Divorce spikes around various life transitions occur because predictable events create predictable stresses that predictably are hard on marriages. Examples include the death of a child, children leaving the home, financial crisis, retirement and long-term illness.
Pairs who proved compatibility by settling down fast last longer because they are more likely to survive these stress points. However stress points are still stress points and "more likely to survive" still means that lots won't.
Personal disclaimer. I married at 20 to my second girlfriend. I was her first boyfriend. We did divorce..but only after 25 years. You can decide for yourself whether a 25 year marriage is evidence that we were more or less stable than an average couple.
I don’t think a relationship that ends is always worse than one that continues. Many stay together out of habit, fear, finances, having kids etc, continue long enough and someone is likely to die. Simply lasting a long time is thus a very poor measure of success. Arguably being happy, raising well adjusted kids, financial success, and or a host of other things could be considered a much better benchmark.
So I will turn it around, what’s the odds you would each have found a better partner or even become a better partner by looking longer?
You can not use statistic thay way. General stat for divorce does translate into individual one like this.
I'm biased. But given her dating history since, I don't know that she would have done better than me.
People often avoid divorce and keep dead marriage because of inertia or fear of change. The massive life trasitions bring on stresses that test all of of that. And things are changing anyway at that point.
Edit: Collage education and getting first married at an older age significantly lower the odds of divorce. Which suggests having multiple prior relationships increase the odds of marriage success. However, we don’t have good statistics for this stuff.