Marilyn Monroe in movie “The Seven Year Itch”

Forget about couples who can’t survive the seven year itch, for Guangdong newlyweds born in the 1980s, surviving half that long appears to be a struggle.

Among divorce cases filed in the province in the first half of the year, 65% of them were married for less than 3 years, reported Nanfang Metropolis Daily on August 12.

In the first half of 2014, Guangdong courts handled 675 divorce cases, of which 102 were filed by couples in their 20s and 30s. Only 34.3% of the couples were married for more than 4 years, while 20.6% of them were married less than a year and 45.1% between 1 and 3 years, according to the report.

47.1% of the couples cited different values as the top reason for divorce, followed by 32.4% who blame a “refusal to take family responsibility” as the culprit. Long distance and extramarital affairs accounted for 11.8% and 8.7% of divorces, respectively, according to the report.

The trend corresponds with the country’s rising divorce rate. According to an earlier report by Beijing Times, about 10,000 couples split up every day, resulting in 3.1 million divorces in 2013, up from 2.46 million in 2009.

One of the reasons driving up the country’s divorce rate is women’s changing economic and social status, said Susanne Choi, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Another explanation is a 2003 change to the marriage laws which removed the requirement for couples to seek a divorce endorsement from their employer or neighbourhood committees, said CNN.

Photos: Sina; Phil Degginger /Alamy