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"New research was published this week via the Pew Research Center concerning the effect of divorce on your social group. The study, titled &amp;quot;Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample&amp;quot; was written by Rose McDermott of Brown University, James Fowler of UC San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School. The research conducted shows that the closer you are to a person who is divorcing, the more likely you are to get divorced yourself. The Pew Research Center put together an interesting infographic that breaks it all down.   Scientists call this phenomenon &amp;quot;Social Contagion,&amp;quot; and there&amp;#039;s some debate about the interpretation of these kinds of study results. I&amp;#039;m not sure if I buy into it entirely, especially since Peter and I are the only split couple in our network of married friends. But I do think that the support of your friends for you as a couple is an invaluable help in keeping your marriage together. When friends start looking at you and treating you as separate entitities or worse, picking sides, I don&amp;#039;t think it strengthens your bond to each other at all. I think the last line of the study says it best: &amp;quot;Marriages endure within the context of communities of healthy relationships and within the context of social networks that encourage and support such unions.&amp;quot; Do you think your network of friends had anything to do with the support or breakdown of your marriage? And do you put any stock into the &amp;quot;Social Contagion&amp;quot; theory? [Follow Ellie on Twitter and Facebook]  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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