When you toast your other half this Valentine’s Day, here’s hoping you don’t finish off the bottle on your own.
For a new study has found that couples who drink similar amounts are more compatible.
A study of nearly 20,000 married couples revealed that husbands and wives who both consumed a moderate intake of alcohol were far less likely to divorce than couples where one was a heavy drinker.
Just 5.8 per cent of couples who were lighter drinkers ended up splitting up from their long-term partners, according to the study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
The highest divorce rate – 26.8 per cent – was in couples where the husband was a light-drinker while the wife went on binges.
However, it seems women are more forgiving, as when the roles were reversed the divorce rate halved to 13.1 per cent.
Researcher Fartein Ask Torvik, said there were several explanations for the disparity.
‘One of them is that women in general seem to be more strongly affected by heavy drinking than men are. Thus, heavy-drinking women may be more impaired than heavy-drinking men,’ he said.
Co-author Ellinor Major, added: ‘Heavy drinking among women is also less acceptable than among men in our society.
‘A wife’s heavy drinking probably also interferes more with general family life – that is, the caring role of the mother, upbringing of children, etc. Perhaps the husband is more apt to the leave the spouse than is the wife when major problems occur.’
