The Great Divorce

A man named Robert came home from work one evening and was astonished to find his wife Alice cramming her belongings into a suitcase. “What on earth are you doing?” he cried. “I can’t stand it anymore,” she said. “Thirty-two years we’ve been married, and we keep on bickering and quarreling and ignoring each other. I’m fed up, and I’m leaving!” Stunned, Robert watched his wife close the suitcase, drag it down the stairs, out the front door, and down the street. Suddenly, the distraught husband ran into the bedroom, grabbed a second suitcase and quickly threw in some clothing. Racing outside toward his wife he shouted, “Alice, you’re right — I can’t stand it either. Just give me a minute, and I’ll go with you.”

Studies have shown that divorce is a highly predictable outcome among couples caught in such a downward spiral of negative interaction. As proof, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle studied more than two thousand…