There does, however, appear to be a magic number for when people get divorced. No matter where you are from or what culture you were up in, according to Dr. Fisher, you are most likely to get divorced four years into your marriage. The reason is even more fascinating, she says. In order to raise a single child through infancy, our human brains have evolved to develop a drive for love and collaboration that lasts just long enough.
Couples permitted women to raise kids while their male partners looked after and protected them throughout the early years. Then what? As animals, we are compelled to have multiple partners in order to leave the best genetic heritage. According to Fisher, having children with two or three men as opposed to one increases the genetic diversity of your offspring. In other words, some sort of primitive divorce undoubtedly served as an adaptive mechanism over millions of years to increase genetic diversity.
On a much smaller scale, one divorce lawyer claims that in contemporary American culture, the average age for divorce is closer to five to eight years into the marriage. This, according to Bettina Hindin, an Offit Kurman marital attorney who has been practicing for almost 34 years, is mostly due to unfulfilled expectations. “In New York, a long-term marriage is one that has been together for 11 years.
The majority of marriages end between the fifth and ninth years or the first and second years.
Her analysis is summarized as follows: “You got into this marriage and this dream in the first and second year, but it wasn’t what you wanted. The first time the alarms sound is at that time “Hindin elucidates. “There is the most change between the fifth and eighth years. You might have kids, work at numerous professions, or feel unsatisfied in your career. Life truly hits you at this point.”
