Married Gay Men Less Likely To Break Up Than Straight Couples, Study Suggests

Gay couple

Married gay male couples are the least likely to divorce, a new study has suggested.

The study, which tracked 515 couples in the US state of Vermont over the course of 12 years, found two men who get married in the US have a better chance of making it than their counterparts in lesbian and straight marriages.


The research by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law also revealed that women in same-sex marriages were the most likely to break up.

Lesbian unions are twice as likely as gay male marriages and 1.5 times as likely as straight marriages to end, according to the study.

Professor Esther Rothblum, one of the study’s authors, said one possible explanation for the results was that women expected more than men.

“Other studies on heterosexual couples have found that women have higher standards for relationship quality than men,” she said.

“We suspect that similar dynamics may be at play with the lesbian couples in our study, leading to the higher dissolution rate.

“At the same time, we found that older couples were less likely to break up, and having children had no impact on the break up rates.”

For lesbian couples, with every extra year that the relationship lasts the odds of a breakup are reduced by 13 percent, the study found.

Each year of education also caused the odds of a split to drop by 16 percent, according to the research.

In 2000, Vermont became the first US state to extend all the rights and benefits of marriage to same-sex couples through its civil union scheme.

In 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have the right to marry in every US state.