As this article has expressed in great detail, the success of a marriage varies greatly from place to place, generation to generation, and person to person. So it’s hard to make a blanket statement about marriages that is true for everyone. But, you asked for it, so here it goes: the current estimate is that between 40% to 50% of today’s marriages will end in divorce. That means that as many as 60% of married couples will stay together for the long haul. Of course, that doesn’t mean the marriages that stay together are happy marriages or that the couples who divorce are worse off. A person’s marital status is just a box they tick on a form. It doesn’t mean all their life problems are solved, and they walk into a sunset never to change or want something different again. Some marriages stay together, and some marriages don’t, and each of those stories can be a success story depending on how you look at it. Some people can put a lot of pressure on themselves to live up to the fairytale of a perfectly happy marriage and classic American family. But that’s not realistic. Marital instability, infidelity, divorce, and other relationship problems are common in American society, and people’s love lives don’t always follow a straight line. Some couples find happiness in a second marriage or in cohabitation without a marriage license.