Did you Catch your divorce from a friend.

Did you catch your divorce from your friend?

A recent study from the University of California, Harvard and Brown say divorce is contagious. Yep, that’s right; you can catch divorce from your friends. Is this possible? According to the survey the statistics look like this:

-When a couple gets divorced, it makes all the couples around them more likely to get divorced. And not just close friends and family, but people with two degrees of separation, such as your sister’s co-workers.

-Someone with a divorced sibling is 22% more likely to get divorced than someone whose siblings are all happily married.

-Someone with a divorced friend is 147% more likely to get divorced than someone whose friends are all happily married.

-Someone with a divorced co-worker is 55% more likely to get divorced than someone who works with happily married people.

The researchers found that people begin to warm up to the idea of divorce when someone they know is going through it. They begin to see the drawbacks and advantages of divorce by going through it vicariously with a friend. If you are in a shaky marriage the benefits may begin to look more beneficial.

To be sure, one of the most trying times in our own marriage is when someone we love announces they are going to divorce. It shakes us to our core. It makes us look at our own marriage. Are we headed in the same direction? What makes our marriage stronger than our friends? We tell ourselves if it happened to our best friends, it can happen to us. This may be an opportunity for us to build a healthier, stronger marriage. How can we help our friends through a divorce and not become a divorce statistic?

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