Marriage in your twenties is for the birds!

I never talk about marriage on this site. Not that I’m against marriage, nor am I commitment phobic. I’ve been married. It lasted three years and one day. It was basically like a lease. At the end she still had low mileage, that “new wife smell,” and she still looked great when I returned her to the dealership. She was like a certified pre-owned Lexus.

Now this is not the part that will offend you – it’s this next part that will get under your skin.

For those of you who got married in your twenties, I think all of you got married too young. Yeah I know: “I want to be a young mommy,” or “I want to be a young dad.” But a young mom and a young dad still have no idea who they are as a person.

If you’re a woman, you really don’t know who you are until you’re thirty. And, sorry guys, but if you’re a man you really don’t know who you are until you’re at least thirty-five to forty. This would make all of you old dads and older moms – not exactly Warren Beatty old but older and, may I add, wiser. Now I could go online and grab you a bunch of statistics about divorce rates and everything else, but why bore you with statistics that you can research on your own.

This would also mean that families would be smaller and the worlds population would slow down to something more manageable. This is not an Al Gore thumping blog post but we are running out of key resources in the world and a few less kids would really help the issue.

From all my years of coaching, I have just found that women don’t really know who they are until they’re thirty. Your twenties are all about finding yourself. And as for men, we’re just way too immature until we’re at least thirty-five to forty.

I’ve recently emailed all the women I’ve dated in my twenties . . . all 700 of them 🙂 I sent them an email that said:

“Thanks for the experience. You were great. I was a self-centered asshole. You met me during my player years and, yes, you were just a notch on the belt. But now that those years are over [my real age you readers will never find out!], I’ve matured into a really good man. Let me know if you’d like to reconnect as a friend or on a deeper level. David”

Now this isn’t some Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen song, nor did I really write this email. And I really don’t think I dated 700 women…I might have, but who knows, and who remembers? The important thing is to embrace what you did and grow from the experiences you had.

But the bottom line here is this: To make a marriage successful, you have to know who you are first. None of this Jerry Maguire ‘you complete me’ crap. Enjoy your twenties. If you’re in your twenties right now, enjoy dating but enjoy the time getting to know yourself more. Also, don’t rush a family and the condominium on wheels (for those of you who don’t know what that is, that’s the overly obnoxious SUV – Yes, I live in California and yes I hate Hummers . . . though I do enjoy an occasional hummer).

So, take the time to get to know yourself before you get in that minivan. Because to have true love, you have to find true love with yourself first. For those of you over thirty who are in a marriage, you know exactly what I’m talking about here.

Just one last thing … I’m all about the biological clock, but can you at least wait until your late twenties to pound out the puppies and get married? Give yourself a few years to get to know who you are as a person. You’ll make a better wife and you’ll make a better lover. Because I’ve got to tell you that there is nothing more fun in bed than a woman over the age of thirty. I tell all my friends that they can have all the women in their twenties. I’m all about the hot sexy cougars.