Last night, a friend called and asked me to come out for a late-night meal.
By the time I got there, Lao Li had already had too much to drink.
He was sitting at the table with his head down, mumbling to himself. Then, almost out of nowhere, he started crying.
“Do you think this is it for me?” he asked. “Do you think I’m just going to be alone?”
He’s thirty-eight.
I’ve lost count of how many blind dates he’s been on.
Every few months, there seems to be someone new. Someone introduced by a friend, a relative, a coworker.
And then, just as quickly, nothing.
I didn’t know what to say.
So I poured him a glass of water.
And while he sat there, I had a thought that made me feel almost guilty.
I’m glad I got married when I did.
Not proud.
Not smug.
Relieved.
There’s a difference.
I met my wife in an online dancing game called Audition.
I was twenty-five. She was nineteen.
We weren’t thinking about compatibility scores, property, retirement plans, or whether our families were a perfect match.
I just liked talking to her.
She had a good personality. We got along. We kept talking.
Then we dated.
Then we got married.
That was more or less it.
Looking back now, I realize how much easier some things felt when we were young.
Not because people were better back then.
Not because men and women were more innocent.
We were just younger.
And the internet had not yet turned relationships into something people analyzed all day.
There weren’t endless videos telling you what kind of partner you deserved.
There weren’t thousands of strangers explaining red flags, emotional value, financial standards, relationship psychology, attachment styles, and the exact salary someone should have before you considered marrying them.
Life felt less optimized.
And maybe that made love a little easier.
When my wife and I were dating, we rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment.
Some weekends, we would just walk through a park.
That was enough to make us happy.
She didn’t ask why I didn’t own a house.
I didn’t ask what her family could provide.
We both had this very simple belief:
We’ll figure it out.
No house? We’ll save.
No car? We’ll buy one later.
Not enough money? We’ll work.
Everything could come later.
That belief seems almost naive to me now.
But it was also powerful.
We didn’t need our lives to be finished before we started building one together.
That’s the part I don’t see as often anymore.
Especially once people reach their thirties.
I know a lot of men who are still single.
I’ve watched some of them go from energetic, confident young guys into middle-aged men who sigh whenever marriage comes up.
Twenty years ago, nobody overthought it this much.
If you were good at basketball, a girl might notice you.
If you were good at a game, someone might start chatting with you.
If you knew how to make a cool QQ profile page, you might end up adding a girl and talking all night.
Romance often started from something stupid.
That was part of the charm.
Now, one of my friends told me about a blind date he had last month.
Within the first ten minutes, the woman asked him three questions.
Where is your apartment?
What car do you drive?
How much does your employer contribute to your housing fund every month?
He laughed when he told me.
But not because it was funny.
“I felt like I was in a job interview,” he said.
Was she being too practical?
Maybe.
But I understand her too.
By your mid-thirties, life has already taught you quite a lot.
You know marriage means bills.
Parents.
Children.
Mortgages.
Work pressure.
Medical expenses.
School fees.
Ordinary life.
Nobody is twenty anymore.
Everybody knows the price of things.
Men calculate.
Women calculate.
Everyone does.
And maybe that is the problem.
Sometimes two people can understand life so clearly that there is no room left for foolishness.
Lao Li once met a woman who looked perfect on paper.
Their families liked each other.
Their incomes were similar.
Their ages matched.
Their backgrounds matched.
Everything seemed reasonable.
They dated for three months.
Then they broke up.
I asked him why.
He said something I never forgot.
“There was nothing wrong with her. I just didn’t want to say anything when I was around her. It felt like two people negotiating a deal.”
At twenty, I probably wouldn’t have understood that.
Now I do.
I also have a relative whose son got married at thirty-two because the family was pressuring him.
He had known the woman for less than two months.
They married quickly.
Now they have a three-year-old child.
He says he regrets rushing into it.
They barely talk.
When they do, they often argue.
Now they stay together mostly because of the child.
So I don’t believe people should marry just because they’re young.
That can go badly too.
But I do think something changes as we get older.
When my wife and I met, neither of us was fully formed yet.
We were still becoming ourselves.
We changed for each other.
She changed some things.
I changed some things.
We argued.
We adapted.
We grew into the relationship.
I sometimes think of two pieces of wet clay.
When they are still soft, you can press them together.
They bend.
They change shape.
Eventually, they become one object.
But after the clay has been fired?
That’s different.
By thirty-five or forty, most people are already hardened into themselves.
They have routines.
Boundaries.
Habits.
A preferred way to sleep.
A preferred way to spend money.
A preferred way to spend weekends.
Things they no longer want anyone questioning.
Two finished pieces of pottery are much harder to reshape.
That is what makes people like Lao Li struggle.
It isn’t always because they are too picky.
Sometimes the timing itself has changed the game.
I got lucky.
My wife and I met before either of us had much.
We saved for a down payment together.
We struggled together.
At the time, it didn’t feel romantic.
It felt stressful.
But now, when I look back, I realize there was something valuable in that struggle.
We were building the life at the same time we were building the relationship.
If I were single today and had to start over, I don’t think I would be any better at it than Lao Li.
The idea alone sounds exhausting.
Not because marriage is easy.
It isn’t.
My wife and I have fought.
We’ve worried about money.
We’ve annoyed each other more times than I can count.
But after enough years, there is something that becomes difficult to explain.
You know how the other person thinks.
You know what they’ll say before they say it.
They know your worst habits.
You know theirs.
And somehow, despite all of that, the two of you are still there.
At the end of the night, Lao Li put his hand on my shoulder.
“I envy you,” he said. “You have a home.”
Then he looked at me and added:
“Your wife is the kind of person who’d help you bury the body.”
I laughed.
“What the hell kind of compliment is that?”
He didn’t answer.
I called a driver for him.
On the way home, I sent my wife a message.
Tomorrow morning, I want the noodles you make.
She replied almost immediately.
“Are you crazy? Why are you texting me this in the middle of the night?”
I looked at the message and smiled.
And suddenly, I understood what Lao Li meant.
He wasn’t really talking about marriage.
He was talking about having someone on your side.
Someone who has already seen the whole version of you.
The good parts.
The embarrassing parts.
The difficult parts.
And after all these years, they’re still there.
When you’re young, you can mistake that for something ordinary.
Later, you realize it isn’t.