Jumping the relation-ship
Jenifer McKim | The Orange County Register
 

Are you miserable in your marriage? Feeling depleted instead of completed?  Considering divorce?

A new study says the majority of unhappy spouses will see their partner in a  better light if they just hunker down and ride it out for five years.

If instead you join nearly half of married folks who dive back into the world  of singles, the report says you don't improve your chance at happiness.

The study, "Does Divorce Make People Happy?" was released this summer by the  New York City-based Institute for American Values and adds to what some call a  growing pro-marriage movement meant to slow the divorce rate.

Critics say a rash of studies - including those showing devastating  short-term and long-term effects of divorce on children - are part of a  conservative backlash manufactured to penalize divorcees and make split-ups more  difficult to achieve.
Advocates say the discoveries aren't part of any insidious effort to keep  miserable couples together. Simply, they say they are documenting what many  local therapists have seen for years - too many couples divorcing needlessly.

"Those who are looking at divorce, 90 percent of them shouldn't get out of  their marriage. It isn't that bad," said Thomas Habib, a clinical psychologist  in San Juan Capistrano. "Our expectation of marriage, the whole romantic notion  of love in Western society, is so off base with the reality of what marriage  is."

The Study

Using data from the federally funded National Survey of Families and  Households, researchers looked at 645 spouses who rated their marriages as  unhappy in the late 1980s. Five years later, the families were reinterviewed.  Researchers found:

Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on  average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married.

Divorce did not reduce symptoms of depression for unhappily married adults,  or raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average,  compared with unhappy spouses who stayed married.

The vast majority of divorces (74 percent) involved adults who had been  happily married five years previously.

Unhappy marriages were less common than unhappy spouses. Three of four  unhappily married adults were married to someone who was happy with the  marriage.

Two of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended  up happily married five years later.

Researchers - chaired by Linda J. Waite of the University of Chicago - also  conducted focus groups with 55 spouses who'd managed to turn around their  unhappy marriages.
They found that many happily married people had extended periods of  unhappiness, often because of serious problems like infidelity, alcoholism,  verbal abuse and emotional neglect.

Yet many of these couples remained together not because they resolved their  problems.
"They stubbornly outlasted them," the study said. "With time, they told us,  many sources of conflict and distress eased."

Doesn't sound too romantic. But that's the point, some say.

"Have they lowered their expectations? Sure," said Judith Wallerstein of  Marin County, author of "Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: Report of a 25-Year  Landmark Study."

"Put it another way: They have become more realistic."

The number of divorces nationwide escalated in the 1970s following the  institution of "no-fault" divorces in many states, Wallerstein said.

Nationwide, the number of divorces and annulments jumped from 708,000 in 1970  - or a rate of 3.5 per 1,000 married adults - to a high of 1,213,000 in 1981,  for a rate of 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people.

Now, some researchers say divorce has created its own disastrous wake.

Wallerstein's book, released in 2000, showed that children of divorce not  only suffer when they are young but that the effects follow them into adulthood.

Her study showed these children of divorce had a higher divorce rate and  struggled more in relationships than those who grew up with intact families.

"The bloom is off the rose of divorce," Wallerstein said. "There is a growing  amount of research that says divorce is anything but easy and before you divorce  you better know what you are getting into not, just what you are getting away  from."

Real Life

Clearly, life is messier than statistics.

Pat Lucas of Orange would have preferred to stay married.

"I didn't have a lot of choice," said Lucas, who has been divorced since  1984. "My husband ran off with his secretary."

Still, Lucas wonders if she had reacted differently, hadn't been so angry,  maybe the couple could have worked things out.

Certain studies show many divorced people express doubts about their  separation, even many years later, the Institute for American Values report  said.

In New Jersey, for example, 46 percent of divorced people said they wished  they had tried harder to work through their differences, the study said.

Lucas said she and her husband did try to repair the damage, but when he  continued to see the other woman, she couldn't go on.

"I didn't file for divorce immediately," said Lucas, who hasn't remarried. "I  was working on it."

Lucas was left to take care of two children, ages 9 and 6. She worries they  have suffered. Her daughter has been involved with married men, she said. Her  son doesn't have a relationship with his father, and it's affected him as a  parent.

"He is not real involved with his own child," Lucas said.

Some therapists warn that if divorcees don't understand the underlying reason  behind a divorce, they could find themselves in a similar situation the second  time around. National numbers show second marriages end up in divorce in higher  numbers than first marriages.
"Often times people don't come to terms with whatever happened with the  divorce. What happens is they re-create whatever happened before," said Doug  Matthews, an Anaheim psychologist. "The choices we make are not accidents. If we  don't come to terms with ourselves, then we make nothing out of the divorce."

Monica Branstetter believes in getting out of an unhappy marriages.

"I'm happier today than I have been in my entire life because I got out of a  very unsatisfying marriage," said Branstetter, 38, now a single mother of two.  "We are more of a family just the three of us than we ever were having him  around. Life is easier without the empty relationship."

Branstetter said she tried for years to make the best out of a bad marriage.  Her husband drank and stayed out with his friends. He worked sporadically. He  ditched family events like plays or Halloween.

She prayed about what to do. She didn't believe in divorce. But her husband  made the choice easy.

"He went out for cigarettes and didn't come back for six months," she said.  "I filed for divorce."

Branstetter said the first years were terrible. A free fall. She didn't know  where they would land. But four years later, she finds the whole family is  better for his absence.
"I'm not focused on this person who is not there," Branstetter said. "I don't  think I'll ever regret it."

THE ROLE OF POLICY-MAKERS

Critics of the Institute of American Values study say it's an attempt to  re-create a bygone era.

They say rather than focusing of the evils of divorce, critics say, families  need help with improved child care and parental-leave policies.

"It diverts attention from the wide range of very complicated issues that  families are facing today," said Stephanie Coontz, author of "The Way We Never  Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap."

"I think most Americans do not go into divorce lightly," Coontz said. "(The  institute thinks) they can jawbone, cajole or scare people into going back to a  period when almost all kids were raised in married-couple families. This is not  going to happen."

Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in  Seattle, has similar concerns.

"That thing that bothers me about this piece is it is part of an effort by  conservative think tanks to try and influence public policy on marriage,"  Schwartz said. "People get divorced because they can't take the life they have."

David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and author  of "Fatherless America," says the accusations are off-base. Blankenhorn says he  is a lifelong Democrat who thinks efforts like his will slow the divorce rate by  emphasizing the consequences.

Already, he says, the divorce rate is modestly declining, and the  out-of-wedlock childbearing rate is stagnant.

"I don't think this is a liberal-conservative issue," Blankenhorn said. "We  are not trying to grind an ax on gender roles. Wouldn't it be better for  children and society if (divorce) numbers were lower?"

Contact McKim at  (714)796-2296 at [email protected]