Invisible hygiene threat lurking in your home that KILLS intimacy… as experts reveal disturbing biological reason for so many divorces

When most couples file for divorce, they often cite reasons like irreconcilable differences, infidelity or even abandonment – but experts say a more unexpected issue within the home could be to blame.

It may sound strange, but environmental factors can absolutely be a hidden catalyst for your split. 

And the worst part is, you might not even realize it's happening until it's too late. 

Just take it from Dave Asprey, 52, the creator of the biohacking movement and founder of Bulletproof Coffee. 

Asprey said that growing up he suffered from unknown mold poisoning, which continued into his adult life. 

The basement in his childhood New Mexico home was full of 'toxic mold' after it flooded. As a result, he has said that he suffered from childhood asthma, arthritis that was diagnosed when he was 14 years old, chronic strep throat and rashes.

But during the 1990s, as he was starting his career in San Francisco's Bay Area, he lived somewhere that had 'massive' water damage in the bedroom. 

Speaking about it during a recent appearance on SuperStratum Labs' podcast, he said that his partner at the time gained 30lbs and got sick, and recalled the two of them had terrible brain fog and that even his dog had pneumonia. 

It even started to have an effect on their relationship. 

During his recent BEYOND Biohacking Conference in Austin, Texas, attended by the Daily Mail, Asprey told the crowd a story about the horrible nightmares his partner at the time would have when they lived in San Francisco. One even resulted in her walking out on him in the middle of the night.

Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, research has found that those who continuously spend time in damp buildings can develop serious health problems, such as respiratory issues like asthma. 

As Asprey himself experienced, mold can also be tied to mental health issues and cognitive issues, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 

And while Asprey may have seen mold poisoning directly affect his relationship, it's actually the chronic stress that can result from illnesses like mold and lead poisoning that can lead to a relationship's demise, according to Washington-based couples therapist Laura Richer.

'It is true that chronic stress can lead to relationships being challenged or ultimately end in divorce,' Richer told the Daily Mail, later adding that it 'can slowly erode the sense of safety that couples need to feel close to each other.'

The couple's therapist said when she works 'with couples who are dealing with relationship stress or breakdown, it often is due to external factors that have caused the couple to be less responsive to one another and more reactive.'

'They are no longer operating on the same team,' she added, 'and they are not able to access the best parts of themselves like they once did at the start of the relationship.'

Chronic stress, according to Yale Medicine, can be defined as a 'consistent sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed over a long period of time.'

Alone, it can be detrimental to our health and is linked to other conditions like hypertension and obesity. 

But when combined with chronic illness or stress from environmental factors, it can add 'another layer of complexity,' Richer told the Daily Mail. 

'When a family discovers their home has mold or that their children have been exposed to lead, the stress that follows is relentless.'

When mold or lead is discovered in a home, other problems are not far behind.

'There is the financial burden of remediation, which can be devastating and is rarely covered by insurance,' Richer said.

'There are the fights with landlords and insurance companies that drag on for months.'

Plus, there is the fear about what the exposure could have done to your children's health and the guilt that comes along with that.

And to top it all off, Richer said, you might not feel safe in your own home anymore, which can cause emotional distress. 

'Often there is the experience of not being believed or taken seriously by the people around you, including doctors,' she explained.

'Couples dealing with this level of stress often find themselves disconnected, short with each other and struggling to find their way back to feeling like a team.'

It can also have devastating effects on intimacy, according to Toronto-based psychotherapist and clinical director at Feel Your Way Therapy Arkadiy Volkov.

'Both neuroscience and my clinical experience show a lot of effects; many are invisible,' he told the Daily Mail.

'When our body undergoes a sustained threat (environmental toxin, chronic illness, any condition that puts our nervous system in prolonged activation), it re-organizes our body and brain in a way that makes sense from a survival standpoint. But it is hurtful for intimacy.' 

Volkov said this can affect our pre-frontal cortex, 'which governs empathy and our capacity for emotional reactions.'

'The threat detection system is very fast and blunt, and is not very interested in what a partner is feeling,' he said. 

'So, it becomes more reactive and less curious and present with our partner to go through all those things that can sometimes go wrong.'

The changes can show up in many different ways – whether it be snapping at your partner, growing distant or fighting. 

'When we feel scared or helpless, we tend to fall back on ways of coping that got us through hard times before, even when those patterns don't serve us or our partners well,' Richer said.

'Some people go quiet and pull away. Others get short and irritable, and the conflict that shows up in the relationship often has very little to do with what is actually being argued about.

'What is really happening is that one or both people are overwhelmed and don't quite know how to say that.'

The experts maintained that the body and relationship that we're in have an incredibly deep connection to each other.

'What harms one,' Volkov said, 'eventually touches the other.'