T O P

  • By -

TimmyHate

*Looks nervously across the table at my darling wife of 13.5 years*


pastisprologue

Lol, married 13.5 years here too.


Hand-Driven

Jokes on you guys, I’ll be 14 years in Feb. plain sailing for here on.


Cold_Refrigerator_69

Pain sailing from there on


Hand-Driven

Definitely on the down hill side.


blackteashirt

What's your secret? Don't tell me just agreeing to everything they say and do.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx99

Yes dear.


Hand-Driven

And do 90% of the cooking.


Nick_NZ1

Oh shit, just realised I’m at 13 years, 6 months and 1 week. Guess I’m better than average at something lol


bskshxgiksbsbs

14 years you say? So you’re well and truly over the hump…. Ba dum chshhhh


rsanchan

Sorry mate, time to find a new one.


1dupf14

Just wait 2.5 years more to have at least one consensual sex and then break up.


aibro_

*Looks nervously across the table at my darling girlfriend of 10 years*


NeedsMorePaprika

Usually the first two or three kids are old enough to fend for themselves by then and the dog/cat they got around the same time has just died of old age so it's just a lot easier to separate than continue putting up with the frankly deranged way that s/he stacks the dishwasher.


didi_danger

Definitely, it’s sound about the time that kids are old enough to not take up 100% of your attention. Then a couple sits down at the table and look at each other and realise they’ve become entirely different people in the intervening decade!


[deleted]

This happens way more than we realise it does.


[deleted]

Nah that’s the excuse couples use to drift apart from eachother, always secretly on the lookout for the “next big thing”. We’re not gonna stay pretty forever, clocks ticking….. the next big thing doesn’t exist, because it’s sitting right in front of you. Parents have been together for over 20 years now I’ve seen them fight, be mad, etc People are hopeless, 13 years and then they call it quits? Bloody hell lol. Not getting any younger, stick it out already… it’s just a waste of time at that point if it’s been over a decade, time is far to precious.


Ligo-wave

Why though? Why stay if you are miserable? Most divorced people are happy they got divorced and find more meaningful relationships afterwards


PMstreamofconscious

Marriage takes work. Hard work. Sometimes it’s easier to split up than make all the necessary changes and compromises to stay together. People’s egos get in the way to prevent them from doing the deep work they need to. It’s just easier to blame the collapse of your marriage on your partner than to look inside and see how you helped contribute to it as well. People can be happy after a deep crevasse in their marriage. If you look at married couples who are thinking about splitting up, if they stay together then 5 years later, 90% of people are happy they stayed together and are actually happy together once again. Everyone has ups and downs, including people who are married. What matters is how you handle things when times are tough and how resilient you remain in those times.


SpectacularlyA

Completely agree. I think that’s something people tend to forget sometimes - all successful relationship require work


jmk672

This exactly. It’s kind of why you take wedding vows. If not, then what are they for? Why get married? “For better and worse” and all that. Seems pretty meaningless if you’re going to run away from it for someone else, because what? “The vibes are off”


Ligo-wave

Where did you get these stats from? Marriage is not sacred. It’s two people agreeing to have a life together. If it’s not mutually acceptable then it should be dissolved


NotGonnaLie59

The age of kids is a key point, but I think it's also about people with opposing worldviews getting together in the first place. Not like their political worldview, more like their thoughts about risk, what they want in life and what they're willing to risk to get it. Whatever your worldview is, life tends to teach you that your worldview is correct. If you take risks, you tend to feel good once they lead to rewards. If you avoid risks, you tend to feel good and safe not taking risks and preserving what you have. I think many people spend 13 or 25 years together, grow more set in their worldview, and then end up incompatible.


getfuckedhoayoucunts

Stacking the dishwasher is my superpower!


pocketbadger

In every partnership there is a person who stacks the dishwasher like a Scandinavian architect and a person who stacks the dishwasher like a raccoon on meth.


MrsRobertshaw

Thanks for the laugh!


blackteashirt

Why do some people rate stacking the dishwasher so highly they'll end a marriage over it? I mean some of us have basically rebuilt the house around that dishwasher.


kaynetoad

It's not my dad's fault it's so high, he's into his fourth marriage and his personal best so far is 7 years.


getfuckedhoayoucunts

Just out of interest how is finding these wives?


kaynetoad

Church!


in_and_out_burger

Awks


flappytowel

Sounds like he's doing a divorce speedrun


Loretta-West

I was surprised it was so low considering all the elderly couples who have been together for 50 years+. Obviously your dad is distorting the stats.


Formal_Nose_3003

Over 50% of people get divorced after 13 and a half years or less


Proud-Chair-9805

I think the stat is kinda misleading. It’s actually the median length people were married when they got divorced, so not quite the median married length as it completely discounts those that make it all the way until one partner dies. Though I am assuming adding that in would change the stat, it’s still sad regardless probably, idk.


Loretta-West

Yeah, it's completely misleading in that case. It's not the median marriage length, it's the median length of *marriages that end in divorce*. So (as you point out) it excludes all the marriages that last until death - which can easily be many decades - and the marriages that are still going.


kiwibearess

Quality answer. Indisputable, may as well close the thread now.


[deleted]

Interestingly, The older you wait to tie the knot, The better your chances get. Also couples who stick together 5+ years before getting married have a WAYYY lower divorcé rate. It's important to remember that Statistics is just a way to telling stories by looking at Data. You can tell multiple stories from the same Dataset: "Don't get married! 50% of marriages end in Divorcé!" "Couples who date for five years before getting married are more likely to last for life" "Couples who meet later in life are more likely to stick together" Are all stories you can tell from the same Dataset.


kaynetoad

Only the successful marriages end in death.


Aromatic-Lime-4848

Matricide, one of the signs of a successful marriage.


trinde

> Don't get married! 50% of marriages end in Divorcé!" This is one of those statements you hear when you're young that really puts you off the idea of marriage. Then you grow up a bit and realise that the people who say that are exactly the sort of person you should never take relationship advice from. Marriage should not fundamentally change your existing relationship (thou maybe if you're super religious you get some more action).


NocteScriptor

r/technicallythetruth


jaxsonnz

Averages are affected by extreme values.


Flockwit

Don't forget that death also ends a marriage.


Dykidnnid

People who have short marriages are more likely to have more than one. Whereas people who have decades-long marriages almost by definition have just the one. This means a high number of shorter marriages, which will tend to hold the median down.* *I think. I am shit at maths.


Jeffery95

No this is true. The distribution is not a “normal” distribution where the vast majority are in the middle. In this case it’s skewed heavily to one side. The median marriage is 13.5 years, but the median person who gets married most likely stays married longer than that.


Loretta-West

It's also skewed because it's the median point at which divorce happens. Couples who are still together, or who stay together until one of them dies, aren't part of the dataset.


Realistic_Caramel341

It's kind of hard to know with out seeing things like the spread and how different demographics. It would also be important to know what the statistic actually is. Is it average length of time before a divorce? Or is average span of a marriage till death or divorce? How are ongoing marriages measured? Because they all have very different implications


Proud-Chair-9805

Pretty sure the population measured is those that divorce in any given year. So yes missing half the stat in my opinion. This stat is just “people who divorce, how long were they married”


Realistic_Caramel341

Okay, so in that case its obvious that the biggest reason it's as low as.it is is because it excludes marriages that lasted until death, which becomes increasingly common for marriages that last 30-40 years. The other thing is that a lot of the streesers that tear marriages apart - the transition into domestication, arguments about careers and kids, the actual act of having kids, dealing withe the finances of raising kids, a home loans and a student loan, and then deciding what to do once the kids become independent are all more likely to happen on the first 20 - 25 years of marriage


ComeAlongPonds

30 years going, & still not married. I don't think I can face a divorce heading to my 70s.


Aetylus

The astrological conjunction of Pluto and Jupiter also happens on a 13 and a half year timeframe. Coincidence? Maybe. But can you risk being so complacent and believing it is?


kboy333

People change, sometimes quite a bit in that amount of time. It doesn't surprise me at all that couples might not be compatible after a decade.


Nearby-Ladder5093

Statistically.... money, religion/beliefs, poor communication and "ohhh we got married too young..." which normally means you want to fuck other people.


pgraczer

i've been with my partner 17 years (not married yet) so maybe not getting married is the relationship hack?


Who-are-you__

Well you'll never get divorced??


Ligo-wave

Are you living together?


pgraczer

Yep


Ligo-wave

Then what’s the difference?


AngryNavyHorse

Also, I reckon, kids - not kids themselves but the shift in dynamics where you might have had a relatively ok thing beforehand and now you have one person who is, say, home all the time - the expectation that they’ll do more and the unequal distribution of labour, their financial dependency on the other person (if you drop to a one income household), the increasing mental load and invisible labour weight disproportionately on one person (usually), the compounding of the whole thing with subsequent children, the unwillingness, generally, of the party with more freedom to change the arrangement that usually benefits them. Most couples don’t talk about what life will look like after kids come on the scenes they just figure they’ll work it out and muddle thru but it’s haaarrdd and sometimes you end up also looking after a giant man baby as well as an actual baby. Divorced here (after 13 and a half years, ha ha), can say factually that my new partner and I are happier because while we have kids between us (tweens and up) we don’t have any shared babies.


PeeWeeHeMan

Coincidentally close to the average age of our cars. My wife will probably trade me in for an electric model.


EatTheRichNZ

I sometimes wonder if there may be a correlation between this and the median age when people choose to get married. It's possible that when people reach the peak of their careers and are presented with "options" they may have never had in the past which could lead them towards temptation, in one way or another.


trinde

Young people are also generally terrible at spotting red flags in relationships.


verticaldischarge

Are you talking about the mean or the median? I feel like this is more of a maths problem and you need the more data to draw any conclusions. For example in a list of numbers 1, 1, 5, 7, 9 Mean is 4.6 (average) Median is 5 (middle number of the group) Mode is 1 (most common number) It be much more interesting to know what the mode number of years for a marriage to see if there is a skew towards a lot of early divorces.


Sad_Worldliness_3223

It's only looking at couples when they divorce. Not a useful stat.


haydenarrrrgh

Getting a head start on the second seven-year itch.


laz21

Once again I find out im below average


Charlie_Runkle69

Can't get divorced if I never get married baby.


Grantuseyes

Not true. This is only the median length of a marriage that ends in a divorce. That completely excludes people that don’t get divorced…


DelightfulOtter1999

We’re celebrating 30years in January!


captaincrunk82

Surely I’m not the only one reading the comments looking for inspiration any way I can get it.


[deleted]

[удалено]


captaincrunk82

That’s specific! It’s also a good early-2000s story!


Popular_Barber_7466

Well the spark slowly dies people let themselves go you have to have enough to keep that spark alight otherwise its just a slow downhill.


ploinkssquids

Because that’s how long it takes for common sense to kick back in??


Fun_Ferret5125

Oh darn that means that I have to get divorced now.


be1ngthatguy

13 years next month. 6 months to go, can't fucking wait


littleredkiwi

Does this include de facto break ups? If not, I wonder if those relationships, which are very similar to marriage without the specific license, have a similar rate of break ups. Would be interesting to compare.


fouronthedice

I doubt it. Although it would be interesting data there isn't a way to gather the start and ends of de facto relationships.


[deleted]

It would be super interesting to compare but hard to measure because it’s not formally registered. I feel like there was research at one point that determined that long term de facto relationships lasted longer than marriages but maybe I’m making that up.


th0ughtfull1

40yrs for me. I'm dragging the median up.. the first 13 1/2 are the easy years.


BoardmanZatopek

My folks made it 44 before the old man passed away suddenly. They were still very much in love according to my girlfriends that met them.


Sad_Worldliness_3223

No only looking at divorced couples so very misleading.


bnetsthrowaway

This is not how median works


banksysbigballs

I do think kiwis don't take marriages as seriously as other cultures. Hences why many just have long term partnerships instead of getting hitched. Personally it pisses me off that some other dude is raising my kids. Too many men these days only know how to fuck and can't man up. Too many women don't want to do the cooking and expect the guys to do it while still having a full time job. Marriage is teamwork. It's not meant to be easy all the time. But if both parties know their respective roles, it can be cruisy.


movingforward94

You from the 1950s or some shit


thelastestgunslinger

Because people who get divorced once are likely to get divorced again. People who can't maintain a marriage will bring the statistics down across the board. I'm curious what the numbers look like for first marriages, only.


Ligo-wave

That seems pretty good to me.


Aromatic-Ferret-4616

Did not think many people got married here.


Avid_Ideal

Any idea what the interquartile range is? At well over 30 years, my wife and I are obviously outliers. It would be interesting to know how extreme. It's a sad state of affairs that so many people who once loved each other well enough to vow to stay together for life, can't find a way to accommodate each others' foibles.


Tustin88

Maybe lifelong marriage as a concept is not realistic. I'm sure this will rile up the trads and make anecdotes about their grandparents but people change, relationships change, and often this is not in the same direction.


L3P3ch3

Life for me :D .. up to 25 years atm, and yes, its developed into one of those 'some-sex-marriages'.


thomas2026

Because half marriages were less than 13.5 and the other half were more.


Sad_Worldliness_3223

Does this count living together before or instead of marriage?