12 Reasons for Divorce

It is the hope of many couples that when they marry, their marriage will last till death parts them. However, in this imperfect world, many things contribute to making that dream become a nightmare for some couples. According to InfidelityFacts, 53% of marriages in the United States end in divorce. So, what are the reasons for divorce? Why do people who promised to love each other till death get divorced mid-way through the marriage journey?

Let us look at 12 of the most common reasons for divorce.

At the beginning of many marriages, both spouses put in a lot of effort and do their best to try to make the marriage work.

However, sometimes, a spouse or both spouses can lose interest in a marriage. A spouse, or both partners, may refuse to put in the effort needed to make the marriage work. This may continue until he or she gets to the point where they no longer feel romantic towards their mate—their commitment can wane until they become indifferent.

When the partner who is making an effort to ensure the marriage works feels that the uncommitted spouse is no longer willing to work on the relationship to sustain it, the marriage can breakdown.

As a result, they may become indifferent which can destroy the marriage.

When a man and woman choose to unite in marriage, each expects the other to honor the marriage vows. So, the love a husband or wife has for the spouse can die when the partner has an affair. That action can kill the vitality in a marriage and leave it spiritless.

The victim whose spouse cheats on him or her can feel so hurt and betrayed that he or she will find it difficult to trust their spouse again. This can harm communication, cause frequent arguments, and breed resentment and bitterness which can eat away at the foundation of the marriage and cause a total breakdown of the relationship.

Some couples have frequent misunderstandings and are not able to resolve such fights amicably. These conflicts can get worse and increase in number and intensity and grow into acrimonious fights.

Constant fighting can hurt communication in a marriage and weaken the bond of love between the couple. Furthermore, a spouse can get very frustrated with the frequent arguments and feel that his or her partner is no more in love with him or her.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 50% of teenager marriages in the United States fail within the first fifteen years, and about 35% of marriages between young men and women in their mid- twenties end in divorce.

Some teenagers throw themselves into marriage without getting to know their partners very well. They do not exercise patience and date their partners for a considerable length of time so that they can appraise him or her well enough to decide whether he or she will be a good marriage partner.

Moreover, in their rush to get married as a result of youthful exuberance, they do not give thoughtful consideration to issues critical to the success of a marriage, such as differences in temperament, whether they are going to have children or not and so on, and such issues crop up in the relationship and cause marital discord.

Additionally, when they get married, an inability to make mature decisions and a realization that the responsibilities of marriage hinder their ability to have fun make them realize that they should have waited for some time before tying the knot and so they agree to part ways.

A husband and a wife can have very different sex drives. One spouse may have a huge sexual appetite whilst the other may not enjoy having sex regularly.

The partner with a stronger libido may make efforts to get the spouse with a weaker libido to boost his sexual desire, but an uncooperative spouse can make him or her feel rejected, he may seek sexual fulfillment with someone else, and this can result in disaster for the marriage.

Or, whilst one partner may be at his sexual peak, the other may have passed his, and so may not be responsive to his or her spouse sexually anymore. As a result, the partner being deprived may feel neglected. As a result, he or she may become unhappy in the marriage because they are not getting enough sex, and that can lead to divorce.

Good, effective communication is a very essential ingredient for the success of any romantic relationship. It helps to enhance the continued growth of love between couples, provides an avenue through which spouses talk about their feelings and desires and get to understand what their spouses want and need so that they can fulfill those desires to maintain a healthy relationship.

However, in some marriages, spouses adopt bad communication habits which can make one spouse feel unwanted—the spouse may feel the partner does not care for him or her. That can cause distrust, resentment, bitterness, and coldness which can weaken the relationship and lead to a termination of the marriage when one partner feels that there is really no relationship but just a “co-habitation”.

A study conducted by the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts among Certified Divorce Financial Analyst professionals in North America found that money issues are one of the major reasons why couples divorce.

When couples have different spending habits, when one is a spendthrift whilst the other is a miser, it can lead to misunderstanding which can create tension and bitterness between lovers and, hence, frequent quarrels which may undermine the stability of the marriage.

Furthermore, how much each spouse contributes to the marriage can hurt the unity of purpose in the marriage can cause disrespect when the spouse who is contributing more money feels that he or she is shouldering the bigger part of the financial burden of the family, and this can weaken the emotional connection between the couple and help to destroy the marriage.

Moreover, how to spend the money they make and on what to spend it can lead to disagreements which can create an unhealthy marriage. As time goes on, these disagreements increase and cause unhappiness until one spouse decides to back out of the relationship.

Research shows that when people of different faiths and from different cultural backgrounds get married, it can create marital dissatisfaction and unhappiness in the marriage, which can eventually cause a dissolution of the marriage.

People with different faiths start having conflicts when they start having children and start arguing about which faith to use to train the children. This can influence the way one partner views his or her spouse, lead to a change in attitude towards a spouse and a subsequent loss of love which can lead to a divorce.

Physical and emotional abuse in a marriage can also lead to a dissolution of a marriage. Abuse in some marriages starts small. It can intensify and the partner at fault may apologize and promise not to repeat his or her behavior again.

However, it can become a pattern in which a spouse commits the abuse and then shows contrition. This can go on until the abuse reaches levels where the victim feels emotionally traumatized by the partner and so decides that enough is enough.

Many scientific studies have shown that doing things together can help to produce a healthy relationship. On the other hand, when couples pursue their own parochial interests at the expense of the relationship, and fail to do things in common, they grow apart.

This can happen in some marriages in which, as they grow older, spouses develop different interests and focus all their time and energy on those interests. As a result, they give little attention to their spouses. This affects communication in the marriage and weakens the connection between the couple.

This can continue until they get to the point where they see that there is no use staying together since they do not have a common purpose and do not do things in common. So, they agree to part ways.

According to a study conducted by the US National Center for Biotechnological Information, of the National Library of Medicine, substance abuse contributes significantly to divorce.

Some spouses get addicted to alcohol or drugs. This causes such spouses to exhibit anti-social behaviors. Furthermore, they may lie to their partners, steal from them, assault them physically and verbally, or lose their jobs as a result of their addiction.

All these can destroy the trust in a marriage and make the spouse at the receiving end become frustrated and disillusioned which can influence him or her to quit the marriage.

Some couples do not take their time to get to know the person they will be living together with for the rest of their lives. They get carried away by the physical attractiveness of the potential mate or the fact that the person is rich, and forget to pay close attention to other issues such as character.

Later, they get married and then discover things about their spouse that they did not see during the days of dating. A marriage can showcase behaviors that some partners manage to hide from their lover during the dating days. Although the husband and wife may have similar tastes and personality, there may be significant differences in style, habits and attitudes. Some couples are unable to reconcile those differences and so decide to part ways.

These are some of the reasons people give for divorce. If your marriage is experiencing some of the symptoms that show that it is heading for a divorce, try to work things out or seek counseling so that you can prevent a divorce.