1. The Most Successful Marriages Start at This Age, And It's Not What You Think
The older you are when you tie the knot, the more solid the marriage will be, right? Not exactly true. The sweet spot for the start of a lasting union: 32 years old. The risk of divorce declines steadily with age throughout your 20s, but after 32, it rises by about 5 percent per year. That's the surprising discovery that Nicholas Wolfinger, PhD, a professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, made last summer after analyzing
marriage and divorce data from more than 6,000 Americans collected between 2006 and 2010. "It used to be a simple, linear relationship," he says. "The older you were when you married, the less likely you were to get divorced." Wolfinger isn't sure what's causing the change, but he does note that people are waiting longer than they used to, which may be a factor.
