Hate your wife’s friends? You’re twice as likely to split

FORGET chocolates and flowers, gentlemen – the key to a happy marriage may be as simple as getting on with your wife’s friends.

A new study reveals that husbands who disapprove of their wife’s friends are twice as likely to get divorced. However, women don’t need to like their husband’s friends for a marriage to survive.

Researchers believe women are less willing to give up their friends, even when their husbands dislike them. In contrast, men will ditch people if their wives do not like them.

Women are also more likely to discuss marital problems with friends. Researchers at Adelphi University and other US centres, tracked 400 couples over a 16year period to compare the risk of divorce with the couples’ attitudes to spouses’ friends.

In the first year, couples were asked if their spouse had friends who they would rather they did not spend time with. Couples were asked the next year about interference from friends. The results show 44% of wives and 29% of husbands said their spouse had friends they would rather the spouse did not spend time with.

The more husbands disapproved of their wife’s friends, the greater the risk of divorce over the following 16 years, even after other factors were taken into account.

Writing in the Journal Of Social And Personal Relationships, the researchers said: ‘Wives may turn to friends for solutions to problems, including marital issues, and their husbands may perceive these social interactions as interfering in their marriage if they do not fully approve of these friends.’