Millennials arent necessarily afraid to commit.
I hear concerns about marriage from young adults all the time in my private practice.
How do I know if hes/shes the one?
Caleb George
How long should we date before we even start talking marriage?
Should we live together first?
Do we really need to get married?
There is a mindset among millennials that you dont have to be with someone to make it be happy.
Yet research shows the benefits of being in a committed relationship with another person.
This redefines the expectations individuals have about how to get the love they want.
Caleb George
Millennials have re-defined the institution of marriage.
Aziz Ansari in his bestselling book Modern Romance calls this new punch in of marriage the soul mate marriage.
What used to be companionate is now much deeper.
Its not about finding someone decent to start a family with.
Its about finding the perfect person whom you truly, deeply love, Ansari says.
He goes on to liken this shift to a pot of water.
We want something thats very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go, says Ansari.
In the past, people werent looking for something boiling; they just needed some water.
Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up.
Now, if things arent boiling, committing to marriage seems premature.
Another consideration is the fact that millennials, generally speaking, are turned off by the idea of divorce.
Some Generation Y individuals grew up in single-parent homes or juggled the balance of living between divorced parents.
If that means taking 10 more years to find it, then so be it.
At first glance, it seems like millennials have a problem with commitment.
Actually, instead of choosing not to marry at all, many millennials are choosing to marry later.
A recent poll found that 69% of millennials report that they do want to get married, eventually.
