Why do marriages fail? What factors determine whether a marriage will fail or not?

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“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
Walter Winchell

Are there factors that can be put in an equation to predict at which point a marriage will fail? Someone has tried to create a calculator to determine the probability of a marriage failure in the next five years based on when one got married, how old they were, how many years they have been married, their level of education, when they were born, and their gender. You can click here to use the marriage calculator.

I believe there are so many factors involved in marriage relationships that it would not be possible to put them in an equation to determine precisely how long a marriage will last. The factors used above have very little correlation to divorce rates in my opinion.

It is possible to use statistics to determine outcomes in a different way. It is also important to start off with more relevant factors. Somehow there are principles that have been put in nature which are fairly accurate in determining outcomes. One of these is based on the laws of probability and statistics.

Let us start with a simple example. If you toss a coin, the probability of it landing with the heads facing up is a half and so is the probability of tails facing up. If you add the probabilities of all possible outcomes you should always get one (or one hundred percent). Probabilities are usually expressed in fractions or decimals. Supposing you tossed a coin four times, how sure would you be to get 2 heads and 2 tails? Well I would not bet on it. You may get all heads, all tails or a mixture but not quite the expected ideal outcome all the time.

What happens if you toss the coin a thousand times for example? The expected outcome will be 1000 multiplied by the probability (1/2) i.e. 500. You will find that you will be very close e.g. between 450 to 550 heads. Working backwards this gives a probability between 0.45 and 0.55. As you increase the number of repetitions this probability will tend to 0.5 e.g. if you toss the coin a million times?.

You may ask what I am driving at. Most of the factors that cause marriage failure are known. These include violence, infidelity or cheating etc. Therefore instead of trying to use complex equations based on how long people have been married and when they were born there is a simpler way. This is more or less a “rule of thumb”.

If you charted the divorce reasons of a hundred divorced people you would be able to get percentages for the various prevalent factors causing divorce. If this were to be extended to a thousand or a million people, the results would be more accurate.
How can you interpret the results? If 50% of the divorces were caused by violence, then it is possible to say it is very likely that if a marriage is characterized by violence then it will end up in divorce. It is more accurate to say that if a marriage ends up in divorce, there is a 50% chance that the cause will be violence.

The context of this application must be the same i.e. the research sample must be drawn from the same population. Some cultures are more tolerant to violence in marriages due to religious reasons – divorced wives may be looked down upon by the society at large. It is not right therefore to apply research findings from a more ‘open’ society to a more ‘closed’ society. There are many other factors which may make generalizations to fail.

What can you do about bullet-proofing your marriage? Check this out..

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