In the 1970s, 21 percent of women had never had sex before they got married, compared to just 5 percent of women in the 2010s. In decades past, people thought that having multiple sexual partners before marriage would lead to a less happy union and, eventually, divorce.
But according to a recent analysis of National Survey of Family Growth data from the University of Utah, two may actually be the unluckiest number. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, women who had exactly two premarital sex partners had the highest rates of divorce—around 25 to 30 percent, which is less than women with either three, four to five, or six to nine partners.
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It wasn’t until the 2000s that women with 10 or more partners surpassed the women with just two as the group with the highest divorce rates.
“Having two partners may lead to uncertainty, but having a few more apparently leads to greater clarity about the right man to marry,” writes lead study author Nicholas H. Wolfinger.
The article 10 Really Weird Causes of Divorce was originally published by our partners at Prevention.com.