What drives couples apart, and what strategies help them to stay together?
Pick up any tabloid, open any blog about marriage and family, or talk to any random person on the street, and you be assailed with passionate opinions. Unfortunately, parsing truth from fiction in such an environment is no small task. Old wives tales and myths spread fast, particularly over the internet. Even the so-called experts in the field of divorce often find themselves hoodwinked by bogus ideas.
Rather than providing with a “top five” type of list itemizing reasons why couples stay together or get divorced, let’s dig a little deeper. Ideally, you want to be able to analyze what you read online and elsewhere about relationship advice and come to critical conclusions.
First of all, to be considered “good science,” the results need to be repeatable. This is important because it helps control for happenstance and chance. For instance, let’s say a study finds that men whose names begin with “B” are 70% less likely to get divorced than men whose names begin with “C.” That finding may be just the result of a single study — one that has never been replicated. To scientifically prove (or more accurately, fail to disprove) that hypothesis, you’d need to conduct more experiments and replicate the results. That can be an expensive proposition! We’ll discuss more about the science of the “relationship longevity” problem in our next post. For now, if you need assistance with a California divorce or family law matter, call Dinnebier & Demmerle immediately to schedule a confidential consultation.