MARRIED couples in East Dorset stick together. Latest marriage figures show that 65 per cent of marriages in the area last, well above the national average of 52 per cent.

The success rate, revealed in a parliamentary answer to an MP, sees the district ranked as joint seventh in the country. Richard Kane, from Wimborne, runs the International Marriage Week every February.

He was pleased to see regional statistics for the first time.

The 49-year-old, who’s been married to Maria for 24 years, said: “It might be an age demographic because it’s an older population.

“Or it might be that people here have a lot more time than in a city.

“Many break-ups are unintentional. It’s rarely another person or because the husband and wife argue all the time.

“Very often, other things come in like children, careers, housing or voluntary work, and squeeze out the relationship.”

Mr Kane set up Marriage Week 15 years ago when a friend getting divorced couldn’t pinpoint what went wrong.

His idea for an annual ‘aide memoire’ to look after your marriage has now spread to 17 countries.

“In older days people used to learn the skills to manage a relationship – handling a disagreement, conflict resolution, intimacy and forgiveness – by osmosis from watching their parents,” he said.

“Now with more and more single parent families, we all need marriage education.”

Andy Rimmer is the vicar at The Lantern Church in Merley.

The Canford group of churches sees around 35 weddings take place per year.

Couples are sent on four-week courses before they can tie the knot.

Mr Rimmer said: “Part of it may be that with an older population, we have a lot of people from a generation who would not divorce and did not break up.

“But marriage is deeper than that. This is good news, but we’d like to keep the average up and mustn’t rest on our laurels.

“Let’s commit to trying to keep it up and raise it.”