My boyfriend just proposed and I’m terrified. 28 is too young to get married, isn’t it?

November 25, 2025 — 11.11am

I have been with my partner for over a year-and-a-half, and he’s been allergic to the concept of marriage for the entire time I’ve known him. From our earliest dates together to the day I moved in with him, he’s had no interest in putting a ring on anything – and gladly told me as such.

So, when he proposed to me on a recent trip to Berlin, I was as shocked by the change of heart as the question itself. It felt so out of character as to be a small betrayal of what I thought I knew about him.

Marriage is forever, so what’s the rush?Credit: iStock

My first response was to laugh the proposal off. I didn’t think he was being serious. He later told me it was one of the most frightening things he’d ever done.

I’m 28 and the prospect of getting married had never entered my mind. For a start, I hadn’t experienced anything close to a long-term relationship before now. When you’re in your 20s isn’t it a little early to go through the “getting down on one knee” experience? I enjoy living in Melbourne’s inner city, and regular travel. I thought that I was years away from a first-home purchase and quiet retreat to the suburbs. I can see that it’s the right decision for plenty of other Australians. I’m happy for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who’s set to tie the knot sometime soon, but he’s at an entirely different phase of his life.

A hundred years ago, I’d probably be three kids deep by now – and about halfway to my life expectancy. Today, the idea that you’re betrothed to someone like property, and having to surrender your family name to take on someone else’s, seems archaic.

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I’m not certain that marriage has a place in today’s more independent, inward-facing society. Statistics from the 2024 Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that 52 per cent of Australia’s population aged 20-39 were most likely to have met their current partner online. If finding the love of your life is as simple as opening an app and swiping right, why even go to the trouble of getting married?

Young people are struggling to buy a house and AI is taking our place at work. Why cling to the tradition of marriage when we’ve discarded traditions like the expectation of leaving school, maybe going to university, and then walking into the job that you’ll hold on to for 40 years. Marrying someone after a romance that begins with a meet cute at a bar seem quaint given today’s Tinder hookups and dick pics over Instagram.

Personally, I have at least three jobs and rent. Where’s the stability in that? How can a freelancer doing gig-work get married when it’s supposed to be the man’s job to bring home the bacon?

Part of my issue was that I felt the question wasn’t necessary. Given my partner had been considering a job in Berlin and I had already told him that, yes, I would follow him to the other side of the world, wasn’t that enough of a commitment?

Then there is the queer factor for me. Saying “I do” … isn’t it a touch straight? It was only in 2017 that us queer folk were allowed to do what the rest of Australia had already been doing for centuries. Maybe we don’t even want to be a part of this silly club that we weren’t allowed in for so long. And given that the median age of first marriages for men in same-sex relationships is 35.9 according to The Australian Institute of Family Studies (for all men it’s 32.8 and for women it’s 31.2), why should I walk down the aisle eight years early?

Magda Szubanski and others on the Parliament House lawn show excitement during the passing of the Same Sex Marriage bill in 2017.Credit: Nick Moir

None of my queer peers in Australia have expressed interest in nuptials. The data shows that while there was an initial surge when same-gender unions became legal, that figure soon dropped to less than 4 per cent of all marriages.

In the end, I said yes. It took me an hour and 10 minutes to navigate the shock. I thought of our many connections. How my partner and I never run out of things to talk about, and – cliché, I know – perfectly finish each other’s sentences. He said we so understand one another that he wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else, and I said yes.

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I got messages from friends congratulating us for touting our gay rights by getting married like straight folk, but couldn’t help but notice that none of them are getting married themselves. It might just be that it’s too much of an institution for historical outsiders to want to conform to. It’s the right of the LGBTQ+ community to not adopt the norms of everyone else.

While I may be young to be getting married on some measures, isn’t it the job of each generation to do things their own way? And isn’t it nice to live with your best friend? When we both know how to make each other laugh, and when you’ve no idea if you’re ever going to be able to afford a house or if rogue AI is going to launch the World War III nukes, I like the idea that I’ll be able to sit at home and watching The Sopranos with my husband.

Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier is a freelance writer and reviewer based in Melbourne.

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