Divorce is contagious: Why there is a 75% chance your marriage will fail if your friends split

By David Derbyshire

Is divorce contagious?

If your best friends' marriage is falling apart then beware, yours could also be heading for the rocks according to research reported in the  Daily Mail.

Researchers have discovered that divorce is catching and spreads like a disease through families, work places and groups of friends.

The domino effect means that if an immediate friend or colleague splits up, your own chance of divorce increases by 75 percent.

Even the break-up of a friend-of-a-friend's marriage boosts your chances of divorce by a third, scientists say.

The researchers describe the effect as 'divorce clustering' – and believe that break-ups within friendship groups force couples to start questioning their own relationships.

They say that a friend's divorce can also reduce the social stigma of splitting up, even when children are involved.

The findings come from a continuing study into the lives of more than 12,000 Americans living in the New England town of Framingham since 1948.

The researchers – led by Dr Rose McDermott of Brown University, Rhode Island – found that every divorce sends ripples through friends, families and work colleagues.

“These results go beyond previous work intimating a person-to-person effect to suggest a person-to-person-to-person effect,” said Dr McDermott. “Individuals who get divorced may influence not only their friends, but their friend’s friends as the propensity to divorce spreads. A person's tendency to divorce depends not just on his friend's divorce status, but also extends to his friend's friend.”

The full network shows that participants are 75 percent more likely to be divorced if a person –obviously other than their spouse – that they are directly connected to is divorced.

The size of the effect for people at two degrees of separation, for example the friend-of-a-friend, is 33 percent. At three degrees the effect disappears.

It wasn't just friends who split up that had an impact on someone's relationship. Divorce among family members and work mates also increased the chances of someone's own marriage ending, the study found.

It also suggests that knowing lots of divorced people can be bad for your marriage. The more divorced people that you know, the riskier your own marriage.

And while many couples cling to the belief that children reduce their risk of divorce, the scientists found it made no difference.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1291916/Divorce-contagious-If-friends-split-75-cent-chance-marriage-fall-apart-well.html#ixzz0tD30nKt7