Marriages between women most likely to end in divorce

In the Netherlands women more often marry a same sex partner than men. Marriages between two women are also more likely to end in divorce than marriages between two men or heterosexual marriages, according to figures released by Statistics Netherlands on Wednesday.

On April 1st gay marriage will be legal in the Netherlands for 15 years. In the first two years after April 1st, 2001, more gay couples got married than lesbian couples From 2003 the number of female couples getting married surpassed the number of male couples tying the knot. Last year 765 lesbian couples got married and 664 gay couples.

Lesbian marriages have the biggest chance of ending in divorce in the Netherlands. Of the 580 lesbian couples who got married in 2005, 30 percent were divorced ten years later. Among heterosexual marriages, that percentage was 18 percent, and 15 percent among marriages between two men.

Same-sex couples tend to be older when they get married than heterosexual couples, especially men. A man marrying another man is on average 43 years old on the day of their wedding, compared to an average age of 37 years for a man marrying a woman. Among lesbian marriages, the average age is 39, compared to 34 years for a woman marrying a man.