<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" My husband is cooking me dinner tonight. This is special because it&amp;#039;s Valentine&amp;#039;s Day, but it&amp;#039;s also special because it&amp;#039;s our first Valentine&amp;#039;s Day as husband and wife. We got married just a few weeks ago, and I&amp;#039;m still getting used to saying &amp;quot;my husband.&amp;quot; (I tried to buy him a &amp;quot;husband&amp;quot; card for Valentine&amp;#039;s Day, but they all sucked so I went with a puppy one instead.) I am totally in love, and I&amp;#039;m so happy we took this step in our relationship. I am also so glad that I didn&amp;#039;t pay attention to anything like the troll-y opinion in the Wall Street Journal. Susan &amp;quot;Princeton Mom&amp;quot; Patton \u2014 the woman who last year wrote a letter in the Daily Princeton urging young woman to &amp;quot;find a husband on campus before you graduate&amp;quot; \u2014 is back with more advice. Well, actually it&amp;#039;s the same advice but aimed at all educated women, not just the Princeton ones. The gist: If you don&amp;#039;t prioritize finding a guy while you&amp;#039;re in college, you are screwed. You will never have such a good pool of candidates again, and as you get older, these men will turn their focus to &amp;quot;younger, less challenging women.&amp;quot; College women, listen to me very, very carefully: THIS IS NOT TRUE. I repeat: THIS IS NOT TRUE. I am 30, and I met my husband when I was 28. And although I&amp;#039;m just one woman, I can assure you that your window doesn&amp;#039;t close as soon as you enter the real world. &amp;quot;An extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself,&amp;quot; Patton writes. Resorting to scare tactics to make her point, she continues: &amp;quot;But if you are a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult.&amp;quot; Again, not true. The &amp;quot;task&amp;quot; of finding a life partner isn&amp;#039;t easy for anyone \u2014 that&amp;#039;s why dating can be so trying at times \u2014 but eligible guys don&amp;#039;t vanish the second they remove their graduation caps. I am personally glad I waited until this point in my life. When I was in college, I didn&amp;#039;t know what I was looking for in a partner. If you do and you meet someone you know you want to spend the rest of your life with, congratulations, mazel tov, and I hope you have a wonderful life together. But if you&amp;#039;re anything like I was, you have to take some time to figure things out about yourself first. My vision of what I wanted my life to look like evolved throughout my 20s, as I gained more Life Experience. I didn&amp;#039;t have a boyfriend in college or even immediately after, but unlike what Patton suggests \u2014 that I was valuing my career over my love life \u2014 it wasn&amp;#039;t for a lack of interest. I just didn&amp;#039;t meet anyone back then, and now I think that was for the best. As I dated and hooked up and talked to friends about their relationships \u2014 the ones that worked and the ones that didn&amp;#039;t \u2014 I gradually got to a point where I was capable of recognizing the man who was right for me. What Patton misses in her narrow focus on academic credentials are the reasons I actually fell in love with my husband: Yes, he is intelligent and hardworking, and those things are appealing. But I married him because we have fun together and because I get excited to come home to him at the end of the day. I married him for his thoughtfulness and his ability to make me laugh and his willingness to listen and his patience when I cry. I didn&amp;#039;t miss out one bit by not locking it down in college. That is the truth. Follow Lori on Twitter. Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5618/right-time-find-a-husband/?src=rss>