HBO
From financial problems to infidelity.
- A number of scientific papers explore the reasons why people say they got divorced.
- We took a look at some of those papers and pulled out recurring themes.
- Seven common reasons are listed below: They include infidelity, growing apart, and getting married too young.
When it comes to studying divorce, social scientists have two options. They can observe different couples and try to figure out on their own what predicts the end of a marriage ... or they can simply ask people why their marriage ended.
A growing body of scientific research falls into that second category. Researchers either ask participants to choose from a list of potential reasons for divorce, or they ask participants to answer an open-ended question about why they divorced. A recent blog post on Psychology Today, by psychologist Scott M. Stanley, for example, highlights several papers on people's reasons for divorce.
We took a look at some of that research and pulled out seven common reasons participants gave to explain their divorce. Those reasons are listed below (but they're not ranked in any particular order).