Dissolution of Relationships, Causes

Complexities in Determining Causes of Relationship Dissolution

Identifying the cause or the causes of relationship dissolution is a very challenging endeavor for a number of reasons. First, there are important distinctions among what people report to be the cause of their breakup (i.e., the public perspective), what they actually believe to be the cause of their breakup (i.e., the partner perspective), and what may have actually caused the breakup (the researcher perspective). Research has suggested that people who are going through a divorce or dissolution typically create a public story of what happened in their relationship that led to its termination. These stories often present the individual in a positive light, minimizing the individual's role and attributing the dissolution to either one's ex-spouse or ex-partner or to unfortunate circumstances. Thus, these stories may be both incomplete and even inaccurate with respect to how the events surrounding the divorce actually unfolded. In addition, individuals may come to actually believe their stories, even if they were distortions of the truth. For example, partners often divide themselves into the leaver and the person who was left. However, research by Joseph Hopper indicates that it is not a simple matter to determine who was the one to leave and who was left and that individuals often assume these roles even though both parties were dissatisfied with the relationship and both may have been thinking of dissolving the relationship.

In addition, researchers attempt to identify the causes of divorce on a grander scale in the sense that they look for regularities in factors that may lead to dissolution among people in general. Whereas the partner perspective identifies each individual's view of what caused the dissolution of his or her relationship, the researcher perspective uses empirical investigations to identify factors that seem to account for dissolutions in the general population. Thus, the partner and researcher perspectives have different goals and may reach apparently divergent conclusions. For example, many individuals blame the termination of their relationship on infidelity. However, because many relationships survive instances of infidelity, the researcher perspective suggests that infidelity is seldom the primary cause of dissolution. Each perspective taps a different, but important, aspect of the complex picture of why dissolution occurs.

A second major challenge is that no single cause is likely to be sufficient to explain why dissolution occurred. The challenge is to identify the multiple factors that are causally responsible for the termination of the relationship. Finally, the factors reviewed in this entry do not always lead to relationship dissolution but increase the chances that it will occur.

First, this entry considers individual and relationship factors that contribute to divorce and then it reviews some possible societal factors implicated in high dissolution rates.

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