Hmm, maybe I need to start going to a gym. I never get approached by gals.

Anyways... as to the 'southern women' & marraige thing... its kind of hard to generalize. I dont' know how old you folks are, but I am in my late 20's. About half my friends from school/personal life are married, and about 90% of my peers at the office where I work are married or engaged.

Even though they say that people are waiting longer to get married, from what I have seen, most marriages occur during the mid-to-late 20's. I have met people whose main priority at the time was to meet someone, fall in love and then get married. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get married, but being too eager to do so, or thinking that marraige will magically make you happy/content isn't a healthy starting point.

One of the issues with making it through your 20's as a bachelor(ette) can be that it takes a lot more effort to meet single, dateable people. This can become a problem if you don't bar/club hop or aren't regularly involved in any social/athletic activities.

Another issue can be that the 'stakes' feel 'higher' dating when you're older. I don't/haven't dated much at all, but as I get older there are an increasing number of people (females especially) who proclaim to be 'sick of all the games/hook-ups and say they are lookingonly for relationships that will lead somewhere. To be honest, that's a bit of pressure and a little disturbing for me for two reasons:
-its annoying to think that some gals who wouldn't have given a guy (like me) a shot before might now settle for a 'safe/boring' guy (just because they are looking to put a guy in a wed-lock)... it just seems like a good way to sabotage a marriage before it ever happens.
-Also its worrisome that my goals & expectations for a relationship will be way out-of-sync with most of the gals still around. I fully expect to date a gal for 1.5 years minimum before I even start to consider marriage.... which is longer than the timetable many of the gals who've been-there/done-that/dated-around enough have in mind.

Obviously, those cases isn't the situation with every single girl out there... but I think that the odds worsen as you get older (biological clock and all).

It could be that I'm just too pessimistic.... maybe someone who dates more than i do will have a different perspective on things