Here goes: I was not the kind of girl who'd been planning her wedding since she was six. I thought of marriage as a sweet, but highly impractical concept that never (as far as I could tell) ended well. I come from a long line of twice (or thrice) married folks with a flair for drama (think: multi-year custody battles), so I wasn't exactly daydreaming about veils and bouquets. I wanted independence, a career, adventure...you dig? Then I met Jack and promptly got over it. I knew he was the one for me, and I started to become open to the idea of marriage for the first time.

Everyone in his family was married (to their FIRST husband/wife!). It blew my mind. And they made it look pretty appealing. Eventually, I got honest with myself -- I (gulp) actually wanted to get married. And Jack? Jack felt the exact same way, with one small difference. It wasn't until years and years...and years later. I, the woman, was ready for marriage way before he, the man, was even almost ready. I hated how cliche that made me feel. But it was true, so I had no choice but to own it. Hey, some cliches exist for a reason.

Here's the deal -- I honestly think that if they could, most men would wait to get married until about age 52. I mean why wouldn't they, right? The only glitch is the whole procreation thing. But that's easily fixed by (you guessed it) choosing a woman 20 years younger. This is what my girlfriend (a gorgeous woman in her early 30s) tells me that dating in Los Angeles is like. She says that the only guys who want to date a woman over 30 are men over 50. And this girl has the butt of a 15-year-old gymnast -- no exaggeration. Thank God the rest of the country isn't quite as bad when it comes to ageism (note that I said "quite"). But honestly, ageism is only part of it. Why IS there such a disparity between when the sexes wanna get hitched?