[TrevorJ]

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.

[lutorm]

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

[TrevorJ]

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.

[josefresco]

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

[mmc]

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.

[bokonist]

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".

[breck]

"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?

[davi]

Numerate romantics seek sanity check?

[mmc]

Very good point. Finding the second breakdown seems harder.

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

[sokoloff]

And presumably you want that for only first marriages.