Keeper

The Northeast treats marriage like real estate. Rarely buy, and once you do, never leave. Not one Northeastern state is in the top half of American marriage rates. But almost half are in the bottom quarter for divorce.

Opposites don’t attract. Across 199 studies, partners were more similar than chance on 82-89% of traits. Study: nature.com/articles/s41562-0…

"Women want Chad when they're ovulating" didn’t replicate. The studies behind it averaged 40 women. A 2018 study tested 584 women up to 15 times each, with a saliva sample every time. Hormones didn’t predict how much they liked masculine faces. Study: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.…

Hot guys get divorced more. Two women rated 238 men's high school yearbook photos. Researchers pulled their marriage and divorce records for the next 30 years. The better-looking the guy, the likelier he was to divorce and the shorter his marriages. Study: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…

Marriage researchers say the four predictors of divorce are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. In New York we call that small talk.

Same workplace, different divorce rates: Pilots 30% / Flight attendants 45% Lawyers 26% / Paralegals 42% Dentists 21% / Dental assistants 34% Pharmacists 20% / Pharmacy techs 35% Optometrists 21% / Opticians 38% (via FlowingData)

Chad’s market share hasn’t grown in 30 years. The General Social Survey has men under 45 write down their body count. Since 2016, the top 10% have slept with 54% of the women reported. Before 2016 it was 58%. Before 2006, 57%. Before 1996, 50%.

Kierkegaard broke off his engagement in 1841, then wrote about her for the rest of his life. When he died in 1855, his will left everything he owned to her. She had been married to someone else for eight years.

From 1907 to 1923, over 14,000 Japanese women sailed to Hawaii to marry men they’d only seen in a photo. Many men sent old or touched-up photos. Some posed in borrowed suits next to cars and houses that weren’t theirs. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Fed look at 50k couples who moved in together, using their Equifax files. Couples with the lowest credit scores were 2 to 3 times as likely to split up as couples with the highest. And the further apart their two scores, the more likely they split. (Federal Reserve, 2015)

In Sweden, women who won an election for mayor or parliament were about twice as likely to divorce within three years as women who lost. Men who won stayed married at the same rate as men who lost. (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2020)

the median american man now gets married for the first time at 30.8 highest since the census started tracking it in 1890 1956: 22.5 2025: 30.8

Older women are less harsh in their ratings of male attractiveness. Older men are slightly harsher.

births are finally going up in south korea and japan. in both, it came after marriages rose korea: marriages +14.8% in 2024, +8.1% in 2025. fertility rate 0.72 → 0.75 → 0.80 japan: marriages up two years running. births in the first half of 2026 rose for the first time in 11 years in both countries, almost every baby is born to a married couple

the american divorce rate is at its lowest in over 50 years congratulations to the 16% of 18-29 year olds who are married

Divorce rate by job, US Census 2020-24: Physicians 20% Pharmacists 20% Registered nurses 34% Practical nurses 47%

Marriage to a highly compatible partner is one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction in adulthood. Stronger than career advancement. Stronger than higher income beyond a baseline. The infrastructure for getting that match right barely exists.

Wired $2M to a Stanford dropout he met on Tuesday. Still not sure about the woman who's picked him up from SFO 40 times.