Nothing can predict the future with 100 percent accuracy. If your relationship with your spouse is strong and loving today, it probably still will be years from now. But plenty of divorced people in Norwalk thought their marriages would last too. Meanwhile, a lot of people in troubled marriages manage to work out their problems and avoid divorce.
If there were a way to predict divorce years ahead of time, spouses would have the chance to prepare themselves financially and emotionally, and end things instead of futilely trying to fix the issues in their marriage. The authors of a new study believe they have found a reliable predictor of divorce: feeling ambivalent about your husband or wife.
Seven-year study of married couples
The study is based on data from the Iowa Youth and Family Project, which followed 451 married couples over seven years, starting when they had a child in seventh grade. As part of their participation in the project, the couples and their children answered various questions about the marital relationship. Some of the questions asked the spouses about their feelings for each other and how satisfied they were with their marriages. The project also kept track of which couples got divorced during the seven-year period.
Ambivalence about marriage seems to lead to divorce
The study concluded that participants who reported feeling ambivalent about their spouse were most likely to end up divorced by the end of the project time period. In other words, people who had about equally positive and negative feelings about their spouse were less likely to remain married to them.
Feelings about your spouse can change over time, even from week to week or day to day. If you or your spouse decide the marriage is over, you will need to make sure you receive a reasonable share of the marital assets, as well as a fair and practical child custody arrangement that puts the kids’ needs first.