Is Marriage Riskier Than Skydiving?

James Sexton, a divorce lawyer in New York City, has spent years watching love stories unravel in courtrooms. He made a bold claim that turns heads every time.

According to him, skydiving is less dangerous than marriage.

That sounds extreme until you look at the numbers.

In the United States, the divorce rate sits at around 45 to 50 percent for first marriages. Second and third marriages have even higher failure rates, often reaching 60 to 70 percent. This means that statistically, you are more likely to split up with your spouse than to keep your marriage intact.

Now let’s compare that to skydiving.

According to the United States Parachute Association, there were 3.9 million jumps in 2022 and only 20 fatal accidents. That translates to one fatality per 195,000 jumps. In other words, your odds of dying during a skydive are about 0.0005 percent.

So what’s really going on here?

Love is not the danger. Misunderstanding love is.

Many people go into marriage expecting it to sustain itself on passion alone. They underestimate the weight of communication, emotional awareness, and shared values. They expect romance to solve problems that only maturity and effort can fix.

Marriage is not a fairy tale. It is a conscious decision to grow with someone while navigating the storms of life. It is not always beautiful. It is often uncomfortable. The risk lies not in loving deeply, but in doing so without clarity or intention.

Sexton’s comparison may be tongue-in-cheek, but it holds a deeper truth. If people prepared for marriage with the same seriousness they gave to jumping out of a plane, the outcomes might look very different.

Before you take the leap, check your parachute.