I recently read a note from Karen Shatafian that said “Women don’t always stay because the marriage is good”. That got me thinking, why do we stay? Not just women but men as well. Especially in midlife when stress is on the rise, hormones are fluctuating, and nothing seems to be quite as it was. I should preface this by saying I am not a marriage guidance counselor or couples therapist, and what follows is my own interpretation of research I have found.
Women are often cited as staying in an unhappy marriage because of various barriers to them leaving. Finances, health, children, and other obligations can all be reasons that they stay rather than leave.
A longitudinal study by Rosenfeld (2018) showed that women wanted 69% of divorces. Men and women were about equally likely to want the breakup in unmarried heterosexual relationships. Married women reported lower relationship quality than married men. This tends to indicate that gender differences in divorce initiation cannot simply be attributed to men being inherently less willing to end romantic relationships. It should be noted that the Rosenfeld study was not specific to midlife.
The Rewards of Staying, the Costs of Leaving
What about the rewards to staying or the barriers to leaving? Previti and Amato (2003) found that people only focusing on barriers were relatively unhappy and more likely to contemplate divorce. They were also more likely to divorce over the following 14 years than those reporting only rewards. So it’s conceivable that someone might be in an unhappy marriage but feel constrained by the barriers to actually leaving. Tran et al (2019) found that satisfaction, investments and perceived alternatives were all associated with commitment. Implying that the more satisfied someone was the more likely they were to stay, but it goes beyond that, they also included investments and perceived alternatives.
Investments of emotions, time, money, and labor are all considerations. The “Sweat Equity of Marriage” if you like. The more a person has invested in a marriage, the more they are likely to see barriers to leaving. And the perceived alternatives. Single life, dating, finances, living conditions, access to children. All these can be barriers that constrain a person to stay in an unhappy marriage.
Why Men Stay
What about men specifically, why do they stay? Studies show that, especially around gray divorce, two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women. The stereotype of a man leaving his wife for a younger woman and turning his back on years of commitment is challenged by a 2004 study reported by AARP. They found 58 percent of men, compared with only 37 percent of women, cited their children as the top reason they postponed a divorce for five years or longer. They also found that men were more likely to be caught off-guard by their divorce, with 26 percent of men saying they “never saw it coming,” compared to only 14 percent of women. Kalmijn and Poortman (2006) support this idea of men weighing the social cost of divorce when making decisions. They found, when studying Dutch marriages and divorce, that men appeared to give greater weight to the social costs of divorce, especially the risk of losing contact with their children. They also acknowledged that the determinants of men’s divorce decisions were less clear than those of women’s.
Knowing When to Leave
The research gives us some insight into why people stay, but much less evidence about why dissatisfied men weigh their reasons for staying. Especially later in life. This could lead us to a false conclusion that men are oblivious to issues in the marriage. Knowing a marriage has problems, believing those problems justify divorce, and being prepared to act on that belief are three very different things.
Why we stay married when we are aware that the marriage isn’t good could reflect an active commitment, a calculation about the consequences of leaving, a hope that things will improve, or simply an acceptance of circumstances.
Perhaps we should be just as curious as to why someone stays as we are about why someone leaves.
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Hi Simon. Given my own experience, I find the traditional image of the clueless man, just going about his business and not paying attention to the pain his spouse is going through or the effect it's having on his life. My experience was the opposite. I tried so hard to break through. I gave up so much of my life to support her and all the things she wanted to do while she closed herself off to our marriage and our partnership. She treated me so poorly; even her own family asked me when I was going to get out. It wasn't until I made every sacrifice; I tried everything I could, that she finally made the last push and told me that she could never love me. I finally realized that our marriage was irreparable. We've been able to maintain our friendship. But I've had to go to lots of therapy to get over the anger and the abuse.