Intimate

Relationships

Rowland S.Miller

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C H A P T E R 13

The Dissolution and Loss of Relationships

The Changing Rate of Divorce ◆ The Predictors of Divorce ◆ Breaking Up ◆ The Aftermath of Breakups

◆ For Your Consideration ◆ Chapter Summary

Sometimes the stresses and strains two partners experience catch up with them. Perhaps their conflict is too constant and too intense. Perhaps their part- nership is inequitable, with one of them exploiting the other. Perhaps their passion has waned, and new attractions are distracting them. Or perhaps they are merely contented with each other, instead of delighted, so they are disappointed that the “magic” has died.

There are myriad reasons why relationships may fail, and the deterioration of any particular partnership may involve events and processes that are unique to that couple. On the other hand, there are also personal and cultural influ- ences that can have generic, widespread effects on the stability of intimate rela- tionships, and relationship scientists have been identifying and studying them for years. In this chapter, we’ll consider the correlates and consequences of the decline and fall of satisfaction and intimacy. I’ll have a lot to say about divorce because a decision to end a marriage is often more deliberate and weighty, and the consequences more complicated, than those that emerge from less formal partnerships. There’s also been much more research on divorce than on non- marital breakups. Nevertheless, the dissolution of any intimate relationship— such as a cohabiting partnership, dating relationship, or friendship—can be momentous, so we’ll examine how people adjust to the end of those partner- ships, too. Let’s start with a reminder that the cultural landscape we face today is quite different from the one our grandparents knew.

13.1 THE CHANGING RATE OF DIVORCE

The Prevalence of Divorce

As you recall, current divorce rates are much higher than they were when your grandparents married. In the United States, there are currently half as many divorces as marriages each year (Cruz, 2013), so the chance that a recent mar- riage will ultimately end in separation or divorce still hovers around 50 percent. This is remarkable because it suggests that despite all the good intentions and warm feelings with which people marry, the chances that they will succeed in living out their lives together are about the same as the chance of getting “heads” when you flip a coin.

Indeed, a typical American marriage won’t last nearly as long as peo- ple think it will. Only about two-thirds (64 percent) of married couples stay together for 10 years, and fewer than half reach their twenty-first wedding anniversary, so the average length of a marriage in the United States is just over 18 years (Elliott & Simmons, 2011). That figure counts all marriages, including those that end with the death of a spouse, but the leading cause of death of a marriage in its first 20 years is, of course, divorce. Lots of people don’t turn 30 without having been divorced; the median age at which men encounter their (first) divorce is 31.8, and for women, it’s 29.4 (Cohn, 2010).

Two other patterns that result, in part, from the high divorce rate are noteworthy. First, only about half (51 percent) of the adult U.S. population is presently married (Fry, 2012). That’s an all-time low. Second, 25 percent of American children—1 out of every 4 people under the age of 18—now live in single-parent homes, most of them run by their mothers (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2010). That rate is 3 times higher than it was in 1960.

Any way you look at it, divorce is now commonplace in America. Divorce rates have also increased in other countries over the last 50 years, but the United States has had the dubious distinction of leading the pack. The divorce rate in the United States is noticeably higher than in all of Europe, Canada, or Japan (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Marriages are less likely to end than other romantic relationships are—see the box on the next page—but they’re also less likely to last than they used to be.

Why Has the Divorce Rate Increased?

There are no certain reasons why the second half of the twentieth century saw such a huge increase in U.S. rates of divorce. But there are several possibilities, and all of them may (or may not) be contributing influences.

One possibility is that we hold different, more demanding expectations for marriage than people used to. Our great-grandparents generally believed that if you wanted to live with a romantic partner, if you wanted to have children, and if you wanted to pay the bills and live well, you had to get married. Nowadays, how- ever, cohabitation is widespread, there are lots of single parents, and most women have entered the workforce. As a result, marriage is no longer the practical neces- sity it used to be. Instead, in the opinion of some observers, people are more likely than ever before to pursue marriage as a path to personal fulfillment (Finkel, Hui, et al., 2014). Marriage is supposed to be play, not work; it’s supposed to be excit- ing, not routine, and passionate, not warm (Amato, 2009). Thus, our expectations for marriage may be too high. A happy, warm, rewarding partnership may seem insufficient if it is measured against over-glorified and unrealistic expectations.

For instance, decades ago, Slater (1968, p. 99) warned:

Spouses are now asked to be lovers, friends, and mutual therapists in a soci- ety which is forcing the marriage bond to become the closest, deepest, most important and most enduring relationship of one’s life. Paradoxically, then, it is increasingly likely to fall short of the emotional demands placed upon it and be dissolved.

We marry for love and passion and think that they won’t change, and we expect our spouses to be soulmates who will never disappoint us. But these are lofty, perhaps impossibly high standards, and indeed, recent cultural history suggests that “no sooner had the ideal of the love match and lifelong intimacy taken hold than people began to demand the right to divorce” (Coontz, 2005, p. 8).

People may simply be expecting too much of marriage. The percentage of U.S. spouses who report that their marriages are “very happy” is lower now than it was 25 years ago (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2010), and the number of conflicts and problems that spouses report are higher (Hostetler et al., 2012). On the whole, the average perceived quality of American marriages has declined since 1970.

But the broader culture has changed, too, and several societal influences may be affecting not only the expectations with which we begin our mar- riages but also the situations we encounter once we are wed. For instance, most women in the United States now work outside the home, and their entry into the workforce has had several effects. First, spouses report more conflict between work and family than they used to, and the more hours a wife works during the week, the lower the quality of her marriage tends to be (Hostetler et al., 2012). Car repairs, child care, and the scheduling and cooking of meals (to name just a few examples) are more problematic when both spouses are employed, and the amount of time spouses spend together tends to decline. Both spouses are also affected by their problems at work, so that decreases in job satisfaction are asso- ciated with increases in marital discord (Amato et al., 2007). Participation in the labor force also increases spouses’ access to interesting, desirable, alternative partners, and divorce is more frequent when women work in occupations that surround them with men (McKinnish, 2007).

Furthermore, women earn more money than they used to, and, around the world, divorce rates are higher when women are financially independent of men (Barber, 2003). People who are able to support themselves have more free- dom to choose divorce when a marriage deteriorates, and in the United States there is a straightforward, positive correlation between a woman’s income and her odds of divorce: The more money she makes, the more likely it is that she will someday be divorced (Mundy, 2012). But don’t think that your mar- riage will be more stable if you just do without money; poverty has even more impact on marital quality. In general, couples with money troubles are less content with their marriages than are those who are better off; in particular, couples with rather low incomes (under $25,000 per year) are twice as likely to divorce as are couples with higher incomes (over $50,000 per year) (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2010). Having money may make it easier to divorce, but being poor can cause stress that undermines a marriage, too.

Overall, then, women’s increased participation in the labor force has plau- sibly increased conflict at home, made alluring, new romantic partners more available, and decreased wives’ economic dependence on their husbands. Per- haps for all of these reasons, the trend is clear: As the proportion of American women employed outside the home increased during the twentieth century, so, too, did the divorce rate (Fitch & Ruggles, 2000).1

1 As I describe these various patterns, do remember, please, that all of these links between social changes and divorce rates are correlations that allow diverse possibilities to exist. A connection between women’s working and divorce does not necessarily mean that employment undermines women’s commitment to their marriages. To the contrary, women are more likely to seek employ- ment when there is preexisting discord and strife in their marriages, so it is just as likely that marital dissatisfaction causes women to find work as it is that women’s work causes marital dissatisfaction (Rogers, 1999). Keep an open mind as you consider the implications of societal change.

Our gender roles, the behaviors we expect from men and women, are changing, too. Women are gradually becoming more assertive and self-reliant (Twenge, 2009), and the partners in many marriages are dividing household responsibilities more equitably (Amato et al., 2007). Over the last 25 years, less traditional gender roles and increases in the equality of family decision making have been associated with higher marital quality for both husbands and wives (DeMaris et al., 2012). However, the new division of household labor has had different effects on men than on women; husbands are less happy now that they’re doing more household chores, but their wives are much more content (see Figure 13.1).

By some accounts, Western culture is also becoming more individualistic, with people being less connected to the others around them than they used to be (Amato, 2009). Indeed, most of us are less tied to our communities than our grandparents were (Ren, 2011). We’re less likely to live near our extended fami- lies and less likely to know our neighbors; we participate in fewer clubs and social organizations, entertain at home less frequently, and move more often. As a result, we receive less social support and companionship from friends and acquaintances than our grandparents did (Oishi, 2010), and we rely on our spouses for more (Campbell et al., 2012), and this may affect divorce rates in two different ways. First, as I’ve already noted, we ask more of our spouses than ever before. We expect them to fulfill a wider variety of interpersonal needs, and that increases the probability that they will disappoint us in some manner. In addition, people who are less connected to their communities are less affected by community norms that might discourage them from divorc- ing. And as it turns out, people who move often from place to place really are more prone to divorce than are those who stay in one place and put down roots (Magdol & Bessel, 2003).

Our shared perceptions of divorce are also less negative than they used to be. In many circles, a divorce used to be considered a shameful failure, and the event itself was often a messy, lurid, embarrassing spectacle in which blame had to be assigned to someone. The advent of no-fault divorce laws in the United States during the 1970s made a divorce much easier to obtain; for the first time in most jurisdictions, once they had agreed on the division of property and childcare, spouses merely had to certify that they faced “irrecon- cilable differences,” and their marriage was dissolved. No-fault laws helped make the procedure more socially acceptable (Wolfers, 2006). On average, we feel that a divorce is a more reasonable and more desirable response to a bad marriage than our parents did, and more favorable attitudes toward divorce appear to reduce the quality of our marriages as time goes by (Amato & Rog- ers, 1999). We may be less likely to work hard to rescue a faltering relationship when divorce seems an expedient alternative (Whitton et al., 2013).

Most couples also cohabit before they marry these days, and as we saw in chapter 1, people who cohabit encounter an increased risk of divorce later on. Despite the widespread belief that cohabitation is a valuable trial run that allows people to avoid later problems, cohabitation is positively associated with the probability of divorce (Rhoades et al., 2009). The good news is that couples who start living together after they become engaged to marry and who cohabit for a shorter, rather than longer, period of time do not divorce much more frequently than do those who marry without living together (Willoughby et al., 2012). Brief cohabitation that is limited to one’s fiancé does not seem to put a subsequent marriage at much risk. On the other hand, people who cohabit before they become engaged (or who ever cohabit with more than one partner) are more likely to later divorce (Tach & Halpern-Meekin, 2012), probably because cohabi- tation changes their beliefs and expectations about marriage. Casual cohabitation seems to lead to (a) less respect for the institution of marriage, (b) less favorable expectations about the outcomes of marriage, and (c) increased willingness to divorce (Rhoades et al., 2009), and all of these make divorce more likely.

In addition, as more parents divorce, more children witness family conflict and grow up in broken homes. Common sense may suggest that youngsters who suffer family disruption might be especially determined to avoid making the same mistakes, but, in reality, divorce is passed down from one generation to the next: Children who experience the divorce of their parents are more likely to be divorced themselves when they become adults (Mustonen et al., 2011). Various processes may underlie this pattern. For one thing, children from divorced homes have less favorable views of marriage, and they report less trust in their partners when they begin their own romantic relationships; thus, compared to children from intact homes, they have less faith that their mar- riages will last (Cui & Fincham, 2010). Furthermore, to some degree, children learn how to behave in intimate relationships from the lessons provided by their parents, and those who remember a childhood home full of strife and dis- cord tend to have more acrimonious marriages of poorer quality themselves (Rhoades et al., 2012b). Thus, as divorce becomes more commonplace, more children become susceptible to divorce later on.

Finally, because divorce is now so commonplace, more of us have friends who will someday divorce—and remarkably, that will mean that we face an increased risk of divorcing, too. For over 60 years, an extraordinary investi- gation, the Framingham Heart Study, has been tracking the health of more than 10,000 individuals—two generations of people—in a large town in Massachusetts. Compared to the average participant in the study, those who had a friend or family member (that is, a parent, child, or sibling) who divorced were 75 percent more likely—that’s much more likely—to divorce as well. If a friend of a friend or relative divorced, people were 33 percent more likely to divorce (McDermott et al., 2013). (And that’s where the effect stopped. If someone with three degrees of separation—for instance, the friend of a friend of a friend— divorced, people were at no greater risk of them- selves also divorcing.) This provocative pattern may spring from several sources—and it makes a fine point to ponder—but the end result is clear: We’re more likely to divorce when others in our social network do (Hogerbrugge et al., 2012).

So, why has the divorce rate increased? There are reasons to believe that, compared to our grandparents’ day:

• We expect more out of marriage, holding it to higher standards.

• Working women have more financial freedom and better access to attractive alternatives, and they experience corrosive conflict between work and family.

• Creeping individualism and social mobility leave us less tied to, and less affected by, community norms that discourage divorce.

• New laws have made divorce more socially acceptable and easier to obtain.

• Casual cohabitation weakens commitment to marriage.

• Children of divorce are more likely to divorce when they become adults.

• More of us have friends who are divorced.

All of these possible influences are merely correlated with the increasing preva- lence of divorce in the United States, so they all may be symptoms rather than causes of the social changes that have promoted divorce. It’s a rather long list of possibilities, however, and it provides another good example of the manner in which cultural influences shape intimate relationships. Arguably, our culture supports lasting marriages less effectively than it did 40 or 50 years ago. But even with such changes, at least half of the marriages that begin this year will not end in divorce. (Not all of them will be happy, but at least they won’t end in divorce.) What individual and relational characteristics predict who will and who will not ultimately separate? Let’s turn to those next.

13.2 THE PREDICTORS OF DIVORCE

Whatever the cultural context, some marriages succeed and others fail, and as you’d expect, the differences between marital winners and losers have long been of interest to relationship scientists. Diverse models that explicate some of the sources of divorce have been proposed, and impressive studies have now tracked some marriages for decades. In this section, we’ll inspect both theories and research results that identify some of the predictors of divorce.

Levinger’s Barrier Model

George Levinger (1976), a proponent of interdependence theory, used concepts like those I described in chapter 6 in a model that identified three types of fac- tors that influence the breakup of relationships. The first of these is attraction. For Levinger, attraction is enhanced by the rewards a relationship offers (such as enjoyable companionship, sexual fulfillment, security, and social status), and it is diminished by its costs (such as irritating incompatibility and the invest- ment of time and energy). The second key influence on breakups is the alter- natives one possesses. The most obvious of these are other partners, but any alternative to a current relationship, such as being single or achieving occupa- tional success, may lure someone away from an existing partnership. Finally, there are the barriers around the relationship that make it hard to leave; these include the legal and social pressures to remain married, religious and moral constraints, and the financial costs of obtaining a divorce and maintaining two households.

A major contribution of Levinger’s approach was to highlight the fact that unhappy partners who would like to break up may stay together because it would cost them too much to leave. He also persuasively argued that many barriers to divorce are psychological rather than material; distressed spouses may certainly stay married because they do not have enough money to divorce, but they may also stay together (even when they have sufficient resources to leave) because of the guilt or embarrassment they would feel—or cause others, especially their children (Poortman & Seltzer, 2007)—if they divorced.

Indeed, spouses report that there are several meaningful costs that would deter them from seeking a divorce (Previti & Amato, 2003). A survey of people married for 12 years demonstrated that the worry that their children would suffer, the threat of losing their children, religious norms, dependence on their spouses, and the fear of financial ruin were all perceived to be influential barriers that discouraged divorce (Knoester & Booth, 2000). However, over that 12-year span, once other risk factors such as low education and parental divorce were taken into account, only two of those perceived barriers, dependence on one’s spouse and religious beliefs, actually distinguished couples who divorced from those who did not. And if people had grown genuinely dissatisfied with their marriages, even those two barriers seemed insignificant: Once they wanted out of their marriages, there was no stopping them (Knoester & Booth, 2000).

Thus, people are usually aware of several obstacles that they would have to overcome in order to divorce, but once a marriage is on the rocks, those barriers may not keep people from leaving. Levinger’s model helpfully reminds us of deterrents to divorce that run through people’s minds, but it may not fully rec- ognize how ineffective those deterrents may become once marital misery sets in.

Karney and Bradbury’s Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model

Benjamin Karney and Thomas Bradbury (1995) developed a general model of marital instability that highlights another three influences that can contribute to divorce. According to this view, some people enter marriage with endur- ing vulnerabilities that increase their risk of divorce. Such vulnerabilities might include adverse experiences in one’s family of origin, poor education, maladap- tive personality traits, bad social skills, or dysfunctional attitudes toward mar- riage. None of these characteristics makes divorce inevitable, but all of them can shape the circumstances a couple encounters, and all of them influence the adap- tive processes with which people respond to stress (e.g., Maisel & Karney, 2012). If a couple gets lucky and encounters only infrequent and mild difficulties, even those with poor coping and communication skills may live happily ever after.

However, almost every marriage must face occasional stressful events that require the partners to provide support to one another and to adjust to new circumstances. Some stressors (such as a period of unemployment or a major illness) befall some marriages and not others, whereas other stressors (such as pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting) are commonplace. The little ups and downs of daily life can combine to be surprisingly stressful, too (Totenhagen et al., 2012b). When stressful events occur, a couple must cope and adapt, but, depending on their vulnerabilities, some people are better able to do that than are others (Williamson et al., 2013). Failure to cope successfully can make the stresses worse, and if poor coping causes marital quality to decline, a couple’s coping may be further impaired (Karney & Neff, 2013). And ultimately, extended periods of dissatisfaction are presumed to lead to marital instability and divorce.

Take a look at Figure 13.2, and start tracing the paths from the bottom. Our inborn traits and past experiences equip all of us with strengths and weaknesses as relationship partners, and some of the weaknesses are “vulnerabilities” that undermine our abilities to cope effectively with stress and change (Stroud et al., 2010). Some vulnerabilities also make life more stressful, increasing the difficul- ties with which we have to deal. But no matter who we are, stress happens. In addition to the intermittent conflicts that occur at home, any frustrations and dif- ficulties we experience individually at work or school can cause stress spillover in which we bring surly moods home and interact irascibly with our innocent partners (Buck & Neff, 2012). Then, our coping skills and other “adaptive pro- cesses” determine whether our stress grows or is managed and reduced. And ultimately, each partner’s ability to adapt successfully influences the quality of their marriage at the same time that marital quality is influencing the partners’ abilities to adapt.

There are feedback loops and overlapping influences in the vulnerability- stress-adaptation model, and when it comes to stress, what doesn’t kill us may make us stronger. Couples with good communication skills who have already encountered moderate stress in their relationships are likely to be more resil- ient and to adjust better to new stressors—such as becoming parents, a change that’s always stressful—than other couples who have similar skills but who haven’t yet been tested by having to deal with stress (Neff & Broady, 2011). Successfully coping with our difficulties can improve our abilities to adapt to new nuisances. But the bottom line is that the quality of our marriages emerges from the interplay of who we are, the circumstances we encounter, and the manner in which we respond to those circumstances, and, to some degree, these three important influences affect each other. It’s possible for the roots of divorce to begin in childhood in an insecure attachment style or the lessons learned in a home filled with conflict. But if life treats us well, or we work hard and well with our spouses to overcome life’s difficulties (or perhaps just take a good college course on close relationships!), divorce need not occur.

Results from the PAIR Project

For almost 30 years, Ted Huston (2009) and his colleagues (Caughlin & Huston, 2006) kept track of 168 couples who married in 1981. The project focused on the manner in which spouses adapted to their lives together (or failed to do so) and was known as the Processes of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships (or PAIR) Project. There’s enormous value in long-lasting studies like this, but their results can be a little sobering. Indeed, in the PAIR Project, after only 13 years, 35 percent of the couples had divorced and another 20 percent weren’t happy; only 45 percent of the couples could be said to be happily married, and even they were less satisfied and less loving than they had been when they wed. And these, I should remind you, are typical results. Take a look back at Figure 6.7 on p. 194: Marital satisfaction routinely declines in most couples as time goes by.

Why? Huston and his colleagues examined three different explanations for why marriages go awry. One possibility is that spouses who are destined to be discontent begin their marriages being less in love and more at odds with each other than are those whose marriages ultimately succeed. This possibility, the enduring dynamics model, suggests that spouses bring to their marriages prob- lems, incompatibilities, and enduring vulnerabilities that surface during their courtship; indeed, the partners may be well aware of these frustrations and shortcomings before they even wed (Lavner et al., 2012a). According to this model, then, marriages that are headed for divorce are weaker than others from the very beginning.

In contrast, a second possibility known as the emergent distress model sug- gests that the problematic behavior that ultimately destroys a couple begins after they marry. As time goes by, some couples fall into a rut of increasing conflict and negativity that did not exist when the marriage began. Thus, unlike the endur- ing dynamics model, the emergent distress perspective suggests that, when they begin, there is no discernible difference between marriages that will succeed and those that will fail; the difficulties that ruin some marriages usually develop later. Finally, a third possibility is the disillusionment model. This approach sug- gests that couples typically begin their marriages with rosy, romanticized views of their relationship that are unrealistically positive. Then, as time goes by and the spouses stop working as hard to be adorable and charming to each other, reality slowly erodes these pleasant fictions. But there may be more disillusion- ment in some couples than in others; romance may fade and some disappoint- ment may occur in any marriage as people realize that their partnership is less wonderful than it originally seemed, but in some couples, “the ink is barely dry on the marriage license when doubts and disillusionment about marriage and the partner can begin to set in” (Kayser & Rao, 2006, p. 206).

The particulars of the three models are meaningful because each suggests a different way to improve marriages and to reduce the risk of divorce. Accord- ing to the enduring dynamics model, rocky courtships lead to bad marriages, and premarital interventions that keep ambivalent couples from ever marrying should prevent many subsequent divorces. By comparison, the emergent dis- tress model argues that couples need to guard against slow slides into disagree- ableness and negativity, and interventions that encourage spouses to remain cheerful, generous, attentive, and kind should keep divorce from their door. And finally, the disillusionment model suggests that dispassionate and accu- rate perceptions of one’s lover and one’s relationship that preclude subsequent disappointment and disenchantment should also prevent divorce.

All of these are reasonable possibilities, but Huston and his colleagues found that only two of the three seemed to be at work in the marriages they followed. (Let’s pause a moment. Which two models do you think were the winners?) First, consistent with the enduring dynamics model, the PAIR Project determined that, compared to couples who were still happy after several years, spouses who were unhappy had been less loving and affectionate and more ambivalent and negative toward each other when their marriages began. Couples who were destined to be distressed were less generous and less tender and more uncertain and more tem- peramental from the very start. Thus, any doubts or difficulties that people faced when they were engaged did not disappear once they were married. To the con- trary, any indecision or incompatibilities were simply imported into their marital relationship, so that they remained less content over the years that followed.

So, the enduring dynamics model predicted how happy marriages would be. However, the best predictor of which couples would actually divorce was the disillusionment model. The drop in marital satisfaction during the first years of marriage was sharper and more pronounced in some couples than in others, and they were the spouses who were most at risk for divorce. They did not necessarily grow cantankerous or spiteful as the emergent distress model would expect; instead, they simply experienced the greatest change in their romantic feelings for each other. Their love faded more, and more rapidly, than did the romances of other couples.

In addition, a striking feature of the disillusionment that Huston and his col- leagues observed was that many of the couples who were destined to divorce were more affectionate than most when their marriages began, and it took some time for their disappointment to develop. Couples whose marriages were short- lived—who were divorced within 6 (or fewer) years—usually began their mar- riages with less love and more ambivalence than did couples whose marriages would succeed. (Thus, you can see why, when disillusionment set in, they were divorced relatively quickly.) However, couples who ultimately divorced after longer periods—after 7 or more years of marriage—were especially affectionate and romantic when their marriages began. They were more adoring than other couples, on average, and thus had further to fall (and, perhaps, were more surprised than most) when the usual drop in affectionate behavior following the honeymoon began. They ended up no less sentimental toward each other than other couples, but they experienced the biggest changes—that is, the steepest declines—in romantic behavior, and those changes predicted a delayed divorce.

Overall, then, the PAIR Project made two conclusions seem sound. First, the size and speed of changes in romance best predict which couples will divorce, and second, the problems couples bring to their marriage determine how quickly a divorce will occur. Similar results have been obtained from other studies (e.g., Lavner et al., 2012b; Niehuis et al., 2014), so we can safely conclude that both the level of satisfaction a couple experiences and the change in that sat- isfaction over time are key players in relational outcomes. Importantly, couples that are doomed to divorce do not always turn surly and spiteful, but they do tend to lose the joy they once experienced (Gottman & Levenson, 2000).2

2 I encourage you to take a moment to consider how this pattern maps onto people’s approach and avoidance motivations, which we encountered on p. 188 back in chapter 6. Evidently, some marriages fail not because they are aversive and unpleasant but because they are not pleasant and delightful enough.

Results from the Early Years of Marriage Project

Another impressive long-term study, the Early Years of Marriage (EYM) Project directed by Terri Orbuch, has been following 174 white couples and 199 black couples in and around Detroit, Michigan, since they married in 1986 (Orbuch et al., 2013). The EYM researchers have been particularly interested in the manner in which the social conditions that couples encounter may affect marital outcomes. And some sociological variables are important. In 2002, 16 years after the project began, 46 percent of the couples had already divorced, but the couples’ race seemed to make a big difference: Just over a third (36 percent) of the white couples had divorced, but more than half (55 percent) of the black couples had dissolved their marriages.

Why were black couples more prone to divorce? There could be several reasons. On average, the black couples had cohabitated for a longer period and were more likely to have had children before getting married. They also had lower incomes and were more likely to come from broken homes, and all of these influences are positively correlated with one’s risk of divorce (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2010). Overall, the EYM project is demonstrating, as other studies have (Wickrama et al., 2010), that the social context in which couples conduct their relationships may have substantial effects on the outcomes they encoun- ter. Economic hardship can put any couple at risk for divorce no matter how much they respect and value marriage (Williamson et al., 2013).

People’s Personal Perceptions of Their Problems

The various models and data we have encountered suggest that there are three general types of influences on our marital outcomes (Levinger & Levinger, 2003). At the broadest level are cultural norms and other variables that set the national stage for marriage. No-fault divorce laws and discrimination that con- strains economic opportunity are examples of the ways in which the cultural context may either support or undermine marital success.

More idiosyncratic are our personal contexts, the social networks of fam- ily and friends and the physical neighborhoods we inhabit. For instance, as I noted earlier, women who work with a wide variety of interesting male col- leagues are more prone to divorce than are women who do not work outside their homes (McKinnish, 2007). Finally, there is a relational context that describes the intimate environment couples create through their own perceptions of, and interactions with, each other. The individual characteristics that lead us to react to our partners with either chronic good humor or pessimistic caution are some of the building blocks of the particular atmosphere that pervades a partnership. I mention these three levels of analysis because people tend to focus on only one of them when they generate explanations for their marital problems. Yet another impressive long-term study, the Marital Instability Over the Life Course project conducted by Alan Booth and his colleagues, conducted phone interviews with a random sample of 1,078 Americans every few years from 1980 to 2000. When those who divorced were asked what caused their divorces, the most frequently reported reasons all involved some characteristic of their marital relationships, as Table 13.1 shows. Women complained of infidelity, substance use, or abuse more often than men, whereas men were more likely to complain of poor communication or to announce that they did not know what had gone wrong. Ex-wives also had more complaints than ex-husbands did, on average, but very few accounts from either sex acknowledged the possible influences of the cultural or personal contexts in which they conducted their relationships.

Nevertheless, those broader contexts may have been important. The higher a couple’s income had been, the less often abuse was mentioned as a cause of divorce and the more often personality clashes were mentioned. The more edu- cation the respondents had, the more often they complained of incompatibility with their ex-spouses. Thus, a couple’s socioeconomic status (which includes education and income) helped to predict the problems they would encounter. The age at which they married mattered, too; people who married at younger ages were more likely to report that they had grown apart or that alcohol and drug use had been a problem.

When they grow discontent, people always complain about the particu- lars of their partnerships (and think that their partners are more to blame than they are; Scott et al., 2013). But broader influences may be important, too. The various factors that shape a couple’s likelihood of divorce include not only the day-to-day interactions that may cause them pleasure or pain; the surrounding circumstances and culture can either promote or undermine their marriage, as well (Williamson et al., 2013).

Specific Predictors of Divorce

I have touched on a variety of variables that may put people at risk for divorce, and I’m about to list them and several more in the big table that begins on the next page. However, let me offer this caveat: Statements of general trends sometimes gloss over important qualifications. No one generalization will apply to every marriage, predictors may hold for some groups or stages of marriage but not oth- ers, and the apparent influence of a particular variable may reflect the other factors to which it was compared in a given study. For instance, some classic correlates of divorce (such as low income) may be more influential in young marriages than in older marriages that have already stood the test of time (Booth et al., 1986). To some degree, marriages that survive the initial effects of certain stressors may be less susceptible to their influences many years later. It may also be important to recognize that when several risks are combined, each may have stronger effects than it would have had by itself; being poor and poorly educated, for instance, can be much worse than facing either difficulty by itself (Cutrona et al., 2011). Please keep these nuances in mind while inspecting Table 13.2, which presents a sum- mary of key predictors of marital stability identified by modern research. These aren’t passing influences; the effects of most of them haven’t changed much for several decades (Amato, 2010). Most of them probably have similar effects on the satisfaction and stability gays and lesbians experience in their relationships, as well (Gottman et al., 2003).

13.3 BREAKING UP

I’ve spent some time describing who gets divorced, and now it’s time to inspect how breakups happen. How do partners proceed when they want to dissolve their relationship? The first thing to note is that people do not lightly end rela- tionships to which they were once committed. Most divorces, for instance, are characterized by multiple complaints that result in a long period of discontent, but there are also things that the partners like about each other. So, some ambiv- alence ordinarily occurs. Recall, too, from our discussion of interdependence theory in chapter 6, that people do not usually depart their partnerships just because they are dissatisfied. Although a long period of unhappiness and dis- tress precedes most divorces, people typically initiate divorce only when they finally come to believe that they will be better off without their spouses (that is, only when their CLalts promise better outcomes than they are experiencing now). The decision to divorce results from complex calculations of distress and delight involving alternative, sometimes uncertain, possibilities.

Then, when that global decision is made, more choices await. Let’s inspect what people do when they want to pull the plug on a failing partnership.

Breaking Up with Premarital Partners

The next time you want to end a romantic relationship, what do you think you’ll do? Will you break the news to your partner straightforwardly, or will you simply start ignoring your partner’s texts, change your status on Facebook, and start avoiding him or her? When she analyzed college students’ accounts of their breakups, Leslie Baxter (1984) found that a major distinction between dif- ferent trajectories of relationship dissolution involved the question of whether someone who wished to depart ever announced that intention to the partner who was to be left behind! In some instances, the effort to disengage was direct, or explicitly stated; however, in most cases, people used indirect strategies in which they tried to end the relationship without ever saying so.

A second key distinction, according to Baxter (1984), was whether one’s effort to depart was other-oriented, trying to protect the partner’s feelings, or self-oriented, being more selfish at the expense of the partner’s feelings. On occasion, for instance, people announced their intention to end the relationship in a manner that allowed their partners a chance to respond and to save face; one direct, other-oriented strategy was to announce one’s dissatisfaction but to talk things over and to negotiate, rather than demand, an end to the partnership. In contrast, when they were direct but more selfish, they sometimes simply announced that the relationship was over and ducked any further contact with their ex-partners.

A more indirect but rather selfish ploy was to behave badly, increasing the partner’s costs so much that the partner decided to end the relationship. People were more considerate when they claimed that they wanted to be “just friends,” but if they did so when they really wanted to end the relationship altogether, this, too, was an indirect approach, with them misrepresenting their desire to depart. Obviously, people made various moves when they wanted to end their relationships, and the differences between direct and indirect and other-ori- ented and self-oriented strategies were just two of the distinctions that Baxter (1984) observed. Other distinctions included:

• the gradual versus sudden onset of one’s discontent. Only about a quarter of the time was there some critical incident that suddenly changed a partner’s feelings about his or her relationship; more often, people gradually grew dissatisfied.

• an individual versus shared desire to end the partnership. Two-thirds of the time, only one partner wanted the relationship to end.

• the rapid versus protracted nature of one’s exit. More often than not, people made several disguised efforts to end their relationships before they succeeded.

• the presence or absence of repair attempts. Most of the time, no formal effort to repair the relationship was made.

Add all this up, and the single most common manner in which premarital relationships ended involved gradual dissatisfaction that led one of the two partners to make repeated efforts to dissolve the relationship without ever announcing that intention and without engaging in any attempts to improve or repair the partnership. But even this most frequent pattern, which Baxter (1984) labeled persevering indirectness, occurred only one-third of the time, so a variety of other specific trajectories were commonplace, too.

People differ in the strategies they prefer, as well. Attachment style is influential: Those who are high in avoidance of intimacy dislike drama and are especially likely to employ indirect strategies that reduce the chances of an emotional confrontation with their (ex-)partners (Collins & Gillath, 2012). If they do straightforwardly announce their wish to break up, they’re more likely than others are to do it from a distance, with a text, an e-mail, or a Facebook message (Weisskirch & Delevi, 2012).

Nevertheless, despite such idiosyncrasies, people generally agree about the typical elements, if not the specific strategies, of partners’ efforts to end their relationships (Battaglia et al., 1998). Surveys of young adults find that the end of a close relationship routinely involves several familiar elements that are listed in Table 13.3. The process usually begins when one partner grows bored with the relationship and begins noticing other people. That partner grows distant and less involved emotionally, but this often leads to an initial effort to restore the relationship and put things back the way they were. The part- ners spend less time together, however, and when a lack of interest resurfaces, thoughts of breaking up begin. Discussion of the relationship ensues, and the couple agrees to try again to work things out, but they continue to notice other people, and they become more withdrawn. They see others, but that engenders a short-lived desire to reunite that is followed by more contemplation of calling it quits. They prepare themselves psychologically and then break up.

Steps to Divorce

Obtaining a divorce is usually more complicated than breaking up with a pre- marital partner, but the ambivalence and vacillation that is evident in the typi- cal sequence of events in Table 13.3 characterizes divorces, too. And marriages don’t end overnight. Whereas someone’s efforts to end a premarital romantic relationship can last several weeks, the process of ending a marriage can take several years. In one study of couples who stayed married for about a dozen years, the dissatisfied spouses typically spent the last 5 years of their marriages thinking about separating (Stewart et al., 1997)!

Over such a span of time, many idiosyncratic events may occur, but Steve Duck (Rollie & Duck, 2006) suggested that five general stages occur during the dissolution of most relationships. In an initial personal phase, a partner grows dissatisfied, often feeling frustration and disgruntlement. Then, in a subsequent dyadic phase, the unhappy partner reveals his or her discontent. Long periods of negotiation, confrontation, or attempts at accommodation may follow, and common feelings include shock, anger, hurt, and, sometimes, relief. But if the end of the relationship nears, a social phase begins. The partners publicize their distress, explaining their side of the story to family and friends and seeking sup- port and understanding. As the relationship ends, a grave-dressing phase begins. Mourning decreases, and the partners begin to get over their loss by doing whatever cognitive work is required to put their past partnership behind them. Memories are revised and tidied up, and an acceptable story—a narrative—for the course of the relationship is created. Rationalization and reassessment are likely to occur. Finally, in a resurrection phase, the ex-partners re-enter social life as singles, often telling others that their experiences have changed them and that they’re smarter and wiser now.

Within this general framework, the manner in which people dissolve their partnerships is likely to affect their feelings about each other afterward. In general, couples who do not identify and discuss the sources of their dissat- isfaction have less positive feelings toward each other and are less likely to stay in touch than are those who do discuss their difficulties. Furthermore, for some couples, a breakup is just a transition to another form of a continuing relationship (Dailey et al., 2013). Various outcomes are possible when intimate relationships end. Let’s turn to those next.

13.4 THE AFTERMATH OF BREAKUPS

When people are asked how much stress and change various events would cause in their lives, the death of a spouse and a divorce consistently show up at the top of the list (Miller & Rahe, 1997). The ends of our romantic partnerships are often momentous events—and although divorces are usually more compli- cated, the end of nonmarital romances can be powerfully affecting, too (Simon & Barrett, 2010). But when a couple breaks up, is that really the end of their relationship? Not necessarily.

Postdissolution Relationships

There’s an impressive amount of churning in romantic relationships that occurs when partners break up but then reconcile and get back together (in some cases, doing so several times). Half of us experienced that unsettled pattern when we were dating as teenagers (Halpern-Meekin et al., 2012), and, more notably, over a third (37 percent) of those who are currently cohabiting and almost a quar- ter (23 percent) of those who are presently married in the United States have cycled through an on/off/on again experience of breakup and renewal some- time in their past (Vennum et al., 2014).3 Churning is usually disadvantageous in relationships that continue, as it is associated with stress and uncertainty and generally lower satisfaction (Dailey et al., 2012)—but it does clearly indicate that the end of a relationship is sometimes temporary. Breakups are sometimes just a transitional phase in an enduring relationship (Dailey et al., 2013).

3 What’s more, a quarter of us have had “sex with an ex” after a breakup, and in most of those cases—63 percent—either we or our ex-partners had already begun having sex with someone else when those booty calls occurred (Halper-Meekin et al., 2012). With that in mind, I invite you to revisit our insightful discussion of “Safe, Sensible Sex” back on pages 294–298.

When a breakup is (finally) permanent, partners may remain friends, at least for a while, but in most cases their commitment to each other gradu- ally fades away entirely. This occurs because most of the pivotal events they encounter after their breakup are setbacks that undermine their commitment to a friendly postdissolution relationship (Kellas et al., 2008). They may have awkward, uncomfortable interactions, become jealous of the other’s new love, or have their sexual advances rebuffed. Or they may finally find it easier to avoid each other, screening their calls or moving away. Certainly, ex-lovers do sometimes hook up, provide needed support, and find forgiveness after a breakup occurs, and some maintain a worthy friendship. Gays and lesbians, in particular, are more likely than heterosexuals to remain connected to ex-lovers after a romance ends (Harkless & Fowers, 2005). But in most cases, the task we face when a breakup occurs is ultimately to get on with our lives without our ex-partners. What’s that adjustment like?

Getting Over It

Some relationships are richer than others, of course, and it’s especially difficult to lose a partnership that’s been characterized by high degrees of mutuality and self-expansion.4 Our self-concepts have to change when we lose a relation- ship that has been a rewarding, central part of our self-definition (Mason et al., 2012), and that can be a wrenching process. Strong emotions often occur. But they are usually not as intense as we think they will be, and they don’t last for- ever. People do heal.

4 These two concepts were introduced on pages 3 and 191, respectively.

An intriguing event-sampling study (Sbarra & Emery, 2005) obtained daily reports of the emotions experienced by young adults at the University of Virginia in the month after they ended a meaningful romantic relation- ship (that had been at least 4 months long). Participants carried beepers that prompted them to record their feelings at random times each day. Four emo- tional reactions were monitored (see Figure 13.3), and they demonstrated that, as you’d expect, breakups were painful. Compared to another group of students whose relationships were continuing, the ex-lovers were angry and sad, and their feelings of courage and strength (that is, “relief”) were erod- ing. Two weeks later, as their romantic love for their ex-partners continued to recede, their anger was reduced and their sadness was ebbing, but their relief was lower, too. Their adjustment continued, however, and after another 2 weeks, they were no sadder than their peers and their relief had rebounded. A month into the process, they were noticeably less in love and their courage and strength were returning.

And importantly, all of this was less awful than they thought it would be. Every 2 weeks, another study asked young adults what they expected to feel if their current romances ended—and it then started tracking the actual responses of those whose relationships did end (Eastwick et al., 2008). In advance of a breakup, the participants correctly predicted the rate with which their distress would fade with time—they knew that time would heal their wounds—but they overestimated the initial pain they would feel when the breakup occurred. This sort of mistake is common. Our forecasts of our emo- tional responses to events are often in error (Hartnett & Skowronski, 2010). In this case, though, the wrongful predictions offer some hopeful news: As awful as they often are, the average breakup doesn’t hurt as much as we think it will.

Of course, some breakups are worse than others. It’s generally harder to be rejected than to do the rejecting (Perilloux & Buss, 2008), and anyone who mopes and dwells on what they’ve lost and how lousy they feel during a breakup is likely to have a hard time; rumination prolongs our distress, whereas reflection—seeking meaning in our experiences and looking to learn from them—is associated with positive adjustment and recovery (Saffrey & Ehrenberg, 2007). But people with insecure styles of attachment who are anxious about abandonment are particularly likely to have trouble mentally letting go. They remain preoccupied with the ex-partner (and are especially upset at the thought of him or her with someone new), so they remain sadder longer than others do (Sbarra, 2006). (To get their minds off their ex-partners, they should start browsing dating sites to see who else is out there; anxious people detach more easily from a failed relationship when they set their sights on someone new [Spielmann et al., 2009]. But neither they nor any- one else should haunt an ex-partner’s Facebook page; the more time people spend examining an ex’s page, the longer it takes them to heal and move on [Marshall, 2012].) People with secure attachment styles fare better after break- ups. They brood less, so they’re less likely to stay angry. They’re also more likely to accept the finality of the relationship’s end, so they start healing and recover from sadness sooner (Sbarra, 2006).

Divorce Is Different

The end of a marriage is usually much more complex. Estates must be divided, children provided for, and laws followed, and the event changes one’s life, sometimes for better but sometimes for worse.

Adjustment

Let’s start with the good news. People are better off when they exit a miser- able marriage, especially if they are leaving a hostile, abusive partner (Amato & Hohmann-Marriott, 2007). Spouses who are depressed and who have hit bottom when a marriage ends tend to feel better, rather than worse, after the divorce (Cohen et al., 2007). Making a change is desirable when a marriage is desolate and unsalvageable.

On the whole, however, divorces are complex, often difficult journeys that can leave people less well off for years afterward. Figure 13.4 displays the results of a remarkable investigation, the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, which monitored the outcomes experienced by more than 30,000 people over a span of 18 years (Lucas, 2005). Several hundreds of them were divorced or widowed during the study, and on average, both events were dreadful, causing big drops in people’s satisfaction with their lives. This is evident in the figure, but there are three other patterns of note there, too. First, people who were destined to divorce were less happy years earlier; they even entered their marriages being less content. Second, their divorces typically halted a painful pattern of eroding contentment, and once they exited their distressed marriages, life started getting better. But third, years later, they still weren’t as happy as they had been before the decline and fall of their marriages. There was a lot of idiosyncrasy in people’s well-being after a divorce, and the average trajectory pictured here makes divorce look meaner than it turns out to be for most people, who carry on resiliently after their marriages end. And some people (9 percent) are much happier after a divorce than they had been before. For others, however, a decrease in well-being that accompanies divorce is long-lasting; years later, 19 percent of divorcees are less happy than they had been before their marriages failed (Mancini et al., 2011). Divorces are often monumental events in people’s lives, and although time heals, it may not do so completely.

While Figure 13.4 is fresh in our minds, let’s also acknowledge the devas- tating losses suffered by people who are widowed. The magnitude of the loss is hard for outsiders to comprehend. Twenty years later, widows and widow- ers still hold imaginary conversations with their lost loves about once a month (Carnelley et al., 2006), and as you can see in the figure, their satisfaction with life is diminished for a very long time, on average. Occasional bouts of grief may still occur a decade later, especially when the survivor is high in anxiety about abandonment (Meier et al., 2013) or the spouse’s death was sudden and unexpected (Stroebe et al., 2012). So, like the loss of a child, this isn’t a hurt that is ever forgotten, and generous, supportive friends will respect that. This is not a loss that people easily put behind them.

Back to divorce. Only two-thirds (68 percent) of those who get divorced after their mid-20s ever remarry, but those who do have usually taken the plunge for the second time within 4 years, on average (Elliott & Simmons, 2011). Remarrying is often a turning point for divorced singles that is associated with a boost in well-being (Blekesaune, 2008); indeed, if they stay unmarried, divorced people are 55 percent more likely than their remarried peers to die sometime during the next 40 years (Sbarra & Nietert, 2009). But whether or not they remarry, over three-fourths of those who divorce will report, 6 years later, that their divorce was a good thing (Hetherington, 2003).

So, outcomes vary. It can take years to adjust to the end of a marriage, but most people gradually bounce back. However, others end up defeated by their divorces, suffering distress and difficulty in their lives and their relationships for years thereafter (Sbarra & Mason, 2013). And almost everyone finds that the stresses don’t end when the divorce is final; divorce changes one’s social network and finances as well as one’s intimate life.

Social Networks

People turn to their friends and family for support during a divorce, and the time they spend with friends increases, especially in the first year (Hanson et al., 1998). However, people usually lose about half of the members of their social networks (such as some friends and most of the in-laws) when their mar- riages end, and in many cases, ex-spouses never make enough new friends to replace the ones they’ve lost (Terhell et al., 2004). So, people typically have smaller social networks for years following a divorce.

Morever, not all of the remaining members of one’s social network are likely to be supportive. About 50 percent of divorced people have interactions with their estranged spouses that are hostile or tense, and half of them also report that they have relatives who disapprove of their separation (Stewart et al., 1997). Not everyone who is close to a divorced person will offer desirable support.

Economic Resources

Women’s finances usually deteriorate when they leave their marriages. National surveys in the United States find that their household incomes drop substantially, by about 27 percent, and this pattern has existed for decades (Emery et al., 2012). Men’s household incomes tend to drop, too, but they’re more likely than women to live by themselves after they divorce; the women are much more likely to have children in their households. So, if you count the number of mouths ex-spouses have to feed, men’s per capita income goes up 34 percent in the year after they divorce whereas mothers’ incomes drop 36 percent (Sayer, 2006). Men actually have more money to spend on their own needs and interests whereas women ordinarily have less. On average, then, a woman’s standard of living decreases after she divorces, whereas a man’s improves.

Relationships Between Ex-Spouses

When a couple has children, a divorce doesn’t mean they’re done deal- ing with each other. Parents usually have continued contact, and antagonism, ambivalence, nostalgia, or regrets may all shape their ongoing interactions (Halford & Sweeper, 2013). Emerging from these conflicting feelings appear to be four broad types of postmarital relationships (Ahrons, 1994): Fiery Foes, Angry Associates, Cooperative Colleagues, and Perfect Pals. For both Fiery Foes and Angry Associates, the spouses’ animosity toward each other still defines their relationship. Despite their open disrespect for each other, Angry Associ- ates have some capacity to work together in co-parenting their children, but Fiery Foes have very little; their bitterness keeps them at constant odds. Coop- erative Colleagues aren’t good friends, but they are civil and pleasant to each other and they are able to cooperate successfully in parenting tasks. Finally, Perfect Pals maintain “a strong friendship with mutual respect that did not get eroded by their decision to live separate lives” (Ahrons, p. 116). In a sample of divorced parents in the midwestern United States, half the ex-spouses had amicable relationships (38% Cooperative Colleagues, 12% Perfect Pals) and half had distressed relationships (25% Angry Associates and 25% Fiery Foes) a year after their divorces.

The Children of Divorce

The verdict is in. Decades of research involving hundreds of thousands of people converge on the conclusion that, compared to those whose parents stay married, children whose parents divorce exhibit lower levels of well-being both as adolescents and as young adults. Their psychological adjustment is poorer; they experience more depression and anxiety and less satisfaction with life. Their behavior is more problematic; they use more drugs, break more laws, make more unwanted babies, and get poorer grades. And, as we’ve already seen, their adult relationships are more fragile; the children of divorce are more likely than others to divorce themselves. These effects are usually not large, and many children experience their parents’ divorce without much difficulty. Still, the global impact of a parental divorce, although modest, is routinely negative (Amato, 2010; Sbarra & Beck, 2013).

Why are the children of divorce less well off? The outcomes I just noted are merely correlated with parental divorce, and there may be several reasons why these patterns exist. Spouses and families that experience a divorce may differ in several meaningful ways from those who don’t, and a number of influ- ences may be at work. For one thing, children of divorce inherit some of their greater risk for unstable marriages, so the stresses of their parents’ divorce aren’t entirely to blame (D’Onofrio et al., 2007). The same traits that make their parents poor partners—neuroticism or impulsivity, perhaps—may be passed on to the children when they’re born, making the transmission of divorce from one generation to the next genetic instead of just experiential. Still, with due respect to the complexities involved, the divorce of one’s parents often brings on several stresses that may also be very influential: the loss of a parent, paren- tal stress, economic hardship, and family conflict (Lansford, 2009).

According to a parental loss view, children are presumed to benefit from having two parents who are devoted to their care, and children who lose a parent for any reason, including divorce, are likely to be less well off (Barber, 2000). Indeed, if a divorce does occur, children fare better when they spend time with both parents (Fabricius, 2003), and they do worse if one of their parents moves some distance away (Braver et al., 2003).

In contrast, a parental stress model holds that the quality, not the quantity, of the parenting a child receives is key, and any stressor (including divorce) that distracts or debilitates one’s parents can have detrimental effects. According to this view, children’s outcomes depend on how well a custodial parent adjusts to a divorce, and, consistent with this perspective, children of divorce usually start doing more poorly in school when their parents grow dissatisfied, long before they actually break up (Sun, 2001). Of course, one major stressor is eco- nomic hardship, and it may be the impoverished circumstances that sometimes follow divorce, not just the divorce per se, that adds to children’s burdens. Any difficulties faced by the children are reduced if the custodial parent has sufficient resources to support them well (Sun & Li, 2002). (Indeed, you may be person- ally familiar with one of the unfortunate outcomes routinely faced by children of divorce: Compared to parents who stay married, those who divorce contribute less money toward their children’s college educations [Turley & Desmond, 2011].)

All of these factors are influential, but the most potent influence of them all is parental conflict (Lansford, 2009). Acrimonious interactions between par- ents appear to be hard on children, and whether or not a divorce occurs, con- flict in the home is associated with more anxiety (Riggio, 2004), poorer health (Miller & Chen, 2010), and more problematic behavior (Musick & Meier, 2010) in children. Remarkably, even when babies are sleeping, the regions of their brains that regulate emotion and stress respond strongly to the sound of angry voices—if the babies live in high-conflict homes (Graham et al., 2013). So, take a look at Figure 13.5: As you might expect, children are happiest when they live in an intact family in which little conflict or discord occurs, and their well-being is much lower when divorce occurs in a low-conflict home. But if they live amidst constant conflict, children are worse off when the parents don’t divorce; when a divorce breaks up an angry, embattled household, there’s almost no decrease in the children’s well-being at all (Amato, 2003). Thus, the question of whether unhappy spouses should “stay together for the sake of the children” seems to depend on whether they can be civil toward each other; children suffer when a peaceable marriage is disrupted, but they are better off going through a divorce if their homes are full of conflict (Musick & Meier, 2010).

There are two more points to make. First, there’s no question that chil- dren are less affected by divorce if they are able to maintain high-quality relationships with their parents thereafter. Whatever their sources, the poorer outcomes often experienced by children of divorce are greatly reduced when the children continue to have meaningful, loving contact with their parents and grandparents (Henderson et al., 2009). When parents cooperate to become attentive, devoted co-parents, their children grow up having better relation- ships with them and with the rest of their extended families (Ahrons, 2007). Second, many of the poorer outcomes experienced by children of divorce grad- ually fade with time (Sun & Li, 2002). People are resilient, and children heal if they are provided sufficient love and support (Emery et al., 2012). Divorcing or remarrying parents may find it helpful to remember that their children will probably be just fine if they enjoy freedom from poverty and receive loving, reliable, consistent parenting that is free of parental conflict.

13.5 FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Connie and Bobby married during their senior year in high school when she became pregnant with their first child. They didn’t have much money, and the baby demanded a lot of attention, so neither of them went to college, and after a few years and another child, it appeared that neither of them would. Bobby now works as a long-haul trucker, so he is gone for several days at a time. Connie is a cashier at a grocery store, and she is increasingly disgruntled. She has always felt that she deserved more than the modest life she leads, and she has started viewing Bobby with hidden disrespect. He is a cheerful, friendly man who is very warm to his children, but he lacks ambition, and Connie is beginning to think that he’ll never “move up in the world.” So, she feels very flattered by the flirtatious regional manager of the grocery store chain who asks her out for drinks and dinner when Bobby is on the road. She fantasizes about how much more exciting her life would be if she were married to the manager, and she has decided to sleep with him to see what that’s like.

In your opinion, having read this chapter, what should Connie do? What does the future hold for Connie and Bobby? Why?

13.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Changing Rate of Divorce

The Prevalence of Divorce. Divorce became much more common during the twentieth century, particularly in the United States.

Why Has the Divorce Rate Increased? High expectations for marriage, women working, changing gender roles, creeping individualism, no-fault divorce legislation, and premarital cohabitation may all have played a part. Children are also more likely to come from broken homes, and many of us have divorced friends.

The Predictors of Divorce

Levinger’s Barrier Model. When attraction and barriers are low but alter- native attractions are high, divorce is likely.

Karney and Bradbury’s Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model. Enduring personal vulnerabilities, stressful events, and the adaptive processes with which people cope with their difficulties combine to influence marital quality.

Results from the PAIR Project. Enduring dynamics predict how happy marriages will be, but disillusionment best predicts which couples will actually divorce.

Results from the Early Years of Marriage Project. The social context in which couples conduct their relationships is important.

People’s Personal Perceptions of Their Problems. Divorced spouses iden- tify infidelity, incompatibility, and drug use as the three most common reasons why they sought a divorce.

Specific Predictors of Divorce. A variety of societal, demographic, rela- tional, and personal influences are related to an increased risk of divorce.

Breaking Up

Breaking Up with Premarital Partners. Persevering indirectness is the most common strategy for breaking up.

Steps to Divorce. When spouses divorce, they often go through personal, dyadic, social, and grave-dressing phases that are followed by a resurrection phase.

The Aftermath of Breakups

Postdissolution Relationships. Some couples continue a friendship after a romantic breakup, but most partnerships fade away completely. Some churning may occur before a relationship finally ends.

Getting Over It. Strong emotions often occur, but they’re usually not as intense as we expect, and they don’t last forever.

Divorce Is Different. Divorces are often monumental events, and the con- sequences can last for years.

The Children of Divorce. Children of divorce exhibit reduced well-being, but they can prosper if their parents stay involved with them and are civil to each other. Children fare better if surly, hostile parents do divorce than if they do not because parental conflict is deleterious to children.

未完待续，持续更新中

The series continues to be updated...

Chapter 1 The Building Blocks of Relationships （I）【121777】

Chapter 1 The Building Blocks of Relationships （II）【152979】

Chapter 2 Research Methods 【596719】

Chapter 3 Attraction （I）【431743】

Chapter 3 Attraction （II）【213329】

Chapter 4 Social Cognition（I）【607185】

Chapter 4 Social Cognition（II）【388771】

Chapter 5 Communication (I) 【261909】

Chapter 5 Communication (II) 【230707】

Chapter 6 Interdependency 【228653】

Chapter 7 Friendship 【166249】

Chapter 8 Love 【240092】

Chapter 9 Sexuality 【598969】

Chapter 10 Stresses and Strains（I）【251315】

Chapter 10 Stresses and Strains（II）【438527】

Chapter 11 Conflict 【275533】

Chapter 12 Power and Violence 【929610】

Chapter 13 The Dissolution and Loss of Relationships

Chapter 14 Maintaining and Repairing Relationships