What's the most common cause of divorce in your experience?

[lollycheeks]

Just that really - what have people you know mostly broken up over?

Marrying some one as dull as dishwater or marrying a waste of space who doesn't pull their weight and spends too much time in the pub.

starballbunny dull as dishwater!

Incompatible. Grow apart. Adultery. Mid life crisis. Abusive, all types Inc ea. I'd say they were some of the leading things.

Lack of communication........ Looks like we're going this way

The first three to come to mind were all due to adultery. Two marriages it was the husband and one it was the wife who DTD (with her husband's cousin).

In my own circle the last three have been adultery, 'grown apart' and adultery in that order. Why?

IMO people divorce because they don't share the same headspace and their values and goals are divergent. This is often unconscious.

Yeah sometimes they want to share headspace in someone else's bedspace

Yes, adultery as a physical manifestation of an emotional connection.

I have only had one divorce, and that was down to emotional and financial abuse, adultery and complete and utter laziness. There was also worse stuff that I won't go into. Ironically, I divorced him on grounds of 2 year separation.
I could have easily completed a 10,000 word assignment detailing grounds of unreasonable behaviour!

Friends of mine have divorced due to growing apart and adultery.

Each of my siblings have divorced at least once so six divorces in a family of six siblings (db never married and I've only married the once) In each case it was down to adultery (the majority of times on my sibling's side)

Just asking! I am newly married and wondering what to avoid.

Lollycheeks, you would be better to ask what makes a good marriage:

1 Good communication

2 Treating each other with kindness, respect and honesty

3 Willingness to compromise

4 Always putting each other first

I think that adultery is often the symptom of an inability to communicate with a spouse. My XH no longer felt that he was the centre of my world (after 15 years together and a great great friendship) but instead of talking to me he decided to screw someone else to plump up his ego.

If you're newly married then focus on what's good about your relationship. Make sure you have love, equality, respect, affection and your own income stream... Above all, make sure you haven't married an arse. :)

I don't actually have any divorced friends. A mate of my husband's wife left him for someone else about 10 years ago. She's still with the guy, and he is happily remarried with another child. Last couple in the world I'd have thought would break up.

In my sibling's cases I would say vanity featured heavily in the adultery in so far as they were/are always on the look out for someone to fawn over them. So once the first flush of infatuation has gone then the marriage soon floundered. I'm not convinced any of them are now married "for keeps" more that as they have got older aged 40 to 56 now the pickings have got sparser.

Alright in case two, it was adultery due to her going on a series of work trips with a fun quirky geek, but her first DH was incredibly dull.

And I accept I'm biased as married to a similar quirky geek.

I think both her and my cousin, who divorced her very quiet hard working DH and only found someone new a few years later, missed some spark of fun and liveliness that keeps friendship and marriages fresh.

money, or rather lack of & conflicting views/beliefs around financial futures.

Money = Power & this is often unbalanced

Good communication

I agree this is the cornerstone, because if you can do this you can meet each other's needs.

I genuinely believe marriage is about having your own needs met, and meeting the other persons needs and the commitment lies in always wanting to meet the other persons needs where you can.

The hidden problem can be that people bring in their own baggage and agendas into new relationships and sometimes you can both be trying your hardest, doing everything right (as you see it) and still messing it up because you don't actually KNOW what your own needs ARE.

Sometimes what you think is right is not always truly right and good people with the best intentions can end up divorced for exactly this reason.

To make sure communication is really open, I'd advise any couple to have a monthly grievance session where each one can talk openly about where their head is at.

This might seem silly, but when I began my relationship with my SO, he talked about communication being paramount and while he thought he was communicating with me -he wasn't. He was doing so selectively, and in the end he resented me for not meeting his needs - although he had never been truthful about what those were. We are now in counselling for that and very nearly ended up separated for good because he was bottling little things up.

An example of how "with the best intentions" and all the right ideas, it can still very easily be lost -especially when hard times come, and they always do.

Of the 6 divorces I have been party to:

• 2 of them the man was violent to the woman.
• 1 of them he was a transvestite and she tried to learn to live with it but couldn't.
• 2 of them she left because he gradually did less and less housework or childcare until he was doing none at all.
• 1 of them, from her point of view he was dull and boring, no spark of interest, poured cold water on all her plans. From his point of view she was constantly unfaithful to him and wanted him to change into a person that he wasn't.

Getting together with someone they were incompatible with. Having a partner who is lazy and refuses to pull his weight. Having a partner who is abusive. Being with someone that you no longer have anything to say to.

Exactly what Starballbunny said.....my best friend left her husband because of the first reason she said, I left my husband for the second. (Oh and because he was a nasty tempered pig who was verbally, physically and emotionally abusive and reduced me to a quivering wreck.....but that's a WHOLE different thread!!) :)

Reason for divorce??? In the 21st century ........... The internet!!!!!!!

The main reasons amongst my friends (and me):

• adultery x 2 (man both times)
• man telling a huge lie, couldn't be trusted again
• stress of family life/special needs children
• man suffered an injury which changed the relationship
• inability to have children (man who went on to have a child with next partner)

All pretty unique to each couple I suppose.