Kaya Drive: Does your relationship status affect your life’s milestones?

By: Natasha Archary

Is your relationship status affecting your life’s milestones? Sizwe Dhlomo and the Kaya Drive team tackled the topic on Tuesday, with differing views on the matter.

There’s a lot of pressure to reach certain life milestones within a strict timeline. A list published after a 2015 study revealed 25 milestones that people should reach in life.

Amongst the list is of course, all things couple related. From buying a house, to getting married and starting a family, many people aspire to achieve every milestone on this list in order.

However, perception on what is a societally acceptable approach to life is shifting, with more people veering off the plan to be married with a nuclear family before the age of 35.

Relationship milestones

Most couples keep track of their relationship timeline and hope things progress onto the next stage. The first year of any relationship has in itself various milestones that couples aim to tick off.

Once a relationship has passed the first year mark, what next? The natural progression would be to discuss your future together and where you’re headed.

Whether it’s moving in together, talking about settling down and getting married, when you have kids, if at all, are all milestones couples work towards.

But, traditional life events are viewed differently today than previous generations. For one, people are now getting married in their 30s as opposed to their 20s.

Having children out of wedlock is also not as frowned upon now. With more adults choosing to start a family, with or without a partner and the options available to do so, many don’t feel restricted by societal norms.

Some milestones will always be important

Kaya Drive listeners shared that there are some milestones that are still important to them and their life goals. These include being financially stable within the next 5-years, buying a house and travelling.

However, more people are of the same view as Keneiloe Huma, in that they are no longer waiting to be in a relationship or married before achieving these milestones.

“There’s no guarantee in life. As much as I would like to be in a relationship or married, I can’t sit around and wait for that to happen before I live the life I want to live. Saying, I should wait to be married before I buy a house. No. I want to buy a house in 2-years, so what if I’m not married by then? I want to buy a house with or without a partner, so my relationship status is not going to affect that.”
Keneiloe Huma shared

One Kaya Drive listener shared that she and her husband waited until they were married to start planning a family. The couple who have been together for 6-years and married for a year are now trying to have a baby.

The listener shared that she’s been struggling to fall pregnant and it’s beginning to weigh in on their relationship.

Infertility issues affect one in six couples in South Africa, and the longer people wait to have children, the more their chances of having a baby decreases.

Milestones are great as a working guide towards a life plan but it’s not set in stone that your relationship status should define when you achieve them.