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This is Dear Dr. Tracy, your guide to creating relationships that feel good. You're driving home after seeing friends for dinner or you are having tea with a girlfriend and they just told you that news that left you feeling stunned. They're getting a divorce. You think about how this couple seemed solid, how they seemed so connected and fun and now suddenly everything feels a little shaky. You glance over at your partner or you call them to mind on your drive home and you think, are we okay? And suddenly the feelings you have going home to them and putting your hand on the door handle just before you open up, you're not so sure about how you're feeling in your relationship. Someone in our community recently asked this question and it wasn't the first time I've an it, so I thought I would bring it here to the podcast episode so that you can also explore this common experience that people have. And the question is, hey Dr. Tracy, is divorce contagious? What happens to our relationship when our close couple friends break up? I think this is such a powerful question, and one that so many of us end up silently wondering and not just holding it within ourselves, but then even struggling with whoa, what? Why am I questioning this? Does this mean something about our partnership? So let's dig into this today. So here's the truth. Of course you know this divorce is not a virus, but it can certainly feel that way in the sense of how one person close to you or your social network is changing and you start to wonder what's happening in my partnership. This can be particularly true if you have found Yourself in a hard spot in your relationship. Recently, I know many people talk about finding or thinking or fantasizing about the exit. The exit being that they envision ending the relationship and leaving it all behind. When we start to fantasize about the exit in a relationship, it tells me that there is something deeper going on here. And oftentimes the exit is the easy road. Not easy in the sense that it would be an easy decision to leave somebody, but in the sense that you are avoiding the very hard thing that you need to be doing in your relationship. So I want to reframe this, that when we see other people ending relationships or getting divorced, it can signify that you have something that you're missing in the partnership, some need that's not being met. It doesn't mean you want to leave the relationship, but it definitely tells us that there's something deeper underneath that's happening, and it's a flag for us to start addressing it. There's actually research on this phenomenon. It was a large study of over 5,000 participants, and they found that you are 75% more likely to divorce if a close friend or family member divorces. And that number jumps up to 174% if there are multiple. Multiple people in your social network who have also divorced. This phenomenon is called social contagion. And divorce isn't the only time that we see this phenomenon. We also see it around significant life events, including marriage, having kids. And so, just like these events, divorce can also be one of those experiences. I think one of the pieces here around this is that when we see somebody going through something, it gives us permission to. To step back and to ask ourselves, is this what I want? What have I been tolerating? Is this the kind of relationship that I want to keep showing up in? What do the next 10 years look like for me? So I think that when we see someone leaving a relationship, it can really stir up our own longings for something to be different. But here's the thing. This doesn't mean that your relationship is doomed. It means you're human. And that this experience that someone else is having, and I really want you to see this, is that everything outside of us can be the opportunity to be a mirror. It's holding something up. And our choice every single moment is, am I going to look in the mirror and to see what's being reflected back to me, or am I going to look away from it and ignore it and not look deeper into it? So we can view this then as an opportunity not to jump to conclusions, but instead to check in with each other in our partnerships. And here's the piece that I wish more couples understood. Every relationship relationship goes through hard seasons. This is inevitable. When you bring two different people together, you have two different histories, value systems. Often they overlap, but they're not going to be exactly the same. You have two different ways of viewing the world. And our work is to co create. And oftentimes we don't even know how to do that. We need to accept that relationships are hard work. As a psychologist, I see people opening up about their mental health difficulties, about their trauma histories, about the challenges they experience as parents and breaking cycles. And yet one area where we continue to experience this deep sense of shame is around talking about the struggles we experience in our relationships. And it is not if you struggle, it's when. Because as soon as somebody means something to you, as soon as they become your attachment figure, your person, your beloved, that is the very moment that they have the power to hurt you. And yet so many people struggle to admit that they don't always feel connected, they don't always feel close to their partner, because we internalize this to mean that there's something defective about us. If I don't feel close to my partner, there must be something wrong with me, which means there must be something wrong with us. And this is the furthest thing from the truth. I recently had somebody share with me that they were unsure about following me on Instagram because what would their friends think about them if they were following a relationship expert and a couples therapist? Here's how I'm going to challenge you on this one. What do people think? Wow. You are learning to prioritize your relationship. Because the moment you prioritize your relationship is the moment that parenting becomes easier. You are more resilient to stress, to mental health difficulties, and to the challenges that show up in your life. When you are connected with your partner, you can tackle all of those life difficulties. So we don't need to feel shame about struggling in our partnerships. We need to be open about that struggle and sharing it with more people to feel that we are not alone in this really hard experience. A healthy relationship is all about the disconnection and coming back to reconnect. And it's in the disconnection that we have this opportunity to be curious, open to build compassion and understanding for who we are and also who our partners are so that we can come back together and connect. That I can't emphasize enough that in a relationship, every single day, you are choosing to Grow your tree branches together, and it's in that choice and that you have the possibility to feel greater connection and greater closeness. So I think the bigger question here is not so much that if I'm having this questioning, does it mean our relationship is over? But instead it's more about are we expressing our needs? Are we listening to each other's desires? Now a lot of people come to me asking Dr. Tracy, what's the right path? And there is no podcast, there is no social media post, blog post, there's no therapist that will tell you what the right choice is, because only you can make that decision and come to terms with whether you stay or go. This is the incredibly hard piece around being human is we do not get to look forward and to know that there is a right decision. And I find great peace in one of these quotes that helps us to decide what's the next move. And this is from Eckhart Tolle, and he says, there is no wrong decision. We make the best choice we can with the information and awareness we have at the time. I love what Esther Perel says about her marriage, about marriage in general, is that on average, people will be married to three to five people during a lifetime. And she hopes that it's the same person. And she described in a recent anniversary post that she's had three different marriages with her husband. I think it was three. I don't want to misquote that. But yes, because we change and that's the truth. We are changing and evolving every single day. And as one person changes, that influences the other person to change and shift as well. I think if you are in the throes of a hard season and you see someone entering into divorce and separation, there is this opportunity for you to explore something. And I'm going to give you this question today that maybe it's a. It's a landing place for you. It's an invitation for you to start somewhere. The question is for you and your partner to sit down and to ask each other, is there anything that we've been avoiding talking about or addressing? Is there something. And actually I want to reframe that to even make it an open ended question. What can we be doing differently in our partnership to create more connection? What can I do to help meet your needs? And what can you be doing to meet some of my needs? And all we can do is to start there with a big dose of curiosity, openness, understanding, but not the sense of hurried urgency, of getting through a hard conversation, but instead seeing this as a Landing place to move forward and to grow. Okay, so is divorce contagious? Not exactly. We see the correlational research. I think we want to recognize that there's a pattern, there's a relationship between two events, and we find correlations between all kinds of things. Research. I was caution people around correlational data, but I think instead what we want to do is to see this as an opportunity, as a window or a mirror being held up to us so that we can ask ourselves what isn't being paid attention to. And this isn't something to fear. I think this is so important. I think we're so afraid sometimes to go inside ourselves and to bring awareness to what's happening. But whenever there's fear, I always say to people, lean into that fear. Learn how to respond to it and believe that something different could come out of you actually doing the very thing that you're afraid of. If you are in that season in your relationship where you need more tools to connect. I've got you covered here. I've got my More Than Roommate challenge, which is a 10 day intensive challenge. And I love hearing from people how just after the first one or two days they are feeling closer already. But I also have a completely different challenge and it's 30 days to us. I love this one. It's one exercise every single day. But I everyone can do this one. Everyone can do both of them, by the way. They are completely different challenges and I love seeing people on the other side feeling closer and more connected. All right, I'm going to finish up. Before I give you my last words of wisdom, I want to ask a favor and that is for you to subscribe to the podcast. There are three little buttons up at the top of the screen. You can subscribe so that you will be informed whenever a new podcast is released. This is one of the best ways that you can support me and the work that I'm doing here so I can continue to have these important questions. And of course, if you have a question, please send it to me. Dr. Trtracyd.com podcast and I just want you to know you are not alone in this and how powerful it is for you to take this pause to pay attention to you and to your relationship. And I think that really requires acknowledgment that you are doing this heavy work. Okay, until next time, take good care of you and your relationship. I have to remind you at the end of every podcast episode that this is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for the care from a licensed mental health care provider. Until next time.