Man!! a lot of scarred men out there with some of these nightmare stories I'm reading! Might as well put my experience out there....
I'm married for almost 2 years now and it's been great. I hear a lot of naysayers out there that say, "you're newlyweds....give it time because it will soon go downhill." I've witnessed that logic firsthand with some of my friends who have gotten married way too young or married the wrong person. But I think my situation is different.
I'm married to a woman that I've known since I was 20 years old.(I'm 35 now and she's almost 32). We first started dating when she was a senior in high school and I was soon to be off to college. Obviously, long distance relationships almost never work so we decided to give our relationship a break. College life was too much fun to have a steady girlfriend, to be honest.

We would get back together every so often but for very short periods of time. She eventually moved out west to live with her boyfriend at the time and I stayed on the east coast and focused on my career. I had numerous girlfriends over the next 5 years. During that time, her and I would hook up once in a blue moon when she came home to visit. However, the timing in our lives was never in synch but there were always strong feelings toward one another.
Needless to say, things didn't work out in her relationship out west and she moved back home and i didn't even know about it. I had just ended a 2 year relationship and we happened to bump into one another out one night, quite by chance. We started in a relationship again and we instantly connected like we always did. There was no doubt about the mutual feelings towards one another but i wasn't ready to get married yet. Two years later in a relationship at 32 years old, I proposed to her.
I've had LOTS of fun in my younger years. I've traveled around the world and dated lots of different women. After age 30, going to bars or getting set up on dates through friends just got old. I didn't settle(surrender) with the woman I have now. It just felt right and I'm still in love with her to this day after knowing her for almost 15 years. We have a lot of history together. But we both waited extra long and made sure that we were right for each other. Marriage was the next logical step, in my opinion.
I'm happy to be with her right now. I'll check back in a few years and give a progress report but so far, so good!