Stressed Out? It Could Lead To A Divorce

On Behalf of | Apr 18, 2019 | Divorce |

Stress is one of the most common issues people face in the United States. It can impact your mental and physical health. It can come from all manner of sources: work, friends, school, family, etc. In many cases, people worry about minor issues and create a lot of additional and unneeded stress for themselves.

While there are a lot of problems with the prevalence of stress, here’s one more thing to consider: Some experts believe it can help end your marriage and lead to a divorce.

One couple’s example

To see how this works, take a look at one couple who decided to open a business together. They kicked around a number of different ideas and finally settled on one: They would open a bakery. Maybe they imagined happy mornings working together in a warm kitchen, getting ready to greet their usual customers and give people delicious food to eat.

What it actually did, though, was cause them to get divorced. Afterward, the two agreed that the stress of running that particular type of business played a big role.

“The demands of running a bakery are extreme,” the man said. “If we had opened a children’s shoe store — another idea we had — there’s a chance we might be married today.”

What is most interesting here is that they fully understood that they stressed themselves out and broke up their own marriage. And it happened anyway. That’s how powerful stress can be.

Average stress causes more divorces than anything else

Another study paints an even more dire view of the impact stress can have. When you think of reasons that people get divorced, you probably consider issues like infidelity or domestic violence. While those dramatic reasons can and do play a role, the study found that stress broke up even more marriages — even though it can stay behind the scenes so that outsiders don’t even notice what’s happening.

“Participants reported the accumulation of everyday stress as a more relevant divorce trigger than falling in love with another person, partner violence, or even a specific major life event that would have instigated changes in their private life,” the study’s authors wrote.

Are you surprised? Maybe you shouldn’t be. If you look at the overall divorce rate, it’s hard to imagine that extreme situations end all of those marriages. It actually makes sense that it is something as common as stress, something that we have all experienced.

Your options

Do you think that you and your spouse are going to end your marriage? Whether it is due to stress or something else entirely, you must know all of your legal options in Illinois moving forward.