Husband not liking wife's friends increases divorce risk

Washington: Does your spouse get along with your friends? The answer could point to how long your marriage may last, say scientists who have found that couples are more likely to end up getting a divorce if the husband disapproved of his wife's friends.

The role of merging friends for relationship satisfaction may be increasingly important, as people are now less likely to meet their significant others through friends and more likely to find them online, researchers said.

"We are now having people who are coming from two very different sets of families and friends who are now trying to merge these networks," Katherine Fiori, a psychologist at Adelphi University in the US.

The researchers used data from 355 black and white heterosexual couples. About 36 per cent of the white couples and 55 per cent of the black couples divorced within the first 16 years of marriage.

Researchers then compared couples' likelihood of divorce with the answers that the men and women gave separately to several questions during their first few years of marriage, 'Live Science' reported.

In year one, each person was asked about how many friends they and their spouse could call on for help and advice. In the second year of marriage, couples were asked whether their spouses' friends interfered with their married life.

About 70 per cent of white couples in which the husband was fine with his wife's friends during year one of marriage were still married 16 years later.

However, among those couples in which the husbands disapproved of the wife's friends, just over 50 per cent were still married, according to the study.

Women's attitudes toward their husbands' friends did not matter for the likelihood of divorce. The results also did not hold true for black couples.

However, if a husband viewed his wife's friends as interfering, though, the chance of divorce almost doubled regardless of race.