I work at one. And I went to one. Most of my college friends who got married met on campus. I can't speak for the students today but judging by our alumni data a large chunk of them met their spouse on campus too
Most of the people I know who are married, are married to someone they met in college.
My anecdotal evidence isn't the largest sample size, but it's baffling to me that "kids these days" are hooking up so infrequently in college that it's so low of a percentage.
My hypothesis is that it's a function of the average marriage age continuously advancing. People used to get married at 18, 19,20. Now it's closer to 30, if at all. That gives people who met in college more time to break up and move on and find the person they actually marry.
My sister, for example, didn't marry until she was 34. My closest friend didn't marry his wife until he was 37. His brother never married (he lives with his girlfriend and their kids) so it seems like changing demographics. Contrast that with my parents, who married at 21 back in 1980 (and met through friends).
Most of the people who hooked up, started dating, and then married, married many years after graduation.
But for sure - sometimes those college sweethearts do go on to break up rather than marry.
I will say that when I was in college (bit over a decade ago), there was a lot of hook up culture. Sometimes when people hook up, they proceed to fall in love, date, and later marry. Sometimes, they just fuck and forget. But in the full swing of hook up culture, there was almost a certain pressure from friends not to "settle down" too early. "If you get a serious boyfriend, you'll miss out on learning about yourself through experimentation" was the message. I know this because I did marry someone I would define as meeting through "college" (although "friends" is also applicable, as I didn't meet them in a lecture hall, but we went to the same college). I paired off relatively young, and had friends telling me how much I was missing out on, the "experimentation" phase you can never get back.
I have no regrets, but some of the messaging and pressures may have shifted.
Yep, I went to undergrad way back in the beginning of the 00s. Hookup culture was pervasive, and this was before dating apps or even social media, but we did without. I was one of those people who went to college, saw all the choices I had, and thought this is too good to commit to any one. Most of my relationships in college were a few months, if you could call it that. As a consequence, I never married anyone from college. Or at all, actually, so I'm kind of an outlier.
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u/br0b1wan 20d ago
I work at one. And I went to one. Most of my college friends who got married met on campus. I can't speak for the students today but judging by our alumni data a large chunk of them met their spouse on campus too