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Comment by TrevorJ | Hacker News Reader

From talking to a lot of married couples it seems as if marriage takes a lot of work and a lot of self-sacrifice. Perhaps the maturity of age has something to do with the successful marriages being those that where entered into later.

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Relationships take a lot of work and a lot of self-sacrifice, regardless of whether you are married or not, I'd say.

I agree with that. I think it's a continuum. Most other relationships don't have the expectation that he should be life-long, day in and day out things. That added constraint ups the anty on the difficulty a bit I think.

Do we actually have data that shows later-in-life marriages are more successful? (besides the submitters anecdotal evidence)

http://www.divorcerate.org/ has the following for men:

  age   rate
  <20   11.7%
  -24   38.8%
  -29   22.3%
  -34   11.6%
  -39%   6.5%

So if you are just playing the numbers, wait until your late 20's at least.

But please, don't play the numbers. As someone already said, don't try to plan love.

Those statistics are totally the wrong ones to look at. It's "Age at marriage for those who divorce in America". You want "Divorce rate by age at marriage".

"Divorce rate by age at marriage" + the age of marriage as a percentage of all marriages (otherwise you might find 80% of marriages at age 60 are successful but fail to realize that probably accounts for a <1% of all marriages).

I think it's kind of funny that we're all seeking statistics on marriage. Where are the romantics on HN?

Numerate romantics seek sanity check?

Very good point. Finding the second breakdown seems harder.

At any rate, it's still the wrong game to play for the OP.

And presumably you want that for only first marriages.

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