What would you attribute to as most common reason for people getting divorce?

Finances. They made a television series on it. Till debt do us part.

For me, the reason was that he felt he needed to leave the imprint of his knuckles on the side of my face a minimum of twice a day. It was very popular at the time & I wasn’t the only wife with the problem. Over the years after my divorce, beating your wife wasn’t as popular. I have noticed that fads change about every 20 years or so.

Incompatibility and growing apart.

I had an old girlfriend (sadly, she married someone else), who said that husbands and wives were like steamships crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

You start from different ports. If you’re luck, you steam next to each other for a while, sometimes almost the whole length of the trip. But when you reach the other end (in this example, Europe) it’s unlikely you end up at the same port. Possible, but unlikely. More often than not, you end up at a different, but not necessarily distant, destination.

So it is with relationships and marriages. Sometimes you are moving in parallel with the spouse, but sometimes your destinations are not the same.

Men divorce because they don’t receive physical and/or especially emotional affection. Women typically divorce because either they are abused or there is not enough security. Incompatibility certainly greases the path to divorce. I’m not a believer in marriage. I think relationships are too fluid for such a commitment. That said, I’m married, I love my wife deeply but it’s far from perfect. I still love every serious girlfriend I have ever had. I’m a hard guy to get close to so if it happened at all it was something special. Casual sex was never in my vernacular and I avoided it like the plague. Nothing good comes from it. If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it’s “don’t get married”
If you find yourself married then it’s much, much better to try to make it work. Especially if your spouse is a good person and you still have feelings for them. Relationships are almost never perfect for more than a year or so. Even if the sparks fade your companion will become family, it’s inevitable when you share ten years or more with someone. Many of us could be so lucky, seriously. The thought of being elderly and alone is horrific in my mind and I’m extremely introverted so that should say something. I’m always going to need a feminine influence in my life.

Incompatibility means unable to agree on finances and most other daily choices.

“Failure to communicate !”

Here are the reasons some of my female friends and relatives got divorced. For some of them, there were ar least one of these reasons, and often multiples of these reasons:

Infidelity by their husband.

Disrespectful behavior by the husband of their spouse, such as telling their wife they were stupid or useless, and making their wife do everything from cooking, cleaning, finances, yardwork, child rearing (while she also had a full time job) and them complaining that things were not done to his liking.

Mama’s boy ^^ see above reason.

Anger issues and un-treated (and un-willingness to be treated) depression and/or anger issues.

Mental abuse of the wife and children.

Cheating &/or resentment.

I seem to remember stats that money is number one and sex number two. I don’t know if it’s exactly in that order, but I think those are high up there on the reason board.

Money meaning how you spend and save. It’s not necessarily how much you have, but if you two jibe with how you view money and utilize money.

Sex meaning physical connection and feeling desired, not necessarily the actual act of sex. Sex also kind of covers the two people growing apart, which I hear a lot, or wanting different things from life.

I once saw this show that talked to psychologists conducting a long term study about divorce. They started with married couples and questioned them in certain points and watched them over years, and who wound up divorced and who didn’t.

The psychologists who ran the study said that after doing it they feel they can predict within about 90% who will wind up divorced. That one of the most important things in a marriage is the couple checks in with each other what they each want in life and help each other work towards their goals. It can be anything from owning a boat, to taking a class, to losing weight, having children, you name it.

That made a lot of sense to me. If being married means you can’t do what makes you happy, or you can achieve things that are really important to you, then why be married.

They said you have to check in with each other periodically, because the goals change also. Anyway, I think that’s part of what growing in different directions can be, but sometimes it can’t be worked out easily. I think a big one is when the two people want to live in two different places. Another very difficult one to overcome is when one really wants children and the other doesn’t.

In my marriage financial stress has been one of the worst outside forces working against us. We have been through illness and the illness directly effects our sex life, and my fertility, and it is one of my biggest sadnesses in life that whole ball of misfortune, but it wasn’t until we had a set back financially that things really went haywire. We don’t even have to “worry” about finances.

As you said, it’s very complex, but if I have to way oversimplify it, I’d say not being each other’s best friend.

Looks change, money comes and goes, sex waxes and wanes, family is uncontrollable, jobs/status fluctuates, kids are wonderful and horrible — but, if you are truly best friends, it makes weathering all that much easier.

I’m always amazed at people who want to spend all their free time or share interests with someone other than their spouse. Or, folks who constantly complain to others about their spouse.

If your spouse is not your favorite person to be with, why the hell would you marry them?

AMEN @cookieman That answer should receive 100 GA’s!!!

Yeah, I love spending time with my husband. :). GA to @cookieman.

I live in a retirement community and the majority of the couples I interact with you can see how much they like being with their spouses, and they also talk about enjoying spending time with their spouse. Many of us do our own things without our spouses too, like zumba, golf, etc., but also we do so much with them.

I always think of that show Wife Swap, how suited some people are for each other.

Facebook link of the kind of sentiment I see here https://www.facebook.com/peoplemag/videos/10157090963473132/

Because now people (especially women) are getting even more intelligent and realize that separation is the logical answer to have a happier life and that independence is the best choice. If people are still bound by social stigma and religious pressure (which mean they’re a bunch of fools) to not get a divorce despite having an incompatible married life then they will contribute to the percentage of married, never-divorced couples statistics. Being married and never get a divorce does not equal a happy life.

^^Are you saying no one should be married? Or, that when a marriage is bad people should divorce?

There are some very nice things about being married.

Like I have my best friend here with me all of the time. Or, most of the time anyway.

^ Of course not. I’m saying that marriage is an option and not a necessity. And yes, when the marriage life is proven to be miserable for even just one party then a divorce the best solution for in the situation. You can say counseling and a such would solve the issue but more often than not some people who got divorced have tried all those things and they never worked. To try to continue a dysfunctional marriage is to relish in inertia (not really a bad idea, especially if the marriage provides you with at least financial support).

I am happy to hear that you have a happy married life, but not everyone will be so lucky to be in your position and sometimes divorce is the best course of action in the situation.

^^I’m fine with people getting divorced, or staying single to begin with, I didn’t mean to imply I wasn’t.

Edited
I think men primarily. want to be respected by their wives, and wives primarily want to be loved by their husbands. I think these are some of the reasons why people divorce.

If a man won’t respect himself, he won’t respect her, and he certainly won’t love her. If a man thinks of his needs first, how can he expect his wife to respect him?

Wives want their husbands to love them, but if he loves everything else in his life more than her, she’s going to know it right away.

Some people enter a marriage hating the opposite sex in general. My mother in law was like that. How can a man or woman hope to be respected (or loved) by someone like that? I felt sorry for my father in law.