If you wait until you're 23 to commit,
you're less likely to get divorced.
A 2014 University of North Carolina at Greensboro study found that American women who cohabitate or get married at age 18 have a 60% divorce rate, but women who wait until 23 to make either of those commitments have a divorce rate around 30%.
"The longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment [cohabitation or marriage], the better their chances for marital success," The Atlantic reported.
1. The difference between like, lust, and love. Only one is worthy of an engagement.2. Each other’s career goals. What do you each want to accomplish in life — and how will it affect your relationship with each other? Knowing what you each want to achieve and supporting those dreams is a critical foundation for any couple.
3. How you each feel about faith. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Mormon, Scientologist, Wiccan, agnostic, atheist — it’s not the belief system that matters but what it means to your life as a couple (and your future life as a family).
4. Each other’s spending habits. And debt situations. And savings
plans. Get it all out on the table early. “Money secrets have no place
in a marriage,” Kelley Long, a CPA and financial planner, writes in the
Wall Street Journal. And even if you have different spending and saving
styles, it doesn’t mean your relationship is doomed. “It is simply an
acknowledgement of a fundamental difference in money attitudes,” Long
says.
5. Whether you want children — and when. It
is important to be on the same page regarding your general timeline for
starting a family, if you want to start a family at all. But you don’t
need to agree on how many kids just yet. “Once a couple has their first
kid, they will have a better idea of how many children they really
want,” Jaclyn Bronstein, a mental health counselor in New York, told The
Knot.
