Pre-Devorce Conflicts Assessment and Sex

Abstract

In the present paper the author undertakes to determine the dependencies between the sex of a person getting devorced and his/her assessment of the pre-devorce conflicts. It is assumed that social-cultural determinants and biological determinants which define the husband’s and the wife’s position in the family are the causes of the fact that a person, because of his/her sex, becomes a source of separate and different psychological problems. For the partner.

In the analysis of the pre-devorce conflicts three aspects were selected and, later, studied: sources of most frequent clashes between the spouses, most burdensome problems for a person in his/her marriage, direct reasons ofstarting the divorce proceedings.

In the research made according to a standardized interview 196 devorcees (133 women and 63 men) were tested. The interviews were made with a new industry works’ employees, in a small town of no industrial traditions. Therefore, the results cannot be extrapolated onto other social environments.

The results showed differences in the men’s and women’s assessments of their pre-devorce conflicts. Alcoholism (and its consequences) of the husband was the dominant feature in the p picture of the pre-devorce conflict presented by 3/4 of the women. The frequency with which this element appeared in the interview depended on the aspect of phenomenon formulated by the question With men, conjugal infidelity of the wife was the dominant category (1/2 answers). However, this charge but made against the husband appeared relatively frequently among the women interviewed. It was shown that both men and women tend not to accept the charge and to shift the responsibility for the beak-up onto the partner. Self-defensive tendencies seem to be stronger in women, which is testified by a bigger percentage of self-criticism in men.