21 High School Sweethearts Marriage Statistics

That first love everyone has in high school is one that many dream will last for a lifetime. Although many high school sweethearts end up breaking up at some point in time, a surprising number of them end up marrying and establishing a new household at some point in life.

The average age of a first-time bride today is 26 years old.

High School Sweethearts Marriage

What is interesting about divorce rates amongst marriages is that those who tend to live in areas that would be defined as American liberal tend to have lower rates of divorce. Religion, age, and location all play roles, but one fact cannot be denied: those who marry their high school sweethearts tend to have happy marriages, even if they end up in divorce for some reason.

• High school sweethearts that get married while still teenagers only have a 54% chance of having their marriage last 10 years.
• High school sweethearts that wait until at least the age of 25 to get married have a 10 year success rate of 78%.
• Only 19% of people who marry their high school sweethearts attend college.
• 14% of couples had met in school.

It’s the last fact right there that is most sobering. Only 1 out of 5 people who marry their high school sweethearts even get to college, no matter what their age happens to be when they get married. An even more staggering statistic is this: less than 2% of people who marry their high school sweethearts earn a degree from college. A lot has changed in 40 years in regards to the views of marriage and when to or when not to marry, but this simple fact remains: people don’t marry their high school sweetheart might be happier, but they are less competitive in the job market.

What Is It About Marrying Your First Love?

• The biggest fear that parents have of their children marrying young, as a teen, is that they will become a parent too early.
• Less than 2% of all marriages are actually to a high school sweetheart.
• Many people end up not marrying their high school sweetheart because it isn’t a love for another person that they are feeling, but it is instead a love of freedom and exploration.
• Relationships that have some sort of spiritual component to them are much more likely to succeed, even if there are contrasting religions or spiritual emphasis in the relationship.
• In 1970, the average age of a first-time bridge was just 21 years of age.
• All marriages have seen a decline in divorce rates over the past 30 years.
• According to some research, couples who meet in school are less likely to divorce than couples who met in any other setting.

The real problem with looking at high school sweetheart relationships is that the data on these relationships is relatively limited. Even the data that does exist tends to be slanted in some way. For liberal magazines, using this as a specific example, the information is slanted to counter conservative claims about marriage. Data gathered by data websites is spun in such a way that using the website itself is promoted as a positive. What that means is that these statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt, but all of the data does suggest something: sometimes your first love really is your soul mate.

Are There Variations In The Data?

• Mormons are more likely to divorce within the first 3 years of marriage than any other group of high school sweethearts, but this is likely because they tend to marry earlier than others as a demographic.
• Mormons are also the most likely to stay married if a relationship lasts for more than 36 months.
• According to a 2006 survey, only 14% of people actually met at school. Meeting through friends or meeting at work were more common ways that couples met and got married.
• The most likely age demographic for someone to marry their high school sweetheart is in the 18-27 age group.
•  People who break up with their high school sweetheart and marry someone else are more likely to have an affair with the their sweetheart if they are able to reconnect.
• The internet makes connecting or reconnecting with a high school sweetheart easier than ever before.
• People who search out lost loves when they didn’t marry their high school sweetheart tend to come from homes where one parent was an alcoholic.

What we’re talking about here is the power of a first love. If two people fall in love together for the first time, it is an extremely powerful connection that doesn’t fade over the years. There are certainly times when busyness takes over a life and having a spouse and kids in a happy marriage makes life enjoyable, but not comparable to if that life was with a high school sweetheart. That’s why many try to reconnect and even people with deep religious beliefs can end up cheating on a spouse. The feeling of a love lost is a feeling the needs to be repaired, which is why a high school sweetheart relationship that takes a little time before marriage is one that can really last until death does them part.

Facts in Conclusion

• 25% of people are marrying their high school sweethearts today compared with those in the 1940’s.
• According to some research, it doesn’t matter who you date first, but it does matter who you love first when it comes to building an enduring relationship.
• Although only at most, 2% of marriages today are from a high school relationship, 25% of women say that they married their first love.

If you find someone that you genuinely love, then hold onto that person for life. Don’t waste your time on relationships where one person doesn’t love the other because that will lead to unhappiness.