14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators with the University of Buffalo argue in a new study that spouses who want to drink, but are also interested in making their marriage last, should pay close attention to how much alcohol their significant others are consuming. Differing alcohol consumption patterns may be one of the root causes for reduced harmony in a relationship.
For some time now, psychologists believed that the amount of alcohol married men or women consumed was the most important factor in disrupting marital harmony. After analyzing the behaviors of 634 couples, the research team figured out that this was not the case.
In couples where only one souse was a heavy drinker, divorce rates were significantly higher than in groups were people drank the same amount of alcohol, or none at all. “This research provides solid evidence to bolster the commonplace notion that heavy drinking by one partner can lead to divorce,” says the lead author of the study, Kenneth Leonard, PhD.
Naturally, drinking is not the only problem that can lead to divorce. However, this work was conducted to show that, even when heavy drinkers do not get divorced, they can still produce a rather negative environment for raising children, PsychCentral reports.