What Factors are Associated with Divorce
and/or Marital Unhappiness?

This is not an exhaustive list of risk factors, but the list contains those that have been found in various ways by many researchers to increase the odds of a couple experiencing unhappiness and divorce.

Factors THAT ARE HARD TO CHANGE ONCE You are MARRIED (Static Risk factors):

Having a personality tendency to react strongly or defensively to problems and  disappointments

Having divorced parents

Living together prior to marriage

Being previously divorced, yourself or your partner

Having children from a previous marriage

Having different religious backgrounds

Marrying at a very young age (for example, at the age of 18 or 19; the average these days is about 25 or 26 years of age for first marriages).

Knowing each other only for a short time before marriage

Experiencing financial hardship  

Factors that you can change to improve your odds, if you work at it (Dynamic risk factors):

Negative styles of talking and fighting with each other, like arguments that rapidly become negative, put downs, and the silent treatment

Difficulty communicating well, especially when you disagree

Trouble handling disagreements as a team

Unrealistic beliefs about marriage

Having different attitudes about important things

A low level of commitment to one another, reflected in such things as not protecting your relationship from others you are attracted to, or failing to view your marriage as a long term investment  

Compiled by Drs. Scott Stanley and Howard Markman

University of Denver

also of PREP, Inc.

co-authors of Fighting for Your Marriage

by Markman Stanley, & Blumberg (2001)