It's been a rough summer for celebrity couples.
Actor couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner recently ended a decade of marriage. Musician power couple Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale have called it quits after 13 years, as have country music's Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert.
Even star-crossed Muppets Miss Piggy and Kermit can't seem to stay together.
When so many high-profile marriages end in such rapid succession, it's easy for fans and spectators to question their own marriages.
"Any person who has ever considered giving up on marriage pays particular attention to the public drama," Relevant magazine's Barret Johnson wrote. "Sure, the pressures that celebrities face are overwhelming, but the difficulties they face in marriage are common to all of us."
But worse than questioning the status of an existing marriage or even toying with the idea of divorce, celebrity splits can make people think twice about ever getting married — something the Institute for Family Studies says is actually much riskier than marrying and risking divorce.
"These relationships are more unstable than marriages on average. And they are, generally speaking, worse for children as well," Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote for the Institute for Family Studies blog."Though people like to cite the statistic that half of marriages end in divorce, that hasn’t actually been true for decades, if ever. If current trends continue, only about a third of marriages will end in divorce."
Like perfect looks, towering income brackets and dream homes, the stuff of celebrity nuptials is hardly realistic — or representative — of the average marriage. It's better to think of them as a sad circumstance than a reason to avoid marriage entirely, Riley said.
"Like everything else they see celebrities do, marriage seems like a dream," Riley wrote. "And when they divorce, it can make marriage seem even more pointless to those watching from afar."
Email: chjohnson@deseretnews.com
Twitter: ChandraMJohnson