Different Life Events That Can Lead to Divorce

Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the support of your spouse is exactly what you need to get through a tough time. However, this isn’t always the case.

Large, unexpected life events have the potential to irrevocably change people and their relationships, causing lasting damage that sometimes leads to divorce. This can happen to brand new marriages as well as those that have lasted through decades of other issues. Here are a few common life events that could lead you and your partner to seek a divorce:

 Unemployment. The reasons for a spouse’s sudden unemployment, such as whether they were laid off or terminated, can play a big role in how a couple handles job loss. However, when one partner loses their job, especially if that job provided significant financial support to the household, the health of the marriage can take a big hit. The spouse who has lost their job might be racked with feelings of inadequacy, and the loss of financial stability could cause both partners to experience severe anxiety, which married couples tend to take out on each other in times of great stress. Depending on the severity of the couple’s financial instability, this hostile environment often leads to divorce.

Illness. When one member of a couple becomes terminally ill, it can cause a great deal of stress on the ill person, the spouse that now has to take on the role of caretaker, and the couple’s finances, depending on what level of care is needed. Added stressors aside, serious illness can greatly change the dynamic of a marriage, sometimes causing irreconcilable damage to the interpersonal balance between partners.

Infidelity and lying. Contrary to popular belief, an affair or other significant act of dishonesty can often lead to the strengthening of a marriage over time as it forces a couple to deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. However, this is not always the case, and huge breaches of trust like infidelity are the breaking point for many marriages.

Empty nest. Raising children is a huge task that provides parents with a series of common goals and objectives for multiple years. Sometimes, couples will set aside their problems for the sake of staying together to raise their children, finally facing the reality of divorce after the children are out of the house. Conversely, some couples start to develop new issues once they don’t have the unifying task of raising children, or they realize that their connection to each other doesn’t extend past that common goal.

Trauma. Traumatic events can have seriously damaging effects on marriages, whether the event happened to one spouse or both together. The effect of trauma on a relationship varies greatly depending on the circumstances; sometimes a traumatic event can bring a couple closer together as they lean on one another in grief, and sometimes the same event can drive a couple apart as their grief changes the way they relate to others. In many cases, marriages will end simply because spouses associate each other with too many painful memories.