If you lurk on Reddit often, you might have noticed posts from people seeking relationship advice pop up frequently. The general advice is what’s you expect: “dump her/him” followed by a string of running emojis, maybe a meme thrown in too. But one trend that I’ve been noticing more often, is when one member of a couple posts about feeling reluctant to marry citing divorce statistics as a reason.

The infamous “50% of marriages end in divorce” statistic gets thrown around as a reason not to get married (as if an unmarried couple can’t break up). But here’s the interesting thing, for every source I find backing it up, I find a different one debunking it.

So which one is it? Research can be quite contradicting at times.

Some highlights from my brief research:

• The failure rate for first marriage is roughly 48%, 60% for second and 70% for third marriages [source], but at the same time, in 2019 for every 1000 marriages, only 7.6 resulted in divorce, which is the lowest divorce rate in the past 50 years.
• Before anyone brings up that these studies are outdated and that the pandemic likely increased divorce rates, 42% of married/cohabitating adults said the pandemic deepened their commitment to their relationship, while a 12% reported it made them question the strength of their relationship [source]
• Back in the 80s, divorce rates peaked but never quite got to a 50% divorce rate, divorce rates have been steadily declining ever since, to the point in 2022 the divorce rate was 2.4 per every 1000 people (married or unmarried) compared to the 4 per 1000 people in 2000. That’s a steep decline [source]
• Assuming you’re a college-educated couple, you have a less than 1/3 chance of divorcing after 15 years [source], additionally, the divorce rate for the 25 to 39yo age bracket has significantly declined in the past 30 years [source] and married Millennials are now less likely to divorce than prior generations [source 1 , 2]
• One of the cited reasons for Millennials being less likely to divorce once married, is because they’re pickier with who they choose to marry.
• The divorce risk by length of the marriage is a bit inconclusive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by the 20-year mark, there’s a 52% rate of separation or divorce, which is less than half within the first 5 years. Simultaneously, different research suggests that most marriages that fail will do so within the first 2 years [source].

Other interesting data:

• More women initiate divorce than men [source] , [source] and they report greater satisfaction after divorce.
• On the other hand, married men report higher relationship quality than married women [source]. So within the same relationship, a man is more likely to be content with the state of the relationship whereas the woman is not.

The most common reasons to get divorced are:

– Lack of commitment (75%)

– Infidelity (59.6%)

– Too much conflict (57.7%)

– Getting married too young (45.1%)

• Some jobs can increase your likelihood of getting divorced. Gaming Managers, Bartenders and flight attendants have a +50% divorce rate compared to engineers, doctors and software developers which are all under a 25% divorce rate [source], [source].
• The above links well with college-educated couples being less likely to divorce [source], or, with hypergamy, since college education leads to higher-paying careers and more job stability [source]. Your pick.

Now, you might be thinking: “well, less people are getting married so of course there are less divorces too,” but that’s not how statistics work. Most of the studies I linked use percentages or X number per every 1000 people. If 1000 couples get married and 100 divorce, that’s a 10%. If 10 couples get married and one couple divorces, that’s a 10% too.

In short, a couple has the best shot at having a lasting marriage if they marry in their late 20s — 30s, are college-educated and stay committed to each other. On paper, that seems simple but the divorce rates are still high enough to make one question how much truth there is in that.