Research originating from the USA has found that the likelihood of a couples’ marriage ending in divorce rises by 75% if an immediate friend or colleague splits up from their partner.
The research comes from a study of 12,000 Americans living in New England and is led by Dr Rose McDermott of Brown University, Rhode Island. It found that a divorce sent ripples through family, friends and work colleagues and that it led to friends questioning their own relationships. The researchers described the process as ‘divorce clustering’.
Dr McDermott said: “These results go beyond previous work intimating a person-to-person effect to suggest a person-to-person-to-person effect. Individuals who get divorced may influence not only their friends, but their friends’ friends as the propensity to divorce spreads.”
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