Wednesday, August 7, 2002

As story published today by the Ottawa Citizen reports that doctors are now trying to predict the risk for a major health problem: divorce.

The breakdown of a marriage exacts an enormous toll on mental and physical health. People in troubled relationships are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and high blood pressure. Even so, the medical community has had little advice for preventing divorce, which ends nearly half of North American marriages.

Many researchers believe couples can "inoculate" a marriage against divorce by seeking counseling long before a major crisis hits. For instance, research shows even as small a gesture as eye-rolling after a spouse's comment can be a strong predictor for divorce, while marriages with traditional gender roles often are highly successful.

University of Washington psychology professor John Gottman, a leading divorce-prediction researcher, has videotaped thousands of couples and codes positive and negative facial expressions, body language and comments.

He and his colleagues have calculated that strong marriages have at least a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions. When the ratio starts to drop, the marriage is at high risk for divorce.

Four negative qualities are the strongest predictors for divorce: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling. Couples also need to be aware of subtle negatives such as facial expressions. "There are thousands of them that happen in a week's time in a marriage," says Cheryl Rampage, senior therapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Another researcher, retired University of Virginia professor Mavis Hetherington, studied 1,400 families over three decades, breaking them down into types.

Certain types, she found, are predisposed to divorce, such as the "pursuer-distancer" marriage, in which the wife typically presses to solve problems, but the husband dismisses her concerns.

Successful married couples argue, but they take a gentle approach to start the conversation, and they know how to exit an argument if it begins to escalate, and quickly repair the damage. Also, the people with the highest expectations for marriage usually end up with the highest-quality marriages.