Research carried out by www.hampers.com revealed that 61% of working adults consider at least one co-worker as a close friend. These investigations were carried out as part of an ongoing study into happiness in the workplace, following on from a study in September 2020.
The study initially found that 90% of respondents are close enough to at least one of their co-workers to consider them a friend (up from 87% in 2020). What’s more, three fifths went as far as saying they’d class at least one co-worker as a close friend, if not one of their best friends (61%), up from 52% in 2020. According to this study the top five reasons colleagues were thought of as close friends are:
1. We tell each other everything: 68%
2. We’ve got a lot of shared experiences: 63%
3. I enjoy spending time with them outside of work: 50%
4. We’re always talking on the phone (texting or calling): 49%
5. I feel they truly care about me: 37%
Over three quarters of those who stated they spend time together outside of work said they have introduced their work place best friend to their partner, family or other close friends (76%). Almost all respondents (95%) stated that getting on well with their colleagues and having friends (close or not) helps contribute to their overall happiness in the workplace. In fact, workplace friendships are considered one of the key factors why UK adults would be hesitant to leave the company and get a job elsewhere (71%).
Patrick Gore, Managing Director of www.hampers.com said: “The findings of this study were incredibly interesting, largely because we have data from just two years ago to compare it to. More UK adults than two years ago have someone they consider a friend, if not a close friend, in the workplace and this really can make the world of difference. There have been a lot of changes over the last few years as a result of the covid pandemic, with people made to work from home during the numerous lockdowns and feeling isolated as a result. It’s no wonder people are yearning for human interaction, even those who may still be working in a hybrid capacity. If we all took one thing away from the pandemic, it’s that relationships are incredibly important for our happiness and mental health.”
Love and hate are powerful feelings. They occupy opposite sides of the coin of emotion; however, I would contend that the latter term is more emotionally charged. Love can occupy a lengthy continuum from mild to meteoric, whilst hate has a narrower band. I’ve used the word ‘love’ to cover all manner of things, from my feelings towards ice cream, to the handful of people I have genuinely fallen in love with.
I accept that I have used the other term to articulate my loathing of, for example, certain foodstuffs, but in the final personal analysis I would cite a persuasive fact: since 1960 71% of popular songs have been about romance, whilst 57% have used the word ‘love in the lyrics. With such statistical scores, it makes sense to conclude that the two emotions should never occupy the same space. Like matter and anti-matter. Night and day. Hot and cold.
Yet, recently I acknowledged, for the first time in my life, that I both loved and hated someone at the same time. The who is unimportant, but the feeling of complete emotional disorientation caused by this juxtaposition needed repair, since – for a time at least ─ I felt on the precipice of a frightening and inexplicable dark void.
There is a mass of evidence within the field of relationship psychology that supports, rather predictably, that relationships – especially with significant others – are complex, with both positive and negative feelings existing in distinct phases. Singer-songwriter superstar Adele’s prose provides ample contemporary evidence that the human heart and mind will regularly process love, heartbreak, and loss, usually at separate times. But these assumptions didn’t accurately reflect my dilemma in experiencing these strong and conflicting emotions simultaneously.
This affected my daytime thinking and at night my mind refused to take a break. However much I tried to make sense of this emotional enigma, my thinking became locked in a repetitive cycle, reminiscent of the famous scene from the movie WarGames where a computer gets locked into an infinite game of noughts and crosses against itself. Am I unique? And did the problem really rest wholly with the other person? I needed answers.
Somewhat surprisingly, and also reassuringly, according to ground-breaking research published in 2014, my thought patterns weren’t as absurd as I’d first imagined. Rather uniquely, Vivian Zayas and Yuichi Shoda introduced their study with reference to the following quote:
“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.” Sigmund Freud quoted by Anna Freud (1939)
A curious way to commence a piece of academic investigation; yet this proposition held true following two imaginative physiological experiments, which concluded that relationships that are both intense and important to one’s own wellbeing can automatically facilitate the “coactivation” of positive and negative feelings. In other words, I wasn’t going crazy.
Having satisfied myself that the significant other in this emotional equation is crucial to my positive mental health, I grasped another important concept: they probably feel the same way about me at times, so we are more similar than perhaps either of us think.
The next part of this journey is to mutually accept that, although the current situation is far from ideal, the mere fact that these flammable feelings exist is testimony to the fact that our relationship is vitally important to both of us. The mending process will only occur when we talk and heed the wise words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they bear within themselves.”
Dr Amie M. Gordon, a social-personality psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, provides a useful template of engagement that I have summarised as follows:
Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Empathy is crucial. Note to self – keep my thoughts to myself and ask questions instead.
Avoid the four horsemen of the apocalypse — criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.
Give them the benefit of the doubt in the belief that they are not being spiteful. Take some deep breaths!
Focus on their positive traits. They have many.
Remember – we are on the same team, not opponents.
Appreciate that this process isn’t going to be easy. Often the really important things in life aren’t.
If anger makes an entrance, positive self-talk is crucial. Don’t take your eye off the goal.
f you’ll forgive me, I’d like to boast a little. Recently I was at university chatting to one of my fellow ‘mature’ students. She’s a mum and we were talking about parenting. We’ve known each other for about 18 months. She told me she thought I was kind. I nearly fell off my chair with shock and pride. Kindness is something I’ve been working on for a long time.
My darling wife Kate, to whom I’ve been married for nearly 37 years, has spent most of those years telling me that all she wants is for me to be kind to her. Having very nearly divorced fairly early on in our marriage, we’ve clearly done something differently to get this far. Kate said she agreed with my friend. I am kind.
It’s not that I was unkind before. The opposite of kindness is thoughtlessness, not cruelty. Being kind is about putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes and seeing things from their point of view. It’s about being interested and thoughtful and not imposing yourself.
After our second child was born, Kate and I did the classic thing of drifting apart. Kate focused on being a mum. I took a back seat and focused on work and money. We stopped being friends and became functional parents, not really thinking about one another. I thought about work and the children much more than about her. I wasn’t kind.
A few years ago, Kate and I were writing a book – What Mums Want (and Dads Need to Know) – about how our marriage had come back from the brink. We wanted to know how common our experience was, so we ran a survey of 300 mums. We asked them to rate the importance of various different roles and characteristics in their husband or partner.
Being a friend, being kind, and being involved were comfortably the top priorities. Fixing stuff and earning money, though not unimportant, were at the bottom of the list.
Kindness is everything. It shows thought, consideration, care. It shows you notice and you value. Being kind is an active decision that requires some sort of action. It only takes little things: a cup of tea, being aware, taking time. But those little things reveal the character behind them.
When somebody is kind, it’s hugely attractive. No wonder mums rate this as the number one quality they want from their other half. If we men could grasp that what mums want most is friendship, interest and kindness, we’d have a lot less heartache and family breakdown.
I only wish I’d known this all those years ago when I married Kate. We would have had a far smoother ride. Still, better late than never.
How can you get through a divorce? Charles Reid has some first-hand experience of the process and some considered suggestions if you, or a close friend, are in the throes of this difficult and emotionally wrenching undertaking.
In 2021, there were 113,505 divorces granted in England and Wales, according to the Office of National Statistics. That’s 227,010 adults who have struggled through to the point of having a decree absolute granted by the courts. That doesn’t include the children, grandchildren, siblings, parents, grandparents, friends, and colleagues who are impacted when a married couple terminate the relationship and start on separate paths. Do not be fooled by the simplistic way divorce is portrayed in the media; this is not likely to be an easy smooth process, and it will test every element of your character.
During the summer of 2015 I started out on this painful, difficult and expensive route. As with nearly two-thirds of male-female married couples, it was my wife who decided to instigate the divorce. We had struggled along together for some years going to repeated counselling sessions, and trying hard to do the best we could. However, we both brought historical baggage into our marriage, and it seemed that we were never going to get to a great place, and so she made the decision to end the relationship.
Although I knew our marriage was not a great place to be in for either of us, it still came as a horrible shock when she informed me that we were going no further together. Over the course of the following few years (this is rarely a speedy process), I learned a lot about myself, my friends and family, and my relationship with God. I’d like to share a few things which may help anyone going through a similar situation – just practical observations.
Take it slow
Patience is the most important quality you will need. The legal process runs slowly, especially while the courts are trying to regain their pre-pandemic equilibrium, but even in ‘normal’ times things seldom happen quickly. If you are the sort of person who cannot cope with delayed gratification and needs everything now, you may find that you regret decisions, things said or done, and the final agreement reached, for years to come. At every stage, in your head ask yourself, “Will I care about the outcome of this part in five years’ time?” If the answer is yes, then stand firm on that point. Otherwise, be prepared to give a little. Pick your battles – you can’t and won’t win all of them.
Get legal counsel
Make sure you get good legal advice, and do it as early in the process as you can. Don’t hire a combative solicitor – they may cost you dearly in financial terms as well as in time and eventual outcome. Look for someone who understands that the desired end of a divorce negotiation is a ‘fair and equitable’ settlement which allows former husband and wife to live a reasonable life, and that the now individual adults should be self-supporting within a viable timescale. The days of being taken for every penny you have are, thankfully, past, in favour of a more balanced approach. The solicitor I chose, having been recommended by friends, told me at our first meeting what the he expected the financial outcome would be. Two years later, he was almost entirely accurate in his prediction. This is the sort of person you need representing you.
Pick your friends
Next, carefully select some really good friends. I cannot stress this enough. Do not trust anyone who may be reporting back to your former spouse. I was fortunate here: I enlisted three very long-standing friends, two of whom had known me in the years before my marriage. All three had proven that they were honest with me: I knew this by the fact that they had sometimes told me things I may not have wanted to hear, but nonetheless were accurate and true. I asked my three friends to become my ‘Council of Reference’, and they were absolutely invaluable in helping me walk through the divorce process. We set up a WhatsApp group where messages could be posted at all times of the day or night and responded to as time allowed.
I had realised very quickly that the emotional burden was going to be enormous and challenging, and there was a high risk that, due to anger or sadness or some other strong mental demand, I would make poor decisions. My Council of Reference were my wise counsel, people physically removed from most of the emotion, who could feed back jointly or together a considered response to my questions around, “This has happened, and I want to do this, but should I?” To try and ensure a balanced view, one of the three was single, one married, and one divorced. Two were male and one female, again to try and balance the advice offered. In almost every situation I used the counsel offered by these friends, and I am enormously grateful to them for making themselves available for a couple of years of their lives to support a struggling man.
Avoid the twits
Speaking of emotional burdens, social media is not your friend during a divorce. Seriously consider deleting your social media accounts. At the time, I was on Facebook and Twitter, and my ex-wife weaponised it, trying to turn friends, colleagues, and family against me. I told friends and family that I literally didn’t want to know or hear anything about what was posted, and it genuinely helped me to cope with the pressure of making good decisions. I deleted my profiles and didn’t rejoin for some years.
Tell the boss
It’s vitally important to let your employer know what’s going on in your life. Make no mistake, divorce is going to impact you in ways you didn’t expect, and it may affect your work. I was lucky enough to have a sympathetic boss, and so when I privately told them that I was starting to work through a divorce they helped me to ensure that any work being issued to clients was correct, sanity-checked some of my emails, and even offered me some time off when I really needed it. Trying to hide a life event as all-encompassing as the separation of a long-term relationship is extremely difficult, and adds stress to an already stressful situation. Don’t do it. If your boss is wholly unsympathetic, it may be worth considering changing jobs, but in general my advice would be not to make any huge life changes at this point if you don’t absolutely have to.
Find a home
One life change you will have to face is finding somewhere to live. Renting property is a nightmare in the UK right now, with high demand and low supply making rents and deposits scarily high. Unless you’re seriously wealthy you’re unlikely to be able to buy a property, as your former wife (and any children still at home) can choose to stay in the family home until an agreed date. This means that you’re still on the hook for the mortgage, which may affect your personal ability to borrow to buy another property.
With all that in mind, wherever you end up living will be your refuge, your place to curl up and mourn the loss of your marriage, but also where the roots of your next life chapter will be born. Don’t be too proud to look at places you would never have previously considered. I ended up living above a shop in a small two-bed flat in the middle of a council estate, having borrowed money to get the deposit together. It was (just) affordable, and money was incredibly tight for a few months, but having space of my own, and somewhere for my children to be able to visit, was a literal Godsend.
Feel the emotion
You won’t come out of this process emotionally unscathed. Everything you thought was your future has just come crashing down in pieces, possibly never to be resurrected. If you have children, they are going to be hurt, upset, puzzled, and all sorts of other things, and it’s partly your fault. Acknowledge that guilt. Mourn the death of your relationship. Worth through it. Get counselling Cry to God for help and healing. This is where some of the Psalms of David start to chime. Life is not good. God’s gracious help, love warmth and forgiveness is there for the asking. Don’t repress your emotions in that way that we Brits are so renowned for. Get it out, get it dealt with, and then move on with a lighter step.
Let it go
There will be plenty to forgive too. First, yourself. You are very likely to shoulder blame, some of which will be warranted and some not. Either way, God forgives when you ask Him, and so you need to forgive yourself too. You will also need to forgive your ex-partner. Easy? Ha! No, but as has been widely quoted in the past, holding a grudge against someone is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will die. Her life is no longer your responsibility. Her decisions are now hers alone.
Photo credit: Luigi Estuye via Unsplash
Taste the joys
Search for, and enjoy, the unexpected freedom. One of the finest feelings I can recall during that period was realising that I could buy orange juice with bits. Daft, right? In our house we only ever had smooth orange juice, and I quite liked the bits. So go round the supermarket and buy the things you enjoy but which were previously restricted. Hang pictures which you love. Read books, watch your favourite TV, listen to the music which makes you smile. There’s a lot of touch stuff in a divorce, but there are little glimpses of sunshine through all the dark clouds.
Look to the future
Remember, none of this is permanent. After your financial settlement is agreed, the decree absolute has been issued, and all that legal stuff is out of the way, you are free to move forward on your own, following God and your heart, and find out what is in store. I have a (worryingly large) number of friends who have gone through divorce, and it’s true that in the years after the process they have discovered positives in life, and are often happier than they were immediately pre-divorce. To state the (hopefully) obvious, I’m absolutely not recommending this journey, but God can truly use all things for his ultimate glory.
So, continue to be patient with yourself, with your family, with your children, and with your ex-spouse (no matter how difficult that is). Patience and wisdom, good friends, and, over all, clinging to God, will get you through intact. I wish you well if you’re battling through this part of life. One verse that constantly helped me was Jeremiah 29 verse 11, and I commend it to you.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
As Marriage Week 7th-14th February2023 draws to a close, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation closes this series with a brief personal update on the progress he is making with his own PhD.
Harry writes: I’m half way through and have finished my third rewrite! I’ve got 25,000 words on paper and at least 20 tables and charts. The results are interesting and new. So it’s mostly now a case of presenting them in a way that makes my supervisors smile rather than cringe! One super thing is that I’m using some of the results for a new joint paper with Professor Galena Rhoades at the University of Denver. We’re aiming for one of the top two family journals. Next steps are awaiting my supervisors’ verdict on my latest effort. Then I have a couple of new projects to start, get this journal article written, and reconnect with my fellow students back in Bristol.
May your marriage, and marriages of those you love, flourish!
As part of Marriage Week 7-14 February 2023 Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares the latest publications based on academic research.
Our bestseller that reached #11 on Amazon, Tells our own back-from-the-brink story. The secret: husband, love your wife, and she will love you right back, in that order
If you shop on Amazon, you can now support our work by using Smile. They give us 0.5% of whatever you spend. Just put Marriage Foundation in the charity box, it’s easy!
Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares some of the stories which have hit the headlines.
Sunday Telegraph Couples who marry because of family pressure 50 per cent more likely to divorce Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, commented: “What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified. But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”
Sunday Express: Married pop and rock stars are TWICE as likely to get divorced – study Top actors and sports stars also have a higher chance of splitting up than non-celebrities but musicians are top of the divorce charts. Researchers from the Marriage Foundation have been tracking nearly 500 A-list celebrities who tied the knot between 2001-2010 in ceremonies which featured in Hello or similar magazines.
Financial Times: Lawyers urge UK ministers to speed up reform of cohabitation rights Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, a charity that champions the institution of marriage, said introducing a new law would effectively remove the need for couples to make a decision on their future relationship commitment. Also what is the legal definition of cohabitation — is it when couples move in together? How is that defined? When they bring the toothbrush or the suitcases?”
Mail on Sunday: As it’s revealed rock stars are TWICE as likely to divorce as the average person, here are the couples who’ve beat the odds – and the musicians who weren’t so lucky Harry Benson, research director of the think tank and study author, suggests the reason celebrities are bucking this trend, despite being at the top of the income scale, is fame. In the paper he writes that the ‘ego and opportunity’, which go hand in hand with being a famous name, is the most likely explanation for the group’s higher divorce rates. This potentially relationship-destroying combination is particularly in evidence with musicians due to their lifestyle, he says.
ThroughoutMarriage Week 7th-14th February2023,Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.
Harry writes: Couples who slide into marriage have higher divorce rates than those who decide, according to our survey of 905 ever married adults. It’s all about commitment! Couples who “slide into marriage”, because of family pressure, are up to 50 per cent more likely to divorce than those who marry for love.
Our survey looked at 905 couples who married for the first time after the year 2000 in the era of online dating. They were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with each of twelve reasons for why they might have got married.
Those who said they: “felt they had to marry due to family pressure” i.e. due to social pressure, had a significantly higher probability of divorce at just 34 per cent compared to 23 per cent of couples who did not identify these reasons.
Those who agreed that their marriage “just kind of happened” i.e. slide into it, had a 29 per cent probability of divorce over the duration of the study compared to 22 per cent of those who disagreed.
In contrast, those who were more intentional about their marriage, who agreed that they married “in order to build our life together” i.e. as the cornerstone of life together, were more likely to stay together. They divorced at an overall rate of just 24 per cent compared to 37 per cent among those who did not agree.
Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February2023, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.
Harry writes: Rock’n rollershave the highest celebrity divorce rates, finds our latest analysis. Our new report, covered in the Sunday Express and Mail on Sunday, shows who has bucked the trend.
Rock stars face the highest risk to their marriages, perhaps due to adrenaline-fuelled nightly performances on tour in front of huge crowds followed by after parties, alcohol and opportunity! Despite their wealth, money doesn’t seem to protect the marriages of celebrities.
The problem is fame. In my analysis, I’ve divided celebrities into categories of music, screen, and sports/other. At 60%, music stars have the highest divorce rate over 18 years, followed by screen stars at 53%. Sports and other stars have the lowest divorce rate at 42%, yet this is still higher than the UK average at 32%.
While fame itself may not be quite so toxic for sportsmen and women whose daily routines tend to involve tremendous self-discipline and little to no alcohol, ego and opportunity are clearly sufficient to raise divorce risk above average levels.
For screen stars it is easy to imagine how inappropriate close relationships can become established with other fellow actors because of the intimacy and suspension of normal daily life required to pretend to be somebody else during a film or theatre season.
But it is rock stars who face the highest risk to their marriages. Read our report here.
Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023, Harry Benson, Sorted columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation, shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.
Harry writes: Births outside of marriage have been hovering just below 50 per cent for the past decade. A sharp increase above 50 per cent in 2021 is almost certainly a knock-on effect of the ban and restrictions on marriage during lockdown in the previous year.
New births data for 2021 from the Office for National Statistics have shown a sharp fall in births within marriage to below 50% for the first time. But have a deeper look and you can see that the share of births within marriage has fallen between 5% and 8% across all socio-economic groups. This is a phenomenon that has affected everyone.
In typical years, as many as one in six marriages take place either just before or just after their baby is born. Many of these couples will have been forced to delay their wedding. Although the overall trend remains down, we should expect to see some sort of rebound in births within marriage in 2022. Read my full comment here.
