A very happy anniversary: more marriages reaching 5 years

LESS social pressure to get married means more couples are making it to their fifth wedding anniversary than at any time since 1973, figures show.

Analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics shows newly married couples are 42 per cent less likely to divorce than their counterparts who tied the knot 20 years earlier.

Just 6 per cent of couples who married in 2011 are no longer together, while 10.6 per cent of those who married in 1991 were divorced within five years, according to the analysis from the Marriage Foundation. There has been a 42 per cent fall in the number of divorces in the first five years since 1991, from 34,280 to 16,914 since 2011.

Harry Benson, the research director of the foundation, said he believed couples were under less pressure to marry than in the past. “It used to be the case that families would say, ‘when are you going to do the decent thing’. These sorts of comments were very normal, and that’s really disappeared.

“Because there’s less pressure, those people who are getting married are more serious about it. There are more people deciding – rather than sliding – into marriage and deciding is fundamental to commitment,” he said.

The ONS data also showed that more men were granted divorces than at any point since 2005, with 41,669 petitions being granted to husbands and 65,290 granted to wives. Unreasonable behaviour was the most common grounds.

The figures revealed the first rise in divorces since 2011. From 2015 to 2016 the number of divorces rose by 5.8 per cent, but the total of 106,959 was still lower than in 2014. Chris Sherwood, the chief executive of Relate, said: “We know that money worries are one of the top strains on relationships and it may be that rising levels of household debt and stagnating pay growth could be contributing factors.”

Lawyers said that they believed businesses failing because of Brexit had also contributed to some divorces.