A myth is anything that many folks believe and seems like it is true, but it is not. Here are four marriage myths:
1. If a girl does not marry by 24 she is going to be an old maid.
Currently the average age for marriage in America is 26.8 years for men and 25.1 year for women. There is only a 50% probability that women will have married by age 25. For men that age of 50% probability of marriage is 27.
2. Second marriages last better than first marriages.
The divorce rate for second marriages is higher than for first marriages. It is even worse for third marriages. I think this is because after exposure to divorce, some couples learn to run from problems rather than do the hard work of making things better.
3. More than 50% of all marriages end in divorce.
Statistics lie. If you have a group of 100 married women and only 20 of them have been divorced, but they have each done so 3 times, the divorce rate will be 60% even though 80% of these women have never been divorced. In truth the age at which you married greatly affects the likelihood of divorce. Women who marry at under 20, get divorced at a 27.6% rate. Women who marry at 35-39 get divorced at a 5.1% rate. Between those two ages, the rate decline with each age bracket.
4. Living together gets one ready for marriage and makes divorce less likely.
Hugely wrong! Living together is not like marriage at all. That makes as much sense as renting a car for a day and claiming to know what it is like to own a car. Two people living together do not own the relationship. In fact they have decided not to commit to the relationship. According to an article in the March 2, 2010 New York Times the experience of living together before marriage weakens the marriage. “The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first.”
Some myths are harmless, but these are dangerous. Learn the truth.
Lonnie Davis
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