London - There are many tips for enjoying a long and successful marriage. But here’s one you probably haven’t heard before.
Whatever you do, don’t set up home by the seaside.
A list has been compiled of the top ten places in Britain with the highest divorce rates – and all of them are beside the sea.
While many of us have happy memories of sun-filled holidays at the coast, experts say that in reality many of the traditional seaside towns are poor or rundown.
And they believe the high divorce rates could be down to the “sheer boredom” of coastal living.
The list, compiled from statistics in the last census, is headed by Blackpool with a 13.13 percent chance of marriage failure.
Hastings in East Sussex is a close second on 12.83 percent, followed by Torbay in Devon, Weymouth and Portland in Dorset, and Thanet in Kent.
Lyn Ayrton, managing partner at family law practice Lake Legal, which carried out the research, said: “While seaside towns can be lovely places to live, they are often areas of high deprivation. Often money problems rather than infidelity lead to behaviour that is then cited as the reason for divorce.
“It is difficult to explain why seaside towns have a much higher divorce rate than inland towns. Perhaps, after lively summer seasons at the seaside, the sheer boredom of winter on the coast in England drove inhabitants to some form of distraction?”
The divorce rate in Britain as a whole was 8.2 percent last year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The long-term increase in the number of divorces is being driven by a greater rise in failed marriages among those aged 50 to 64 than in younger age groups.
Daily Mail