the conversation.

As the population of never-married women expands, we should be honest about what it meant, and means, to be one. We should celebrate our identity and the life experience that has given it to us.

We should reclaim our history and stop being defined by others. Why not start by taking back that dread word, spinster? Why are increasing numbers of women choosing to be single?

No thanks. I grew up as an only child, and have never really felt the need or desire for a partner. For context, I met him while I was a freshman in college he lived in another city, and we were long-distance for about four years. He was my first and only serious boyfriend — we have no children, we are not religious, and we do not want children. Purchasing a house together this year has felt like our version of marriage or a wedding.

In ways, it feels like a bigger deal and more of a milestone than getting married ever could. In addition to being incredibly dated, the entire tradition of marriage is steeped in sexism. However, for me, the idea of marriage is the opposite of romantic , and not a tradition I choose to practice or promote.

As my 20s turned into my 30s, I was less and less open to marriage.