This is apparently the perfect age to get married, according to study

Want your marriage to last at least five years?

Most people do - five years is officially 'giving it a good go' and the respectfully throwing in the towel if it's not working out.

Any sooner, and people ask why you did not see the red flags before you married, and if they can have the plus £100 food processor wedding present back.

Research into divorcing habits by the University of Utah has found that fewer people who marry between the ages 28-32 split up in the years that follow.

Sociologist Nick Wolfinger led the analysis of data from 2006-10 and 2011-13 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)

He found that ages 28-32 were the best years for a successful marriage.

Previously it was believed that the older you married, the less likely you were to divorce.

Now the findings show a distribution that there are two peaks in divorces within the first five years, around teenage and early 20s marriages, and in marriages made over the age of 45.

Picture: National Survey of Family Growth 2011-13

According to the study, for every year after 45 that a marriage begins, the chance of divorce increases five per cent.

Wolfinger writes that the pattern continues, regardless of background.

Even after controlling for respondents’ sex, race, family structure of origin, age at the time of the survey, education, religious tradition, religious attendance, and sexual history, as well as the size of the metropolitan area that they live in.

As to why couples over the age 32 have so much trouble, Wolfinger blames selection bias.

The kinds of people who wait till their 30s to get married may be the kinds of people who aren’t predisposed toward doing well in their marriages...[and] people who marry later face a pool of potential spouses that has been winnowed down to exclude the individuals most predisposed to succeed at matrimony.

There is however, evidence which contradicts Wolfinger's study.

A similar analysis by Phillip Cohen, from the University of Maryland, used a survey looking at just women, which found the perfect age for them to get married was 45-49.

Picture: American Community Survey/Phillip Cohen

Writing for IFS, Wolfinger stated the study Cohen used did not include a large number of divorces from its analysis, skewing the results.

HT Motto IFS

More: The legal age you can get married around the world, mapped