Divorce reasons

There seems to be a strong belief among manospherian men that women are to blame for the high number of divorces these days, as they initiate most of them. They overlook that initiating divorce is different from causing it or they think that women should bear whatever the issue they have within their marriage for the sake of marriage itself. It would be more reasonable to think that both men and women can be at fault for failing their relationships, most likely sharing the blame more equally than some men here want to believe.

Most commonly cited divorce reasons: lack of commitment (75%), infidelity (59.6%), too much conflict (57.7%), getting married too young (45.1%), financial problems (36.7%), substance abuse (34.6%), domestic violence (23.5%), health problems (18.2%), lack of support from family (17.3%), religious differences (13.3%), little or not premarital education (13.3). If we look at reasons that were cited by both partners, it's lack of commitment (70%), too much conflict (53%), financial problems (50%).

We also can see that there's usually a "final straw" event:

Overall, 68.6% of participants and at least one partner in 88.9% of couples reported that there was a final straw leading to the end of their marriage. General themes of final straw issues where generated through qualitative methods for participants who reported a final straw. Of the individuals who indicated that there was a final straw involved in ending their marriages, the most common cited reason was infidelity, which was reported by 24% of these participants, followed by domestic violence (21.2%) and substance abuse (12.1%). At the couple level, no couples (0%) had both partners report the same reason for the final straw.

Not surprisingly most people blame the other party:

In examining participants’ elaborations of infidelity, substance abuse, and domestic violence, we found that 76.9%, 72.2%, and 77.8%, respectively, described these events in terms of their partner engaging in these negative behaviors, and only 11.5%, 11.1%, and 0%, respectively, volunteered that they engaged in the behavior themselves.

Most people think that their partner should have worked harder to save their marriage and a bit more women than men think that they should have worked harder (31.6% vs 33.3%).

We also can check out stats considering infidelity, substance abuse and domestic violence to see whether men or women engage more often into these things.

Men cheat more, the only age group with the opposite numbers are people between 18-29, but the difference is 1% while for older age groups it can almost double with men cheating more than women.

Men have higher substance abuse rates, but women's rates have been growing for quite some time now.

There are multiple different studies on domestic violence, some show higher rates for women, while others show equal or higher rates for men. I just leave a few links. I think one of many unfortunate outcomes of male abuse victims having less resources and help is that they're less likely to divorce their abusers whether because they're ashamed to admit that they're abused, they're afraid of their abuser and they can't reach for help or because they don't have resources to get out.

I am not sure how can we measure the stats for other cited divorce reasons, but considering that 2 major divorce reasons have higher stats for men than for women, it would be reasonable to suggest that at least some of women initiating divorce aren't really at fault for their dissolved marriage - their husbands have cheated on them or their husbands had addiction. A certain share of these women has also got out of abusive marriage whether it's was reciprocated abuse or not. Of course, there must be couples with a reverse situation as well.

Let's move to another point. Men often state that women gain more from divorce, while men lose more. It largely depends on a country and in case of the US a state we're talking about, considering that lots of places have family law stating that community property gets divided 50/50. Alimony is pretty rare these days - I couldn't find a specific study or stats, but most articles show 10%. An average child support payment is less than 500$ and less than 50% of custodial parents receive full payment. It's no wonder that men’s disproportionate strain of divorce is transient, whereas women’s is chronic and it's mostly financial. Women more often become single parents as a result of divorce and while we can argue whether most men want or don't want to get shared/main custody, I think we all can agree that a single parent has it harder in terms of finance and free time. The other parent has more freedom but they also spend less time with their kids which can be a major downside for some...and a positive thing for others depending on a person.

So overall divorce isn't a good deal neither for women or men. Divorce is not a desirable outcome and it wouldn't be a big jump to assume that most people who get divorced do that because they just can't keep staying married to each other for various reasons. Of course, there must be some couples who divorce for minor reasons and who could have put more efforts into their marriage, we could argue whether these couples are the majority or not, but according to the study it seems that most couples cited infidelity as one of their divorce reasons, while half cited substance abuse and a 27.8% cited domestic violence. We probably can agree that these 3 reasons are objectively sensible reasons to get divorced. Causing divorce is different from pulling the trigger and both men and women can be the reason why their marriage ended.