From Alienation to Divorce

It is extremely difficult to draw up a balance sheet of the social advantages and costs of high levels of divorce. More tolerant attitudes toward divorce mean that couples can easy terminate an unrewarding relationship. On the other hand, marriage breakup is almost always emotionally stressful and may create financial hardship, especially for women. In the USA, the living standards of divorced women and their children on average fell by 27 percent in the first year following the divorce settlement. The average standard of living of divorced men, by contrast, rose by 10 percent. Most court judgments left the former husband with a high proportion of his income intact; therefore, he had more to spend on his own needs than while he was married.

In her study Uncoupling, Diane Vaughan (1986) carried out a series of interviews with 103 recently separated or divorced people (mainly from middle-class backgrounds) to chart the process of transition from living together to living apart. The notion of “uncoupling” refers to how people make the transition from intimate relationship to living alone. She found that in many cases, before the actual physical parting, there was a “social separation” – at least one of the partners developed a new life pattern, becoming interested in new pursuits and making new friends, in contexts in which the other was not included. This usually meant keeping secrets from the other – especially, of course, when a relationship with a lover was involved.

According to Vaughan’s research, uncoupling is often unintentional in its beginnings. One individual – whom she calls the “initiator” – becomes more dissatisfied with the relationship than the other. The initiator creates “territory” independent of the activities in which the couple engages together. For some time before this, the initiator may have been trying unsuccessfully to change the partner, to get him to behave in more acceptable ways, foster shared interests, and so forth. At some point, the initiator feels that this attempt has been a failure and that the relationship is fundamentally flawed. From then on, she becomes preoccupied with the ways in which the relationship or the partner is defective. Vaughan suggested that this is the opposite of the process of falling in love, when an individual focuses on the attractive features of the other and ignores those that may be more dubius.

Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the Family

The home is a more dangerous place than a dark alley. One in every four murders in the USA is committed by a member of the victim’s family. More police are killed responding to calls about domestic disturbances than are killed chasing armed robbers. One American sociological report says: “You are more likely to be physically assaulted, beaten, and killed in your own home at the hands of a loved one than any place else, or by anyone else.”

One reason the family is so prone to violence is that people make a large emotional investment in family relationship, so they take the words and actions of their family members very seriously. As a result, petty disagreements can easily escalate into violent conflicts.

Wives are almost as prone to be violent as husbands (but they are injured more often). Women groups have set up shelters and “hot lines” for abused wives.