Cheyenne West

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103
25 March 2015
Divorce: The Reasons Behind It May Be Just Beneath Your Sheets
The day someone gets married is supposed to be the happiest day of your life. You wake
up after a night spent away from your significant other, longing to see their face. You get out of
bed with butterflies entangling your stomach and spill your coffee all over your pajamas because
your hands are shaking so badly. Your bridesmaids show up at your door to help start the
festivities of the day. Makeup on, curled hair and heels, you are sure to be the most elegant
person in the entire world on this day. You turn the corner, bouquet in hand and see your groom.
The expression on his face when he first lays eyes on you causes all the nerves and concerns to
vanish. Your cold feet are now comfortable in your shoes when walking down the aisle. On this
day, you are indeed the most confident you will ever be in your marriage. The words I do
follow a long list of vows you make to one another, in sickness and in health and for richer or
for poorer, you promise your lives to one another and vow til death do you part. However,
ever since 1643, this last, most binding part of a vow, has somehow become less powerful. Why
1643, you ask? In 1643, Denis Clarke broke his promise to his wife Anne by abandoning her and
committing adultery with another women within the colony. This was the first divorce granted by
the Quarter Court of Boston, Massachusetts and the first recorded divorce in America.
Since 1643, the rate of divorce has done nothing but expandgrow. As Glenda Riley states
in her book Divorce: An American Tradition American divorce was vital, and growing, long

before late twentieth-century Americans carried it to its current state, divorce has always been a
part of American society and always will be. But; what if we, as Americans, can do something to
decrease the numbers of divorce per year? Perhaps we can by finding the underlying causes of
divorce and trying to fix them before it gets to the point of separation.
In the 1920s, women were the main cause of divorce. With the new idea of feminism
sparking and husbands recently returning from World War One, there were a lot of changes to
American life. Journalist of Forum magazine in 1911 and feminist, Rheta Childe Dorr, told her
readers to view divorces as mere legal ratifications. Dorr was a major advocate for the
Divorce Movement in the early 1900s. This movement was seen as a way for women to gain
liberation from their male partners. Within their fight for rights, women also fought for rights in
their homes and would leave finally have the courage to leave unhappy marriages. Abused
women felt as though they could be free from their tainted lifestyle. With so many soldiers
returning to the states with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, women found themselves married to a
person they did not originally married because of the state of the mans mindwomen commonly
found themselves in situations that were not ideal for themselves, or their children. Women, were
also finally able to gain status within the labor force, especially with their husbands at war and a
need for workers in factories. As this Divorce Movement continued, however, the stigmas
associated with a divorced women were vanishing. Dorothy Dix, a popular columnist and
feminist at the time, stated that while before World War I, a woman of divorce was considered a
disgraced woman, yet, after World War I, society found it useless to keep two people together
who have come to hate each other. Divorce was becoming so popular in the early 1900s that,
Robert Grant, author of Scribners, said the law was soon to benearing granting divorce on
demand. The 1920s were the start of the dramatic incline of divorce, and the reasons then were

for independence and for women to stake a claim in American society, but, now that women have
the same rights as men and there is little reason why a woman would be forced into a marriage
she does not approve of, why are divorce rates still increasing?
After the Divorce Movement of the 1920s, the stigmas associated with divorce were
nearly eradicated. Some of those completely opposed to divorce, were willing to accept other
limited grounds for divorce, such as adultery, insanity, and consanguinity. For those of you who
do not know whatAdultery is when one person within a marriage has a sexual relationship with a
person outside of that marriage, insanity is when a person is considered mentally unstable and
consanguinity is, it is when two people get married and find out that they have common
ancestors and request a divorce because of this. So, now that divorce is not frowned upon quite
as much as it previously was, more people were willing to admit their reasons for divorce.
According to William H. Doherty, noted marriage scholar and therapist, 40-50% of all first
marriages end in divorce, and 60% of all second marriages end in divorce. He wrote the article,
How common is divorce and what are the reasons? Within this article, Doherty describes the
most commonpopular reasons for divorce in the United States. The top four most common
reasons are, lack of commitment, arguing, infidelity, and marrying too young. Although some of
these reasons, such as infidelity and arguing, cannot be foreseen or even thoroughly explained,
many experts can indulge in research within lack of commitment and marrying too young.
John Marshall Townsend, acclaimed writer and author of What Women Want- What Men
Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently, goes into detail on the
many reason why lack of commitment may play a huge factor in divorces. He uses information
from many studies throughout his novel including The Kinsey studies. The Kinsey studies,
conducted between 1938 and 1950, is still the largest studies conducted on human sexual

behavior. These studies provide insight into why so many couples, approximately 73%, get
divorced due to commitment issues. In these studies, the Kinsey team witnessed that women can
go weeks, months, or even years without having any sort of sexual activity, however, in men, this
sort of irregularity is rarely seen. Men will usually resort to forms of masturbation, otherwise the
frequency of nocturnal emissions will increase. This substitution from sexual gratification to
other forms of masturbation can be seen as a form of decreased commitment to ones partner.
Different sexual preferences will always be a contributing factor in martial disagreements. Prior
to the 1960s, premarital sex was extremely frowned upon, so it is understandable that couples
would not be completely aware of their partners sexual preferences and this may have caused
tension within the marriage, however, in todays society, premarital sex is extremely common
and then should play less of a roll in divorces. According to Kinseys study, of those who came
of age in the 1950s, 45 percent of women and 17 percent of men were virgins when they got
married. Comparing that to the 1980s, just thirty years later, 5 percent of women and 3 percent of
men were virgins when married. This shows that premarital sex and premarital sexual foreplay
has greatly increased since the early 1900s. Young adults are allowed more time to experience
different sexual scenarios before settling down with one partner for marriage. Though this allows
more room for discovery, men tend to take advantage of this and explore many sexual partners,
while women tend to prefer to have sex with a stable partner in which they share a monogamous
relationship. Referring back to Dohertys reasons for divorce, 46% of divorcees claim they were
married too young. When a person marries too young, they have yet to experience many sexual
expenditures, which often times causes tension between partners as they age. So while some
studies say that allowing time for sexual exploration is best for the development of relationships,
there is evidence which suggests the contrary. This suggests that Allowing women and men to

explore their own sexualities and choose what they like best makes basic sex differences more,
rather than less, visible. (Townsend, 16)
As well as sexually, men and women differ in their emotional tendencies. Women
naturally look for a partner whom is going to invest time into her. Although in todays society,
women tend to lean towards casual relationships until later in life, their emotional mechanisms
will interfere with this sexual desire they are feeling until the man starts to divest emotional
interest into them. This, in marriage, will also be a leading factor in arguments. When a husband
stops showing adequate signs of attraction towards the wife, she will lose her sexual desires
towards him. A woman can live life off of a purely emotional relationship, while a man,
according to Townsend, can maintain a relationship merely off of sexual relations. Thats not to
say that men cannot experience deep love and press for commitment, but for the most part,
studies show that men prefer a more lenient relationship. When men find themselves leaning
towards commitment, unlike for a women, it is not because they feel used or degraded, but
because they can find unemotional sex to be unappealing. Townsend found in her many years of
research that many men adjust to monogamy not because it is their deepest desire, but becuase
it is their partnerspartners desire.
These differences men and women experience, strictly because of the way they are
developed can causes so much tension. It has been researched for centuries the differences of
women and men sexually and emotionally, so why is it so hard for the opposite sex to understand
the distinctions between the opposite sex? If we as the future try to understand what we want
before diverging into marriage, do you think it could be possible to nearly eradicate the need for
divorce except for the most extreme of cases? I believe that if we take the time to get to know,
not only ourselves, but also the opposite sex, in all aspects, emotionally, cognitively and sexually,

then there will be no need for divorce because we will know exactly who we are vowing our
lives to and what compromises are necessary to aid the needs of our significant others.

BibliographyWorks Cited
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