Is there a special breaking point in a marriage after the first decade? Year 2023 the length of an average marriage before divorce in Gothenburg was 12.3 years according to Statistics Sweden, SCB. The same trend goes locally for many municipalities in Sweden. We spoke to two couples being married 7 and 61 years on the matter.
According to SCB, the municipality in Sweden where marriages lasted the shortest 2023 where Aneby in Småland. Here people who divorced had only stayed married for 9.1 years on average. If there’s something particularly straining on the relationships in Aneby is hard to know, but just an hour away from the village lies Sävsjö where people stay married 19.2 years on average before divorcing. Among the three biggest cities in Sweden Gothenburg couples who divorced 2023 stayed together a few months longer than in Stockholm and Malmö, but they all seemed to split up around the twelfth year of marriage.
Do you think there’s a certain year within marriage where your relationship is tested the most?
“That depends on if you’re a parent or not. A lot of things happen when you become a parent, which my research shows,” says the retired relationship expert and author Tone Ahlborg.
She explains how a lot of couples with a rocky foundation often divorce after the second child.
“You must find a way back to each other and feel like you are not only parents but also lovers,” she adds.
| Tone’s best relationship advice: • Don’t accuse or generalise. Be very straight forward and neutral with what you think. • Start sentences in a fight with I, such as “I feel like…” “I think…” • Find a moment to give each other a hug even if you’re too tired for sex. |
Niclas och Malin Ackevall, lives in Kallebäck outside of Gothenburg, and has been together since 2013. Their marriage is going on its seventh year. Niclas describes his and Malin’s early long distance relationship as the biggest challenge they’ve ever had to face.
“When you have each other close all the time everything is on routine. We got to really learn how it is to miss someone. I think that created something that was really good for us,” Niclas Ackevall says.
The couple have three kids in the age range of 1.5 and 6 years old, and Niclas says that divorce has never been on the table even after having kids and when he hear about the 12 year break he responds confidently:
“I’m a competitive person so when I hear about that I fell like that is something we have to pass. I’m not going to get divorced before that”
Niclas and Malin Ackevall with their three children. Photo: Private
Tone Ahlborg lists a few different things to watch out for in a marriage. The second biggest challenge is when the kids move away from home.
“It’s a risky period when the kids move away from home. You have to find something else that you can have as a project and focus on. Maybe take dance classes or other activities,” she says.
This is something that the couple Per and Eva, both in their eighties, have gone through several times without any particular problem. They sit down by their kitchen table in central Gothenburg and describes how they will be celebrating their 61st wedding day in just a week and a half.
“We met on the 4th of June 61 years ago. We got engaged a month later and married the seventh of December the same year,” Eva says.
She thinks back on how it was a bit scary deciding to get married so quickly but since the couple grew up near each other and felt like they fit together very well, it still felt right to them.
Neither Eva and Per nor Niclas can pinpoint a certain year within their marriage when things have been particularly rough. However, they both find difficult situations in life that they’ve had to process together and power through. Niclas explains how his partner Malin got burnt out a couple of years ago, which was a hard situation that they both had to face, and Eva and Per remembers a situation many years ago that was tough:
“So far we have gone through all the different waves in a relationship. The hardest was when I was a stay at home wife with our three kids and we lost our youngest. He died when he was only two years old,” Eva explains.
She keeps explaining that around the same time she started studying at university with a lot of new young faces and that she then drifted away a bit from Per. The couple did make it through that situation, perhaps by following one of Tone Ahlborg’s most important advise for married couples:
“If you want to stay together for life you have to support each other”
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Byline: Clara Fors Wisbyse