Jong trouwen (voor je 25e) vs. wachten tot het einde van je twintig of begin van je dertig
Als je handelt
Trouwen vóór je 25e
23%
Als je niets doet
Wachten tot eind twintig of in je dertig
15%
Percentage dat later spijt heeft van elke keuze. De balken en het volledige overzicht staan hieronder.
Familie
Laatst beoordeeld 2026-05-13
Kwaliteit van bewijs 4.0/5
Beoordelingsscore op acht dimensies volgens de
kwaliteitsrubriek
. Elke dimensie krijgt een score van 1 tot 5.
D1 Bronverificatie
4/5
D2 Autoriteit en onafhankelijkheid van bronnen
4/5
D3 Nauwkeurigheid van spijtcijfer
3/5
D4 Vergelijkbaarheid van bronnen
3/5
D5 Gilovich-patroon
5/5
D6 Prozakwaliteit
4/5
D7 Volledigheid van voorbehouden
5/5
D8 Steekproefkwaliteit
4/5
Gemiddelde4.0/5
Proxygegevens — er bestaat geen directe spijtenquête voor deze beslissing. De percentages zijn afgeleid van tevredenheidsscores en toegangsdrempelgegevens in plaats van vragen die direct naar spijt vroegen. Zie opmerkingen hieronder.
Spijt van handelen
Trouwen vóór je 25e
23%
23% van getrouwde Amerikanen hebben spijt te jong te zijn getrouwd
Getrouwde Amerikaanse volwassenen
dwarsdoorsnede, retrospectief
Spijt van nalaten
Wachten tot eind twintig of in je dertig
15%
15% van volwassenen die huwelijk uitstelden hebben spijt van verminderde gezinsvormingstijd
Volwassenen die later trouwden of ongetrouwd bleven, nationaal representatief Amerikaans
dwarsdoorsnede, 2014
% betreurt deze keuze
Trouwen vóór je 25eWachten tot eind twintig of in je dertig
23%15%
action dominates — Handelen domineert — de meesten hebben spijt dat ze handelden.
Gerelateerde keuzes
Semantisch vergelijkbare keuzes — zelfde terrein, andere afwegingen.
23% of currently married Americans report regretting that they married too young, according to a 2023 Clever Real Estate survey of 1,000 married US adults, placing it as the third most commonly cited marriage regret. This aligns with a consistent structural finding in family demography: age at first marriage is among the strongest demographic predictors of marital dissolution, and marrying before one’s mid-twenties substantially increases the risk of divorce, according to an Institute for Family Studies analysis by Nicholas Wolfinger. That analysis describes a curvilinear pattern — prior to about age 32 each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by roughly 11 percent, with the late twenties emerging as the optimal window. The mechanism is not mysterious — early marriage compresses identity formation, career establishment, and partner vetting into a narrower window, increasing the probability that the match that seemed right at 21 looks different at 30.
The inaction side cannot be measured directly: no large-scale survey asks adults whether they regret waiting too long to marry. Pew Research’s 2014 nationally representative survey of 2,003 US adults found that 53% of never-married adults would like to marry eventually, and among those, 30% cite not having found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% financial unreadiness, and 22% being too young or not ready to settle down. Those are reasons for remaining unmarried, not retrospective regret about waiting — so the 15% inaction figure shown here is an explicit proxy drawn from that barrier data, not a measured regret rate, and the comparison should be read accordingly. The same Clever Real Estate survey found that 30% of married respondents wish they had married someone more compatible — its single most cited regret — but that figure is not broken out by age at marriage, so it speaks to partner selection in general rather than to people who waited.
Under Gilovich and Medvec’s temporal framework, action regret (marrying too young) tends to dominate the short and medium term, and the 8-point gap in this dataset is consistent with that pattern. The median marriage age in the United States reached 30 for men and 28 for women in 2022, a generational shift from 23/21 in 1970, meaning the population has already moved toward the lower-regret path on average. Whether that shift has reduced population-level regret, or simply shifted its form from “married too young” to “waited too long and now face fertility constraints,” is a question the current literature does not yet answer with bilateral precision.
Bronnen: handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
1/2 bronnen onafhankelijk woordelijk geverifieerd tegenover de geciteerde bron
[1]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Primaire studie
23% of respondents regret marrying too young — the 3rd most cited marriage regret
Fragment
“"23% of respondents regret marrying too young, making it the third most common marriage regret among surveyed married US adults."
”
Brongegevens van
2023-01-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-13
Berekening
Clever Real Estate online survey, n=1,000 married US adults, 2023. Regret rate taken directly from survey: 23% endorsed "marrying too young" as a regret. Used as the action-side regret_rate of 0.23.
[2]Institute for Family Studies — Want to Avoid Divorce? Wait to Get Married, But Not Too Long
Geverifieerd
Gerenommeerde referentie
Prior to age 32, each additional year of age at marriage reduces divorce odds by 11%; after 32, odds of divorce increase by 5% per year -- with the late 20s as the optimal marriage age
Fragment
“"Those who tie the knot after their early thirties are now more likely to divorce than those who marry in their late twenties. Prior to age 32 or so, each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by 11 percent. However, after that the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year. Research consistently finds that marrying before one's mid-twenties substantially increases the risk of divorce. Age at first marriage is among the strongest demographic predictors of marital dissolution."
”
Brongegevens van
2015-07-17
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-14
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
URL corrected 2026-05-14: the original IFS URL (blog/the-best-age-to-get-married) returns 404. Replaced with the confirmed IFS article by Nicholas Wolfinger (July 2015) on age at marriage and divorce risk, which loads successfully. The Wolfinger article presents the curvilinear finding: late 20s is optimal; marrying before mid-20s substantially raises divorce risk; marrying after 32 also raises it. The corroborating context for the action-side is confirmed: higher divorce risk among early marriages is consistent with higher retrospective regret rates. No separate regret rate extracted.
Bronnen: niet handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
2/2 bronnen onafhankelijk woordelijk geverifieerd tegenover de geciteerde bron
[1]Pew Research Center — Record Share of Americans Have Never Married
Geverifieerd
↗ 1 other entry
Primaire studie
53% of never-married adults would like to marry eventually; among those, 30% say the main reason they are not married is not having found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% are not financially prepared, and 22% are too young or not ready to settle down
Fragment
“"About half of all never-married adults (53%) say they would like to marry eventually... three-in-ten say the main reason they are not married is that they have not found someone who has what they are looking for in a spouse. Nearly as many (27%) say they are not financially prepared for marriage, and 22% say they are too young or not ready to settle down."
”
Brongegevens van
2014-09-24
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-13
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
Pew Research nationally representative survey (n=2,003 US adults, 436 never-married), May 2014. The survey measures REASONS never-married adults remain unmarried, not regret: of the 53% who would like to marry eventually, 30% cite not finding the right spouse, 27% financial unreadiness, 22% being too young / not ready. None of these is a retrospective "regret waiting" measure, so this source does not directly support an inaction-side regret rate. See the inaction_side note below: no reliable direct estimate of regret over delayed marriage exists.
[2]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Geverifieerd
Primaire studie
30% of married Americans wish they had married someone more compatible — the single most cited marriage regret (general, not specific to those who waited)
Fragment
“"The top three regrets are: wishing they married someone they're more compatible with (30%), wishing they married someone better with money (24%), and marrying too young (23%)."
”
Brongegevens van
2023-01-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-05-13
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
Same Clever Real Estate survey, n=1,000 married US adults. The "wrong person" regret (30%) is the most common marriage regret overall; it is NOT broken out by age at marriage, so it cannot be attributed to people who waited. Included only as general context that waiting does not by itself solve partner selection -- it does not support an inaction-side regret rate. The 0.15 inaction figure is an acknowledged proxy from the Pew barrier data (see proxy_only: true).
Kanttekeningen
Het 23% actie-spijt cijfer komt uit een sample van huidig getrouwde volwassenen, wat degenen uitsluit wiens vroege huwelijk eindigde in scheiding en die hogere spijtpercentages kunnen dragen. De inactie-zijde 15% is een ondergrens proxy afgeleid uit een Pew-vraag over barrières voor huwelijk, geen directe retrospectieve spijtmeting. De Clever Real Estate enquête is een online panel, geen kanssample. De stijgende mediaan huwelijksleeftijd (30 voor mannen, 28 voor vrouwen in 2022 vs. 23/21 in 1970) weerspiegelt een populatieverschuiving naar wachten, maar meet niet zelf spijt. De twee zijden zijn niet getrokken uit dezelfde enquête of met equivalente vragen, dus het 8-punts verschil is richtinggevend in plaats van precies.
