causes of divorce essay

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Ai or not ai a student suspects one of their peer reviewer was a bot, how to summarize a research article, loose vs lose, how to cite a blog, apa paraphrasing, essay on causes of divorce – example, sample.

Extramarital affairs is the main reason for divorces (Oliver). Infidelity causes anger and resentment among those who are married, and often tears apart the emotional connection couples have. Though one event of infidelity can be tackled through counseling, multiple accounts of extramarital affairs usually result in divorce.

Another main reason why people get divorced is money. Different spending habits, opposite financial goals, and a lack of money can produce great strain on a marriage (Oliver). If the couple has children, money becomes even more vital to the sustainability of the relationship.

Though it may seem minor, a lack of communication is another key reason for divorce. If one or both partners in the marriage feel they cannot express themselves properly, or feel they are not being listened to, resentment can easily settle in (Oliver). Yelling and interrupting are common signs that a couple is not communicating well.

Some people cannot stand the amount of arguments they have with their partners. If couples are bickering constantly, the joy of marriage cannot show through (Oliver). Arguments commonly stem from not being able to understand another person’s view, which is essential in a healthy relationship.

Unfortunately, weight gain leads to many divorces. Say if a couple started out as both skinny, and one partner became overweight, the attraction to that partner might be lost. That loss of attraction causes many to turn in divorce papers, as they cannot fathom staying in a relationship with someone they do not feel comfortable with in a romantic way (Oliver).

Another prominent cause of divorce is unreasonable expectations (Oliver). It is good for the partners in marriage to discuss each other’s expectations before signing the matrimony papers, as partners often have varying expectations of what the marriage entails, and the positions the partners will hold in it. Sometimes one partner will have lofty expectations for the marriage without his or her partner realizing it.

Though love should be the overriding reason to get married, it seems, a lack of intimacy causes many couples to get divorced. The romantic, maybe even infatuated love that married couples feel in the beginning of their marriages eventually subsides. It is natural, but how the partners deal with this decrease in sexual contact often decides how the future marriage will pan out (Oliver).

Though common sense, equality in marriages is not often achieved. Each partner should feel equal in the marriage, and not dominated. Though it is delicate balance, it can be accomplished. Those who cannot achieve this often ask for a divorce, as they feel they are being shackled by his or her marriage instead of feeling a sense of joy and happiness from the relationship (Oliver).

Alas, some people are not prepared for marriage. Many people rush to get married in a romantic frenzy without taking in the consequences of such an action (Oliver). They could be unprepared in terms of financial stability, emotional stability, and mental stability. Surprisingly, the age group with the highest rate of divorce are people in their 20s (Oliver). So, when getting married, be sure that you feel that everything is set for the occasion.

A sad fact about marriages is that with emotional, physical, and mental strain, abuse can follow. This abuse does not have to refer to only physical abuse, but also emotional and psychological abuse (Oliver). Abuse can come from both men and women, and should not be thought of only as an attack against women, however women are subject to most of the physical abuse that occurs.

As you can see, the cause of divorce is multifaceted. Though one issue might put enough pressure on a marriage for the couple to go for a divorce, commonly a combination of problems arise that lend to the couple pondering the end of their relationship. Through infidelity, money issues, a lack of communication, constant arguing, weight gain, unrealistic expectations, a lack of intimacy, a lack of equality, a lack of preparedness, and abuse, marriages are broken. It is important for couples, therefore, to get counseling when any of these issues arise.

Sometimes expository essays can cover more complex topics. Moreover, they can also be sensitive ones as well. So it’s crucial to find proper words and objective arguments to clearly express your opinion. Have you asked yourself: “What is a good homework help website that could give me useful insights on this type of writing?” Then, you might want to check the reviews on the topic, as there are plenty of options to choose from.

Oliver Smith (2017). Mapped: The countries with the highest divorce rate. [online] The Telegraph . Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/mapped-countries-with-highest-divorce-rate/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

Marriage Advice – Best Marriage Advice & Tips for Couples. (2017). 10 Most Common Reasons for Divorce | Marriage.Com. [online] Available at: https://www.marriage.com/advice/divorce/10-most-common-reasons-for-divorce/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

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Essay Samples on Divorce

Divorce is a complex and deeply personal process that involves the legal dissolution of a marriage. It marks the end of a once-promising union and triggers a range of emotions, from sadness and anger to relief and newfound independence. Understanding the intricacies of divorce and its effects is crucial when writing college essays about divorce.

How to Write College Essays About Divorce

When exploring the subject of divorce, it is important to delve into the factors that contribute to its occurrence and look at college essays about divorce examples. These can include communication issues, incompatibility, domestic abuse, financial strain, or even external factors such as societal expectations or cultural norms. Discussing these causes helps paint a comprehensive picture of the complexities surrounding divorce.

To provide a well-rounded perspective for an example of college essay about divorce, consider including statistics or research findings related to divorce rates, average durations of marriages, or common age groups affected by divorce. This data can help support your arguments and provide a factual foundation for your essay.

Additionally, it is crucial to examine the legal aspects of divorce. Different jurisdictions have specific laws and regulations governing the process, including property division, alimony, child custody, and visitation rights. Incorporating information about these legal frameworks can add depth to your essay and showcase a comprehensive understanding of divorce proceedings.

While divorce can be emotionally challenging, it also offers opportunities for personal growth and self-discovery. Discuss the psychological and emotional impacts divorce can have on individuals, as well as strategies for coping and rebuilding one’s life after the end of a marriage.

Lastly, explore the societal implications of divorce. Analyze how divorce impacts the perception of marriage, family structures, and gender roles. Consider the evolving attitudes towards divorce in different cultures and how society supports or stigmatizes individuals going through this process in the divorce essay example.

Cause and Effect of Broken Family: Exploring the Impact on Individuals and Society

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The Effects Of Divorce On Children And Young Adolescents

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Best topics on Divorce

1. Cause and Effect of Broken Family: Exploring the Impact on Individuals and Society

2. Growing Up with Divorced Parents: Discussing the Topic of Divorce With Your Children

3. Growing Up With Divorced Parents: The Impact of Divorce on the Children

4. The Effects Of Divorce On Children

5. The Effects Of Divorce On Children In America

6. The Effects Of Divorce On Children And Young Adolescents

7. The Causes Of Divorce That Lead To The Annulment

8. The Causes Of Divorce And The Ruined Marriages

9. The Causes Of Divorce: The Reason Marriage Fails

10. The Causes And Effects Of Divorce

11. Main Reasons For Divorce In The United States And How It Impacts Family

12. My Personal Opinion On Why Divorce Shouldn’t Be Legalized

13. Common Social Problems Encountered In Family Life And How They Affect The Marriage

14. Divorce Rates In Kenya And Means To Reduce Them

15. Divorce Process And Finances In Hennepin County

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Persuasive & Argumentative Essays about Divorce: Free Tips

A divorce is a life-changing experience that affects spouses and their children (if there are any). Since divorce rates are relatively high in modern society, more and more people face this problem nowadays.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

When you are assigned to compose an argumentative essay about divorce, you should be as careful as possible. Remember that the split-up of marriage can be a painful experience for everyone involved.

The article will give you useful advice on how to write an outstanding paper on the topic. Learn the essential features of the following types:

• persuasive essay about divorce,
• for and against essay,
• causes and effects of divorce essay,

Check tips from Custom-writing.org below and write the best paper!

• 💍 How to Write It
• 📂 Essays by Type
• ✒ Causes and Effects

✍️ Divorce Essay Topics

💍 how to write a divorce essay.

The general structure of essays on divorce is quite common:

• introduction;
• conclusion.

Yet, there are some variations of what info to include in the body, depending on the essay type. The following structure is applicable for divorce argumentative essay. To learn about the features of other types, keep on reading our article.

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

Argumentative divorce essays are composed according to the standard structure:

1. Thesis Statement about Divorce

A divorce essay introduction isn’t anything extraordinary as you have to introduce your topic and position.

• You should always give broad information about the issue and state the main problems you will discuss in your writing.
• Make a general statement about the consequences of divorce or the common divorce effects on people.
• Then write your thesis statement on divorce. Clearly explain to the audience the topic you’re going to discuss and your position on that topic. In case you find this task difficult, try using a thesis generator for argumentative essay . This will save you some time.

That’s it! Now your divorce essay introduction is ready.

What’s next?

2. Main Body

This section presents all of your ideas and arguments related to the topic of divorce.

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• Here you can write about the adverse effects of divorce on children or the most common reasons people divorce.
• Use compelling arguments and support your ideas with examples.

There are tons of surveys and statistics about divorce on the internet, so it won’t be too challenging to gather the information you need.

3. Conclusion

In the last paragraph, you have to sum up your paper and leave a final expression.

• Summarize every idea presented in your divorce essay.
• Restate your thesis statement on divorce, relying on your reasoning.
• Then list your concluding thoughts on this topic.

Make your sentences clear and easy to follow. Use synonyms to improve your writing style. Such an approach will help you convince the readers and express your thoughts better.

📂 Divorce Essays by Type

The content and reasoning of each paper on divorce depend primarily on the type of essay . See the following sections to understand how to write each of them.

Here are a few types you can consider:

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

Argumentative Essay about Divorce

When it comes to divorce, there are many disputable topics—for example, the reasons people separate or its impact on children. It’s easy to find support and statistics for both issues. And you’ll need them as facts are a crucial part of a divorce argumentative essay.

As a starting point:

Research your idea and choose a side to support. Make sure that among all argumentative essay topics about divorce, you selected the most interesting for yourself. In your thesis statement, concisely express your position, so the reader can quickly get it.

Then, start writing the entire essay. Regardless of what type of paper you are writing—anti or pro divorce argumentative essay—your writing should meet these requirements:

• Base your points on logic;
• Present both sides of the arguments, but support only one;
• Take into consideration counterclaims;
• Support all the arguments by valid evidence;
• Use a calm, informative tone.

Don’t forget to incorporate quotes and figures to convince your readers.

Persuasive Essay about Divorce

What is the goal of writing persuasive essays ? It’s to convince your reader that your position on a particular problem is true.

Therefore, writing this paper means that you should identify an individual problem related to the topic. In the introduction of your persuasive essay about divorce, you should choose your side and deliver it to the reader.

Crucial note:

Similarly to an argumentative essay, you have to provide credible facts to support your position. Yet here, you use them to back up your opinion and persuade your reader.

While composing your persuasive essay about the legalization of divorce, remember its distinctive features:

• Based on emotions;
• Presents only one side of the argument;
• Ignores counterclaims;
• The tone is dynamic, emotionally-charged, and aggressive to some extent.

Cause and Effect Essay on Divorce

Whether it concerns old parents or a young couple, divorce typically has the same causes and effects. You can often see them clearly, even in books or movies.

The essay outline for the causes and effects of divorce essay is quite common:

• Introduction.

In your divorce essay introduction, provide a general background and compose a clear thesis statement. For example, your thesis might look like this:

A divorce, caused by the spouses’ expectations mismatch, results in a lack of communication between children and one of the parents.

In this part of your essay, investigate the cause and effect of divorce, you stated before.

For the given thesis, the main points would be the following:

The primary cause of divorce is the mismatch in the spouses’ expectations from the marriage.

The divorce often results in a lack of children’s interactions with one of the parents.

• Conclusion.

Synthesize all of your arguments and give your audience a space for a further investigation of your issue.

Narrative Essay about Divorce

If your assignment is to write a family essay, you can choose from a wide range of topics. For this purpose, a marriage essay or a divorce essay would be perfect.

In a short paper about your family, it isn’t easy to cover many topics. So choose only one.

Look through some narrative essay topics and select the one you like:

• The story of my divorce: how did I decide to break up with my spouse?
• My life completely changed after my parents divorced.
• How my life looked like before the divorce with my wife/husband and how it looks now.
• The way divorce destroys healthy communication between children and parents in my family.

For and Against Divorce Essay

As you know, both the negative and positive effects of divorce are disputable, making them appealing to discuss. There are many recent studies and relevant statistical data on the topic to help you write such an essay.

This topic would also be great for a speech on divorce.

Wondering what are the for and against divorce arguments? Take a look at the following:

✒ Divorce: Causes and Effects

We have a pleasant bonus for you! Below, you can find useful arguments and insightful ideas that you can use in your papers on divorce. Apply our concepts in any type of essay, adjusting them to your topic.

Divorce essays can cover the following issues:

Generally Known Facts on Divorces

When covering this issue in your persuasive essay on divorce, you will have to cover the problem altogether. Include the common marriage problems that psychologists all over the world study. Use their statistical data on divorces when crafting your argument.

Divorce is quite a broad topic, and you may want to narrow it down. With so much information available, you could write a research paper on divorce without any difficulty.

Statistical Data on Divorces

Good divorce essays should include enough statistical data. It will add more scientific value and reveal your research abilities. Besides, facts and figures present many exciting topics to comment on.

For example:

You can do significant research concerning divorce causes and consequences. Draw a contrast between divorce in several countries, or examine the age and education of people who officially separate more often.

Reasons for Divorces

What does an essay on divorce mean without discussion of its reasons?

Find out different sociologists’ viewpoints on the reasons for divorces. Then underline the cause you consider to be the most truthful one.

You can also provide your own theory on the grounds for divorces in your persuasive essay on divorce. The key point is to prove the accuracy of your statement.

Divorce Prevention Ideas

If there is a problem, there must be some solution. So, think of the possible ways to make a marriage work.

Investigate divorce causes from a scientific point of view. Examine the primary studies that reveal why people actually break up. Also, discuss the precautions that can help married couples avoid significant conflicts.

Effects of Divorce on Children

Parents sometimes forget that their divorce isn’t only about them but also about their children. It causes psychological problems for kids, which you can classify in your paper. Don’t forget to add some statistical data on divorce to support your arguments.

Every child reacts differently to their parents’ breakup. It’s a rare case when divorce consequences are positive, making the effects on kids an urgent topic to discuss.

Positive Effects of Divorce

Sometimes divorce isn’t a catastrophe but rather the only way to heal wounds and begin a new life. Often, people don’t recognize that they need to change their lives for the better. This situation is primarily related to abusive marriages or those with regular cheating.

In these cases, the positive effects of divorce may seem easy to understand. However, psychologists have to make great efforts to persuade people to end their relationships. Write a paper making this same argument.

• Negative outcomes of divorce on children .  
• Connection between divorce and antisocial behavior of children.  
• Family crises and the issue it causes: divorce, remarriage, stepparents, adoption. 
• Effect of divorce on teenagers ’ academic performance.  
• Causes and consequences of divorce . 
• What can be done to decrease divorce rates in America ?  
• Does parental divorce affect the rates of juvenile delinquency ? 
• The most widespread reasons for divorce .  
• Analyze marital success factors and Gottman’s predictors of divorce.  
• Impact of divorce on child’s mental health .  
• Change of divorce law throughout history.  
• Positive and negative changes in children’s behavior after divorce.  
• Divorce : a disaster or a benefit?  
• Is cheating one of the main reasons of divorce?  
• Gender stratification impact on divorce trends.  
• Effect of divorce on family relationship .  
• Do divorced parents change their child-rearing styles ?  
• List of factors typically associated with higher divorce rates .  
• The support required for all the members of divorced and single-parent families . 
• Analyze the reasons for high divorce rates . 
• Does divorce only impact adolescent in a bad way?  
• Effect of poverty on divorce rates.  
• Specifics of divorce in the UAE . 
• Does divorce lead to depression ?  
• Family therapy and its role in decreasing divorce rates.  
• The impact of divorce on children-parents relationship.  
• Evaluation of child custody in divorce proceedings.  
• How to manage the stress of divorce.   
• Effect of divorce on children’s self-esteem.  
• How to minimize the devastating consequences of divorce .  
• Addiction as the reason for divorce.  
• Effective communication in marriage and its role in preventing divorce.  
• Divorce as the only way out of an abusive relationship .  
• Financial issues of divorce and how to overcome them.  
• Parental support is the best way to help children to go through divorce .  
• How do adolescents adjust to parental divorce?  
• Do boys and girls react to the parental divorce the same way?  
• Social media can destroy relationship and lead to divorce. 
• Can Christian counseling help couples to resolve their issues and avoid divorce?  
• Poverty among divorced women.  
• Young marriage has more chances to break-up.  
• Respect is the best way to get marriage satisfaction and avoid divorce.  
• Is interfaith marriage doomed to divorce? 
• Why a successful marriage may end in divorce?  
• Marriage contract will help to facilitate the legal side of divorce process.  
• Reduction of the number of divorces . 
• Personal development after divorce.  
• How family relationships influence future marriage and divorce chances of children. 
•   Child support in case of marriage divorce.  
• Will lack of family and work balance definitely result in divorce?  

If you are stuck on writing, you can always ask us for help! Whether you need a persuasive essay on divorce or any other paper, we are here and ready to assist.

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Further reading:

• Top Ideas for Argumentative or Persuasive Essay Topics
• Best Argumentative Research Paper Topics
• 197 Inspirational & Motivational Argumentative Essay Topics
• Gun Control Essay: How-to Guide + Argumentative Topics
• Proposal Essay Topics and Ideas – Easy and Interesting
• Free Exemplification Essay Examples

🔗 References

• Essay Introductions
• Transitional Words and Phrases
• Argumentative Paper Format
• The Writing Process
• Divorce Argument Essay: Bartleby
• Cause and Effect Essay: The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Roane State Community College and UNC at Chapel Hill Writing Center
• Counterargument: Gordon Harvey, the Writing Center at Harvard University
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Essays About Divorce: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about divorce can be challenging to write; read on to see our top essay examples and writing prompts to help you get started.

Divorce is the legal termination of a marriage. It can be a messy affair, especially if it includes children. Dividing the couple’s assets also often causes chaos when divorce proceedings are in session. 

Divorce also touches and considers religion and tradition. Therefore, laws are formed depending on the country’s history, culture, and belief system.

To help you choose what you want to talk about regarding this topic, here are examples you can read to get an idea of what kind of essay you want to write.

1. Divorce Should Be Legalized in the Philippines by Ernestine Montgomery

2. to divorce or not to divorce by mark ghantous, 3. what if you mess up by manis friedman, 4. divorce: a life-changing experience by writer louie, 5. divorce’s effects on early adult relationships by percy massey, 1. the major reasons for divorce, 2. why i support divorce, 3. my divorce experience, 4. how to avoid divorce, 5. divorce and its effects on my family, 6. the consequences of divorce, 7. divorce laws around the world.

“What we need is a divorce law that defines clearly and unequivocally the grounds and terms for terminating a marriage… Divorce is a choice and we all should have the freedom to make choices… in cases where a union is more harmful than beneficial, a divorce can be benevolent and less hurtful way of severing ties with your partner.”

As the title suggests, Montgomery and his other colleagues discuss why the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, needs to allow divorce. Then, to strengthen his argument, he mentions that Spain, the root of Christianity, and Italy, where the Vatican City is, administer divorce. 

He also mentions bills, relevant figures, and statistics to make his case in favor of divorce more compelling. Montgomery adds that people who want a divorce don’t necessarily mean they want to marry again, citing other motives such as abuse and marital failure.

“Divorce, being the final step in a detrimental marriage, brings upon the gruesome decision as to whether a married couple wishes to end that once made commitment they had for each other. As opposed to the present, divorce was rare in ancient times…”

Ghantous starts his essay with what divorce means, as not only an end of a commitment but also the termination of legal duties and other obligations of the couple to each other. He then talks about divorce in ancient times, when men had superior control over women and their children. He also mentions Caroline Norton, who fought with English family law that was clearly against women.

“So even though G‑d has rules,… laws,… divine commandments, when you sin, He tells you: ‘You messed up? Try again.’ That’s exactly how you should be married — by treating your spouse the way G‑d treats you. With that much mercy and compassion, that much kindness and consideration.”

Friedman’s essay discusses how the Torah sees marriage and divorce and explains it by recounting a scene with his daughters where they couldn’t follow a recipe. He includes good treatment and forgiveness necessary in spouses. But he also explains that God understands and doesn’t want people in a failed marriage to continue hurting. You might also be interested in these essays about commitment .

“Depending on the reasons that led up to the divorce the effects can vary… I was fourteen years old and the one child that suffered the most emotional damage… My parents did not discuss their reasons for the divorce with me, they didn’t have to, and I knew the reasons.”

The author starts the essay by citing the famous marital promise: “For better or worse, for richer or poorer,” before going in-depth regarding the divorce rate among Americans. He further expounds on how common divorce is, including its legalities. Although divorce has established legal grounds, it doesn’t consider the emotional trauma it will cause, especially for children.

Louie recounts how his life changed when his dad moved out, listing why his parents divorced. He ends the essay by saying society is at fault for commercializing divorce as if it’s the only option.

“With divorce becoming more prevalent, many researchers have taken it upon themselves to explore many aspects of this topic such as evolving attitudes, what causes divorce, and how it effects the outcome of children’s lives.”

Massey examines the causes of divorce and how it impacts children’s well-being by citing many relevant research studies. Some of the things he mentions are the connection between the child’s mental health, behavioral issues, and future relationships. Another is the trauma a child can endure during the divorce proceedings.

He also mentions that some children who had a broken family put marriage on a pedestal. As a result, they do their best to create a better future family and treat their children better.

Top 7 Prompts on Essays About Divorce

After adding to your knowledge about the subject, you’re better prepared to write essays about divorce.

There are many causes of the dissolution of marriage, and many essays have already discussed these reasons. However, you can explain these reasons differently. For example, you can focus on domestic abuse, constant fighting, infidelity, financial issues, etc.

If you want to make your piece stand out, you can include your personal experience, but only if you’re comfortable sharing your story with others. 

If you believe divorce offers a better life for all parties involved, list these benefits and explain them. Then, you can focus on a specific pro of legalizing divorce, such as getting out of an abusive relationship. 

If you want to write an essay to argue against the negative effects of divorce, here’s an excellent guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

This prompt is not only for anyone who has no or sole guardian. If you want to write about the experiences of a child raised by other people or who lives with a single parent, you can interview a friend or anyone willing to talk about their struggles and triumphs even if they didn’t have a set of parents.

Aside from reasons for divorce, you can talk about what makes these reasons more probable. Then, analyze what steps couples can take to avoid it. Such as taking couples’ therapy, weekly family get-together, etc. To make your essay more valuable, weigh in on what makes these tips effective.

Divorce is diverse and has varying effects. There are many elements to its results, and no two sets of factors are precisely the same for two families. 

If you have an intimate experience of how your immediate and extended family dynamic had been affected by divorce, narrate those affairs. Include what it made you and the others around you feel. You might also be interested in these essays about conflict .

This is a broad prompt, but you can narrow it down by focusing on an experience you or a close friend had. You can also interview someone closely related to a divorce case, such as a lawyer, reporter, or researcher. 

If you don’t have any experience with divorce, do not know anyone who had to go through it, or is more interested in its legal aspects, compiles different divorce laws for each country. You can even add a brief history for each law to make the readers understand how they came about.

Are you looking for other topics to write on? Check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Causes Of Divorce: 19 Of The Most Common Reasons

By Brette Sember, JD Updated Mar 15, 2024

What are the most common reasons for divorce? Of course, this is a subjective question, as the reasons people get divorced are as varied as the reasons they fall in love.

However, certain issues arise more often: conflict, infidelity, poor communication, incompatibility, and a lack of romantic intimacy. Even though the overall divorce rate is decreasing among adults aged 16 to 65, approximately 45% of marriages in the US still end in divorce.

Read on to learn about the 19 most common reasons people decide to divorce.

What Are The Most Common Causes of Divorce?

According to various studies, the four most common causes of divorce are lack of commitment, infidelity or extramarital affairs, too much conflict and arguing, and lack of physical intimacy. The least common reasons are lack of shared interests and incompatibility between partners.

The 19 Most Common Reasons for Divorce

1. too much conflict, incessant arguing.

Constant conflict, bitter battles, and going to bed angry every night are no one’s idea of a healthy marriage.

"How you handle conflict is the single most important predictor of whether your marriage will survive."

How long could you stick it out when your home – which is supposed to be your place of peace and release from the daily grind – is more stressful than your worst day at work? In a good marriage, your spouse is your partner, your shelter from the storm, and your number-one cheerleader when you’re down.

In a high-conflict marriage, your spouse is as emotionally dangerous as a terrible boss. Unless interrupted by marriage counseling or therapy, this negative spiral will continue downward until the only place left to go is divorce.

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2. Lack of Commitment

A happy and healthy marriage requires commitment from both spouses. Unfortunately, it only takes one spouse with a lack of commitment to the relationship to doom the marriage. If one partner isn’t fully committed to the other, then the marriage will eventually suffer.

Sometimes, the spouse who is still committed to the relationship believes they can singlehandedly save their marriage if they work harder at it. After all, if they put in 200% while their spouse puts in 0%, that equals 100% – right?

When their marriage inevitably ends, after the shock and disbelief have worn off, their rage at being used and taken for granted during the relationship may lead to a very difficult divorce.

3. Infidelity / Extramarital Affairs

Being cheated on by the person who vowed to remain faithful to you forever is a bitter pill to swallow, and most people consider this to be an unforgivable offense. Infidelity doesn’t always lead to divorce, but it does destroy how you see your relationship.

Discovering that your spouse has been engaging in an extramarital affair makes you ask three questions:

• Can my marriage survive this betrayal?
• Can I ever trust my spouse/partner again?
• Am I willing to work on my marriage, or is my partner’s infidelity the last straw?

The answer to these questions depends on whether both of you are willing and able to repair your relationship – almost certainly with the help of a marriage and family therapist (MFT) .

To rescue your relationship, you will have to forgive your partner – and your partner will have to make a genuine apology and commit to acting to end their cheating for good. If you have been drifting apart, focus on reconnecting rather than pointing fingers and playing the blame game.

4. Lack of Emotional and/or Physical Intimacy

Emotional and physical intimacy “grease the wheels” of a smooth-running relationship. When they’re gone, however, serious relationship issues often take their place.

Communication breakdown, anger, resentment, sadness, loneliness, infidelity, and greatly diminished self-esteem are some of the most serious issues – and left untreated, they can irreparably damage a relationship and pave the road to divorce.

When emotional intimacy is low or non-existent, your sex life will probably suffer as well. When you feel emotionally distant or disconnected from your spouse, your marriage may become a sexless one.

To reignite the spark, try to remember why you fell in love with your spouse and consciously view them through those lenses.

Also, think about what you used to love doing together and carve out time to do those things together again. Spending quality time doing something you both enjoy can help rebuild emotional intimacy, leading to physical intimacy.

Emotional and physical intimacy is like super-glue to strengthen your love and marriage bonds.

5. Communication Problems Between Partners

A breakdown in the lines of communication is one of the biggest predictors of divorce. Couples who don’t communicate well cannot resolve issues together and tend to suffer more misunderstandings and hurt feelings than those who have learned how to resolve conflict respectfully.

Good communication is physical as well as verbal, and it is required for almost everything in a good relationship, including sex, a couple’s finances, whether or not to have children, areas of disagreement, and other sensitive topics unhappy couples deem too dangerous to discuss.

An inability to communicate turns problem-solving sessions into shouting matches, which will eventually kill love, intimacy, and respect in your relationship.

To make it through the inevitable tough times, you must be willing and able to talk about what’s wrong or not working and decide how to resolve these issues together.

“Being able to communicate well requires both good transmission skills (articulation) and good receptive skills (listening). Without both, communication will be, at best, difficult.”

6. Domestic Violence: Abuse by a Partner or Parent

Domestic violence can include any act of tangible or threatened abuse – including verbal, physical, sexual, emotional, and/or economic abuse. In such a relationship, one person gains or maintains power over their partner via a pattern of abusive behavior.

This abuse can be directed solely at a spouse, or it can also involve one or more children of the marriage. If you or your children are in immediate danger, call 911 now!

For 24/7 confidential help, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY).

In October 2022, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) merged to form Project Opal .

For more resources, visit: https://ncadv.org/get-help

7. Opposing Values or Morals

There have been literal wars fought over differences in race, religion, nationality, and culture – and persecution based on all of these, plus gender, sexuality, and even which political party someone supports.

When two spouses have or develop opposing values and/or morals, and neither can or is willing to see things from their spouse’s point of view, the marriage is likely to end in divorce.

She believes in a woman’s right to choose, and he believes life begins at conception; his best friend is gay, and his wife is homophobic. They fell in love despite their religious difference, but those differences are tearing them apart now that they have children.

When you’re in love, you tend to overlook or rationalize red flags that your core values and morals are too different for a healthy relationship – but when the rose-colored glasses come off, those differences make it difficult or impossible to sustain a happy marriage.

8. Addiction: Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling, or Sex

There are many different types and degrees of addiction, and many top professionals – politicians, businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, portfolio managers, actors, and athletes, to name a few – have been able to hide their addiction successfully as they rose to the top.

Their spouses may be blissfully unaware, willing to look the other way in return for lifestyle/economic benefits, or gaslighted into believing they’re crazy to suspect their spouse’s addiction. No matter how the moment of truth arrives, it is always shattering.

Whether the marriage can survive depends on several factors – including the addict’s willingness and ability to take responsibility for their addiction, a genuine desire to seek treatment, and a lifelong commitment to recovery.

9. Absence of Romantic Intimacy or Love

This one is far too common given how busy and stressful our lives are – especially when you add driving the kids to football/hockey/baseball/ballet/orchestra/theater/choir practice before and after school into the mix.

Too many couples prioritize everything except their relationships, and then one partner is blindsided when the other says, “I want a divorce.” Contrary to popular belief, romantic love is not self-sustaining: without carving out quality time for intimacy and fun as a couple – not just as a family – love withers like a plant without water or sunshine.

Create a weekly carved-in-stone date night. For example, go to bed, wake up earlier, and use the time for daily physical (cuddling and/or sex) and emotional intimacy. Remember what you loved doing while you were dating, then start doing those things again before it’s too late!

10. One Spouse Not Carrying Their Weight in the Marriage

We all know marriages like this: both spouses work full-time, but only one of them takes responsibility for grocery shopping and cooking, household chores, and child-rearing.

Over time, the spouse whose work doesn’t end when they get home can build up a powerful resentment against the other, and unless the situation is addressed and rectified, the marriage could spiral down into divorce.

Sit down and list everything that needs to be done to keep the household running smoothly. Then, place a name beside each task, making sure to divide the chores equitably.

Don’t forget to add your children’s names to tasks they are old enough to tackle or help with – from setting the table to washing the dishes to mowing the lawn to vacuuming the carpets.

“Not carrying your weight” extends to romance and intimacy; if one partner is the only one making romantic gestures, arranging date nights, or initiating sex, that will also take a toll on the marriage.

11. Financial Problems and Debt

Money has been tight for many couples over the last few years. Arguments about money can become nasty and vindictive – and if a couple lacks the communication skills to discuss their financial problems calmly and rationally, that can be a reason for divorce.

In a marriage, financial problems are not limited to carrying massive debt and/or being unable to cover necessities. When the way spouses think about money and debt – no matter how much or how little of it they actually have – are fundamentally incompatible, it can also cause the breakdown of a marriage.

If financial problems are your main issue, consider hiring an expert specializing in financial divorce issues. They could save money by recommending the most efficient property division, tax, and support strategies.

A divorce financial analyst can also provide scenarios extrapolating your cash flow and net worth 5, 10, or even 20 years into the future if you choose Settlement A vs. Settlement B.

12. Marrying Too Young

A study from the University of Utah suggests that the perfect age to get married is between 28 and 32 . This is because those who marry young most likely don’t fully grasp marriage. This could be a reason why a lot of young married couples get divorced.

About 46% of couples who get married young get divorced. Also, 48% of couples who marry before they turn 18 are most likely to get divorced in 10 years, compared to 25% of people who marry after the age of 25.

13. Lack of Shared Interests / Incompatibility Between Partners

Opposites may attract, but similarities are what bind. With no shared interests, you will either start spending less and less time with your spouse as you pursue your hobbies and passions or give them up in favor of your spouse’s interests.

Both of these strategies will build resentment and weaken the bond you share. If you hope to stay together, you will likely need marriage counseling and a willingness to compromise.

For example, if he loves bowling and she loves dancing, he could bowl with his buddies on Thursdays while she goes dancing with her girlfriends – and then they identify something they both love and do that on “Friday date night.”

This applies to every area of your shared life, from household chores to choosing which extracurricular activities their children will do. If you cannot reach a compromise that both of you can commit to, your incompatibility may lead to divorce.

14. Religious Differences

Religious beliefs and practices play a pivotal role in shaping an individual's worldview, values, and daily rituals.

When two partners come from different religious backgrounds, it can sometimes lead to disagreements on fundamental life choices, from dietary habits to child-rearing practices.

While many interfaith couples find ways to blend their beliefs and traditions, for others harmoniously, the differences can become a source of recurring conflict. The challenge often lies in reconciling deeply held beliefs and finding common ground, especially during significant life events or ceremonies.

In some cases, external pressures from family or the broader community can exacerbate these differences.

Religious differences can significantly lead to marital discord without open communication and mutual respect.

15. Parenting Differences

Parenting is one of the most rewarding yet challenging responsibilities a couple can undertake together.

Differences in parenting styles, stemming from individual upbringings, personal beliefs, or cultural backgrounds, can become a significant source of tension in a marriage. While one partner might advocate for a more disciplined approach, the other might lean towards a lenient and nurturing style.

These disparities can lead to disagreements, ranging from education choices to setting boundaries and disciplinary actions. As children grow and navigate different life stages, these differences can become more pronounced, especially if not addressed early on.

Effective co-parenting requires open communication, compromise, and a unified front. Without these, parenting differences can strain the marital relationship, leading to deeper misunderstandings and conflicts.

16. External Family Pressures

Marriage often means merging two families, bringing along a mix of expectations and traditions. External pressures from in-laws, cultural differences, or unsolicited advice can strain a marriage.

Balancing the couple's needs with extended family demands is crucial. Without clear boundaries and open communication, these pressures can lead to resentment, potentially pushing a couple toward divorce.

17. Unrealistic Expectations

Every individual enters marriage with a set of expectations, often shaped by personal experiences, societal norms, or portrayals in media. While some expectations are reasonable, others can be unrealistic, setting the stage for disappointment and conflict.

Whether it's about roles in the household, financial achievements, or emotional support, when reality doesn't align with these lofty ideals, it can lead to feelings of inadequacy and resentment. For a marriage to thrive, it's essential for partners to communicate openly, adjust expectations, and understand that perfection is unattainable.

Unrealistic expectations, if unchecked, can become a silent threat to marital harmony.

18. Trust Issues

Trust is the bedrock of any strong relationship, and its absence can create deep fissures in the foundation of a marriage. Trust issues can stem from past betrayals, misunderstandings, or personal insecurities.

Whether it's doubts about fidelity, financial decisions, or even smaller daily matters, a lack of trust can lead to constant second-guessing and surveillance. This atmosphere of suspicion can stifle open communication and intimacy.

For a marriage to overcome trust issues, it often requires open dialogue, understanding, and sometimes professional counseling. If not addressed, persistent trust issues can erode the bond between partners, making reconciliation challenging.

19. Supporting Each Other's Goals

In a marriage, individual aspirations don't disappear; they intertwine with shared dreams.

Supporting each other's goals is pivotal for mutual growth and fulfillment. When one partner feels their ambitions are sidelined or undervalued, it can lead to feelings of resentment and stagnation.

Whether it's career advancements, personal passions, or educational pursuits, acknowledging and championing these aspirations strengthens the marital bond. Conversely, neglecting or undermining a partner's goals can create a rift, making one feel unsupported or isolated.

Successful marriages often thrive on mutual respect and encouragement, ensuring both partners feel valued in their pursuits.

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Divorce Essay: Causes and Effects

I hope you will enjoy reading this causes and effects of divorce essay. Also you should definitely visit our website Puressay.com , which is one of the best essay writing services. There you will find everything you are looking for. However, if there is something you are interested in and you do not see exactly what you want, in this case contact our team of professional writers and they will provide you with first-class original essay . Don’t waste your time and join us!

Divorce in a family

Why did not they manage to create happy family?

Causes of divorce in a family issue is relatively new, but already urgent problem. It became widespread only a couple of decades ago. According to the statistics, in 1950s only 3% of families got divorced, in ‘60s it was already 10%. In 1980s due to different reasons 33% of family could not avoid divorce. Today the number of divorces is about 45%. So there is no need to explain why this essay about divorce has much importance and must be read. Besides, young generation starts to forget what value family has and why they should try to save it.

Usually young families that exist for less than a year get divorced, also 1/3 of divorces happen in families that exist for 1 – 5 years. That is why the problem of divorces is the problem of young people.

Of course, there are cases when divorce is necessary, when husband and wife do not respect each other, do not love each other and do not take into consideration the opinion of each other, so in this case a man and a woman in a family are almost enemies. So how can it be possible to avoid divorce in such a family? Is it necessary at all? Trying to save the image of a happy family, parents may hurt emotionally their children.

There are about 120 children on a hundred divorced families. And in the most of cases children stay with their mothers. Besides, more than half of women do not marry for the second time, it means that there is no male influence on a child in the process of upbringing.

And our school much feminized lately can not replace the role of the father in a family. This fact leads to bad consequences.

One of the main reasons of unhappy family life and as a consequence of divorce is the fact that future husband and wife do not each other well enough before they decide to get married. When a young man and a young woman with similar opinions and interests meet each other, we can say that they are lucky. However, in most of cases people have to learn to live together, to adapt to family life. Unfortunately, not everyone has patience, desire and knowledge to do that.

Let’s look at the example of two families. In both families husband and wife are talented people. In both families they love each other. But the first family gets divorced, and the second one does not. What did lead to the divorce in the first family? In this family the wife did not see friend in her husband, did not consider him head of the family. She treated him as an enemy and used to think that children were a trap that her husband purposely made to become more successful in the life. So when he studied his postgraduate education, the wife decided to get divorced. In the second family the married couple supported each other. The wife decided not to chase after the husband. The husband continued to get education while she took café of the family. She said she did this for the family’s sake. The husband thanks to his wife’s support became professional and perspective scientist. As a result, the whole family got the benefit, what can not be said about the first one.

In the past you could often hear such a phrase: “On the family council we decided…” Why do we hear it so seldom today? Instead we can often hear about the competition between husband and wife, that they do not want to give way to their second half. And after that they naively think that they can create happy family and get family happiness.

About 40% of women and half of men after divorce create second marriage, so it means that the reason of divorce becomes the reasons of women’s loneliness.

Women after divorce in most of cases do not give birth again. So divorces have negative impact on the demographical situation. Young people so easily decide to get divorced and have very unserious attitude to the marriage, that it seems that divorce is a new fashion trend, and this is another unusual cause of divorce. Nowadays it is so easy to divorce, especially when a couple does not have children. Such a simple way of marriage annulation leads to irresponsible attitude to marriage itself.

Fashion in the sphere of family life is very dangerous. And not everyone realizes it. People often hide their own egoism behind love. It is so easy to blame love and jealousy, wife’s or husband’s bad temper.

Most of cases of divorce due to various reasons happen in the cities-millionaires. In such cities the family social control of relatives, grandfathers and grandmothers, neighbors, etc. is less strong. And young people more often and usually without much thinking get married. Also there is much higher number of venal and fictitious marriages, which very soon come to their end. Also many young girls and boys have to get married because they wait for a child.

Very often young people say that the family is destroyed but they can not say the exact reason. And you want to ask them: “Who were you in love : creators or destroyers? Whom did you become in fact?”

Causes of divorce

Research of the most common divorce reasons among young family gave the following result:

1st place. Cause of divorce is harmful habits, in particular the problem of alcoholism in a family (in most cases husband’s alcoholism);

2nd place. Cause of divorce is adultery of one of the spouses;

3rd place. Cause of divorce is light-minded, thoughtless decision to get married;

4th place. Cause of divorce is living conditions, problems related to them and lack of money;

5th place. Cause of divorce is conflicts in a family because of the parents.

There is another reason that should be mentioned. Everyone knows such a term as marriage of convenience. And everyone understands that the ground of the marriage is not love, but certain benefit of one of the spouses. In such a family in the first years or eve months of marriage the basic rules of mutual respect and moral principles are violated. And it is logically, because what is the base of marriage (material interest instead of feelings), that is the result of marriage. Conflicts in such a family begin from the very beginning, because there is no love and respect between the couple. People often forget that it is not possible to build happy marriage basing on material interest. Such spouses divorce because they have the material aspect, but the spiritual is absent.

The consequences of divorce

What does divorce for the married couple mean? Divorce is a painful phenomenon that leaves marks on a human soul, it is always catastrophe, tragedy that affects people sometimes for years. Divorced spouses sometimes miss each other, feel anxiety, despite the fact that they were the initiators of divorce and considered their family life unhappy. Even if they manage to keep good relationships, for a child divorce is always a catastrophe, it is a tragedy for the whole life, because child can be absolutely happy only having both of parents. Besides, scientists discovered that children of divorced parents in their adulthood divorce more often than children raised in full families.

Divorce is the process that causes much harm to a child, affects the mental health. Moreover, gils raised without father often begin to hate men in general. Divorce also has negative influence on the child’s discipline and the personality development. Children often start doing what they want, they usually have problems with friends, memory and school. Since the child is between parents, he /she will always suffer more than the parents.

Most of divorced men and women become supporters of free relationships because of their previous negative family experience. They also are afraid of the repetition of the situation, that is why they do not get married again.

So, now you see how much important it is to consider all the possible negative consequences of divorce before taking such a decision. Also young people should understand the whole responsibility when they decide to get married. Anyway, I hope that the situation with divorces will improve soon and that people will be more serious about marriage and family relationships.

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Causes and Effects of Divorce Cause and Effect Essay

One of the main reasons why God created human beings was to ensure that all that He had created was taken care of. This was possible through man’s reproduction to fill the world through various generations.

Since creation took place many people have used marriage as a way or reproducing to ensure human beings do not become extinct on earth. However, not all marriages last until death separates the couples as they are intended to. This essay aims at discussing the causes and effects of divorce in most marriages.

Divorce is defined as a permanent separation between a man and a woman who were initially married to each other. This means that when a man and woman divorce they no longer live together and have the right to get married to any other person (Stewart 7). However, divorce can be reversed when couples decide they want to get together.

The most common reason why many marriages do not last for long is infidelity by one or both partners. When a man and woman fall in love they devote all their love and energy to ensure that their relationship lasts for as long as they are alive. However, some people become tempted along the way and start having extramarital affairs with their neighbors, workmates or family friends.

Whenever such acts are uncovered by the other partner divorce becomes inevitable. Infidelity makes many marriages to break due to the fact that the person being cheated on feels that all the commitments and sacrifice made to ensure the marriage lasts are betrayed.

It also makes them feel worthless compared to the other person being courted. Infidelity breeds mistrust and the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections and this makes many people to prefer divorce than go through these painful moments.

Drug abuse has also led to many divorce cases as couples addicted to drugs become irresponsible and careless with regard to their personal lives and the welfare of their families.

Many people do not tolerate extreme use of drugs at the expense of their families and whenever such behavior is not changed divorce becomes the next alternative (Stewart 12). Drug addiction leads to financial constraints, domestic violence, health complications and possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections that many people will not tolerate hence demand for separation or divorce.

Extreme poverty has also led to many marriages to break as means of survival become very limited. Most couples especially those who do not have children prefer divorcing as this offers higher chances of one being able to meet his/her needs compared to when they are together.

Unemployment due to retrenchment, end of contracts, drug abuse or misuse of office can also result to divorce since most people who are dependent on one person for basic needs like clothing and shelter decide to look for someone who has the means to provide these basic needs.

Infertility has also made many people to divorce as they look for partners who are able to give them children or conceive. The desire to have children running around the house making noise while playing motivates many people to make very hasty decisions and abandon their spouses who are not able to conceive or make their women pregnant for those considered fertile.

Any family without a child is normally considered by the society to be heading for a dead end and to avoid this situation they ensure they look for partners who they will raise children with.

Many people rush to marry without having sufficient information regarding who they are marrying. After marriage many couples will discover that their partners are not the way they thought they were before getting married.

Every issue becomes the opposite of what they had anticipated and eventually all their needs, wishes, demands, tastes and preferences become unmatched. They start feeling their partners are giving them a lot of stress and discomfort and their relationship ends up being very shaky as their personalities are totally incompatible resulting to divorce.

Whenever a couple divorces on grounds of infidelity, drug abuse or infertility the partner who is a victim here develops a negative perception regarding his/her personality (Stewart 34). They feel inferior and less worth compared to their partners and the society.

Therefore, they start to feel that their value in society is too little that no one seems to recognize and appreciate them. The fact that someone has given another all their trust and hope only to be divorced later means that all the sacrifices and commitments made were never appreciated.

Some partners get married and decide to resign from their jobs in order to commit themselves fully to their marriages and families. They decide to be housewives and take care of their husbands and children while they go to work. Some men have also been forced to abandon their jobs and dedicate their lives to their children and wives.

However, when the marriages of such people fail to work and they get divorced it becomes very difficult for them to get access to basic needs. The possibility of them having made some savings during their short lived marriages is almost zero since they were fully dependent on their spouses. The probability of them getting back their previous jobs is zero and making new applications for jobs may take too long before being successful.

Stress and depression is one of the most common effects evident in people who have divorced. It is very difficult to comprehend the fact that someone is no longer living with the person they used to live and sleep with for the past few years. When people get married and stay with each other for several years they begin to become part of their spouses and start living their lives (Stewart 66).

The fact that someone is being separated from his/her long time companion is a bitter truth to live with. After divorce some people experience serious instances of stress and depressions that threaten their health if not checked in time.

Despite the fact that divorce is activated by one or both parties in marriage children suffer most in these families. This is due to the fact that most children do not understand the reason why their parents divorce after bringing them up successfully (Stewart 108). When provision of basic needs is cut due to divorce children will be subjected to malnutrition or poor living standards that compromise their health and education.

When parents go their own ways children are left in the middle of the tussle and are unable to decide whether to follow their mother or father. Children who are brought up with one parent face various challenges as far as discipline, food, shelter and entertainment are concerned.

Divorce is very common in the modern society due to the above mentioned reasons. However, if all attempts to save a relationship fail it is better for a person to divorce and get rid of a risky marriage than waste their lives in them.

Works Cited

Stewart, Alison. Divorce: Causes and Consequences (Current Perspectives in Psychology) . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 5). Causes and Effects of Divorce. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-and-effects-of-divorce/

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1. IvyPanda . "Causes and Effects of Divorce." June 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-and-effects-of-divorce/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Causes and Effects of Divorce." June 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-and-effects-of-divorce/.

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Maryse Condé, a grande dame of Caribbean literature, dies at 90

She wrote more than 20 books and was awarded the 2018 new academy prize in literature, an alternative to the nobel.

Maryse Condé, a French-language author from Guadeloupe who became known as the grande dame of Caribbean literature while writing exuberant, lushly descriptive novels that explored the brutal legacies of slavery and colonialism, died the night of April 1 at a hospital in Apt, in southern France. She was 90.

Her death was announced by her husband, Richard Philcox, who translated many of Dr. Condé’s books into English. He did not cite a cause, and it was unclear if Dr. Condé died late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

In recent years she had lived in the French village of Gordes, near Avignon, and suffered from a degenerative neurological disorder that made it difficult for her to speak and see, leading her to dictate her last two books to her husband.

A literary chronicler of the Black diaspora, Dr. Condé wrote richly textured novels that were dense with detail, drawn in part from her years living in West Africa, Europe, the United States and, above all, the Caribbean. Much of her work gave voice to the people and history of Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France that she described as “a small island with no say on international issues” — the sort of place that gets “mentioned only when there is a hurricane.”

Dr. Condé, who had a doctorate in comparative literature and was a professor emerita of French at Columbia University, wrote more than two-dozen books, including plays, essay collections, children’s books and memoirs, in which she recounted her childhood in Guadeloupe (she was the youngest of eight children) and her passion for cooking, which began as an act of defiance against a mother who insisted that “only stupid people like to cook.”

But she remained best known for her novels, including “Segu” (1984), a family saga set in 19th-century West Africa; “I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem” (1986), about an enslaved biracial woman accused of witchcraft (the book included a cameo from Hester Prynne, the protagonist of “The Scarlet Letter”); and “Windward Heights” (1995), a reworking of “Wuthering Heights,” the book that inspired Dr. Condé to become a novelist, with a setting transferred from the Yorkshire moors to the islands of Cuba and Guadeloupe.

“It is impossible to read her novels and not come away from them with both a sadder and more exhilarating understanding of the human heart, in all its secret intricacies, its contradictions and marvels,” author Howard Frank Mosher wrote in 1992, reviewing “I, Tituba” and another multigenerational Condé novel, “Tree of Life,” for the New York Times.

Dr. Condé had a burst of late-in-life fame at 84, when she received the 2018 New Academy Prize in Literature. Bestowed by a group of Swedish cultural figures, the award was described as an alternative to the Nobel, during a year in which the Nobel Prize in literature was not awarded because of a sexual misconduct scandal that had roiled the Swedish Academy.

In handing out the New Academy Prize, jury chair Ann Palsson called Dr. Condé a “grand storyteller” who “belongs to world literature,” adding that “she describes the ravages of colonialism and the post-colonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming.”

Dr. Condé, who once declared that the French language “was forged for me alone,” evoked a powerful sense of place in her novels. She transported readers to the cemeteries of Guadeloupe in “Tree of Life” — she called the graveyards “cities of the dead, where the filau , the beautiful beefwood tree, keeps weeping watch over the departed” — and the busy streets of London in “Segu,” where the luxury stores of the Strand give way to “hovels filled with human wrecks sleeping and copulating on heaps of straw or rags crawling with vermin.”

In “Segu,” her breakout third novel, she told a story that was at once intimate and sprawling, jumping between dozens of characters while examining a period in which Islam and the slave trade spread across West Africa. Translated into English by Barbara Bray, the novel centered on the four sons of Dousika Traore, an aristocrat in the Bambara Empire (located in present-day Mali), and examined issues of race, class and religion, as well as more transcendental questions of death and the afterlife.

“Dousika’s soul had left his body,” Dr. Condé wrote in one passage, offering an elegy for the book’s patriarch. “Every soul, airy and invisible to human eyes, enjoyed a few brief moments of liberty before being recovered by the fetish priests and assigned to its new home in the body of a newborn child. During that interval it floated above rivers, soared over hills, breathed in without a tremor the thick mist that rose from the marshes, and alighted in the most secret corners of compounds. Distance meant nothing to it. For it, the great checkerboard of the fields was but a dot in measureless space. It steered itself by the stars.”

By most accounts, she was born Marise Liliane Appoline Boucolon in Pointe-à-Pitre, the economic center of Guadeloupe, on Feb. 11, 1934. Her mother was a schoolteacher, her father a banker. Her parents privileged the French language over Creole and taught her to embrace France as “the Mother Country,” avoiding discussions of race and colonialism and sending her to high school in Paris.

Growing up, she said, she was “oblivious to the outside world.” That began to change after she read Joseph Zobel’s semi-autobiographical novel “Black Shack Alley” (1950), about an impoverished boy named José who lives near a White-owned sugar-cane plantation in Martinique.

“Reading Joseph Zobel, more than any theoretical discourse, opened my eyes,” she wrote in the memoir “Tales From the Heart” (1998). “I understood then that the milieu I belonged to had absolutely nothing to offer and I began to loathe it. I had become bleached and whitewashed, and because of it, a poor imitation of the little French children I hung out with.”

She studied English at the Sorbonne, and in 1958 she married Guinean actor Mamadou Condé. They moved to West Africa, where she lived for more than a decade, teaching French in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal and mixing with left-wing activists and leaders, including a visiting Che Guevara and Malcolm X.

Returning to France, she completed her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in 1975. The next year, she published her debut novel, “Hérémakhonon,” inspired by her years in West Africa and her disillusionment with the region’s first generation of post-independence leaders, including Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré , who ruled as a dictator.

Interviewed by francophone scholar Françoise Pfaff in 1982, Dr. Condé said that she took the novel’s title, a Malinke word translated as “waiting for happiness,” from the name of a department store in Guinea. “In theory, this store offered everything people needed, but it had nothing except Chinese toys of poor quality. For me it was a symbol of independence.”

The novel “Segu” established her literary bona fides, becoming a bestseller and leading to a sequel, “The Children of Segu” (1985). Dr. Condé was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach in the United States, and went on to join the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland before coming to Columbia in 1995.

She became the founding chair of Columbia’s Center for French and Francophone Studies and retired from teaching in 2005, shortly after she was appointed by French President Jacques Chirac to chair the country’s National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery.

“In France, it took a long time for slavery to be recognized as a crime against humanity,” she told the Guardian in 2020 . “In the 18th century, some scientists still supported slavery and claimed that Black people were inferior and closer to animals and we are still fighting that misunderstanding. It is not easy. We shall overcome. But it will take a long time. I’m an optimist, in spite of everything.”

Dr. Condé’s first marriage ended in divorce. In 1982, she married Philcox, her translator. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Dr. Condé was twice shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, first in 2015 for her entire body of work and then in 2023 for her last published novel, “The Gospel According to the New World.”

The book was a reworking of the New Testament, following a Jesus-like figure from Martinique. Dr. Condé told the Times that she had long “dreamed of writing about the Bible and the New Testament, which I believed to be a series of sumptuous stories and not really a religious text,” although she didn’t quite know how to tell the story.

“I was torn between mockery and the spiritual,” she added. “Very often, I imagined God as an ordinary Guadeloupean who went about his daily activities such as playing cards, drinking rum or going to the cock pit.”

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Divorce Rate — What Causes Divorce

What Causes Divorce

• Categories: Divorce Rate Family Relationships Malaysia

About this sample

Words: 673 |

Published: Apr 11, 2019

Words: 673 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Loop, E. (2017, November 21). The importance of communication in relationships. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-you/201711/the-importance-communication-in-relationships
• Malay Mail. (2014, March 3). Divorce rate increases dramatically in Malaysia.
• N, Sheiresa. (2017, February 5). Signs you married a gold digger. Retrieved from https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/signs-married-gold-digger.html/
• Peter, O. (2018, January 17). Why people cheat: 16 real reasons people cheat on their partners. Retrieved from https://www.bonobology.com/real-reasons-people-cheat-partners/
• Sama, D. (2019). The impact of financial problems on marriage and personal relationships. American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, 11(2), 51-57.
• Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Whitton, S. W. (2010). Commitment: Functions, formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2(4), 243-257.
• Theisen, K. R. (2018). Communication skills and relationship satisfaction among married individuals. Journal of Family Communication, 18(1), 18-28.
• Visher, E. B., & Visher, J. S. (2019). Financial issues in divorce: Research, theory and practice. Routledge.
• Wang, M. (2018). Marital conflict and communication patterns: A study of Chinese couples. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(6), 444-460.
• Whisman, M. A., Uebelacker, L. A., & Weinstock, L. M. (2006). Psychopathology and marital satisfaction: The importance of evaluating both partners. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(6), 1325-1336.

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Opinion Michelle Goldberg

Terrified Parents, New Age Health Nuts, MAGA Exiles. Meet the R.F.K. Jr. Faithful.

Supported by

By Michelle Goldberg

Photographs by Michael Schmelling

Opinion Columnist

• April 4, 2024

Chris Inclan, an alcohol and drug counselor from Sonoma, Calif., voted for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016. In 2020 he backed Andrew Yang in the Democratic primary and cast a ballot for Donald Trump in the general election. Joe Biden, he said, was “so ingrained in the establishment and politics as usual,” while Trump “went against the grain on a lot of issues,” including wars and government regulation. But Inclan, a big bearded 39-year-old with tattoos on his hands, doesn’t want to have to make that choice again, which is why he’s now enthusiastically supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I met Inclan at the Oakland rally where Kennedy introduced his new running mate, the 38-year-old political donor Nicole Shanahan. Held in the auditorium of the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, it was the first political rally Inclan had ever attended.

“The system is corrupt,” he said of what he called the two-party “duopoly.” “We keep playing the same game. But I think Americans are fed up.” He’d joined Kennedy’s We the People Party, formed to help Kennedy get on the ballot in several states, and has aspirations to run for office himself someday.

Inclan’s politics are hard to understand in purely left or right terms. The more relevant dichotomy, for him as for many Kennedy voters, is insider versus outsider, which is why Kennedy’s following sometimes overlaps, in unexpected ways, with the MAGA movement.

Matt Castro, a San Francisco bus driver at the rally, described himself as “extremely left-leaning,” but didn’t vote in the last election and said that, if Kennedy isn’t on the ballot, he’d probably vote for Trump in the next one, because of his opposition to military support for Ukraine. Alex Klett, a 33-year-old Kennedy volunteer from Wisconsin who was handing out American flags, described himself as a right-leaning independent who voted for Trump in 2016 and then, in 2020, wrote in Kanye West.

Another Kennedy volunteer, Jaclyn Aldrich, a striking 43-year-old Black woman who sometimes works as a model, has never cast a presidential ballot, because she hadn’t trusted any of the candidates. “I didn’t even vote for Obama,” she said. Among her fellow volunteers, she said, are some former Bernie Sanders voters, but “it’s mostly Trump people.”

This is a paradox of the Kennedy campaign. Many Democratic and Republican insiders view Kennedy as a danger to Biden’s re-election. Timothy Mellon, the top donor to the Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., is also the top donor to the Kennedy super PAC American Values 2024, suggesting he thinks Kennedy will help Trump. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has recently formed a unit, including veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, devoted to battling third-party candidates, and Kennedy is getting most of its attention.

But on the ground, I haven’t met many Kennedy-curious voters for whom Biden is a second choice. Instead, Kennedy attracts many of the same sort of alienated political eccentrics who in the past have gravitated to Trump. “They keep saying that he’s pulling from Biden, but most of our people are actually coming from the right,” said Leigh Merinoff, volunteer chair of the finance committee of American Values.

Anecdotes aren’t the same thing as data, and people who go to rallies and volunteer for campaigns aren’t necessarily representative of the electorate, which is full of people who are much more disengaged. Nevertheless, there’s a gap between both Democratic and Republican assumptions about Kennedy’s appeal and the character of his real-life movement. He’s much more of a wild card than left-wing third-party candidates like Stein and Cornel West. There’s something distinctly Trumpy in his campaign’s mix of New Age individualism, social media-fueled paranoia and intense, aching nostalgia for the optimistic America of the early 1960s, when Kennedy’s uncle John F. Kennedy was president and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, served as attorney general. It’s not surprising that some otherwise Trump-leaning voters are picking up on it.

On the surface, Kennedy’s choice of Shanahan, a patent lawyer and former Democrat who has donated to candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Marianne Williamson, might seem as if it would draw more left-leaning voters into the campaign. In introducing Shanahan, an avid surfer who met her ex-husband, the Google founder Sergey Brin, at a yoga festival, Kennedy said, “I wanted a vice president who shared my passion for wholesome, healthy foods, chemical-free, for regenerative agriculture, for good soils,” as well as an athlete who “would help me inspire Americans to heal, to get them back in shape.”

One can imagine voters who frequent farmers markets and follow wellness influencers seeing an idealized version of themselves in her. And while large parts of the New Age and alternative health community moved right during the pandemic in response to lockdowns and vaccine mandates, it’s still a world with plenty of people who think of themselves as progressives.

Indeed, the most interesting thing about Shanahan is the way she dramatizes how Kennedy wins over voters like her. In the week after her debut as a candidate, Shanahan hasn’t made any mainstream media appearances, but she did speak at length on the podcast of Rick Rubin, the music producer and, recently, self-help author , telling the story of her conversion from lifelong Democrat to Kennedy acolyte.

Their conversation is fascinating, demonstrating how frustrations with conventional medicine and the desire for a transcendent order — for a big holistic framework that makes sense of the world’s destabilizing chaos — lead away from technocratic liberalism and toward, well, the unstable political formation that’s coalescing around Kennedy. Listening to it, you can hear a smart and sensitive woman narrating her own journey down the rabbit hole, a portal that took her to a place where she could help swing the 2024 election and thus the course of American history.

Shanahan came to Kennedy the way many desperate parents have. During the pandemic, her 18-month-old daughter was diagnosed, over Zoom, with autism, and she described how none of the interventions offered by experts helped. Another Silicon Valley mom with an autistic child urged her to listen to Kennedy, who has long asserted a false link between vaccines and autism. Though Shanahan was resistant at first — she knew about Kennedy’s reputation as a conspiracy theorist — she tuned into his podcast.

Around the same time, she got deep into the work of Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon and self-described “biohacker” who emphasizes the importance of sunlight for good health. (Kennedy and Kruse appeared together on Rubin’s podcast last year.) Kruse, said Shanahan, awakened her to the idea that autism could be “related to the way that the brain was responding to some kind of outside influence” — like vaccines — “and how to heal the brain.”

She started her daughter, Echo, on a regimen that included lots of early morning light, swimming in a saltwater pool and music frequencies that send “a signal to brain cells that they can repair.” (“Morning sunlight in particular is like chicken soup for metabolic health,” she told Rubin.) At the same time, she worked to reduce Echo’s exposure to “nonnative light sources,” and cellular and Wi-Fi signals. These interventions, she said, have all helped her daughter. “When it works, maybe we need science to catch up,” she said.

When she met Kennedy last summer, she was impressed by his record of “looking at the environmental exposures and the things that impact human health that are man-created,” she said. Shanahan lamented what she sees as widespread closed-mindedness in the face of the questions she wants to explore. “My daughter has lifted the veil for me,” she said, in an allusion to Aldous Huxley’s work on psychedelics. “If we’re talking about my support for Bobby Kennedy, that is what has brought me to this movement.”

Shanahan was never all that left-wing; she helped fund the recall campaign against San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Still, her presence on the ticket has alienated some right-leaning Kennedy fans. Shortly after she was announced, one erstwhile Kennedy supporter posted a link to an online “Save R.F.K. Jr. Rally” on Kennedy’s campaign website, demanding the firing of Kennedy’s campaign manager for promoting a “C.I.A., feminist agenda” by bringing Shanahan on board. (It was quickly taken down.) “I think the pick was meant to be more about covering his left flank, and I found that an odd calculation,” Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist who has co-hosted a fund-raiser for Kennedy, said on the podcast “All-In.”

In fact, the calculation makes perfect sense: Kennedy needs Shanahan’s money. Her divorce settlement from Brin isn’t public, but she reportedly asked for more than $1 billion, about 1 percent of his net worth at the time, and she’s clearly extremely wealthy. Campaign finance law allows both presidential and vice-presidential candidates to pour unlimited funds into their own races, and the process of getting Kennedy on state ballots as a third-party candidate is going to be expensive. Shanahan has shown she’s willing to spend; she gave $4 million to American Values 2024 to fund a Kennedy ad that ran during the Super Bowl.

Introducing Shanahan in Oakland, Kennedy said, with a straight face, that there is “no American more qualified” than she to serve as vice president. But his speech also gestured at the heart of those qualifications. Shanahan, he said, would help him liberate America from the “predatory cabal” who control the campaign finance system.

It’s doubtful, however, that Shanahan will be able to help Kennedy in ways that go beyond finances, and not just because the influence of vice-presidential candidates tends to be limited, especially with third-party aspirants. (My guess is that few readers remember either Ralph Nader’s or Jill Stein’s running mates.) Shanahan appears to find negative publicity debilitating, an unusual quality in an aspiring politician and one that may limit her visibility.

Before joining the Kennedy ticket, she was probably best known for her divorce from Brin, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, was precipitated by an affair with Elon Musk. (Both she and Musk deny this.) In an essay in People magazine, she described the scrutiny that followed the Journal article as unbearable. “I was thrust into the public eye; the online images and commentary felt more like a zeitgeist than depictions of my lived experiences,” she wrote . Insisting that she’s “not a public person,” she called the Journal article and its aftermath “a disaster for my work life, my reputation and my ability to communicate the things I care most deeply about.”

This week, “Fox & Friends” promoted an appearance by Kennedy and Shanahan, but Kennedy ended up going on alone. In a post on the social media platform X, Shanahan wrote, “While Bobby’s out there spreading our message on TV right now, I’m working behind the scenes to make sure we’re on the ballot in all 50 states.” So rather than add a new note to Kennedy’s message, Shanahan is mostly just using her fortune to amplify what he’s already been saying. And what he’s been saying is often quite reactionary. (The campaign didn’t respond to my requests to interview Kennedy or Shanahan.)

The last time I saw Kennedy speak, in June in New Hampshire, he was still a Democrat, running a doomed primary challenge to Biden in a campaign managed by the quirky former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich. Seeking to echo the famous 1963 “ Peace ” speech in which his presidential uncle called for a halt to the Cold War arms race, Kennedy warned against antagonizing Russia over Ukraine, presenting himself as an antiwar candidate.

Some of his followers still see him that way, but now they must either rationalize or overlook his zealous support for Israel’s war in Gaza. In March, weeks after the Biden administration called for a six-week cease-fire, Kennedy was skeptical of the idea, telling Reuters that previous truces have “been used by Hamas to rearm, to rebuild and then launch another surprise attack.” Though he often rails against censorship, he cheered on the hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman’s demand that Harvard do more to crack down on antisemitism, writing, “It’s time to hold college administrations responsible for the epidemic of campus antisemitism by insisting on zero-tolerance policies.”

Kucinich left the campaign in mid-October in ambiguous circumstances, though he’s hinted that disagreements with Kennedy about Gaza had something to do with his departure. (The campaign is now run by Kennedy’s daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former C.I.A. officer .) In November, Sayer Ji, an alternative medicine promoter and key anti-vaccine influencer, withdrew his endorsement of Kennedy over Gaza. Charles Eisenstein, a major intellectual figure in New Age circles, is still advising Kennedy but has been openly critical of his stance on Israel.

While there are still some progressive figures in Kennedy’s orbit, his campaign has an increasingly right-wing vibe. Border security has become a central part of his pitch. Since January, his communications director has been Del Bigtree, a leading anti-vaccine activist who doubts that climate change is caused by human activity and who spoke at the MAGA Freedom Rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6. “I wish I could tell you that this pandemic really is dangerous,” Bigtree said then. “I wish I could believe that voting machines work and that people care. You’ve been sold a lie!”

The conservative talk radio host Randy Economy, one of the leaders of the campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, is Kennedy’s senior adviser for ballot access. An opening speaker at the Oakland event was Angela Stanton-King, a Black conservative QAnon promoter who served time for her role in a car-theft ring and was pardoned by Donald Trump.

Some strains of New Age wellness culture — with its distrust of mainstream expertise, moralistic view of health and weakness for quackery — have long intersected with right-wing politics. (Alex Jones, after all, made much of his fortune shilling health supplements.) The connection between alternative medicine and conservatism grew significantly stronger during the pandemic, as the center of gravity in the anti-vaccine movement moved rightward and longtime right-wingers grew increasingly mistrustful of Big Pharma and, with it, Big Food.

“The globalists want you to be fat, sick, depressed and isolated — the better to control you and to milk you for as much economic value as they can before they kill you,” a pseudonymous far-right figure who goes by Raw Egg Nationalist said on the 2022 Tucker Carlson special “The End of Men.”

Kennedy’s conservationism can sound a lot like that of Raw Egg Nationalist. His commitment to the environment is tempered by paranoia about federal government power that makes him suspicious of regulation. Climate change “is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls, the same way the Covid crisis was, and it’s the same people,” he said in a campaign video featuring Jordan Peterson, the anti-woke psychologist and author. Dismissing the efficacy of a “war on carbon,” Kennedy said he’d approach energy issues using “free markets and not top-down control.”

Because of his hostility to the state, Kennedy’s environmentalism often manifests as a belief in the redemptive power of healthy living and closeness to nature, which Shanahan shares. This ethos helps explain Shanahan’s much-publicized criticism of I.V.F. “I believe I.V.F. is sold irresponsibly, and my own experience with natural childbirth has led me to understand that the fertility industry is deeply flawed,” she wrote in People. She’s interested in low-cost, organic alternatives. “I’m not sure that there has been a really thorough mitochondrial respiration study on the effects of two hours of morning sunlight on reproductive health,” she said on a panel last year. “I would love to fund something like that.” Hearing this, I couldn’t help thinking of Carlson’s promotion, on his “End of Men” special, of testicle tanning to raise testosterone levels.

Of course, even though the Kennedy camp has a lot in common with the esoteric new right, Kennedy could still siphon Democratic votes from Biden. A lot of undecided voters don’t follow politics closely, and some who are unhappy about their major-party choices may find themselves drawn to Kennedy’s mythic last name and green-seeming, anti-establishment pitch.

“Anything that splits up the anti-Trump coalition hurts Biden,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump conservative pollster who regularly asks about Kennedy in focus groups. As she sees it, the largest group of persuadable voters in 2024 are the so-called double haters, those who disapprove of both Trump and Biden. “My experience over the years in the focus groups is that when Trump is top of mind for people, people who dislike both him and Biden end up disliking Trump more,” said Longwell. Kennedy, she fears, could give people who might otherwise reluctantly vote for Biden an off-ramp from making a dispiriting decision.

Some polls back up this analysis. A recent Quinnipiac survey shows Kennedy getting 13 percent of the vote; he has support from 9 percent of Democrats, 8 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of independents. The poll shows Biden leading Trump by three points in a head-to-head matchup but Trump ahead by one point when third-party candidates are included. Though both numbers are within the poll’s margin of error, they suggest that Trump could benefit if the election isn’t seen as a binary choice.

Other polls , however, show Kennedy pulling more voters from Trump, and the truth is no one knows how the election will ultimately shake out. “The public polling, if you dig into it, can be really head-swiveling,” said Smith. “It’s very hard to gauge the impact, but it does seem like he pulls from both, and right now — emphasis on ‘right now’ — slightly more from Biden.”

Kennedy certainly has no qualms about spoiling the election for Trump. On CNN on Monday, he argued that Biden poses a “much worse” threat to democracy than Trump because of the Biden administration’s attempts to get social media companies to remove vaccine misinformation, much of it spread by Kennedy.

“President Biden is the first candidate in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent,” he said. The primary threat to democracy, he added, “is not somebody who questions election returns,” noting that he believed the 2004 election was stolen from John Kerry. “So I don’t think people who say that the election is stolen — we shouldn’t make pariahs of those people,” he said.

This interview was clarifying about Kennedy’s intentions. But precisely because he evidently views Trump, not Biden, as the lesser of two evils, he may prove most attractive to voters who also view the election that way. That, however, would depend on people grasping what he stands for. So it might not be a disaster for Democrats if Shanahan can help Kennedy be more widely heard.

“If anyone is listening who never considered an independent ticket, I want to extend the same invitation to you that my friend did to me last year,” said Shanahan in her Oakland speech. “Please, listen to Bobby Kennedy in his own words.” It’s sage advice.

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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

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