If there’s anything that can bridge the gap between young professionals new to the District and native Washingtonians, it could be this: None of us like being married.

Maryland is a little below the national average, at 50 percent, while Virginia is a little higher, at 54 percent, and both are declining. But in the District, which experienced an influx of young adults over the past decade, only one in four adults is married while more than half have never wed.

The statistics offer a snapshot in time, and do not mean the unmarried will remain that way. They are a byproduct of a steady increase in the median age when people first marry, now at an all-time high of older than 26 for women and almost 29 for men.

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to get married someday,” said Kate Shorr, 30, a lawyer and lobbyist who until recently wrote a blog about her social life in Washington, A Single Girl Doing Single Things. “All of us want to meet that special person and marry, but there’s no real rush to do that. Especially in the career-driven society we have here. You don’t move to Washington, D.C., to get married, you move here for your career.”

The Post notes folks of all incomes and ethnicities are eschewing marriage. Of course, one difference is that most college graduates eventually do get married—-stabilizing their families, increasing income, and solidifying their place in the middle class.

Photo by dccraftaholic128 via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License