Why do couples break up? A study carried out by researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City (USA) in collaboration with experts from the University of Toronto (Canada) has examined the reasons behind this complex decision-making process. The findings provide valuable information about relationship satisfaction and our choices when it comes to leaving or staying in a relationship.
The experiment was divided into two phases. The first had a diverse sample of participants who were asked open-ended questions about the reasons why they would continue and the reasons why they would end a relationship. In total, there were three groups of respondents: two groups of about 135 undergraduate students and a third group of mechanics who at the time of the study were considering whether or not to break their relationship.
The researchers created a coding scheme based on reasons for continuing or ending a relationship, as well as an extra category for ambiguous responses . This led to a total of 27 different reasons to stay with the couple and 23 reasons to leave.
In the second phase of the study, the experts used these reasons to develop a questionnaire, which they then distributed to another group of participants. These respondents were also deciding whether or not they would end the relationship they were in at the time of the study. The members of this group had an average of 2 years with their partner if they were dating or 9 years together if they were married.
Both phases of the study confirmed that, in general, the participants had the same number of pros and cons to make up their minds. The main reasons for wanting to continue the relationship were emotional intimacy, or feeling close to the partner, investment (logistical barriers, for example) and a feeling of commitment or obligation to their family.
Rather, the main reasons for breaking up involved the partner’s personality, breaches of trust (such as infidelity or cheating), and the partner’s detachment (no longer supportive or caring).
The reasons for ending the relationship were largely the same between the two groups – those who had been less long and married. However, there were differences between the two groups when it came to reasons for continuing the relationship.
Couples who had been together for less time seemed to focus on positive factors, such as the personality traits they liked in their partner, emotional closeness and the enjoyment they had derived from the relationship.
Married couples, on the other hand, seemed more focused on constraints : investments made with the partner (including logistical barriers), family obligations and responsibilities, and fear of uncertainty.
In all groups, approximately 50% of the participants provided a comparable number of reasons for staying and leaving, indicating that ambivalence is a very common experience.
“What interested me the most was how ambivalent people felt about their relationships. They felt really torn because breaking up can be a very difficult decision. We can look at a relationship from the outside and say ‘you have some really unsolvable problems, so you better break up, ‘but seeing it from the inside is a very difficult thing to do and the longer you’ve been in a relationship, the harder it seems to be, “explains Samantha Joel, leader of the work.
“Most of the research on breakups has been predictive, trying to predict whether or not a couple will stay together, but we don’t know much about the decision process. Human beings fall in love for a reason. From an evolutionary perspective, to Our ancestors, finding a partner may have been more important than finding the right partner. It could be easier to enter into relationships than to recover from them, “says Joel.
Referencia: Wanting to Stay and Wanting to Go. Unpacking the Content and Structure of Relationship Stay/Leave Decision Processes. Samantha Joel, Geoff MacDonald, Elizabeth Page-Gould. 2017. Social Psychological and Personality Science. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617722834
