A recent study from the UK family law firm Slater & Gordon found that couples who planned vacations to “save their marriages” attested that the vacation “did more harm than good.”
Huffington Post reports that of those in the study, “40 percent of the 2,128 married and divorced British couples surveyed said they had booked a trip specifically to salvage their relationship. However, only 36 percent said it helped; the rest felt it made things worse.”
“In fact,” HuffPo writes, “40 percent said the vacation added more tension, 27 percent said they decided to split within two weeks of returning from the trip, 15 percent said the vacation made them realize they were no longer in love and 8 percent said they even ended the vacation early.”
Now in response, we ask:
Is This Really A Bad Thing?
If two married people want to file for divorce, a vacation can actually be the catalyst that speeds along the process now rather than later. There were no indications from the study that the relationships might have gotten better had the pairs stayed home in the exact situation that created their tensions in the first place.
Explained Amanda McAlister, head of family law at Slater & Gordon: “One of the fundamental issues is that a holiday environment is essentially an artificial one and the problems that couples have will still be there when they return home.”
If a married couple has these types of potentially relationship-ending problems, what are they doing to fix it? What would they be willing to do?
These are questions that need to be answered before we can assume that vacations leading to divorce papers is a bad thing. If the union is destined to fail, it could be argued that couples will find out sooner rather than later by planning that trip.
But what do you think, readers? Should couples refrain from planning a vacation if they’re experiencing marital difficulties? If your answer is yes, then what actions should they take in lieu of that trip to avoid divorce forms in the near future? Share your thoughts in our opinions section.