Written By:
Liz Pharo
CEO and Founder, Divorce.com
According to divorce statistics by gender, women are more likely to initiate divorce than men in heterosexual marriages.
While divorce is associated with significant life challenges, especially for women, women are still the driving force behind most marriage dissolutions.
What exactly makes women file for divorce more often than men? This article explores the reasons connected to societal norms, gender differences, and roles influencing motivations behind divorce initiation.
Let’s dive right in.
Key Takeaways
Around 69% of divorces in heterosexual marriages are initiated by women.
Women often feel less satisfied in marriages due to unmet emotional needs, poor communication, and lack of independence.
The unequal division of domestic chores and childcare responsibilities, even when both partners work full-time, contributes to marital dissatisfaction among women.
Infidelity and alcohol addiction are significant factors in many divorces. Women are more likely to cite their husband's affairs as a reason for divorce, while alcohol abuse leads to stress and decreased marital satisfaction.
Physical and emotional violence is a major cause of divorce, with women being primary victims more often than men.
Despite short-term economic difficulties, women often experience long-term improvements in well-being after divorce. Only a small percentage of women regret their decision to divorce compared to men.
Who Files for Divorce More in the U.S.
A study by Michael Rosenfeld from Stanford University analyzes data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) survey, encompassing responses from a diverse sample of couples.
The study concludes that approximately 69% of divorces are initiated by women. This comprehensive data set offers robust evidence that women are more likely to initiate breakups across various relationship types, including dating, cohabiting, and married couples.
Why Are Spouses Unhappy in Marriages?
Some opinions suggest that marital dissatisfaction doesn’t typically happen overnight. Instead, it may stem from the emotional unreadiness of both men and women to have a dependable partnership.
Women often feel less satisfied in relationships, which makes them more likely to initiate breakups. This lower satisfaction comes from various issues, like not feeling emotionally fulfilled, poor communication, and lack of independence in the relationship.
Women usually want more emotional closeness and support; they become unhappy when they don't get it. This unhappiness often leads them to end the relationship.
Another reason women may be unhappy in marriage is that their relationship wasn’t satisfying enough from the start. So, why did they marry then? Social pressure is often the answer.
On the other hand, men usually feel more satisfied in relationships. This might be because they have different emotional needs or are taught to stay in relationships longer. Because men are generally happier, they start breakups less often.
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This difference in satisfaction shows how important it is to meet both partners' emotional and relationship needs.
What Percentage of Divorces Are Initiated by Men?
Men initiate a less significant portion of divorces.
About 29% to 30% of husbands file for divorce, according to surveys. Since the remaining two-thirds of divorce filings come from women, it’s safe to say that men are more satisfied in marriages.
Marriage brings about several benefits for married men compared to their unmarried peers. In particular, marriage is linked to a range of positive health effects for men. It enhances mental health, reduces the risk of depression, and improves cognitive function.
Moreover, married men have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, better blood sugar levels, and better outcomes during hospitalization.
Married men also live 2.2 years longer than unmarried ones. Possible reasons for this may be that their wives often help them stay healthy by encouraging healthy habits and offering chances to make healthy choices.
Married men may eat better, visit doctors more often, and take medicine as prescribed, which may be due to the influence of their wives.
Even when both men and women have full-time jobs, women typically have more childcare and household chores responsibilities. Usually, this workload is unequally distributed, leading women to experience more significant fatigue than men.
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If there are problems in the marriage, men are less motivated to leave because the alternative usually means a decrease in lifestyle satisfaction. Men are also more likely to remain separated than initiate a divorce proceeding, even if the relationship is in trouble.
Reasons Why Women Initiate Divorce
There are several key reasons why women are likely to file for or begin a divorce.
Unmet Needs
To some extent, men and women are wired differently, and women may find that this leaves some of their expectations unmet.
Men may be less attentive to nuances and hints. They have different ways of absorbing and processing information, according to scientific research.
Women are usually socialized to be more emotionally intelligent than men, and so they are more likely to perceive problems in a relationship. Women are also better communicators than men and are more likely to talk about the problems they perceive.
Because men are less likely to have the emotional intelligence to see the problems and the communication skills to talk about them, this can lead to women feeling as if their needs are not being met in the relationship.
The primary emotional and physical needs that may be neglected in marriage and cause negativity are the following:
Recognizing and valuing the work done at home and a day job
Affection and physical contact
Companionship and support
Family commitment
Assisting with household duties
Financial support
Honesty and openness, etc.
Leaving these needs chronically unmet leads to growing marital dissatisfaction and eventual divorce in 64% of cases.
Deficient Life-Work Balance
Married women often juggle multiple responsibilities, such as caring for children and doing housework, while working nine-to-five jobs.
The percentage of women who earn as much as or substantially more than their husbands has increased nearly threefold in the last half-century. In about 29% of present-day marriages, spouses earn approximately the same income, while in 16% of them, women earn more.
Women who earn $38,000 or more than their husbands have an 8.4% chance of divorce, compared to couples where the husband earns more, who have only a 2.9% chance of divorce.
One study found that the greater the gap by which a wife’s income outpaces her husband’s, the less he does around the house. Despite these facts, women are still expected to do the most domestic chores in many marriages.
This unequal division can make them feel stressed because they must balance their jobs and care for the family.
Additionally, the presence of a husband can add more housework. Research shows that divorced women with children sleep and rest more than those with a male partner. They do three hours less housework and sleep an hour longer per week.
In addition, working women trying to succeed in their careers do not always receive their husbands’ support regarding childcare and domestic chores. With these pressures, it’s unsurprising that women conclude that staying married is no longer in their best interest.
Husband’s Unfaithfulness
In a survey on reasons for divorce involving 212 women and 189 men, 35% of the women cited their husband’s affair as the primary reason for their divorce.
Typically, men are more prone to infidelity than women. Specifically, 20% of men (compared to 13% of women) reported having had sexual relations with someone other than their spouse while married.
Cheating, whether physical or emotional, is seen as one of the most significant trust breaches in a marriage.
Infidelity can severely damage relationships, particularly already fragile ones, and lead to their downfall. Also, the response to infidelity varies among couples. Some may break up over a single instance of adultery, while others experience repeated affairs before filing for divorce.
If a wife decides to withdraw from the marriage emotionally, she will likely detach from her failed relationship long before officially initiating a divorce. In such cases, no efforts of the other spouse to reconcile will have any effect.
Alcohol Addiction
According to the 2021 NSDUH report, 16.3 million men 18 years or older said they had a problem drinking too much alcohol in the past year. In comparison, 12.4 million women in the same age group experienced issues with alcohol abuse.
Research published in Clinical Psychology Review investigated the impact of alcohol addiction on marriages. The study indicated that marriages were less happy when one spouse experienced alcohol-related problems, such as excessive drinking.
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Another study found that if one spouse is a heavy drinker, the marriage is 50% more likely to end in divorce.
A different study compared alcohol consumption in various countries and found that an increase in one liter of alcohol consumption per person in the country on average is linked to a 20% increase in divorce for that country.
In particular, stress arising from alcohol problems led to a decline in marital satisfaction.
Alcoholism harms trust in relationships, damages communication, and affects the standard of living for families. People with alcohol problems may lose their jobs and inflict financial issues. Alcohol abuse is also connected to accidents and injuries.
Since men are more likely to experience alcohol addiction or be heavy drinkers than women, it makes sense that this is a common reason for a woman to seek divorce.
Physical and Emotional Violence
A survey on common reasons for divorce published in the National Library of Medicine states that 24% of divorces are caused by domestic violence. And women are the primary victims more often than men.
For every three women in the U.S., one has experienced physical violence from an intimate partner, and one in seven women has been seriously injured, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence report.
In comparison, only one in 25 men have been hurt by a partner.
Within the context of spousal violence, there are two types: emotional and physical.
In research on domestic violence among married couples, 22% of women disclosed experiencing injuries due to physical abuse. In 6.3% of cases, bodily harm was preceded by emotional abuse, such as verbal aggression, control, or humiliation.
Studies have found that women were 44% more likely to list abuse as the reason for divorce than men.
Better Support System
Women are more likely to have a robust support system than men, so they are more likely to talk to friends and family about their relationship and to have more help if they divorce. They have a circle of support to help them through the transition.
It is also worth noting that divorce is contagious. If a close friend divorces, a person’s chance of divorce goes up 75%. Women have more close friendships and divorce becomes more likely if friends are divorcing.
Fewer Regrets
Divorce plays out in two ways for women. First, despite changes in laws, women are still more likely to get primary custody after a divorce. Thus women feel more confident that they will be the primary parent after divorce.
However, women also experience detrimental economic effects from divorce, especially in the short term when compared to men. However, their long-term well-being increases after divorce, and only 27% of women report that they regret getting a divorce, compared with 39% of men.
Women may be better able to predict their long-term happiness and choose divorce when they see a better future.
Reasons Why Men Initiate Divorce
The reasons men initiate divorce are different than the reasons women give.
Different Interests
If a couple grows apart, it is common for them to develop independent interests. This may be more common if a wife spends more time involved with raising children than the husband does. The husband then has more time to develop interests that do not involve the wife.
When a couple pursues different interests, they have less in common and less connection. If each spouse is pursuing their own unique hobbies and interests, there is little time for them to do things as a couple and continue to strengthen the marriage.
Lack of Respect
Criticism or nagging can be a marriage killer.
It holds such significant destructive potential that it was recognized as one of the predictors of a relationship ending. John Gottman metaphorically called it one of The Four Horsemen preceding divorce.
A wife’s continuous criticism may stem from her dissatisfaction with her husband for not meeting her needs, realistic or not. And since the husband can’t find any way to conform to that ideal, the criticism may become more vicious, inevitably leading to disillusionment and divorce.
Adultery
It is a widespread opinion that men have the most affairs, leading to divorce. While this is generally true, women also engage in infidelity. As mentioned before, 13% of wives are unfaithful in their marriages.
However, research also shows that between 20% and 25% of men cheat.
And there is some suggestion that men may be less forgiving of adultery than women.
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Conversely, women in the same situation might see emotional infidelity as more significant than physical when their partner forms a strong bond with someone else.
They may become frustrated if their partner spends time and resources on another person instead of them and their children.
Lack of Sex
Marriages often start with intense love and desire for closeness, including emotional and sexual intimacy. But as time goes by, passion may fade and lead to a lack of sex for some couples.
For a husband who values physical intimacy, the issue of not having sex can be particularly distressing.
According to a 2017 study, 15.2% of men and 26.7% of women reported no sexual activity the previous year. For 8.7% of men and 17.5% of women, this pause lasted for five years or longer.
The absence of sexual activity in a marriage can trigger feelings of insecurity and anxiety, mainly when there was a higher frequency of sexual intimacy in the past years.
When a husband cannot fulfill his sexual needs, he may naturally start looking for satisfaction outside of marriage, which may lead to eventual divorce.
Mid-Life Crisis
Married men sometimes withdraw from their wives after years of a seemingly good marriage, not because their wives did something wrong but due to inner discontent with their lives.
The marriage does not directly cause this sense of unhappiness, but men may mistakenly attribute it to relationship problems. A significant factor here is a mid-life crisis, as men may realize they don’t have time, health, and energy to fulfill their dreams or excel in their careers.
TA mid-life crisis is more common among men (15.5%) in their 40s and early 50s, who usually focus on goals outside their personal lives. In comparison, women often have strong relationships with others, like family and friends, and thus are less likely to experience a mid-life crisis.
Bottom Line
The decision to get a divorce for women is multifaceted and can have various underlying causes. Some divorces result from years of living in an unhappy marriage and misery.
In contrast, others are driven by a desire for more independence, building a career, or finding a more suitable partner.
Both men and women give a variety of reasons for divorce, but most marriages end because the couple grows apart or argues often.
Who wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples | Stanford University
Is Marriage Really Bad for Women’s Happiness? | Greater Good Magazine
How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently than Women's | Scientific American
Husbands and Wives Earn Similar Wages in a Growing Share of Marriages | Pew Research Center
Money Isn't Everything: Wives’ Earnings and Housework Time | PMC
Married Women With Children and Male Partners Do More Housework Than Single Moms | PRB
Who Cheats More? The Demographics of Infidelity in America | Institute for Family Studies
For better or for worse? The effects of alcohol use on marital functioning | PMC
Alcohol consumption and divorce rates in the United States | PubMed
(PDF) Domestic Violence in Married Couples: From the Viewpoint of Women | Research Gate
Reasons People Give for Divorce | Institute for Family Studies
How Common is Infidelity? - Department of Family and Consumer Studies | The University of Utah
Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017 | Census.gov
