Divorce rates are highest among couples in their 20s. What causes ‘starter marriages’ to fall apart, and what can you learn from them? Brides and grooms who said ‘I don’t’ before the age of 30 tell all

John and Dan met online when John was 19 and Dan was 17. They were from similar backgrounds, country boys who, growing up, hadn’t known anyone else who was gay. When it turned out they were attracted to each other as well, they couldn’t believe their luck. They were together for a year before life intervened; when, two years later, they bumped into each other again, the attraction was stronger than ever. They knew they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, and announced to their respective parents that they would be entering into a civil partnership.

The response was immediate: they were 21 and 23 – way too young. “But then we both sat our parents down,” John says, “and I told my mum I knew she was 21 when she got married. And Dan sat his mum down, who was also 21 when she got married. And we said, ‘You’re all a bunch of hypocrites.’ They shut up and left us to it” – though not without John’s mother pointing out that she had also been divorced, and that marriage was not to be undertaken lightly. “It just went over my head. We were in love and heading to our wedding, simple as that.” And so their life together began as everyone hopes these things will begin – with love, joy, hope, and in defiance of any boring naysayers.

But earlier this year, after four years of civil partnership, John and Dan filed for divorce. Every divorce is an individual grief; it is also, however, part of a greater cultural story. This is not just that divorce rates are high, though that is part of it (2012, the last year for which the Office for National Statistics has published figures, saw a slight increase in the number of divorces, to 42% of marriages). Almost half of divorces happen in the first 10 years of marriage, and the rate is especially high between the fourth and eighth anniversary. The average age at divorce was 45 for men and 42 for women, which masks a more interesting statistic: by far the highest divorce rates have been among women aged 25-29 and men aged either 25-29 or 30-34, depending on the year.

Over the past few months, I’ve talked to a number of people who were divorced by the age of 30, about their first, early marriages. I have discovered, predictably, that there are as many narratives as there are unions (or perhaps, it would be truer to say, as with traffic accidents, as many stories as there are witnesses, ie at least two). But there are some things that come through again and again.

That the pain and trouble of a difficult marriage are often a huge shock – “The church tells them marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning,” as a wry matrimonial lawyer once put it. That divorce, though easier and more common than it was in previous generations, is still traumatic – the cliches of a messy or painful divorce are not only cliches, lawyers and therapists will tell you wearily, but tautologies.

But I also found that people who survive what are sometimes called starter marriages often learn things they could not have learned in any other way – not even by cohabiting. And that these things might help them go on to make far stronger unions than they might otherwise have made.

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Whether or not a young couple stay together often depends on why they married in the first place, says Kate Figes, author of Couples: The Truth, a book for which she interviewed more than 100 couples. If it’s because “they want an expensive party, to be centre stage for a day, because they have romanticised notions of finding their ‘soulmate’, or want the imagined extra security marriage might bring, they could be in for a nasty shock, and a speedy separation,” she says. “On the other hand there are people who marry, say, their childhood sweetheart, or the person they fell in love with at university. They grow up together.”

Many of the people I spoke to in fact fell into the latter camp – they met early, yes, often at university; but there were years of dating, of sharing lives and possessions, before they actually married.

Kieron Faller, 34, manages a music technology company and lives in London. He met his first wife on his first day at Canterbury University, and they were engaged a year later. “It didn’t feel like we were being weirdly over-committed or obsessed with each other to the exclusion of our friends or other stuff that was going on,” he says. They married four years after they left university, by which time they owned a house, two dogs and a horse, and were both working.

Alison Martin, 42, a self-possessed teacher at a school in West Sussex, also met her ex-husband at university. It was her first week at Queen’s in Belfast. He was funny, good-looking, and “I suppose it was very lighthearted, you know, as girlfriend and boyfriend, then it got more serious when we were living together.” They had been together for seven years when they married in 1999.

Laura Paskell-Brown, 34, now a doula in San Francisco, met her husband in her first year at Oxford, when they were both campaigning against the introduction of tuition fees. “I saw this man – he seemed to have it all together. He lit up the room every time he walked into it, and I was like, if I can’t be that person, I can marry that person,” she says. “I thought he’d see how interesting and fabulous I was, and then we’d live happily ever after.”

But happily ever after is a large part of the problem. As a culture we seem to believe that marriage is a kind of end point and a solution to all ills, rather than the start of a complex process that, depending on who we are and how we deal with it, could go any way at all. The central question, says Susanna Abse, a psychotherapist and CEO of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, is: “Can [a marriage] tolerate the process of disillusionment, the facing up to limitation that all long relationships have to go through?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alison Martin, 42, met her husband at university. They married seven years later, and divorced two years after that. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian

This disillusionment can set in surprisingly quickly. “I remember my mum saying to me, ‘Oh, isn’t it fun when you are first married?’” says Lindsay, 34, an American from Oregon who met her ex-husband when she sat down next to him in a youth hostel in Salzburg. They conducted a long-distance relationship for a couple of years, before she came to Britain to be with him. They married when her student visa ran out. “And I was like, ‘Oh really? When does it get fun?’ And that is not a criticism of him, I think we just didn’t know what sort of existence marriage really is.” Unable to cope with its strictures and its import, she began to pull away in all sorts of unconscious ways. “He was always a much more sensible character, and I, all of a sudden, just started going out and getting really drunk all the time, and hanging out with people he didn’t like.” At the same time her work as a business manager in architecture and design was going well. “I became more confident in myself.”

Schoolteacher Alison remembers having serious doubts a month or two before her wedding. It was a church wedding, not massive, but involved all their family, “so there was a lot of buildup. But I thought you either got married or you split up and it was over. You know it’s not 100% right, but do you try to make it work because, ultimately, you still love them? So I went in knowing there was a good chance it wasn’t going to work. But there was also a good chance it would work.”

The day that really sticks in her memory, however, is the day after the wedding, when she and her new husband were meant to clean out their old flat in preparation for renting it while they were on honeymoon. “Our friends had come in and trashed it, there was confetti everywhere, lipstick all over the mirror, all over the toilet,” she says. Her husband went to drop off his suit and planned to join her in the cleaning. “Eight hours later, he came home. He’d been out, had a few drinks with his friends. We were leaving first thing in the morning. It’s not a great way to start your marriage off, and I suppose that carried on, really.”

Paul, 45, also a teacher, had been with Nathalie for five years before they got married, and says they never got used to it. “We both fought against the idea,” he says. “I remember the day we got engaged, Nathalie threw up because she was so anxious. We didn’t call each other husband and wife; it sounded too permanent. At our wedding – quite traditional, formal, in a church – I remember somehow the first dance didn’t happen because, ‘Oh no, we’re not going to do that,’” he says. He is particularly struck now by the fact that they “fought a lot in that first year – a lot more than in the previous four or five. I’m sure it was a reaction to the idea that we were tied together for the rest of our lives.”

It didn’t help that they found their lives going in different directions. Paul went back to university, while Nathalie went straight into work, and progressed quickly. “It was exciting and there was lots of opportunity to go places. But it was not something we were sharing – I was stuck at home, and she would resent me for not doing the same thing.” While this type of divergence can happen at any time in our lives, it tends to happen particularly in our 20s and early 30s.

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Marriages that are built on fairytale promises, as Laura admits hers was, begin to founder when reality comes into view. She got married two months after her finals, in 2001, and what she did, she says, was “paint a picture. But as that started to crack away – as it inevitably does – I became more and more defensive.” They began to fight a lot. “I was constantly trying to tell him what he was doing wrong, trying to control him and change him. I could be really vicious.” They moved to San Francisco in 2003, because her husband was studying there, and she realised two things: one, that she had found her home, and two, that she was leaving her marriage.

Others discover that things that seemed manageable before marriage are the source of building resentments. Alison, for instance, found that her husband would go out with his friends at the weekend while she stayed at home, preparing lessons and doing the housework.

Then there are factors that have the capacity to bring everything to a head. Money is one. “He’d say, ‘Well, you chose to have a low-paid job,’” Alison says. By then they’d had a (planned and wanted) baby, and children are another acknowledged marriage stressor. They bring high strain (in terms of finances, fatigue and housework) and often highlight different standards of care. “It wasn’t an easy time,” Alison says. “It reinforced just how different we were. Before, when we argued, I just thought, ‘Well, we’ll make up a few hours later.’ But when you’ve got a child, you don’t want to be falling out all the time.”

Eventually, two years into their marriage, it all became overwhelming. “I was lying in bed,” she says, “it was three in the morning, he hadn’t come home, I’d rung his mobile I don’t know how many times, but there was no answer. And then, it sounds awful, but I thought, do you know, if the police knock on the door and say he’s been hit over the head and is lying in an alley, it’ll actually be a relief.” The next day she picked up the phone and began looking for properties to rent.

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What is love? This was the most searched question on Google in 2012 (followed in 2013 by “What is twerking?”) – and there are probably at least as many answers as there are searches. One answer is that it might not be what we think it is, if we think about it at all. “We never talked about whether we loved each other,” Paul says, “or what love meant. We sort of ran away from that question.”

In Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert’s sometimes irritatingly chirpy but also often wise study of marriage, she argues that we choose partners partly as an expression of our deepest aspirations for ourselves – in terms of education, appearance, achievement: “Your spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world.” But if, as is so often the case when we are young, you have little idea of who you are or want to be, then it is easy to make the wrong choice.

“The problem was getting married in our early 20s,” says John, who is 27 and works in publishing. “We were too young, simple as that. I wish both of us had had a life before we settled down.” Eventually, John and his partner were both unfaithful – a common factor in divorce at any age. “That’s when you know a relationship is at its end.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Laura Paskell-Brown, 34, met her husband in her first year at university. They got married after finals, and split up two years later. Photograph: Carlos Chavarria for the Guardian

Paul felt he was too young to understand what marriage meant. “In your 20s, you think you’re an adult and in control of your life, but you’re basically an idiot. You don’t have the self-knowledge you think you do.” It took him a few years – until he found himself in another serious relationship – to begin to disentangle what had happened.

For Laura, the San Francisco-based doula, it wasn’t until she was in another difficult relationship in her 30s that she “had a moment of realisation. I was going through old diaries, and I saw that the state of my relationship was pretty much the same as it was at the end of my marriage, and the common denominator was me.”

This is not unusual, says couples therapist Avi Shmueli, as all our relationships unconsciously follow patterns set early in our lives. “Every human being,” he says, “is born into a powerful relationship” with their primary caregiver, which “sets up a very powerful influence on the internal architecture of the mind”. So, for example, a depressed parent might not be able to respond beyond providing food and shelter. “The child begins to think that either there’s no point in trying to play with anyone, because you don’t get a response, or that they are responsible for the bad feeling. They might be someone who tries very hard and yet feels they never quite get it right – they can’t make someone happy.”

These are patterns that, again unconsciously, we often recognise in others. But it’s nuanced, Abse says, “because in one relationship you can choose someone who had a similar experience to you. And that could be a really good relationship – where the early experience can be healed.” Or, she says, “it could be a car crash”.

Whether a relationship works depends partly on the degree to which each of you is aware of how you have been shaped by your early experiences; and then on whether you are able and willing to be flexible, to change and to grow. And since this is the kind of self-knowledge that usually comes with age, those in early marriages are less likely to have come equipped with the necessary tools.

“One of the main things I understand now,” Kieron says, “is that I was very much the compromiser.” His then wife had clear ideas about what she wanted in life, and he wanted to help her. “I think that was just me being a perfectionist. Compromise is supposed to be a good thing, so if I compromise a lot, then I must be doing really well.” In fact, he discovered, the imbalance that resulted wasn’t healthy for their relationship.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Having left their early first marriages, Kieron and Lindsay Faller, both 34, met online and married three years ago. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian

Sometimes this issue of balance is reflected through gender roles, both in basic issues of equality – when it comes to housework, for instance, as Alison found – and in more complex issues of conditioning and expectation. “I had this idea of what a good wife should be, based on what I had seen from my own mother,” Lindsay says. “I had in my mind that I needed to be up making breakfast and to make sure dinner was on the table – I put a lot of pressure on myself to fit this mould of what maybe my parents wanted me to be as a wife, as opposed to what I wanted to be.” As Gilbert writes, contemplating her own imminent second marriage, “I do believe that one should at least try to understand one’s mother’s marriage before embarking on a marriage of one’s own.”

Femininity – or at least, a particular construct of femininity – “is often linked with submerging oneself in terms of other people’s needs and desires,” Abse says. “That is a theme in lots of relationships that break down – women decide the relationship itself is not going to be able to allow them a more autonomous self.” For men, it is often the opposite side of the same coin, an “anxiety about regression”. “Therapists see a lot of men who are depressed and withdrawn because they can’t express their anger and their feelings,” Abse says. “They’re often preoccupied with damaging their partner, whom they see as quite fragile. If you did a big analysis of those early relationships, you might find that is a common theme: mutual suppression of the individual self in favour of the relationship. And in the next relationship, they’re able to be more autonomous.”

That was certainly what schoolteacher Paul found. “We didn’t have a way of communicating in a nonjudgmental, rational way that didn’t involve blaming or punishing the other person. It was a lack of maturity – you’re both frightened by what you don’t want to admit to.” Now, he says, “You think, ‘Shit happens’ and you face up to it and talk about it. In my 20s, I didn’t have that ability or that insight.”

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This, then, is the real question: can the trauma of divorce lead to a new way of doing things? Laura remarried earlier this year. Kieron and Lindsay, having left their first marriages, met online and married each other three years ago; they now have a 17-month-old daughter. Paul is in a long-term relationship which has produced two children. John, at this point, has no intention of getting married again (his mum thinks otherwise). Alison, meanwhile, is a prime example of what Gilbert describes as someone freed from “the Tyranny of the Bride”: having done it once, and particularly having had a child, she feels no overwhelming need to do it again. She is not against marriage, but over the years has built a life that makes her happy, and that she will not put in just anyone’s hands. She carries a checklist in her head of non-negotiables, and she’s not the only one.

“I think everyone should have the conversation first, really, even if it’s with a counsellor,” Alison says. And that conversation should involve going through a list of things such as, on a scale of one to 10, how far do you feel the woman’s role is in the home, or how comfortable would you feel if your wife earned more, or what do you think is an acceptable amount of time to spend together? Ultimately, she says, it comes down to respect. “Respecting that other person and wanting to make them happy, you know? That your lives are better together than apart.”

John’s advice would be to ask what you each want in 10 years’ time. “That will flush fundamental differences out pretty quickly.” It is also something many, particularly young people often simply don’t think to ask.

“Who are you?” Lindsay says. “What do you want to do with your life?” And who, exactly, are they? Remember that while people can change a bit, the fundamental person is probably always still there.

Paul agrees. “There are things that are innate to us. The issue isn’t about changing them, but recognising them and being wary – of letting things drift, for instance, or allowing issues to develop their own life in your head… always a recipe for disaster.” Talk about problems, he says, trying if at all possible to take into account who each person is and where they’re coming from – and not taking it as a personal attack if they disagree.

This is what comes up again and again: communication, and especially the forms that communication takes. When Laura remarried, her main priority was to establish that she and her new husband could manage differences fairly and with compassion. “Are you open to talking about it?” she asked. Could they be honest, and could they be vulnerable? “Because that’s what everyone wants in a friendship. It’s also what everyone wants in a marriage. Not only was I not capable of that at 21, I didn’t even know it existed.”

And can they be supportive, without being controlling? It isn’t easy, but at least these people know to try. It used to be, for instance, that if Lindsay had a bad day at work, Kieron would start straight in on looking for a solution, telling her what she should do. “But I catch myself doing it now, so I will stop and try a different, more healthy approach,” asking questions that draw out her own thoughts and solutions. This has helped Lindsay to deal with occasional bouts of low self-esteem. She recently quit her job in business management to become a freelance food writer and cook. It is a change she was never brave enough to make before, but she says, “I am learning to trust my instincts again.”

When you have both been divorced, as Lindsay and Kieron have, you can bring a lot of circumspection to a new relationship. “We had to be realistic,” Lindsay says, “because your expectations are different.” But this is not necessarily a bad thing – in fact, it can be quite the opposite. “My aunt thinks everyone should have a starter marriage, then go on to their real marriage afterwards,” she says. “I definitely feel it was a good education for me. As traumatic as it was and as sad as it was, I am really glad it happened.”