If you’re like me, you went to a nice family dinner for one of the holidays, admired others’ sparkly engagement rings, cooed over new babies and heard all about newlyweds’ new houses.

And you were OK with it, even though you’re starting to think, geez, is everyone getting married but me?

Now, thanks to newly released data from our friends at the U.S. Census, we can feel more at ease. According to the “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2003” report, more people are waiting to get married than ever, household sizes are decreasing, and more couples are living together before getting married.

In its survey, the census reported the estimated U.S. median ages at first marriage for women and men is 25.3 and 27.1, respectively – which is a jump of 4.3 years for women and 3.9 years for men in the past three decades.

And there were dramatic changes between 1970 and 2003 in the proportion of people ages 20 to 24 who had never married. For women, the numbers were up to 75 percent from 36 percent and 86 percent from 55 percent for men.

That means more people are waiting to get married than ever before.

And more people are living together before marriage, too. The census reports 4.6 million cohabitating couples maintained households in 2003. That number comprised 4.2 percent of all households, up from 2.9 percent in 1996.

There were plenty of other interesting bits of information in the report, too. For example, the single woman’s where-have-all-the-good-men-gone complaint loses a bit of its punch considering there are 118 single men (single being defined as never married, widowed or divorced) who are in their 20s for every 100 single women of the same ages.

That seems like a bit of a surprise to those women with a string of half-decent boyfriends. But here’s a number that’s not surprising: There are 33 single men age 65 and over for every 100 single women of the same age. Now those women have cause for bellyaching.

So there.

Go ahead, rattle off some numbers when the family starts to get nosy and meddlesome. More people are choosing to get married later in life and are living together rather than tying the knot.

Resolve to get out, get more confidence for the New Year

If you’re reading this Saturday morning – and you can still read despite the copious amounts of champagne you consumed – then congratulations, you’ve made it through another New Year’s Eve.

Maybe you had a date for the big night. Maybe not. I’ve had more dateless NYEs than not, but I’ve never not had fun just because I didn’t have someone on my arm. Over the years, some of my better nights have come while hanging out with some members of the local Hispanic community – the grapes-at-midnight tradition is definitely sweet – or spending time with a Dutch-Canadian family in Orono.

But enough with the New Year’s resolutions to find a girlfriend or boyfriend or get married. Please. How about resolving to get off the couch and get some confidence? Even if you didn’t have a New Year’s Eve date, a little confidence will help with the next high-pressure holiday just around the corner.

Jessica Bloch can be reached at jbloch@bangordailynews.net.