5 Reasons Not to Marry Your College Love

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Natalie Andersen

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Updated: 13 Jun, 2025

Table of Contents

College life is not real life and real adulthood tests you, so talk openly, share responsibilities, and support each other to stay connected.
Different backgrounds can widen your perspective, so listen with empathy, align core values, and grow together to deepen trust and closeness.
Take time to build real-world readiness by graduating, aligning careers, and ensuring financial stability before marrying so your love can deepen with confidence.

The average person getting married today has a 40% risk of getting divorced. This is lesser than the much touted 50%, but there are reasons for this.

Fewer people are actually getting married now than in past decades
The 50% rate is an average – people in second marriages actually have a 60%+ rate of divorce; and with third marriages, the percentages increases more.

In all, it is difficult to determine the actual percentage of divorce rate, because so many variables are put into each piece of research. But the point is this: divorce is a real phenomenon, and it occurs often. Why people get divorced is the subject of many other studies.

Many couples find each other in college, and those relationships do end in marriage, often upon graduation, if not before. They become a part of romantic college love stories – boy meets girl, boy and girl share college life together, boy and girl have cute love stories to hold on to, and then boy and girl get married.

But these marriages are part of the statistics too, and can end in divorce.

While this may not seem a wonderfully romantic topic, there are reasons not to marry your college love. Here are five that should be considered.

1. College life is not real life

There is something idyllic and romantic about college life in general. Kids are on their own and have the freedom that they never had before. It’s all very exciting and new. Finding a new relationship in this environment is far removed from relationships in the real world of adulthood.

There is an idealism that is not tempered by reality. You meet; you study together; you eat together; you sleep together; and you find ways to get those writing assignments completed, working together. When the reality of adulthood actually hits, couples can find that they do not deal with it in the same way.

According to Maggie Martinez, LCSW:

When you are in college, a lot of your responsibilities do not mirror real adult responsibilities.

2. There may be very different backgrounds

College is, in many ways, a great equalizer. Students come together from many different backgrounds with different “baggage.” During college, this “baggage” doesn’t show up much. But once out of school, couples who have very different backgrounds, values, and priorities may not make it.

3. Others have romanticized your relationship

You are such a cute couple. Everyone assumes you will ultimately get married. You may have some reservations, but, hey, if everyone else thinks it’s great, so do you. When removed from that “culture,” and in the reality of marriage, things look very different.

4. Careers may be incompatible

While you are preparing for a career, you are engaged in coursework on campus, maybe an internship. So is your love. Where will those careers ultimately take you? Your partner may be looking forward to setting up a “nest” with both of you home every evening, having dinner and spending the evenings together. Your career may mean that you travel a lot. And you don’t want to give up that career for a job that keeps you home.

5. The world is a big place

Once you graduate and begin life as a real adult, you will discover that there are many other individuals and groups of individuals with whom you are compatible and want to share a social life with. You may quickly lose interest in that love from college in favor of new and different members of the opposite sex that you find more exciting and relevant to your life.

Maggie Martinez highlights that:

There is a lot of growing for one to do after college, which could lead to outgrowing your college partner as well.

The best advice

If you are in college and in love, it’s a beautiful thing. But, it may be advisable for the two of you to graduate and get into the real world for a while, to see if your love withstands the challenges of adulthood. There are many years to be married. Sometimes, avoiding divorce is avoiding the marriage in the first place.

Maggie Martinez adds that:

Be sure to be financially stable as well before deciding to marry a college sweetheart!

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