The results of a new study indicate that divorce just may be contagious; when you're around divorcing couples, you're more likely to do the same.

The study, conducted by researchers from Brown University, Harvard University and University of California in San Diego, concluded that having a close friend or relative who is divorced can increase the chancefor a person’s own marriage breakup by 75 percent. The study also found that even knowing acquaintances that are divorced raises the risk of breakup by 33 percent.

The study was headed by Dr. Rose McDermott, a professor of political science at Brown University. According to McDermott, divorce is what she calls a “social contagion” – the news of someone’s divorce spreads quickly among family, friends, work colleagues and other social networks people have.

Divorce is one of the most difficult times that a person can go through. Though divorce is extremely common—according to the Center for Disease Control, the number of divorces and annulments has continued to increase since 2009, after slowing slightly during the Great Recession—some feel a stigma upon marital dissolution. Often, there are complicated matters to deal with, such as child custody or joint parenting. “Shared physical custody is increasingly common in divorce courts across the nation,” Parenting magazine reports. Though this can be good for children of divorce, it can be all the more difficult for divorcing parents.