Getting wasted all the time will only wreck your marriage if your spouse doesn’t get drunk with you, a new and romantic study finds. The University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions followed 634 couples for 9 years after their weddings, and found that nearly half of couples with one heavy drinker wound up divorced, compared to 30 percent of mutually drunk couples. More interesting, the divorce rate in drinking couples was no higher than in couples where neither person drank, suggesting it’s the lack of shared interest in drinking that leads to marital dissatisfaction, not the alcohol itself. The divorce rate was slightly higher in couples where the heavy drinker was the woman, but researchers warned that was only the case in a handful of couples. If it is supported by further research, however, they say it might be the result of a lingering double standard for impropriety in women.
