In my 20's, I met guys who had decided that they wanted to get married because it "was time." They had a good job, a nice house, and now they wanted a wife to complete the picture. I used to call them bowerbirds because, like the Australian bowerbird, they had everything all set up and were just waiting for a female to come check out their display of stuff.

When some female friends and I were talking about this with our male friends, the guys were baffled. They were like, "Wait, isn't a guy who wants to get married what you all say you WANT?" We had to explain to them that of course there's nothing wrong with wanting to get married. But we don't like feeling interchangeable. Some of these bowerbird guys gave us the feeling that they just wanted to get married and that any halfway decent looking woman who seemed nice could fill the role.

I avoided falling into that trap. I remember thinking that he seemed nice and we could probably have a decent life together. But once the novelty of getting married and living together and maybe having kids wore off, we would wake up one morning and realize that we didn't have much in common besides the fact that we'd both wanted to get married at around the same time. And then we might make each other miserable, and would probably get divorced.

Now that I am single and in my late 40's, a lot of my friends from my late 20's and early 30's who used to ask me why I wasn't with anyone and how their lives were sooooo great because they were engaged/just married/having kids, etc. are now either divorced or aren't saying anything anymore about how great marriage is.