Divorce

Why Do People Get Divorced?
Gottman offers research to support two main reasons and times for divorce:
•5-7 years due to high conflict
•10-12 years due to loss of intimacy and connection

But why does this happen? Wallerstein offers that divorce is passed down from divorcing parents to their children:
•Among adult children of divorced parents, only 60% marry, with 50% marrying before age 25 and
   most marrying people they had known only a short-time.
•40% of them eventually divorce (in other words, only 36% of children of divorce are happily
   married). Among adult children from intact families, 80% marry, and 9% of them divorce (in other
   words, 73% of children of intact families are happily married).
•Among the adult children of divorced parents that never marry, half are women. Among the adult
   children from intact families that never marry, one-third are women.

Amato supports this, and attributes the transmission to personal problems in spouses:
•Personal problems (self-report of being easy to get angry, hurt, or jealous; showing poor money-
   management skills; having had an affair) were twice as likely in marriages in which both partners'
   parents had divorced compared to marriages in which neither partners' parents had divorced
•Adding personal problems into the prediction equation took 39% and 55% of the variance away
   from parental divorce in one and both partners, reducing history of parental divorce to non-
   significance when seen in one partner
•Personal problems predicted divorce 4-12 years in the future, so high ratings of personal
   problems do not appear to be short-term reactions to a deteriorating marriage.

Further, this seemed more pronounced in shorter marriages:
•In marriages 0-4 years old, chances of divorce increased 87% if wives had a history of parental
   divorce, 620% if both partners did
•In marriages 5-10 years old, chances of divorce increased 41% if wives had a history of parental
   divorce, 160% if both partners did
•In marriage 11+ years old, history of parental divorce was not a significant predictor of divorce

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