Not sure if it was that paper, but there was a similar paper showing this phenomenon which later turned out to contain an error:

People who left the study were actually miscoded as getting divorced.

After the adjustment the correlation was less but was still there.

No, they're not referencing the same paper.

	▲	daymanstep a day ago \| parent [-]
		The paper that you cited is the 2009 study: Glantz, M. J., Chamberlain, M. C., Liu, Q., Hsieh, C. C., Edwards, K. R., Van Horn, A., & Recht, L. (2009). Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness. Cancer, 115(22), 5237-5242. https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10... That paper has been debunked. Its conclusions were based on a coding error. When the coding error is corrected for the gender disparity disappears. Please stop citing this paper without adding that it was debunked. See for more details: https://www.benjaminkeep.com/misinformation-on-the-internet/