Midlife Crisis – it’s coming. Best to pair up.

Posted On May 5, 2015

How do you avoid a mid-life crisis? Chances are, you probably don’t.

But a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that one way to lessen its effects is to get married. That study was based off two surveys in Great Britain, so you might be wondering if marriage is typically more tranquil across the pond, but it really makes sense: Life crises – even, or perhaps especially, psychological ones – are tougher to deal with alone.

Time Magazine notes that if you couple that information with data from the Pew Research Center, which shows fewer Millennials are getting married than Gen Xers or Baby Boomers did when they were of similar age, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the mid-life blahs may hit Millennials harder than their parents.

But just because only 26 of the 18-to-32-year-olds surveyed in 2013 in the Pew research were married doesn’t mean that Millennials will be married at significantly lower rates than previous generations by the time they’re in their 40s and beginning to second-guess every decision they ever made.

Many Millennials are focusing on their careers before starting families, and while their grandparents may consider that putting the cart before the horse, it’s entirely possible that, numbers-wise, they’ll end up in the same place.

Besides, the other important piece of information to be gleaned from the NBER study was that people who consider their spouse a friend are the happiest.

Well, duh.

So your 40s and 50s will go easiest on you if you’re married, and particularly if you’re married to someone you like. Because no one enjoys spending their mid-life crisis going through a divorce.

Seems that it’s less important to be married by the time you’re 32 than to get it right.

Categories: Generation X, Generation Y / Millennials