It's not just the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi's wife who wants a divorce, I've had three sets of friends in the last month tell me they are splitting up - and that's a lot. So apart from being shocked and upset, it got me thinking about why. Is the chapter of starting afresh and making new friends in the sunshine often the death knell to a marriage down here?

I spoke to a colleague in Antibes who got divorced last year and has two children. She thinks it's the result of a combination of things. She is sure that being away from your family and friends does put pressure on your relationship, but she also pointed out that when you first get here, instead of having them to let off steam to, (or keep you in check!), you can easily fall into the trap of relying on each other too much and that ‘neediness' might not be good in the long term. You've left an established network and suddenly you're relying on just one person for everything.

My friends - the ones who provoked this article - had been together for a staggering 25 years, 21 years and 11 years; some with children, some without. I spoke to a (happily married) woman at a bbq recently about this and she confided that she believes 11 years is the real stumbling block. She said: ‘Everyone thinks that 7-year itch thing is dangerous, but I think 11 is worse, and if you do make it past that one, then often the next landmark make-or-break is 25 years!' Well as far as my friends go she's spookily accurate, but to me that seems ironic when you've come through all those years together and shared a quarter of a century of common ground. That's something you're going to struggle to recreate with anyone new.

What I'm wondering also is if age plays a role. The people that move down here now are much younger than in the past. Gone are the days of the Riviera only being for well-healed retirees. So apart from being out of your comfort zone away from home turf, are you also nudging towards the midlife thing that seems to be so critical for some people. Is it all about telling the world you've still got what it takes and panicking about being stuck in a rut as you get older?

I read somewhere that because people live longer, they have different priorities. A hundred years ago, you were only going to live to 40 and life was hard - so an unhappy marriage may not have felt quite so daunting. Today that could equate to feeling saddled to someone until your 80s, and with a more carefree existence and less to worry about that's a long time.

Is the current recession fuelling that feeling, by making people evaluate their lives and ‘seize the day' while they can? Of course the dreaded crunch can be responsible for the money worries which won't help any relationship. Money may not buy you love, but it does give you choices and thus makes life easier. Jobs are notoriously hard to find in this part of the world, and when you are stressed and scratchy it's easy to take it out on your partner, and nothing makes you feel stressed and scratchy quite like limited earning potential.

So a combination of pressures can certainly get you to that place, but maybe thats the exact moment to take a big step back and realise that it is tough living in a new land, learning a new language and creating a network for yourself. If you can focus on what you get in return, and how lucky that makes us, surely it's worth the extra effort. No one said it would be easy, the best things never are.