Dissolutionment Notes

Levinger�s Barrier Model

George Levinger proposed that three factors influence the breakup of relationships:

�Attraction � the desire to remain in a partnership is   enhanced by its rewards but diminished by its costs

�Alternatives � tempting alternatives increase the   appeal of leaving one�s current partner

�Barriers � various social pressures, religious constraints, and financial costs may make it hard to leave

�The Barrier Model reminds us that unhappy partners who would like to break up often stay together because it would cost them too much to leave.

�Indeed, people are usually aware of several obstacles that they would have to overcome in order to divorce.

�However, those barriers may not deter a divorce when the spouses are genuinely miserable.

Karney and Bradbury�s Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model

Benjamin Karney and Thomas Bradbury suggested another three factors that can contribute to divorce:

�Enduring vulnerabilities � personal liabilities or weaknesses with which people begin their marriages

�Adaptive Processes � the techniques with which partners try to cope with stress

�Stressful events � the difficulties people encounter

Results from the PAIR Project

  For decades, researchers have been tracking 168 couples who married in 1981.  Fewer than half are still happily married.  

  Why?  Three possibilities have been investigated.

�Enduring dynamics:  Spouses may bring to their marriages problems that surfaced during courtship.  These frustrations are usually recognized by the partners before they marry, so that marriages that are headed for divorce are weaker than others from their very beginning.

�Emergent distress:  The problems that destroy a couple begin after they marry, so that, when they begin, there aren�t any obvious differences between marriages that will succeed and those that will fail; the difficulties that ruin some marriages usually develop later.

�Disillusionment:  Couples typically begin their marriages with rosy, romanticized views of their relationship that are unrealistically positive.  Romance fades and disappointment gradually sets in as people realize that their spouses and their partnership are less wonderful than they originally seemed.

Results from the PAIR Project

  The enduring dynamics model predicted how happy marriages would be.

  Couples who were destined to be distressed were less loving and affectionate�and more ambivalent and negative�toward each other when their marriages began.

  Doubts or difficulties that people faced when they were engaged were imported into their marital relationship, and they caused trouble later on.

However, the best predictor of which couples would actually divorce was the disillusionment model.

  The drop in marital satisfaction during the first years of marriage was sharper and more pronounced in some couples than in others, and they were the spouses who were most at risk for divorce.

  Some couples who were especially affectionate when their marriages began divorced years later when that �magic� faded.

Breaking Up with Premarital Partners

There are patterns to the way people end unwanted relationships.

�Most of the time, they never tell their partners that they seek to leave, so their efforts are indirectrather than explicit and direct.

�Their efforts are usually selfish and self-orientedinstead of considerate and other-oriented.

�There is rarely a critical incident that suddenly changes their feelings about the relationship; instead, their discontent   usually grows graduallyrather than suddenly.

�Most of the time, only one and not both partners want the   relationship to end.

�They typically make several protractedattempts to end the   relationship instead of succeeding quickly.

�Most of the time, no formal effort to repair the relationship is made.

  The usual sequence of events that results involves ambivalence, vacillation, and a lengthy process of relationship dissolution.