Why People In a Bad Marriage Stay Married

Men and Women come to my office telling me in detail everything wrong with their marriages. These complaints are not unusual, but they are usually heart-felt. They include a whole range of misbehavior's on the part of their spouses. Here are some of the things they have complained about to me, in no particular order:

 

1. parenting behavior.
2. Putting other family first.
3. Use of drugs.
4. Irresponsibility (and unreliability, including chronic lateness)
5. Secretive behavior.
6. Contemptuous and rude and scornful behavior.
7. Cruelty.
8. Betrayals, such as promising to have children, and then refusing.
9. Violent behavior (both men and women)
10. Stinginess, or profligacy.
11. Bad temper.
12. Selfishness
13. Lying repeatedly.
14. Refusal of sex.
15. Infidelity
16. Prolonged or repeated absence.

 By the time I am presented with such a list, usually the patients have concluded that their marriages are not worth saving. But they are ambivalent. They repeatedly run through the reasons they have for leaving, as if they have to remind themselves of how serious they are. But they would like not to break up their marriages. They would like to hope that things are not so bad and that their married life is salvageable

1. For the sake of the children. (In one case, the child whose interests were being considered was 29.)
2. An unwillingness to give up money in a divorce  action. (One man who had two million dollars lived on the income from his job. He could easily have spared one million dollars in a divorce settlement; but since his wife had never worked, he was not going to agree to her getting anything. He held on to his money at the expense of being tied to a woman he disliked.)
3. An unwillingness to move away from a house, the physical house, into which so much care and effort has been invested. (This feeling is not uncommon. It is as if the house itself began to symbolize everything that had gone on between its walls.)

1. An attachment to in-laws, or mutual friends.
2. Pessimsm about any possible alternative.
3. Too much trouble. It is too late, too expensive, etc 

Money   It costs more for a couple to live separately than together. And the divorce itself costs money. There is no question but that the lack of money colors aspects of divorce as it may have affected the marriage. But I see couples in dire circumstances who manage to leave their marriage anyway. It seems that when there is no alternative, a way can be found. Some of the men and women who do give financial reasons for not divorcing are actually well-off, even rich, sometimes.

Friends and Family.  It is true that a divorce is likely to leave either the husband or wife estranged from their mutual friends. Often that separation from them is not what the friends would have wished. The divorced men and women pull back because of embracement or a sense of no longer being of interest. It is one aspect of the self-doubt that comes in the wake of a failed marriage.