Science: Good Luck Not Getting Divorced If You Get Married After the Age of 32

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Until recently, general knowledge—and statistical data—held that the older you were when you got married, the less likely that marriage was to crumble under the weight of two people who didn’t fully know yet who they were.

However, according to the analysis of some new data that was gathered between 2006 and 2010, that is no longer the case. Now, it would seem that while your chances of divorce do go down the older you are when you get married—that is only true until your early 30s! After the age of 32 or so, your chances of divorce go from decreasing by 11 percent each year to increasing by five percent each year. Behold:

The Institute for Family Studies

Nicholas H. Wolfinger, the University of Utah psychologist who jotted up his findings for the Institute for Family Studies, threw out some conjecture as to why this might be: 

• “If you’ve had many boyfriends or girlfriends, your exes might play havoc with your marriage. They may offer the temptation of adultery.”
• “If you’ve had children with one or more of your exes, there could be ‘baby mama drama.’”
• “The kinds of people who wait till their thirties to get married may be the kinds of people who aren’t predisposed toward doing well in their marriages … More generally, perhaps people who marry later face a pool of potential spouses that has been winnowed down to exclude the individuals most predisposed to succeed at matrimony.”
• “With median marriage ages as high as they’ve ever been, perhaps some people who delay marriage get so used to single life that they make lousy spouses should they ever decide to give marriage a try.”

So, in short, if you are past the age of 32, what with your past coming back to haunt you, a crap selection of potential partners out there who have already been Darwin-ed down to the lowest common denominator, and the fact that you are obviously already too set in your ways to successfully mate for life with another human being, you know, good luck with this whole marriage thing. (But we think you’ll be just fine.)

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