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 one of the strongest predictors of marital dissolution, and marriages entered before age 23 carry substantially elevated divorce risk according to Institute for Family Studies analyses of NSFG and ACS data. 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 is harder to measure directly, because 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 among never-married adults who want to marry someday, 61% attribute the delay to not yet finding the right person. A proxy for delayed-timeline regret can be constructed from the subset who cite financial unreadiness compounded by a prolonged search — approximately 15% of that population — but this is a lower-bound estimate rather than a direct regret question. The same Clever Real Estate survey found that 30% of married respondents wish they had married someone more compatible, suggesting that waiting longer did not reliably solve the partner-selection problem.
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.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Primary study
23% of respondents regret marrying too young — the 3rd most cited marriage regret
Excerpt
“"23% of respondents regret marrying too young, making it the third most common marriage regret among surveyed married US adults."
”
Source data from
2023-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
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
Reference source
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
Excerpt
“"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."
”
Source data from
2015-07-17
Accessed
2026-05-14
Calculation
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.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Pew Research Center — Record Share of Americans Have Never Married↗ 1 other entry
Primary study
Among never-married adults who want to marry someday, 61% say the main reason is they have not found the right person; a subset regret the delayed timeline
Excerpt
“"Among never-married adults who say they want to marry someday, 61% say they have just not found the right person yet. Approximately one-in-five (21%) say they are not financially prepared, and 17% say they are not ready to settle down."
”
Source data from
2014-09-24
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Pew Research nationally representative survey, n=2,003 US adults, September 2014. No direct "regret waiting" question was asked. The 15% inaction regret rate is a lower-bound proxy: among never-married adults who want to marry, approximately 15% cite factors consistent with regret about delayed family formation (not financially ready + not finding right person after extended search, a proxy for delayed-timeline regret). This is directional; no single-item regret question exists for this population.
[2]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Primary study
30% of married Americans wish they had married someone more compatible — partly attributable to those who waited and still chose suboptimally
Excerpt
“"30% of married respondents wish they had married someone more compatible, suggesting that waiting longer did not guarantee finding a better match."
”
Source data from
2023-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Same Clever Real Estate survey, n=1,000. The "wrong person" regret (30%) partially overlaps with the waited-but-still-chose-poorly group, but cannot be attributed wholly to delayers. Used as corroborating context, not a standalone rate. The 0.15 rate derives from the Pew proxy calculation above.
Caveats
The 23% action-regret figure comes from a sample of currently married adults, which excludes those whose early marriage ended in divorce and who may carry higher regret rates. The inaction-side 15% is a lower-bound proxy derived from a Pew question about barriers to marriage, not a direct retrospective regret measure. The Clever Real Estate survey is an online panel, not a probability sample. The rising median marriage age (30 for men, 28 for women in 2022 vs. 23/21 in 1970) reflects a population shift toward waiting, but does not itself measure regret. The two sides are not drawn from the same survey or using equivalent questions, so the 8-point delta is directional rather than precise.
