Traits unhappy couples have in common

By Judy Dutton

David Bakke never thought he’d get divorced. At the start of his marriage in 2006, the 45-year-old from Atlanta, GA adored his wife’s intelligence — and was magnetically attracted to her to boot. Nonetheless, soon after tying the knot, cracks appeared in their relationship. “I was a saver, and my wife was a spender,” Bakke says. “She liked to leave a big mess in the kitchen and clean it up afterwards; I liked to leave as little to clean up as possible.” While each disagreement was small on its own, “You’d be surprised what an effect it can have on a relationship,” he says. “Not necessarily the habits themselves, but the unwillingness of one spouse to attempt to change them. Many more than one of our arguments began with, ‘If I can’t even get you to put the toilet seat down, how can I ever expect you to…’”

By 2010, Bakke was divorced, and baffled about how he’d gotten there. He was also worried about whether he could trust his instincts for relationships in the future: How could he know whether the next woman he was with would stick around? While none of us has a crystal ball, scientists have found that certain traits are common amongst those relationships that founder. Here are some of the most common ones to watch for — and what to do if you encounter them in your own love life.

My Response

One can never be completely sure if the relationship is going to last forever, for nothing lasts forever in this finite and temporal world. There are those that follow all of the guidelines and some follow none of them and still we come up with some amazing findings from both groups