Here it is again folks, for all of the newbies - long but worth reading -

Does Divorce Make People Happy?
Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages

Call it the "divorce assumption." Most people assume that a person stuck in a bad marriage has two choices: stay married and miserable or get a divorce and become happier.1 But now come the findings from the first scholarly study ever to test that assumption, and these findings challenge conventional wisdom. Conducted by a team of leading family scholars headed by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite, the study found no evidence that unhappily married adults who divorced were typically any happier than unhappily married people who stayed married.

Even more dramatically, the researchers also found that two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. In addition, the most unhappy marriages reported the most dramatic turnarounds: among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost eight out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married five years later.2

The research team used data collected by the National Survey of Family and Households, a nationally representative survey that extensively measures personal and marital happiness. Out of 5,232 married adults interviewed in the late Eighties, 645 reported being unhappily married. Five years later, these same adults were interviewed again. Some had divorced or separated and some had stayed married.

The study found that on average unhappily married adults who divorced were no happier than unhappily married adults who stayed married when rated on any of 12 separate measures of psychological well-being. Divorce did not typically reduce symptoms of depression, raise self-esteem, or increase a sense of mastery. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income. Even unhappy spouses who had divorced and remarried were no happier on average than those who stayed married. "Staying married is not just for the childrens' sake. Some divorce is necessary, but results like these suggest the benefits of divorce have been oversold," says Linda J. Waite.

Why doesn't divorce typically make adults happier? The authors of the study suggest that while eliminating some stresses and sources of potential harm, divorce may create others as well. The decision to divorce sets in motion a large number of processes and events over which an individual has little control that are likely to deeply affect his or her emotional well-being. These include the response of one's spouse to divorce; the reactions of children; potential disappointments and aggravation in custody, child support, and visitation orders; new financial or health stresses for one or both parents; and new relationships or marriages.

The team of family experts that conducted the study included Linda J. Waite, Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Case for Marriage; Don Browning, Professor Emeritus of the University of Chicago Divinity School; William J. Doherty, Professor of Family Social Science and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy program at the University of Minnesota; Maggie Gallagher, affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values and coauthor of The Case for Marriage; Ye Luo, a research associate at the Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work at the University of Chicago; and Scott Stanley, Co-Director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver.

Marital Turnarounds: How Do Unhappy Marriages Get Happier?

To follow up on the dramatic findings that two-thirds of unhappy marriages had become happy five years later, the researchers also conducted focus group interviews with 55 formerly unhappy husbands and wives who had turned their marriages around. They found that many currently happily married spouses have had extended periods of marital unhappiness, often for quite serious reasons, including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness, and work reversals.

Why did these marriages survive where other marriages did not? Spouses' stories of how their marriages got happier fell into three broad headings: the marital endurance ethic, the marital work ethic, and the personal happiness ethic.

In the marital endurance ethic, the most common story couples reported to researchers, marriages got happier not because partners resolved problems, but because they stubbornly outlasted them. With the passage of time, these spouses said, many sources of conflict and distress eased: financial problems, job reversals, depression, child problems, even infidelity.
In the marital work ethic, spouses told stories of actively working to solve problems, change behavior, or improve communication. When the problem was solved, the marriage got happier. Strategies for improving marriages mentioned by spouses ranged from arranging dates or other ways to more time together, enlisting the help and advice of relatives or in-laws, to consulting clergy or secular counselors, to threatening divorce and consulting divorce attorneys.
Finally, in the personal happiness epic, marriage problems did not seem to change that much. Instead married people in these accounts told stories of finding alternative ways to improve their own happiness and build a good and happy life despite a mediocre marriage.
The Powerful Effects of Commitment

Spouses interviewed in the focus groups whose marriages had turned around generally had a low opinion of the benefits of divorce, as well as friends and family members who supported the importance of staying married. Because of their intense commitment to their marriages, these couples invested great effort in enduring or overcoming problems in their relationships, they minimized the importance of difficulties they couldn't resolve, and they actively worked to belittle the attractiveness of alternatives.

The study's findings are consistent with other research demonstrating the powerful effects of marital commitment on marital happiness. A strong commitment to marriage as an institution, and a powerful reluctance to divorce, do not merely keep unhappily married people locked in misery together. They also help couples form happier bonds. To avoid divorce, many assume, marriages must become happier. But it is at least equally true that in order to get happier, unhappy couples or spouses must first avoid divorce. "In most cases, a strong commitment to staying married not only helps couples avoid divorce, it helps more couples achieve a happier marriage," notes research team member Scott Stanley.

Would most unhappy spouses who divorced have ended up happily married if they had stuck with their marriages?

The researchers who conduced the study cannot say for sure whether unhappy spouses who divorced would have become happy had they stayed with their marriages. In most respects, unhappy spouses who divorced and unhappy spouses who stayed married looked more similar than different (before the divorce) in terms of their psychological adjustment and family background. While unhappy spouses who divorced were on average younger, had lower household incomes, were more likely to be employed or to have children in the home, these differences were typically not large.

Were the marriages that ended in divorce much worse than those that did not? There is some evidence for this point of view. Unhappy spouses who divorced reported more conflict and were about twice as likely to report violence in their marriage than unhappy spouses who stayed married. However, marital violence occurred in only a minority of unhappy marriages: 21 percent of unhappy spouses who divorced reported husband-to-wife violence, compared to nine percent of unhappy spouses who stayed married.

On the other hand, if only the worst marriages ended up in divorce, one would expect divorce to be associated with important psychological benefits. Instead, researchers found that unhappily married adults who divorced were no more likely to report emotional and psychological improvements than those who stayed married. In addition, the most unhappy marriages reported the most dramatic turnarounds: among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost eight out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married five years later.

More research is needed to establish under what circumstances divorce improves or lessens adult well-being, as well as what kinds of unhappy marriages are most or least likely to improve if divorce is avoided.

Other Findings

Other findings of the study based on the National Survey Data are:

The vast majority of divorces (74 percent) took place to adults who had been happily married when first studied five years earlier. In this group, divorce was associated with dramatic declines in happiness and psychological well-being compared to those who stayed married.
Unhappy marriages are less common than unhappy spouses; three out of four unhappily married adults are married to someone who is happy with the marriage.
Staying married did not typically trap unhappy spouses in violent relationships. Eighty-six percent of unhappily married adults reported no violence in their relationship (including 77 percent of unhappy spouses who later divorced or separated). Ninety-three percent of unhappy spouses who avoided divorce reported no violence in their marriage five years later.

Believer:

Thanks for posting this. I have believed every one of the assertions in this article for quite some time, but it is good to see that there is more solid research out there to back up my beliefs...(I have found similar statistics from the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University in New Jersey).

Whats worse is if your beliefs are similar to the ones in this article, but your XWS just continues to inflict damage on you and your children by forcing divorce and continuing to feed the unhappiness cycle. (I type this as I'm sitting home alone on Christmas Eve, while my children are with X).

Merry Christmas!

LoBoy

Merry Christmas, LostBoy. I know you did your best, and they still usually come back. The study is 27 pages long and goes into more detail. But the fact remains that after 5 years, people who stay together are happier than those who divorce. Divorce is not a fix-all.

Hey LostBoy,

I'm sorry you are at home alone. What are you doing for yourself?

Bracha

Yeah, I know. Divorce doesn't seem to fix anything, it just creates more problems. The stuff I read at the National Marriage Project cited pretty much the same 5-year happiness statistics.

What am I doing for myself?

Well earlier tonight, I went to a very moving Christmas Eve church service. Right now, I am wrapping up presents, and later I will sit down and follow through on one of my favorite traditions that HHW and I had...after wrapping presents, we would sit and watch the movie "Love Actually". Very funny and touching movie centered around Christmas.

Other than that, I'm just waiting for tomorrow morning when I get the kids back. Really looking forward to it.

Happy Holidays

LoBoy

Hi Lostboy,

I'm here alone too, so post if you like and I'll respond. I also was glad Believer posted this because I suspected the same. The stats don't help though when you know that your WS is having a good time with OP and OP's family while you sit alone.

Hang in there.

Hey Chai:

I'm sorry you have to go through that...WS being off with OP. I don't think my STBXWW was in an A when she left, but I don't know for sure.

Stay true to what you believe, that's integrity. If it hasn't started already, most of your family and friends will tell you are better off, and you (and I) may very well be. But for the most part, I believe the people that say they're happy after divorce are pulling the same mental gymnastics of rationalization that WS's do when in the fog and re-writing history. It's easier to just convince themselves they're better off, than to face the damage.

I'm here if you want to post.

LoBoy

Happy Holidays to you too.

I have seen that movie.

LoBoy,

Do you have a thread somewhere? Maybe you can give me the two paragraph version of your situation?? I'm not very familiar with it. Hard to keep up with all of them.

Give me the short version if you don't mind....

Oh, LoBoy, I AM much happier. But there are still consequences that will be lifelong for me. It isn't what I would have chosen, but it is what it is.

Thanksgiving '06, I found out "hrdhddwoman" (HHW) had been in contact with her Ex for a couple of months. Ex (Sperm Donor) had fathered a son with my W before we met. I adopted S after we married, and raised him as my own...he just turned 20. HHW and DS20 had set up a meeting with Sperm Donor on Thanksgiving Day 06 without discussing it first with me, and I flipped out when I found out. We got in a huge fight, and we were staying in her parents Vacation home 500 miles from home. When it came time to leave, HHW stayed in vacation home alone without a vehicle for 10 days hanging out with Sperm Donor, while me and the kids came home.

When HHW came home, she said she didn't have a PA with Sperm Donor, but did have a PA two years prior and wanted a divorce, and wanted to move away to a different state alone. I did somewhat of Plan A for 5 weeks until after New Year's, then told her to go, but that same day she changed her mind and wanted to go to a marriage seminar. We went to a non-MB weekend seminar, and HHW asked me to re-marry her. Things were great for four mos, and she started to become a poster on MB.

Then we had a little misunderstanding on Mother's Day that kept on sprialing out of control, until she left in July and filed for divorce immediately. There has been a lot of nasty stuff since the divorce too.

I am not a saint either, and did have my own indiscretion. But the whole divorce thing has thrown me for a loop.

That's about as short of a synopsis as I can give you. (And we have two other children DD11 and DS8)

Thanks,

LoBoy

LoBoy,

Oh, I'm sorry that it has gone to D. Are you doing anything actively to try to recover or get together again? Do you want to?

LoBoy,

How long have you been married?

Now, Mothers' Day, there is a holiday I could just chuck. Absolutely chuck. When I was pregnant with my MS, my H relapsed and destroyed us financially for a few months. I can't be sure, but he could have cheated on me while I was at my mom's home.

My mom and dad should NEVER had had children and Mother's Day just isn't a good holiday, but this year it was the day before D-Day. That morning, my H and I lied in bed talking about how much we had grown and loved each other and how close we were becoming and how much we wanted our marriage.

I can honestly say that I don't EVER want to celebrate Mother's Day again. I wish I could drink and make the day just fade away.

Believer:

I didn't mean to imply that everybody was rationalizing, and I'm sure that there are a bunch of people that are better off...if I remember correctly, I think I read that your X was a serial cheater...than I'm sure you are better off.

But what everybody keeps telling me (my lawyers, family and friends), 'that I'm sooo much better off' seems ridiculous. I refuse to use that coping mechanism to 'hate', villify, whatever my X. Sure I hate some of the things that she has done, but she was still my wife and I don't want to hate her.

LoBoy

No, my ex wasn't a serial cheater. But he wasn't that great a husband. However, I was happy with our life. And I'm still happy. It may be rewriting history, but life is good again. But I'm not saying that everything turned out fine. The family damage was horrendous.

All of our friends told me I was better off too.

I kept an open mind for reconciliation for a long time, even through some pretty nasty custody filings from her, and a bunch of other dirty tricks. The current atty that I have wouldn't even let me hire her back in the summer because she only does divorce 'for real'. Now, I think I am finally coming to terms with it, but it still sucks when I don't have the kids with me.

Skinsgal:

The messed up thing about Mother's Day is that I had put a lot of time and effort into making it a special day for her, but it ended up being like the "Perfect Storm" for stupid marital fights. There is a whole big thread started by HHW on the Recovery Forum about it and the spiraling fight after that.

Lousy Mother's Day

LoBoy

Oh, I hear the same thing daily - "you're better off" "you deserve better" "don't you dare take him back" etc. etc.

And I do hate what he did, but I don't hate him. I just wish I had found MB before I needed it. I just thought we were happy. I guess most BS's do. I wouldn't say mine was a great husband, but I don't imagine I was a great wife. We just seemed to roll along...

All friends seem to say that we are better off. I would say 95% of the people in my life say it.

My sponsor is at her wits end with me still being sad over this.

It seems that no one buys the addiction action as the root of this and therefore our WS are making choices that are just plain hurtful.

I can tell you for a fact, that when it's an addiction, you lose the choice and therefore those who are in the way are the ones to get hurt.

I think I finally figured out that although I completely agree with this philosophy, at least when my H was out using, he would come down and feel remorse. It didn't stop the behavior, but with this, not ONCE has I seen any kind of remorse or sorrow for the absolute destruction his behavior is causing. In fact, he feels he is entitled to what he is doing and he is the victim in all this. That is what is hardest to watch.

Do others understand this? Or am I blowing snow for Santa tonight?

Looking back, I had all the signs and in the end absolutely didn't believe my H was capable of this. I knew he could go out using and it freaked me out.

But this.... NEVER.

We actually have had an unhealthy relationship for years. We were both needing each other to fill up the hole inside of us. What I have come to terms with is that G-d was the ONLY thing that could fill the hole and until we figured it out, the pain was going to continue.

However, he is off FILLING IN HIS HOLE. And I am blessed to have G-d in my life who is pulling me through this, rather dragging me at times.

And I have met people on here who I think will for a long time be a part of my life. And then unfortunately are those who will come after us and NEED us to be there like the Vets are here for us now.

Believer:


What was some of the horrendous family damage?

Skinsgal:

We were married 13 yrs, together 15.