About a third (32%) of adults who are married, living with a partner or in a committed relationship say that is how they first met their current partner, while 18% say they met through work, 17% through school, 12% online, 8% at a bar or restaurant, 5% at a place of worship and 8% somewhere else.
Young people aged 18 to 24 first spot their crushes at university (18%), school (18%) or with mutual friends (15%). In contrast, 45- to 54-year-olds meet tend to meet at work (22%), by chance (19%) or through friends (16%). Older couples who, like Homer and Marge Simpson, met at school are rare.
People meet all kinds of partners through friends. But you're far more likely to meet your future spouse via a family member. In fact, any sort of organized group is a good bet. Sixty percent of those surveyed met their future spouse through school, work, church, etc.
According to Match.com's findings, women are more likely to meet that special someone earlier in life at age 25, whereas men meet their match closer to 28. However, 50% of the folks the website surveyed all meet their partner at some point during their 20s.
And, according to the findings, the average age you'll find your partner varies from gender to gender. That's right - the research found that the average woman finds their life partner at the age of 25, while for men, they're more likely to find their soulmate at 28.
"The Marriage Crunch" was based on a study by Harvard and Yale researchers that projected college-educated women had a 20 percent chance of getting married if they were still single at 30, a 5 percent chance at age 35, and just a 2.6 percent chance at age 40.
Among those 18 to 29 years of age, 63% of men versus 34% of women considered themselves single. This dropped to 25% of men and 17% of women for those 30 to 49 years of age.
“When you've found The One, you want everyone in your life to meet them, and get to know them,” says Assimos. “You are genuinely excited about the prospect of being with this person, and you're no longer are looking around to see what else is out there.”
eharmony claims to be responsible for a not insignificant 4% of U.S. marriages, while OkCupid claims to have the most mentions in the New York Times wedding section of all dating apps.
The 2022 Average Age of Marriage in the US
In 2022, the average age of marriage for female participants was 30 (down 3 years from 2021), while male respondents married at age 32 (also down 3 years from 2021).
A recent study from WeddingWire revealed that 50 percent of those included in the data said they had some kind of romantic encounter while celebrating someone else's nuptials.
Research finds that the most successful couples meet through shared social networks or while pursuing a common interest, and couples with weaker social ties outside of each other may take longer to commit to marriage.
Yes…
Are you in your mid-thirties and still single? If you are, you're not alone. About 56% of people in their thirties are married, while the other 44% of thirty-somethings are single.
Pew Research found that 55 percent of the singles it surveyed said they were not looking for a partner, though this includes widows and divorcees.
Not until age 27 is there a 50% probability that men will have married for the first time. The probability of first marriage by age 30 is 74% for women and 61% for men. The probability of first marriage by age 40 is 86% for women and 81% for men.
Whether you're 35 or 75, it's never too late to fall madly (or gently and even sacredly) in love. Just ask actress Ellen Burstyn and a host of other women who found themselves in the heat of romance when they least expected it. My mother met the love of her life when she was 84.
I recently carried out a mini survey on Instagram and established that most people considered 40+ to be the threshold for being an “Older Bride”, though a reasonable number considered it to be 35+ (I'm guessing they were probably votes supplied by my 13 year old daughter and her friends).
The Goldilocks Theory
“The ideal age to get married, with the least likelihood of divorce in the first five years, is 28 to 32,” says Carrie Krawiec, a marriage and family therapist at Birmingham Maple Clinic in Troy, Michigan.
While 40% of people marry their first love, reunited or not, only 4% have a happy ending after reuniting.
Most experts agree that the right age to start dating is around 16. Wanting to spend more time with a boy you genuinely care about is a sign you might be ready to start dating.
While age differences between couples may spark raised eyebrows, they aren't that uncommon. Though the average age gap between people in heterosexual relationships in the US is about 2.3 years,¹ many relationships endure with a much wider age interval.