You & Me Solo

On the cover of today's Yale Daily News there is a photo of a beaming young couple, two Yale seniors (both Catholics and on the crew team) who are engaged to be married upon graduation. It all began when they met on the steps of the New Haven post office, and they sealed the deal (not literally I'm sure, since they are devout Catholics) when he proposed to her last year on those very steps. What a whirlwind tale of tidy romance.

Marriage before the age of 23 is uncommon these days, and the figures are dropping in recent years: apparently only about 25 percent of women and 16 percent of men choose this path of an early yoke and bypass the lovely exploratory period of the 20s dating scene. The Yale Daily News reported that less than 40 percent of young marriages end in divorce, which is less than the overall 50 percent divorce rate.

My guess is that it's all a matter of luck. Destiny could have it that you meet the man, or woman, of your dreams while studying for final exams, under the harsh fluorescent glow of the library reading room, at age 19. For some women, their destiny seems to be meeting a series of mixed characters until the right one comes in, maybe late in life. And then, oops, that one wasn't the right one either—just a regular old mimbo/wanker conglomerate.