Here’s How Long Marriages Actually Last Before Divorce, According to Data

The seven-year itch has been one of our favorite go-to clichés for failing marriages. But that might not exactly hold true anymore. If a marriage ends in divorce these days, 13 years is much closer to what the actual data says. That same number is true in both the UK and the US.

New data found that marriages ending in divorce in England and Wales in 2025 lasted an average of 13 years. Opposite-sex marriages averaged exactly 13.0 years. Same-sex marriages ran slightly longer, at 13.7 years for men and 13.6 for women. Research from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research puts the US median length of a first marriage ending in divorce at 13 years too.

People are also getting married later than previous generations did, giving them more time to establish their lives before saying yes. The US divorce rate has fallen around 37% from its 1980 peak and now sits near a 50-year low.

That leaves fewer marriages ending in divorce overall, and couples who do split are staying married longer first. Counseling is also easier to find, and much less taboo than it once was, so couples have more options before they decide the marriage is over.

England and Wales also changed how divorce works. No-fault divorce came into effect in 2022 and removed the requirement for one spouse to blame the other for ending the marriage.

After the change, divorces at the one-to-two-year mark dropped 68%. The old rules had affected when some couples could file and how they went about it, so changing the process changed the timing as well. Some marriages lasted longer on paper before the couple eventually called it.

Relationship coach Kate Mansfield told Metro that people usually stay because they’ve “loved, invested, hoped and often built an entire life around the relationship.”

Thirteen years is a lot of life to untangle. There could be kids involved. You might own a house together, share money, or have years of routines to pull apart. Leaving after that long usually comes after repeated attempts to make the marriage work, including conversations that probably felt exhausting by the fifth time around.

The seven-year itch makes it sound like people reach a certain anniversary and decide they’ve had enough. In reality, divorce often comes after years of trying to make the marriage work before one or both people finally call it.