There are many different and complex causes and reasons for divorce, each of them specific to each couple’s marital relationship, their individual experiences and personal issues. None of them may seem “common” to the people going through a divorce, of course, but many of the reasons recur enough to warrant the term. Divorce research reveals these facts:

• Lack of communication is one of the leading causes of divorce. A marriage is on the rocks when the lines of communication fail. You can’t have an effective relationship if either one of you won’t discuss your feelings, can’t talk about your mutual or personal issues, or keep your resentments simmering under wraps, and expect your partner to guess what the whole problem is about.
• Divorces often happen because people rarely discuss their expectations in detail prior to marriage, are less willing to work on their marriages afterwards, and would like quick solutions rather than having to resolve issues.
• People have gotten divorced for trivial reasons like snoring.
• People who come from divorced homes are more likely to get divorced than people who come from happily married households. Divorce seems less like a big deal if you have seen your parents go through it.
• People who get married between the ages of 23 to 27 are more likely to stay together than people who get married in their teens.
• People who cohabit before marriage have higher rates of divorce than people who didn’t cohabit before marriage.

In many cases, quite a few of the problems causing divorce existed in the couple’s relationship long before they got married. The problems were either not acknowledged, or were ignored in the fond hope that marriage might transform them for the better. Guess what? It doesn’t. Nobody else can make you feel better about yourself. You can’t change or save anybody. As someone wise once said, it takes two wholes to make a marriage, not two halves.