Metrocards & Condoms

I used to have a grand theory about this question. Of course, one’s first question might be why would we designate an age?

You may be saying “Love Doctor you should know true love doesn’t wait or rush.” Indeed, I couldn’t agree more.

However, there’s nothing wrong with setting a goal, or better put, a guidepost.

The inherent problem of the “marrying age” is that when one begins running up against the mid-thirties they risk landing in the zone of potentially “settling.” Those people you always wondered if you would end up with..you didn’t because they already got married…. and the pickings are just really slim. They just settle down with whoever is around just because that’s all who is left unmarried . NYC has a rich tradition of mid-thirties bachelors, but it’s unique, and only so many people can rock that lifestyle.

So let’s assume that one wants to be married by the tender age of 30. Women can still have many children, and it’s not so old that people begin to settle for less and not so young that they feel they’re giving up some great part of their life by getting married “too early.”

So assuming that 30 is our D-Day let’s work backwards to see when we should hope to have met our future wife/husband to be.

Although some people are all about the shotgun we fell in love and got married in three months deal, the Love Doctor rejects that approach to marriage. Sure it works for some, but you simply don’t know somebody after just a few months…they could be a psycho killer or even an assassin (a la Mr. & Mrs. Smith) for all you know.

So let’s give it an engagement period of one healthy year.

In addition to that let’s add a healthy year of solid dating before the engagement.

Of course, before the year of solid dating we’ve got to add that period of time of sort of kind of dating and the initial time period of meeting the person and getting to the romantic point (or crossing out of the friend zone with a friend), so let’s add on another year.

All of which means that with 30 as our D-Day, by the age of 27 we need to at least know, have as a friend, or be sort of kind of dating the person that we’re going to marry (I think that I’m behind).

Then again 40 is the new 30….so we may have an extra ten years.

- The Love Doctor