Forget the seven-year itch, said The Telegraph. Heterosexual couples are staying together longer, with divorces happening “a record 13 years after marriage”, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It might not be “a case of happily ever after” but people are increasingly “turning to couples therapy and forgiving infidelity” in what is a “bleak financial landscape”.
Staying power
The 13-year figure, from 2025, is the “longest average period marriages have lasted before divorce or dissolution” since records began back in 1963 and is up from a “record low” of 8.9 years in 1985, said The Times. Record highs were also recorded in same-sex civil partnerships, with male couples lasting 13.7 years on average, while female couples went their separate ways after 13.6 years.
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The broad trend of marriages lasting longer is “not solely a British phenomenon”, said The Guardian. While divorce statistics are collected differently in different countries, data from the Pew Research Center in the US shows the median length of marriages ending in divorce rose from 10 years in 2008 to 12 years in 2023. In Germany, the average length of marriage was 14.6 years in 2025, and in the Netherlands it was 14.7.
ONS figures from 2023 show the average age of first-time marriage for opposite-sex couples has reached peak levels in the UK – at 34.8 years for men and 33 years for women. This could help explain why marriages are lasting longer, Jo Edwards, head of family law at Forsters, told The Times. People are making the commitment later in life and in doing so “perhaps invest more in it emotionally”.
‘Nuclear option’
Divorce is now “more accessible than it ever has been”, Lisa Pepper, a divorce lawyer at Osbornes Law, told The Guardian, yet “couples are staying together”. One of the “less romantic reasons” for this is that rising mortgages, rent and childcare costs mean they can’t afford to separate. Instead they are trying things like couples therapy or mediation before going for the “nuclear option” of divorce.
The result, said Rebecca Aston-Jones, a senior associate at Clarke-Willmott, is that some separated couples are stuck in “unhappy or hostile living environments” as they “continue to live under the same roof” so they can share their financial assets and split household bills.
The only age demographic for whom divorce rates are on the rise is the “silver splitters” – those in their fifties and sixties and older. Many of these couples have waited until their “children have flown the nest”, Edwards told The Times, before they start divorce proceedings. Younger Gen X and millennial couples are “less likely to rush into marriage and many are choosing not to marry at all”, said Laura Mortimer, a partner at BP Collins.
Another “fundamental change” that might help to explain the figures is the rise in cohabitation, Brienna Perelli-Harris, a professor of demography at Southampton University, told The Guardian. Marriage may be becoming a more “selective institution”, with over 90% of couples living together before tying the knot. Those who move in together and figure out the relationship doesn’t work can go their separate ways. “Those who stay together and eventually marry are, my research shows, the couples who are happiest.”
