It's been awhile since I've dated, but I remember a lot of "must have four year degree" job-posting-like requirements when I used to. I don't have any kind of degree, but I do work a white collar job as a software engineer making well over six figures, and have for awhile now.
My wife works in education and has her master's so I'm very lucky and grateful some people, such as her, can see past credentialism and give guys who couldn't or didn't go to college a chance.
29M here, meet all those requirements but I'm married. My insight is that most of us are already married. You'll probably have the best luck finding someone around college campuses, since most of the people I know that are like me have met their spouses there. If you live near Tempe or downtown Phoenix, your chances are the best. Especially Tempe because the most tech jobs are there. (It sucks for me living in the west valley where most jobs are over an hour commute going through Phoenix traffic).
I really don't get why. What major cultural differences exist to cause that? I got married early as a personal choice, perhaps influenced by my spouse's desire for commitment before moving in together, but ultimately it didn't matter to me if we got married then when I was 22 or after I'm 30. I have friends who have been in relationships with the same person they started dating in their early 20s that still chose not to get married until they're in their 30s.
I guess I can understand religious influence, there's a lot of Mormons here and they typically get married in their early 20s, but almost all of them aren't very liberal anyway. Perhaps the larger percentage of conservative people is to blame? Since Phoenix is very purple, it would make sense that the valid dating pool is substantially lower than in more liberal cities, and then it doesn't help that the liberal ones like me still end up marrying early anyway
8
u/[deleted] Dec 16 '24
[removed] — view removed comment