The perfect age for marriage is…

Forget about obsessing about waiting for the perfect match or first making sure that you have achieved particular life goals before marriage.

Sure, these things are important for a healthy marriage, but findings of a new study suggest that it is more important that you get married between the ages of 28 and 32. Not before this and definitely, not after.

Sociologists from the University of Utah came to this conclusion after collecting data over a six-year period. For the study, 22,000 study subjects aged between 15 and 44 were polled on subjects ranging from attitudes towards sex and pregnancy to factors determining marriage and divorce.

On analysing this data, the researchers found that marital breakdown was lowest amongst those couples who wed during the four-year period between the ages of 28 and 32. The divorce rates were seen to decline through the late twenties and early thirties. The study only looked at the first five years of marriage. After the age of 32, the rates of divorce rose up again through the late thirties and early forties.

TOO YOUNG, TOO OLD

These findings are surprising seeing as experts have in the past advocated for waiting to get married arguing that a couple will have a deeper sense of stability then. The notion that one is never too old for marriage has also been trashed by this study.

According to Nick Wolfinger, who led the study, for each year after the age of 32, the chances of a marriage ending up in divorce go up by about five percent. Marriages between younger people are more likely to end up in divorce because of a younger person’s dating experiences. There is a lot of casual sex and hooking up in the younger generations. It takes some time to wipe off these perceptions towards marriage and relationships making 28, which is a little older the ideal age. When you choose to marry after 32 years on the other hand, you have probably been single for quite a while. You are pretty set in your ways and less willing to accommodate or compromise in a relationship making a marriage you get into stormier.

Just getting married during these ages will however not be enough to make the marriage work, both parties involved must be committed. You might be the right age but not mature enough to be able to decide to stay married.