The average first marriage that ends in divorce lasts about 8 years, about the life of a new car.  Divorce rates in the US are at nearly 50 percent for first marriages, and two thirds of them are initiated by women.  With such dismal facts, it seems important to understand why marriages succeed or fail and how to know when it’s time to separate.

Ahhh, the new car smell, the shiny paint and the spotless interior.  I hadn’t had my new car for more than a month before my kid spilled chocolate milk in the console.  It was all downhill from there, no air freshener would help.  Yes, I kept up with the required maintenance and things continued to work smoothly, but it lost the luster with the spoilt milk smell.  Just like relationships, cars are perfect when they are brand new but life happens and it takes a lot of work to keep them fresh.

With decades of research, Dr. John Gottman can now predict with 91 percent accuracy whether a marriage will succeed or fail after watching a couple interact as little as 15 minutes.  An eye roll, a curl of the upper lip-both are signs of contempt.  Criticism is when a complaint is expressed as a character flaw and often begins with “you are” or “you always”.  One partner asks a question and the other ignores them while perusing a magazine-stonewalling. These small bits of data are collected on video during conflicted discussions between partners, plugged into a computer and are indicators of divorce according to Gottman’s decades of research.  I spent hundreds of hours analyzing these recordings during my undergrad studies and consider myself to be an expert at reading people’s relationships. As a couples’ therapist, these skills are helpful. But seeing these signs tell us whether a marriage is likely to succeed or fail but it doesn’t tell us when a couple should call it quits.

Signs a Marriage is Headed for Divorce

The common theme throughout unhappy marriages is betrayal.  Not just the obvious extramarital physical affair, but any choice that doesn’t put the partner before all others.  Some examples of this are siding with family against one’s mate, breaking promises, defensiveness and stonewalling, being too focused on the kids and disrespecting a partner.  Each of these behaviors creates distrust in the marriage and without repair can lead to divorce. 

When it comes down to it, we are biological creatures that need to feel physically safe in order to thrive.  If we are always expecting the worst, planning for all contingencies because we don’t trust our partners, or are unable to be vulnerable and put our guards down to relax the relationship will likely gasp the last breath and end in divorce. 

An unhappy marriage increases your odds of getting sick by roughly 35 percent and can even shorten your life by a period of 4-8 years. Gottman hypothesizes that this is because in an unhappy marriage people feel physically stressed and emotionally overwrought for long periods of time which affects the body.  In addition, studies done with preschoolers have found that in homes with great marital hostility, kids were more likely to  have chronically elevated stress hormone levels and when followed through the age of 15 these kids suffered far more from truancy, depression, peer rejection, behavior problems (especially aggression), low achievement at school and even school failure. (Dr. John Gottman, 2015)

What does a healthy marriage look like?

Being in a healthy marriage requires having humility for your own mistakes and a willingness to take accountability. It takes a desire to communicate well, with mutual listening and effort.  It means putting your partners needs before yours frequently.

It means having more positive memories than negative memories. 

All couples have negative feelings and thoughts about one another, but what makes a marriage work is the couples’ ability to keep the negative thoughts and feelings about each other from overwhelming the positive ones.  According to Gottman, happy couples have emotionally intelligent marriages and “the positive attitude not only allows them to maintain but also to increase the sense of romance, play, fun, adventure, and learning together that are at the heart of any long-lasting love affair. (Dr John Gottman, 2015)

What makes a marriage last?

The most basic necessary component to a successful marriage is really simple. Maybe too simple.  It’s reciprocal friendship.  We care about how our friends feel.  We typically try to attune to their emotional needs and support them.  We make an effort to reach out, to spend quality time, to share in a vulnerable way. We believe that they will be there to support us when we need them.  We might get angry, but we care about taking responsibility for our bad behaviors and have a desire to understand how they feel.

The same goes for spouses.  When we care about how our partner feels, we make an extra effort to communicate in a thoughtful and more gentle way.  We take the time to understand them and their peculiarities.  We turn toward them in an effort to repair any misunderstandings.  We allow ourselves to be influenced by them and we are more like teammates than opponents. We work together to solve problems and to navigate our way out of a gridlocked conflict situation.  These small things, when done regularly, keep the relationship strong enough to survive the inevitable tough times that might otherwise lead to divorce.

Now that you know why marriages succeed and fail, it would be helpful to look at how to know when yours has run its course.  Sometimes too much damage has been done to repair a relationship, even if you understand how you got to the point where you are and you are both wanting to change.

What are some warning signs that it may be time to separate? 

There’s a long list of possibilities, so I’m just going to focus on a few.

1.    Your gut tells you things are not improving.  You are your best detective and have the inside view to what your marriage is like.  Is there a string of betrayals?  Do you have reason to believe your spouse is not participating in the marriage and unwilling to address their own parts of the issues? Do you have health issues that are being exacerbated by the amount of stress in your marriage?  Studies show that arguing will not lead to divorce, but do you have issues resolving any conflict?

2.   You believe a separation would improve your quality of life.  Maybe when your partner goes away for a few days you breathe a sigh of relief.  Or, you don’t have a lot of feeling when you think about ending the marriage.  There may be a history of physical, mental, or emotional abuse. There is untreated substance use or other addictive behaviors that are causing problems in your life together. If you are humiliated, feel invisible, have a lack of communication about your needs, and perpetually feel lonely you have problems. These are deal breakers for most people.

People get hung up on whether they can make it on their own financially or are worried about the impact of a divorce on their kids.  These are legitimate concerns.  If you need answers, hire a professional.  Talk to a mediator, a lawyer or a therapist.

3.   You don’t like who you have become.  You might be angry, resentful, suspicious, focused on negative things, fearful, spineless or don’t know who you are or what you want.  Being with your spouse doesn’t inspire your creativity or to be your best.  Perhaps even more challenging is when you can’t trust your own voice and have begun to believe the negative things your spouse tells you.  (Trust me, rarely are you too sensitive, making too much out of nothing, crazy or losing your memory.  This is called gaslighting.  It’s when a person makes you doubt yourself or your recall of a situation.)

If you are in love with someone else, your marriage doesn’t stand a chance. End it with one or the other.  But, as a marital therapist, I caution you not to start a new relationship without first figuring out what is broken about YOU that needs fixing.  You will repeat your mistakes.

 4.   There is a lack of give and take in the relationship.  You might lead parallel lives and have little to do with one another in your free time and inviting your partner to do something has become a chore.  Is there a feeling of me-ness vs we-ness?  Maybe it’s ALL about them all of the time?  Narcissistic traits are a relationship killer. More effort on your part to make them happy is just going to keep the power imbalance going. 

You are uncertain about your willingness to continue to give more energy without the expectation of being paid back.  All of these things can lead to divorce.

 5.   You genuinely don’t like your partner.  Maybe there is an abundance of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling- what Gottman calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  You might have begun to focus on the things that irritate you and no longer see the initial quirks you recognized as endearing.  Maybe your partner is unkind, neurotic, unattractive or smells bad and you no longer find them attractive.  You really wonder what you ever saw in this person and rarely find yourself feeling happy at the thought of seeing them at the end of the day. 

 Similar to a car, sometimes you get a lemon of a partner. The person you choose is not what you thought you were getting; life gets hard and one of you is unable to keep up the healthy relationship skills or you are unable to grow together.  When seeing a therapist and working together to improve your quality of life is not an option, it may be time to trade in for a new model.

 Just remember, nobody is perfect, including you.  Not only do you need to pick a partner with the skills needed to be successful, but you have to be willing to do the work to keep things fresh when life gets in the way. An air freshener will only do so much.

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More information about Gottman’s findings can be found in his book The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work