I think some with good but imperfect marriages that have lasted at least a decade worry too much about divorce.

My youngest sibling was 4 months old on my parents' 15th anniversary.

Some really late divorces are for a legal reason where the couple is still married in all but legal records. Big medical debt > divorce & give spouse the house in divorce > you die > spouse keeps house as medical debt collectors can't touch it.

33 years today….!!

In our 24th year. And we had a late start.

A major contributing factor to divorce in a woman's 40s is perimenopause. I have seen studies saying it contributed to most divorces in that age group. While that seems high, its effects are real.

Just hit year 15.

I believe a grave area of weakness supporting these young marriages is the lack of “community” at the local parish level. Most (not all) local parishes now: hundreds of people at mass - most don’t know anyone. Life gets difficult, stop attending church, nobody even notices. First communities: “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common.” Acts 4,32 Take physical ownership out of the verse and focus on the kind of united community described and we have a big call to be better at the local parishes level.

I firmly believe this is skewed by non sacramental marriages. We need to define terms what is “marriage” in this context.

So marriage prep classes might want to have a marriage sustained follow-up section 3 years in, 6 years in. 10 years in.

Or, once you make it to 54 you're in the clear.

Hit 31 years this year. We had some incredibly bumpy years to get here, though. Faith, belief in our vocation and a willingness to compromise is what helped.

I really hate beating the odds sometimes.

38 for my wife and I... I suspect she'd murder me before divorce at this point... 😆 🤣 😂

This chart implies a cumulative divorce rate of around 41% Pretty grim stuff, although I assume a lot of the later divorces are due to a need for financial separation rather than a genuine breakdown of the relationship.

This might be more useful to have as 1 - CDF (ie what’s the probability of divorce given that someone has made it to X years) but depending upon how this data was collected (eg how was right censoring handled?) we might not be able to use it that way.

I've been married for 38 years. I joke that we haven't killed each other...yet.

That year 53 though…

Completely wrong. The divorce rate after 20 years is ~50%. What you’re doing here is just plotting year by year rates while ignoring previous years. See “survivorship bias” for a dose of reality.

That doesn’t mean anything it could mean they don’t want to go through divorce through financial reasons but still cheat on each other or live separately this is why it’s bad proxy just because the rate is down doesn’t mean they are still faithful

Now show me the same chart based on when the husband insisted on adopting a puppy.

Couldn't relate. 🥲