36 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
kinds of situations begin to put more stress on the marriage. Sure
enough, those are exactly the kinds of couples that are increas-
ingly prone to divorce.
Causal Factors
The single greatest cause of divorce—marriage!
—Anonymous
Whenever I lecture on divorce, I get asked the almost trick ques-
tion, “What are the main causes of divorce?” My canned reply:
“The same ones we see in the daytime TV soap operas... the big
three are Sex, Money, and Family.” Other key lightning rods are
the allocation of household chores and responsibilities, alcohol or
other substance abuse and, sadly enough, spouse abuse. Appar-
ently, the soap operas are pretty accurate in highlighting these
themes. No wonder millions of Americans watch them with such
interest.
Let’s take a closer look at the issue of interspousal commu-
nication (or the lack of it), since that too can be a major mar-
riage buster. There is now strong evidence that the relationships
most likely to end in divorce are not necessarily those in which
the spouses fight too nastily or too often. Nor are those married
couples who have their own in-house policy of trying to avoid
conflict necessarily headed for trouble (something that previous
research had suggested). Rather, the latest studies suggest that the
marriages most likely to dissolve are those in which some or all of
these four behaviors are chronic: criticism, contempt, defensive-
ness, or withdrawal.
“It’s not the amount of empathy or understanding in a relation-
ship that predicts who is going to make it and who is going to
divorce,” says Howard Markman, professor of psychology at the
University of Denver. “It’s the zingers or negative behaviors.”
All marriages have conflicts, but that doesn’t necessarily have
to be a deal breaker. The key is the ability to resolve them. A mar-
riage counselor friend of mine cites a popular quote that “the dif-
ference between a good marriage and a bad one is three to four