January 10, 2023 · 5 min · 1052 words · Tammy Wilson
Your commute is too long.
Maybe there’s too much stress when you’re stuck in traffic. Or maybe you miss quality time together while stuck on the road. Whatever the reason, when your commute to work is 45 minutes or more each way, you’re more likely to divorce, found a 2013 Swedish study published in the journal Urban Studies. The study tracked millions of Swedes over a 10-year period and found that 14% of the couples in which one or both partners had a long commute split, as opposed to 10% of the couples who worked closer to home.
All your friends are doing it. There’s that moment when all your pals are getting married or having babies, and you start to think you should, too. Turns out, the same thing happens with divorce, according to a study published in Social Forces. The phenomenon grows the closer you are to it: Study participants were 75% more likely to divorce if a close friend or family-member divorced, and 33% more likely to divorce if a friend of a friend divorced. But the power of influence can be positive, too: The study also suggests that helping a friend improve a rocky marriage may actually improve your own.
MORE: 10 Things Never To Say To Someone Going Through A Divorce
Your first child is a girl. Having a firstborn daughter leads to divorce more often than having a firstborn son, according to 60 years of US census data. Plus, an unmarried couple is 42% more likely to marry if their first child is a boy, says a University of Washington study. Does this suggest that fathers are more important to boys or that boys are more important to fathers? The jury is still out on that one.
You got seriously ill. Here’s some depressing news: A recent study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior looked at almost 3,000 marriages of people over 50 and found that when a woman got seriously ill from cancer, heart or lung disease, or stroke, a marriage was 6% more likely to dissolve than if the man got sick or if both partners were healthy. The study authors suggest the financial strain that illness causes coupled with an older man’s ineptitude at caregiving contribute to marriage failure.
You’re a busy doctor.
The prevailing wisdom from older studies said the demands of working as a physician increased your likelihood of getting divorced. It turns out the opposite is true. Sort of. A new analysis of census data in the BMJ found that physicians actually had a lower rate of divorce than dentists, health care executives, nurses, and lawyers. But there’s a caveat: Female physicians who worked more than 40 hours per week actually had a higher rate of divorce. The opposite was true for men: When a male doctor worked more than 40 hours per week, his divorce rate dropped.
MORE: 11 Early Warning Signs Of Divorce Most People Miss
You share the housework equally. Well this is unexpected: Couples who shared housework equally actually had a higher rate of divorce, according to a Norwegian study. It found that in most homes, child rearing was split 50-50, but domestic chores usually fell to women. However, when couple split housework down the middle, divorce rates were higher. The study author suggests that these couples have created a business-like partnership that leads to unhappiness rather than a relationship filled with generosity, intimacy, and spontaneity.
You drink more than he does.
While heavy drinking and addiction is associated with higher rates of divorce in general, the numbers spike if the wife drinks significantly more than her husband, according to a Norwegian study published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The study looked at alcohol consumption and rates of divorce in nearly 20,000 couples. Couples that didn’t drink or drank the same amount had a lower rate of divorce. While the rate of divorce went up when a man drank more than his wife, it actually tripled when a woman drank more excessively than her husband.
You’re at a healthy weight. If your weight is under control, you’re far more likely to file for divorce, according to a 2013 study from the online service MyDivorcePapers.com. The researchers analyzed more than 2,700 divorce filings and found that 76% of them occurred when both husband and wife each weighed less than 200 pounds. The group with the lowest divorce rate weighed in at over 250 pounds.
MORE: 8 Surprising Marriage Insights From Divorce Lawyers
You’re missing the “love hormone.” Swedish researchers found a gene variant that may contribute to rocky marriages and divorce, according to a 2013 study in Biological Psychiatry. Some women carry the permutation that prevents them from properly processing oxytocin, or the “cuddle-hormone,” which we produce naturally to promote love, connection, and happiness. Women with the gene variant often stay single, have trouble bonding, and, if they do marry, are 50% more likely to have a rocky, unfulfilling relationship on a beeline towards a divorce.
You got busy with exactly two partners before you tied the knot. It’s no secret we’ve become a bit more accepting of sex outside of marriage: In the 1970s, 21% of women had never had sex when they got married compared to just 5% of women in the 2010s. In decades past, it was thought that having multiple sexual partners before marriage would lead to a less happy union and, eventually, divorce. But according to a recent analysis of National Survey of Family Growth data by University of Utah professor Nicholas H. Wolfinger, two may actually be the unluckiest number. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, women who had exactly two premarital sex partners had the highest rates of divorce—around 25 to 30%, which is less than women with either three, four to five, or six to nine partners. It wasn’t until the 2000s that women with 10 or more partners surpassed the women with just two as the group with the highest divorce rates. “Having two partners may lead to uncertainty, but having a few more apparently leads to greater clarity about the right man to marry,” Wolfinger writes. “The odds of divorce are lowest with zero or one premarital partners, but otherwise sowing one’s oats seems compatible with having a lasting marriage. But not too many oats.”
