More on the crazy business of predicting marital success

In the previous blog we started a series on predicting divorce or marital success.  Will we make it or won’t we? is the question so many people ask. 

Today I want to talk about an aspect of this that few people talk about but that’s very real.  If you ask someone if they want to get divorced or stay married, the honest answer, and the accurate one, based on research, is “Well, that depends on the costs and benefits of my staying married, on my options, and on my search costs, and on my transaction costs.”  In other words, the probability of staying married is a function of the excess of benefits over costs, the search costs, and the transaction costs. 

Of course no one actually says that.  And that’s because no one wants to seem that cold and unromantic.  But that’s how it plays out.  It works like this:

• When the costs of staying married rise, the probability of staying married falls.  This is why people get divorced if they find they’ve married a cheater or a loser.  And this is why marital therapy reduces the probability of divorce: it increases the benefits of staying married. 
• The more options someone has, the more likely they are to get divorced.  If there are two people and one is young and attractive and the other is old and over the hill, guess who is more likely to divorce?  And this is also why if one woman divorces the probability that her friends will divorce increases: the option of being single suddenly seems less scary and more attractive. 
• The higher the search costs, the less likely people are to get divorced.  It’s hard to find someone new.  It’s particularly hard to find someone with whom you can be sure you’ll be happy.  What’s the point of going from the frying pan into the fire?  But if you have an affair, then suddenly the other person is known and road tested (at least seems to be!), so it is then much easier to leave your marriage.  In the same vein, isolated people will be much less likely to divorce. 
• Then there are transactions costs.  If you expect the divorce will be bitter, if you are afraid you won’t see much of your children, if you are under a lot of social pressure from friends and family to stay married, then you are less likely to divorce.  No wonder there’s a bump up in divorce after the kids grow up: the transactions costs suddenly go down. 

So the next time you hear about someone getting divorced, don’t be so surprised.  Something changed with respect to the costs or benefits of marriage, the options the people had, the search costs, and the transactions costs.  And don’t feel superior either.  We are all just as susceptible to the same forces as everyone else.  If any of these variables change for us, we too could just as easily find ourselves headed for the divorce court.   

This model explains why divorce rates are higher in red states than in blue states, higher in Arkansas than in Massachusetts (the state with the lowest divorce rate in the country, and probably not just because we have our practice here).  In red states there is less access to contraception and abortion.  More people get married because there are children.  But having children is a bad reason to get married: it has nothing to do with whether you’re compatible, only whether you can mate.  So there are likely fewer benefits to your actual relationship.  And so there is a higher probability of divorce. 

This model also means that one item in the equation is enormously important: the benefits of staying married.  The higher the benefits, the more likely people are to stay married.  So don’t worry about how likely you are to get divorced.  Instead, focus on bumping up those benefits.  And by the way: love is not a benefit.  Love is cold comfort if you have nothing in common, if you don’t enjoy talking to each other, if you don’t have fun.  Now those are benefits. 

Bottom line: the more good stuff in a marriage, the less likely the people are to get divorced.  So go now and make more good stuff in your marriage.  And you can do it.  If you wonder how, there’s a lot of help in the classic Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad. 

And if you want expert, experienced, results-oriented help with your marriage, please visit us here at The Chestnut Hill Institute.

Posted: Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Category: Relationships, News & Notes, Emotional Energy, Decision Making, Uncategorized
Author: Mira and Charles
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