What do you suppose is the most common factor influencing divorce?
Infidelity? Poor communication? Abuse? Irreconcilable differences? Lack of commitment? These are the reasons most often given by divorced couples.
Marrying early in life? Living together before marriage? Premarital pregnancy? Having no religion? Coming from a divorced household? These are the demographic factors that predict divorce.
Observers who watch and listen to couples: marriage counselors, researchers, and the like, have identified an unexpected factor that most often leads to divorce: the lack of willingness of the male to be influenced by his female partner.
We’ve come a long way in the past fifty years or so. It used to be that a man ruled his home. I suspect that many women were able to exert considerable influence in their homes, even then, but they had to do be devious about it. They had to soothe the ever fragile male ego. They had to make him believe it was all his idea for the woman to have any power at all.
Today, it’s different, women have rights and they assert them more often. Men’s egos can feel bruised and battered. Men sometimes resist the ideas that their female partners bring to the relationship. Some men fight every battle to the bitter end. In doing so, they may win the battle, but they will lose the war.
Men who are willing to change their approach and give their female partners more of a voice in the relationship end up being more successful and happier in the end. That’s what the data shows. The times have changed.
Keith R Wilson 