Week 11: Relationship Breakdown, Loss And Repair Flashcards
Divorce stats
US - 50%
Aus - 35%
Marriages less likely to break up than co-habiting couples
Engaged co-habitors - better grounds
Why is it difficult to study divorce?
- takes time for marriages to dissolve
- need to track from newly-weds over many years
- sampling issues - who agrees to participate in the study?
Early research - Levinger (1967) - why didn’t people get divorced - external barriers model
- economic barriers - nb w increasing financial independence
- when both financial ind. each may feel less guilty about ending the rship knowing it won’t cause financial hardship
- legal barriers - before no-fault
- religious barriers
- children
- social barriers vary
Implications for Gay and Lesbian - more likely to break up than het. married as they are less constrained by external barriers
Current predictors of divorce
- personal: age, education, income, religion
- being younger strongest predictor of div. within the first 5 yrs
- rships: hist of divorce, not poolin finances
Other - loose community connections: less support for married couples
- more positive attitudes towards divorce
- ‘casual’ cohabitation: increases likelihood of divorce
- witnessing parental divorce: shapes expectations and marital behaviors
Changing marriage expectations
- higher expectations “a path to personal fulfillment”: play, exciting, passionate
- changing gender roles: economic ind. for w, w expecting more domestic work from husbands - makes wives happier, husbands less happy.
Processes of Adaption in Intimate Relationships (PAIR) project (Huston, 2000). Marriages fail for 3 reasons:
1) the enduring dynamics model: basic problems exist before the marriage and continue
2) emergent distress model: problems arise after marriage and couple can’t resolve them
3) disillusionment model: unrealistic positivity at the beginning gives way to disappointment
Strongest predictor:
- disillusionment model: more rapid, the more likely to divorce
- fits with the evolutionary model of fading passion and relationship break-up, if companionate love has not developed
A divorce gene?
- identical twin 5x more likely to divorce if twin has. Even if separated at birth
- divorce-prone personality: high neuroticism the most consistent predictor
Interdependence approach
- commitment to stay is strongest when dependence is high (even if rewards are low)
- satisfy needs elsewhere?
- attractive alternatives?
- if satisfaction and dependence are low an attractive alternatives are available, divorce is more likely
Couple behaviors
- 3 most consistent predictors were infidelity, jealousy, and reckless spending (Amato & Rogers, 1997)
- vulnerability-stress-adaption model (Karney & Bradbury, 1995)
• some ppl enter a rship with pre-existing vulnerabilities that make it difficult for them to cope adaptively to stressful events, including marital conflict
Divorce initiator behaviour
- ambiguous attempts to communicate dissatisfaction
- escalation
- decrease interaction w partner
- violate rship rules: e.g. Criticize partner in public; infidelity)
Initiator advantages
Have time to
- reconstruct rship mentally
- plan exit strategy
- develop another rship (transitional partner)
- construct an account of breakup
The more victims attribute the cause of the break-up to their partners, the less adjustment they experience
Cascading towards divorce
Gottman (1994) - distance and isolation cascade model of marital breakdown. 4 questionnaire subscales;
1) flooding: emotional outbursts that lead to withdrawal
2) loneliness: increasing isolation and belief that problems are too hard to resolve;
3) work things out? May seem too difficult and hopeless
4) parallel lives?
Gutted rship: meshed interactions are severed and interdependence decreases
Duck’s Model
- breakups are composed of several different but connected phases
- the model takes account of partners’ initial internal dissatisfaction before communicating w each other; contributions from network members; and concerns for own and other impressions and evaluations of self and rship
1) intra-psychic phase: one or both partners becomes distressed about rship - neg internal talk - complain to family and friends
2) dyadic phase: partners try to confront and talk through their feelings with one another - interpersonal mess (conflict,anger) may be shock and pain for unaware partner
3) social phase: if break up; have to tell other ppl and get network support (may hinder or help)
4) grave-dressing phase: practicalities and also emotional - constructing an account of the relationship that saves face and aids recovery
Responding to break-up (Sbarra & Emery, 2005)
Emotional trajectories
- individuals who had broken up with their partners reported sig more ANGER and less love, with feelings of love decreasing more slowly than sadness, which decreased more slowly than feelings of anger
Lingering emotions
- participants felt more love and sadness on days when they spoke to their ex-partners
- problem for separated and divorced ind. who need to maintain contact with one another in order to share joint responsibilities
Individual differences
- attachment security was neg ass. With anger and positively ass with relief; securely attached participants also experienced sig faster rates of decline in sadness over time
- more anxiously attached individuals have more difficulty recovering from post-breakup sadness than less anxiously attached individuals
Grief as a response to loss
1) protest and distress; ppl feel shock, numb, disbelief. As ppl see loss is real: intense pain and yearning.
- compulsion to search; may hallucinate; suicidal behaviors
2) despair: anger, sadness, aloneness, anxiety
- intense physical symptoms: appetite, sleep
- increases vulnerability to illness
- function?:
• poss no adaptive function (disorganized)
• loss of attachment, brings interruptions. Appraised as important and neg; thus fresh pain and distress
3) re-organisation: re-involvement and new attachments
- not forgotten, lessen over time
- some may grow via new perspectives and increase empathy
Only way to avoid grief is don’t attach; in dev. Nations mothers may delay attaching.
