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If you don’t want your marriage to end in divorce, you might want to reconsider how old you are when you tie the knot.

But what is the right age?

It’s a been rumored for decades that the older you are when you get married the less likely you are to get divorced. According to Nicholas Wolfinger, however, professor of family and consumer science and adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at the U, that trend is changing.

Wolfinger conducted research to examine the correlation between marriage age and divorce rates. What he found was, instead of a steady decline of the rate as people get older, the relationship is now more of a U shape. If you marry too young or too old, your chance for divorce increases, but there’s a sweet spot in the middle.

Specifically, the odds of divorce decline from the teenage years to your late twenties. But once a person reaches their early thirties, every year they wait to tie the knot the chances of splitting with a partner increase by five percent.

Wolfinger said there are many possible explanations for the change, but the exact reason has yet to be determined. When the research was conducted, different control groups were taken into account such as age, gender, education level, religion, whether participants were from families of divorce and so forth, but there are other factors to consider. Wolfinger theorizes that perhaps people who are older may have more emotional baggage that influences their relationships.

“At that age, you could have had more previous relationships or children from previous relationships, which could make your marriage harder,” he said.

The average marriage age in the U.S. right now is about 30 years old — “the highest it’s ever been,” Wolfinger said.

Jasmine Bishop, a senior in physics, said even though she hasn’t been married for long, she can see why getting married later in life can be difficult.

“When you’re young you haven’t been on your own for that long so you build habits together,” she said. “But I think when you hit your 30s, you have a life and you have your job and your friends, and it’s difficult when you get married because you’re with someone who has [already] solidified their personality.”

According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report, the divorce rate in Utah sits at about 3.6 percent, slightly higher than the national average of 3.4 percent. Wolfinger believes marrying young may not be the problem.

“There is a culture of youthful marriage here,” Wolfinger said. “In Utah, you’re less likely to hear someone tell you you’ll regret marrying young because everyone marries young.

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