I just don't get the dissonance between these men acting like women have windows of attractiveness and fertility that last a couple of years AT BEST, yet they are the whiniest fucking babies about committing. Yes, of course you shouldn't move in with a guy after a week and marry him two months after the first date, but there's a pretty thick and well-defined line between that and men with the philosophies of "We have to live with each other for six months MINIMUM before I propose," "you shouldn't get married unless you've been with each other for four years MINIMUM," "you don't even know someone unless you've been on no less than five vacations with them," etc. Overlapped of course with the men in their 30s who exclusively date women under 24 because "dating older women is too much pressure, they're always nagging about a ring and babies, I want a woman where we can go slow and get to know each other and have fun!"
This is why I stopped giving a shit about the collective mournful cry from terminally online men about loneliness and wanting the trad nuclear family more than anything, it's men who are the ones mocking people for getting married "too quickly" (i.e. within ~2 years) instead of dicking around, then they're in pieces when nobody wants to be der eternal bangmaid.
We are slightly past forty. We have, individually and together, a handful of the eternally single friends who are ages with us. Some of them (predictably) failed at a first marriage, some have burned through several forever-girl/boyfriends, and some are just... God has decided they should not reproduce.
All of them we have known since school, or university at the latest.
Every single one of them told us at the time we got engaged too soon/too early/too young, and doubled down on it when we got married.
Every warning, intervention, or dressing down they gave us involved some variant of "you have all the time in the world to find someone" or even better "if this is really The One, you'll get back together eventually" or "you need to live a little and get more experience"
I listen with carefully faked sympathy and wine to their tales of dating woe, but my husband is secretly an arsehole and delights in cheerfully returning the advice we were once given. We haven't heard from one friend since the last time he did this to him. Friend in question had just discovered his 25 year old gf - of whom he was so very proud - had been embroiled with the 25 year old personal trainer (that he had hired for her) for the previous year of their relationship. They were only together 14 months in all. It was so hard not to laugh.
In short, the people around you strongly encouraging you to remain eternally unwed when you would rather not be, are like the pals who were constantly trying to get you to start smoking or not study for exams. They aren't interested in your best interest, they just want to make sure they have other people to share their questionable choices with.
(Also, can I add your post the eternal moid whining about "all that's left is used up roasties and single mothers". Well, if you only start looking for a fucking spouse
in your mid thirties, the available choices are
also in their mid thirties and have also been comparison shopping for twenty years.
Fucking accept this, or get married very early. No one is fucking sitting around like a maiden aunty until they are nearly forty to see if some used-up fat biffer of an ex-fuckboy determines that they will be honoured with his hairy wankpaw in marriage.)