At 28 you are unbelievably young and full of possibilities and potential. Seriously. Ask anyone my age (a lot older than you...)

I was 28 when I met my SO. more previously...

My first partner died when I was 27. Though I did date a bit once I got over the worst of the grief, and even lived with one partner for a time, I more or less assumed I would spend the rest of my life alone, with spates of happy low-intensity dating. I was pretty happy with that idea most of the time.

My now-husband and I met when we were both about 35, and married this summer at about 40. At times, this is literally unbelievable to me; I have to stop and shake myself in wonder and delight at having found such a loving and healthy partner, but also in disbelief at how little this domestic cuddlebug resembles the determinedly single young woman I once was.

What I'm saying: not only can you not predict who will come into your life, you might not even be able to predict who you will be.

Where were you in your life career / etc-wise when you met?

I missed this.

I was a wicked-old broke-ass college student with no kids, no pets, a halfway decent rental apartment, and a big but geographically distant support system of mostly single friends, male and female.

28. Ha. Ha. My now-hub and I moved in together when he was 46 and I was 43. We got married and had a baby within the next year. Until then, I had a lot of fun adventures, and a great exciting and fulfilling career that required a lot of traveling. I figured I would never settle down with one partner and never get married. I was wrong.

We got together around the time I was tired of working all the time and ready for a new chapter in my life. I looked at John, someone I worked with occasionally, and started to notice how smart he was, how kind and how honest and decent he was. Then I started thinking how very blue his eyes looked and then I started to lust after him. But we were friends first and I didn't feel that way about him at all at the beginning. You might look at him and see a wiry medium-sized guy, with not too much hair. I look at him and he's ten feet tall and the smartest, handsomest man in the world.

If I'd met John when I was 28, I wouldn't have given him a second look. I didn't have the perspective or the wisdom to realize what a splendid person he is. Actually maybe he wasn't all that splendid back then. I certainly wasn't. Maybe we're both better now as we are, slightly aged.

You just have to live your life and do the things you enjoy and pursue your goals and trust that things will fall into place. There are many things that are better with a partner, yes. But having been single so long, I now sometimes miss that freedom and that feeling of being accountable to no one. I think you can have it all but you can't have it all at once.

Wise words from Kangaroo.

I was 29 when I met my husband and working in a Japanese anime merchandizing company. I don't think where I was career wise made a difference. We met in a punk club.

In February/March 1999 (32 years old) I was single, had two cats, a decent apartment, a car on its last legs and living in a state I wasn't particularly fond of. I was working as a mortgage loan underwriter which is a type of job you can do until you die at your desk. Which was exactly what I was picturing for myself (or at home alone after choking on something and having my 20 cats eat my corpse) when I decided to dump the job, cash out my 401k and move to Seattle in Spring 2000.

In June 1999 I met the future mister in a chat room. We started getting serious in September. As it turned out he lived just over the Canadian border in BC, a proximity highly convenient to meeting him. Rather than flying back and forth and since I was already planning my move to Seattle, I sped up my move to Seattle by about three or four months.

I had just turned 33 when I met the mister (face-to-face) December 1999 and we married a year later. He is the only serious relationship I've been in. I have no regrets in not having others. He was worth waiting for.

The culture at large likes to pretend that All Good Things only happen in our 20s, and that everything beyond is hopelessly second-rate, and that if you haven't found THE ONE by the time you're 30, YOU LOSE. Feel free to take it from me: The culture at large is full of shit.

I got married at 28. My husband and I separated about 3 years later, and I moved cross-country to start my life (and career!) over again. Around the same time I fell head over heels in love with a new boyfriend and had a dramatic romantic long-distance relationship that eventually broke my heart another 3 years later. While recovering from that broken heart, I traveled to New Zealand, had a couple of short stage plays produced, and got braces on my teeth to fix the bite/jaw problems that had always bothered me.

My partner -- like amazing, best friend, love-of-my-life, makes-me-laugh-every-single-day, I cannot fathom how I ever spent a day without him -- and I did not meet (via Salon Personals) until I was 36 and he was 42. That was over four years ago. Now I'm 40, and the main thing I regret is that, at 28, I didn't realize how much living there really was to do.

If I'd met John when I was 28, I wouldn't have given him a second look. I didn't have the perspective or the wisdom to realize what a splendid person he is.

I've said exactly the same thing about The Fella: he's an amazingly kind, giving, patient, intelligent person, and every day he makes laugh and makes me feel loved. But I would have noticed very little of that when I was younger, brasher, less attentive, and --- let's face it --- a whole lot stupider about myself and about other people.

*wants to Favorite this thread so bad that it has bruises*

Speaking as a 32-year old woman who is one year into a "second career," is in therapy for various issues, is more financially aware now than she has ever been, and feels as if she's at least capable of retaining a long-term partner, I am starting to despair of finding the right person for me.

I hate to be ultra sick but you made this thread, not me! It's our five year anniversary this week. Which I only ever remember because it was fleet week in San Francisco.

It's too much to go into everything but I was 24 and my life was complete shit, from a terrible job where I was being sexually harassed (hugged, petted, massaged all while saying, always saying, "Don't fucking touch me, stop touching me.") near-daily for over a year by a co-worker while (female) management observed and even found it cute/funny, to a messed up living situation I'd just escaped from that included living with a pair of married insane right-wing nut jobs; the wife would cry when I came home after 11pm and have her husband "talk" to me about it, so then I started sleeping away from home to avoid said crying and "talks" only to discover that was worse. OK, so I had just escaped that and was now renting a room from a nice lady, and I had just started dating this kind of annoying British guy but he lived not in the US and we had an "open relationship" or whatever you call it which is just code in the end for "we don't live near each other, so let's see other people" and unsurprisingly that included meeting and falling in love with the best person I ever met or heard of. The end.

And actually I was going ot make a thread today to thank Metachat as I reflected on this 5th year of my relationship, especially the ladies. All of the discussions and dialogue about feminism and gender/culture have done so much to improve me, my relationship, and my partner. It's so much, well, both easier and harder, to suss out when tensions are uniquely ours or cultural baggage. But easier or harder, always worth it as I/it/he move toward something less satisfied with the status-quo. It's been tremendous to see each other in allies toward progress. Thanks, metaverse!

If I'd met John when I was 28, I wouldn't have given him a second look. I didn't have the perspective or the wisdom to realize what a splendid person he is.

Oh, and I wanted to underscore this as well. There's no way at 28 I would have had the capacity to recognize the insane amazingness of my guy, nor did I have the capacity to be the person I am in our relationship -- I still had so much emotional learning to do. We came along in each other's lives at exactly the right time.

I married too young at 23; we split nine years and two kids later. Met Mr. V by chance at 32; we married seven years ago. Now I'm 43, we are separated, and although we are working on it, there are days when I question if it's worth all the trouble. I just want a nice relationship with someone who loves me as much as I love them (I'm a big believer in the Golden Rule: Do unto to others, etc.) I don't think it should be so much work, really.

At 28 you've got time, although it may not feel that way. And when the right one comes along, it will have been worth the wait.

I just want to say that I both know and like myself SO MUCH MORE in my 30s than I did in my 20s. 30s ROCK.

I got married for the first time in my twenties which didn't work out in the slightest and we split up when I was 31. I met Ms. Duckie when I was 35 and was just starting out in my career due to the fact that I'm a moron and took sixteen years to get my BS degree. That was almost ten years ago and we've been married for six years now.

28 seems so young to me now, I was so confused and direction-less at that point that I'm not surprised that my life was so screwed up at that point.

I think I'm about amro's age, and I'd like to strongly second what she said.

Thank you all. The was the reassurance I needed. Sometimes I forget that I'm really just getting started on this whole life thing.

I was 21 when I met Mrs. Doohickie. I was a junior in college. We got married the summer after graduation and before I started my first professional job.

I met my now-husband at the age of 36 after being extremely single for almost 8 years. We got married this August, right before my 39th birthday.

There is hope, TURST ME. I had resigned myself to eternal spinsterhood right before I met him.

I was 29, three years out of college, working at a halfway decent job (but not in my field). I turned 30 a month after we met. We married almost exactly four years after we met. This is my first (and hopefully only) long-term relationship (where long term is more than 6 months).

I met my husband when I was 26 and had just moved to the USA. I was just out of graduate school and starting my first post-doc position. I already had two 4-year relationships under my belt and was very definite about what I didn't want in a relationship, and in fact, didn't really want a relationship. I had every intention of having a lot of sex with a lot of American boys. Instead, I've done it withe exactly one american. Hrmph! (not really :) )

I was 17 when I met my wife and at 26 I was a divorced single parent of two boys. I spent most of the next decade having sex with some great women and being friends with some other great women. I never let anything get serious in any sort of marriage way. I couldn't.

I would not risk a relationship where my sons might get attached to someone new when there was a risk of that relationship not lasting. I had to wait until I had raised them to the point where they could live life on their own.

At 36 I was a university prof and took over a job skills retraining class for a teacher who had fallen ill. I met a wonderful someone who was in that course and after the course was over we became a couple. We have been together for almost 12 years. In that time I have lost a father and a son. Rosemary's support has been wonderful and unwavering.

So YCCMA I guess I am saying, good or bad, there is still a lot of living to come. Even at my lowest points I have always gone on because I just want to see what happens next.

I realized a long time ago that I'm the only one who has ever been and will ever be here for myself.

Sorry, this isn't the place for my two cents.

18 years ago, when I was 46, I met my current wife on the internet. I needed all those years of mistakes and stupidity to get it right.

We met right here on this site, and got married when I was 34. You've got time, life is not over at 28! Whuffles.

Sorry for the downer-ness upthread, btw.

I was 36 and had practically given up when turtlegirl walked into a the bar where I was. Our 7th anniversary is on Monday.

I was twenty-eight and my husband was thirty-one when we met. I was at a fabulous time in my life: I was independent, answered to no one, was financially secure, living the life that I had chosen for myself. When I met the man who was to become my husband, he was similarly not interested in getting involved in a relationship, and famously declared that he doubted that he would ever marry, and if he did so, it wouldn't be until he was well into his forties. We didn't even date for nearly six months after we met, we were just friends, and when we started to grow closer, it was more about hooking up than building a relationship. Slowly but surely we fell deeply in love with one another, but it took awhile, and that was a very good thing. When he proposed to me I was genuinely shocked, because I had made clear that I NEVER thought it was necessary to get married, and I teased him (and still do) about not wanting to get married anytime before he turned forty, because he doesn't even turn forty until January, and we have been in a committed relationship for over eight years, married for half that time. The only reason we didn't get married sooner is because I resisted.
As for meeting people after the age of 28, I see it happen ALL THE TIME. I have single friends (mostly women), who spend years focusing on their careers, and haven't dated anyone seriously since college. I have had no less than three close friends find love, marriage and subsequently, children all in their mid-thirties. I know there is no age for love to strike, and it can find anyone, anywhere, at any time.