The summer holidays can be a stressful time for families, putting additional strain on relationships that might already be troubled.
As many as 2.87 million people across the UK are living in relationships which would be described within clinical practice as distressed, according a new study by relationship charity Relate. This amounts to 18% of married or cohabiting couples and 1.4 million UK families.
A distressed relationship is one with a severe level of relationship problems, which has a clinically significant negative impact on partner’s wellbeing.
The charity is concerned that these poor quality relationships are having a detrimental impact on people’s physical and mental health, with many struggling to access the support they need and reaching breaking point.
The research, which had a sample size of 20,980, looked at key questions from a validated scale to measure relationship quality. These included how often couples argued, how frequently they considered separation or divorce, the extent of unhappiness in their relationship and how often they regretted being in their relationship.
The research found that:
There is an increasing gap in the numbers getting married between the rich and poor, according to pro-marriage think tank Marriage Foundation, which claims that mothers with young children are four times more likely to be married if they are wealthy than if they are poor.