Although divorce isn’t a disease, it does have risk factors that can point to your likelihood of a divorce. These risk factors, like the ones for cancer or heart disease, merely point us in a direction so that the necessary steps can be made to put extra effort into your relationship once you know what to avoid. Things like divorced parents, the attractiveness of the couple and religion in the home are things that can’t be controlled, but other things, like the age at which you get married and how much you spend on a wedding can. In the end, things like learning to communicate with your spouse can overcome these risk factors and help your marriage to survive.
Key Takeaways:
- Having risk factors for divorce do make it more likely that you will divorce your spouse; however, there are things you can do to try to prevent this.
- Social factors, such as your parents’ marital history or religious leanings, can cause you to be more likely to get divorced.
- If you have a history of not finishing things – school, previous marriages – or you got married young, you are more likely to be divorced.
“In a 2014 University of Buffalo study, researchers found that among couples in which one person was a heavy drinker and the other wasn’t, 45 to 55 percent got divorced before their 10th anniversary. Meanwhile, when both partners — or neither partner — drank, only around 35 percent of couples split up.”