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Statistics

Most affairs end. We know that both anecdotally and from research. Very few affairs go on to become long term permanent relationships. Of those that do, very few last more than five years. Here are a few stats for comparison. If youíre in an affair, your chances of ending up happy and content with your affair partner are pretty slim. (And yes, I know everyone believes their situation is different. Perhaps yours is. However, the numbers are not in your favor.) If your spouse is having an affair I hope this gives you something to hang onto during the dark days before the affair comes to an endÖ. and the real work of healing begins.

47% of first marriages (in the US) end in divorce
60 - 80% of second and subsequent marriages end in divorce.

These numbers alone offer a pretty graphic picture. Read on:

By Joanna Bare

Based on information supplied by Penny regarding affairs, divorce, and remarriage, I did a few calculations. And I found that only 1 to 3% of affairs result in lifelong marriage.

How does that compare to other things that might come to pass in your life?

You are much less likely to:
Die of drowning ~ 1 in 1000

You have about the same chances of:
Getting skin cancer - 1 in 100
Dying in a vehicle accident - 1 in 78
Dying of septicemia - 1 in 77
Die of kidney disease - 1 in 62
Get Alzheimer's - 1 in 45
Die of flu or pneumonia - 1 in 38
Die of diabetes - 1 in 33

You are more likely to:
Die of breast cancer (if you're female) - 1 in 30

You are much more likely to:
Die of a stroke - 1 in 15
Die of cancer - 1 in 4
Die of heart disease 1 in 3

Other Stats:
So those are all things none of us wants to have happen. What about good statistics? Here are a few to contemplate:

(Remember, the chance of an affair evolving into a lifelong committed relationship is between 1 and 3 in 100.)

The chance of a woman having twins at any age is 3 in 100.
The chance of a woman having twins over the age of 45 is 17 in 100.

And for you sports fans, for the year 2004:
The odds of the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl are 1 in 8.
The odds of the Minnesota Vikings winning the Super Bowl are 1 in 20.
The odds of the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl are 1 in 25.
The odds of the Houston Texans winning the Super Bowl are 1 in 100.
The odds of the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series are 1 in 8.
The odds of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series are 1 in 9.
The odds of the Minnesota Twins winning the World Series are 1 in 16.
The odds of the New York Mets winning the World Series are 1 in 50.
The odds of the Milwaukee Brewers winning the World Series are 1 in 200.
(Note: All the bookmakers' odds were gathered in August of 2004; please don't use them to bet on anything!)

Additional Complex information about marriage and divorce:
Detailed Tables ~ www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p20-514u.pdf

The 1998 Census reports there were 55,303,000 men living with their spouses. There were 55,259,000 women living with their spouses.

Of the adult population of the United States:
56% are married and living with their spouse.
4% are married and not living with their spouse.
24% have never been married
7% are widowed
10% are divorced (really 9.8, but I'm rounding).

There's also a wealth of information about children and their living arrangements. At the very end of the report there's information about people who are unmarried and living with a partner of either sex. All in all, the number of people living with same sex partners is TINY in comparison to the numbers who are married. Miniscule.

On to the next interesting report from the census bureau...
Another really interesting report is the Special Study on Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the 1990's. It's a .pdf file available here if you'd like to read the whole thing.

In the report, marriages are normalized by measuring the number of marriages per 1,000 single women between 15 and 44. Divorces are normalized by showing the number of divorces per 1,000 married women between 15 and 44. Remarriages are normalized by showing the number of remarriages per 1,000 widowed and divorced women between 15 and 54. Very complex. And yet, it shows interesting things....
In 1922 (it's actually a 3 year spread, but I'm simplifying), 99 out of 1,000 unmarried women got married every year. So over a 10 year time frame, most of them would get married.
In 1988 (same simplification), only 76 out of 1,000 unmarried women got married every year.

Forget the divorce crisis, let's talk about how people don't get married anymore!

Okay, so what about when you DO get married?
In 1922, 10 out of every 1,000 married women got divorced every year. (Not over a lifetime. EVERY YEAR.)
In 1988, 37 out of every 1,000 married women got divorced.
In 1922, if you were available to remarry, you did so at a rate of 98 per 1,000.
In 1988, the remarriage rate is actually higher -- 109 per 1,000.

In the intervening years, this particular rate has done all kinds of wild jumping around and has been MUCH higher in between:
Marriages and remarriages dropped dramatically at the beginning of the Great Depression.
There was a huge spike in marriages, divorces, and remarriages between 1945 and 1947 -- at the end of WWII.
The marriage rate has steadily dropped since then, with the early 1970s showing a huge decline in first marriages -- and a huge spike in divorces and remarriages. In other words, kids who were learning about marriage the first time were very cautious about it, while their elders were busily shredding their first marriages to see what else they could find.
The remarriage rate peaked in the late 60s and has been dropping steadily ever since. The divorce rate peaked in the late 1970s and has been slowly declining since then.
The rest of these data get VERY complex, though they are also very interesting. I'll pull out only a few tidbits.

4 out of 10 marriages in the United States involve the bride or groom's or both's second (or later) marriage.

Divorce appears more likely when:
- You marry before ago 20
- You drop out of school (at the high school or college level) rather than finishing your education
- If you marry because you got pregnant

You're most likely to remarry if you:
- Got divorced when you were young

All the way through, black women have a much harder time with marriage than white women. Black women marry less, divorce more, and remarry less than their white counterparts. (Note: please see the information about Black Marriage Day on our  resource page.) The median time between divorce and remarriage is 2.5 years, with 75% of all remarriages within 5 years of the divorce.

Children: The report goes on to report on the effects of all of this on children and the types of households in which they are raised. Again, there is a great deal of data here and I can't hope to present all of it. Tidbits...

There are 34.6 million households with children in the United States. 24.9 million of them are two-parent family groups. 9.7 million are one-parent family groups. Of those, 8.4 million are led by single moms and 1.4 million are led by single dads.
In the married couple households that have children, there are...
37 million living with their biological parents
6.6 million living with their biological mom and their stepdad
608 thousand living with their biological dad and their stepmom
974 thousand living with their adoptive parents
197 thousand living with an "unknown" mother or father (whatever that means)
More than HALF of all black children live with one parent.
More than one in five of all white children live with one parent. Most of these children live with their biological mom and a step-dad. (The above data are from the 1990 census and may not match data from other years.)

So what does all this mean? Itís not really designed to tell you what to do. Itís here, more than anything else, to give you some data to work with. It doesnít present anything like all the data. There are many studies regarding the effects of divorce on children, for example, as well as the effects of divorce on adults. This is only the tip of a very large iceberg ñ maybe enough to get you thinking about where you are and where you may be headed.
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