If you ask any unmarried, overworked middleclass person looking for love, he or she will tell you that it all seems hopeless. ........ . In the 1950s, the median age of marriage for women in the United States was 20, and it was not much more for men. Most well-educated women met their husbands at university. Men could do the same, or find a wife in the suburbs where they grew up, or marry a girl in the office.