Here Are The Most Common Reasons For Divorce After Less Than One Year Of Marriage

I don't think anyone can argue that marriage isn't hard work. Of course, everyone's heard the greeting card proverbs that "love should be effortless" or "true love should feel easy," but that's honestly a load of you know what. Relationships consist of two people with different wants and needs, no matter how synchronized they may be. You're going to go through rough patches that you may or may not be able to weather. And on the flip side, that effortless, easy love may not actually be so genuine, and can come crashing down. Take, for example, three of the most common reasons for divorce after less than one year of marriage.

Before diving in, first keep in mind that half of all marriages in the United States do not end in divorce. It's a false statistic perpetuated since the 1980s, according to Refinery29, and is totally off-base. Data from the National Survey of Family Growth actually show that, between 2006 and 2010, the likelihood a first marriage would last at least a decade was between 68 and 70 percent, and between 52 and 56 percent that it would last at least two decades, Refinery29 reported.

Of course, that doesn't mean you're one among the doomed (or liberated, depending on how you look at it). But there are reasons why things may not work out, even when everything seems peachy.

Cheating

Despite the belief that "everyone cheats," infidelity isn't as common as you think. Between 1991 and 2008, only about 20 percent to 25 percent of married men admitted to infidelity, while 10 to 15 percent of women admitted to cheating in their marriage, according to Psychology Today. Still, a lot of marriages that tanked before a year did so because of cheating.

Personality Change

People change. It happens. It's a result of aging and moving through the world. But sometimes, that personality shift is one that's unbearable. One divorcee lamented on Reddit that his ex-wife "became a different person," according to Huffington Post. He continued, Huffington Post reported:

She was never home when I was and always with friends. She stopped paying rent and other bills. I had to pick up the slack. She got ‘mugged’ so I gave her my credit card so she could get necessities like gas and then she goes and spends thousands on irrelevant junk. When she left me, she keyed my car and told me she had met a guy at a bar a while back. We were together for over eight years before we married and all that happened just a few months in. I shouldn’t feel loss after she left me, but it still hurts a year later. ‌

Age ‌

Age is an interesting cause of divorce. It can be a difference in age that breaks down the bond. It could be a difference in maturity. Or it could be because you both are in stressful places and think you need to hit that big milestone before you turn a certain age. In a Reddit thread, one divorcee wrote, according to Cosmopolitan:

We didn't love each other. I proposed because I was 30 and panicked. She said yes because she wasn't sure anyone better than me would come along. Dumb reasons for both of us.

Speaking of panicking, another Redditor wrote, according to Cosmo:

She panicked. She decided that she was too young to get married (23 years old) and still wanted to experience more of life before settling down.

Marriage is tough, and sometimes they don't last, no matter how hard people try to maintain the relationship. And you know what? That's OK.