College is typically the place where people go to build relationships, figure out who they are and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. For many college students, it is not the place to go to think about marriage.

However, The News & Observer ran an article earlier this month discussing a study that looks at the beneficial effects of getting and staying married. The article states that those who consider their spouse or partner their best friend are about two times more satisfied with life than other couples.

Brittany Bradish, a junior studying animal science and who is also engaged, said she sees the best friend aspect as critical for a long-term relationship.

“I feel like it’s very important,” Bradish said. “I like that in that you feel like you can really talk to them about anything. It’s like my best friend from when I was little. If I need to call her and tell her about anything in the world, I feel like I can, and it’s the same way with him.”

Theodore Greenstein, a sociology and anthropology professor at NC State, said research shows that not only marriage, but any kind of union, such as cohabiting, also generates the beneficial effects which the article addresses.

“One of the things we have to realize is that it’s not solely the legal act of getting married, it’s having a steady life partner,” Greenstein said. “Whether that person is legally married to you or not doesn’t seem to be the determining factor.”

Despite the apparent connection between marriage and overall happiness, statistics show that modern adults are delaying getting married more than ever before in the United States, according to Greenstein.

“The ages at first marriage for both men and women are at an all-time high, and are very high in most Westernized countries,” Greenstein said.

Greenstein says he suspects these numbers not only reflect the decision by many to delay marriage, but also likely suggest that many will never get married.

“Traditionally, family sociologists assumed that the increasing ages at marriage in the U.S. reflected not a retreat from marriage, but simply delay,” Greenstein said. “Today, however, I suspect that the increasing age at marriage reflects not only that those who marry are doing so later in life, but that many are simply never marrying.”

Jeremy Berg, a senior studying nuclear engineering, said the generational change has a lot to do with how people view marriage and what they expect from it. Berg is married to Nicole Abbott, a senior studying psychology.

“I think previously, people were more willing to get married, but more willing to be divorced,” Berg said. “Now you’ve got people who aren’t necessarily as willing to get married because they’re not going to want the divorce.”

Abbott agreed that there is more hesitancy in getting married for modern youths, and that it might have to do with not feeling the need to get married in light of other options.

“There are more alternatives that are more accepted by society, like living together,” Abbott said. 

Greenstein made similar observations about the increasing acceptance of cohabitation as a likely contributing factor to people deciding not to get married.

In addition to the desire to avoid commitment, Berg said he could recognize a few things that might reasonably deter someone from taking the next step.

“I think that there are a lot of tangible and respectable fears when it comes to this kind of thing,” Berg said. “The fear of commitment, obviously, there’s the fear of being tied down and the fear of just the unknown more than anything else.”

Bradish also said the fear of being tied down might have something to do with the current generation’s attitude toward marriage.

“I guess people seem to look at it as more like you’re tied down, like that person is kind of holding you back from stuff,” Bradish said.

Bradish said she does not share such fears and said her experience with her partner has been just the opposite.

“Our personalities are a little bit different,” she said. “He’s a little more outgoing than I am, so we kind of push each other to do new things.”

She said such new things include scuba diving and even spearfishing.

“It’s like all this stuff I would have never thought I would be doing, we’ve kind of done that for each other,” Bradish said.

Berg and Abbott also said they were neither nervous nor afraid of taking the next step.

 “I could see why some would rather wait until they’re done with college or they know where they’re going to be for a job or where they’re going to be for a couple years, and from there look for a more permanent kind of a sense,” Berg said. “It worked in our specific case and we just kind of went for it.”