Abstract
We present a new economic model of romantic relationships by theorizing breakup as an intertemporal process, unlike the traditional static approach in terms of outside options. Contrary to Becker (2009), our approach underlines the possibility of divorces even when outside options are less than gains from marriage. This allows us to provide a rationale for the anti-Benthamite legally mandated separation periods during divorce proceedings, within the Benthamite paradigm. Further, we provide a rational explanation for the curious tendency of partners of being in long periods of acrimonious fight before making up by undertaking actions that they could have undertaken right at the start of their fight. Finally, in line with a UK government report (1989), our paper posits that unions without legal recognition are likely to be more unstable in comparison to legally recognized marriages.
Introduction
Sacred scriptures of most religions in the world have invariably frowned upon break up of union between man and woman. However, it is only the classical Islamic law which decrees that divorces should only be granted after disagreeing partners spend a period of separation which is typically three or four months from the first pronouncement of repudiation (Awad & Mawla, 2013). 1
Those who swear to keep away from wives (with intent to divorce) have four months of grace; then they reconcile (during this period), surely God is forgiving and kind. And if they are bent on divorce, God hears all and knows everything. (Qur�an 2: 226�227 in Peters, 1993, p. 249)
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. (Bentham, 1996)
Therefore, it is only natural to expect the modern societies that emphatically champion Bentham's utilitarian decision-making to do away with such an archaic practice. Yet, in several countries around the world such as Chile, France, Ireland, India, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and some states in USA, the process of legal divorce by mutual consent requires partners to spend a duration of trial/legal separation from the date of moving the application for divorce, which is usually more than six months long. 2
This paper attempts to resolve this apparent contradiction without abandoning Bentham's utilitarian perspective and the accompanying rational decision-making paradigm. In particular, we consider two partners with identical socio-economic characteristics involved in a sufficiently ‘healthy’ relationship where both partners, a priori, do not find quitting the relationship to be an attractive option. Our model focusses on their ability to resolve conflicts in a dynamic setting while being unabashed pleasure seekers.
We find that even such healthy relationships may not survive a conflict among partners. Moreover, even if such relationships survive the conflict, it would do so—either under a severely unfair norm where one partner has a hegemonic power over the dispute outcome, or when partners decide probabilistically to make up or fight in each period. In the latter case, a resolution of dispute is likely to be preceded by several periods of fighting. And so, this equilibrium explains the curious, but commonplace, behaviour where partners engage in conflict for long periods of time before arriving at a resolution, by undertaking actions that they could have agreed to in the first period itself and saved themselves from the painful periods of acrimony.
Now, it is difficult to imagine that an unequal hegemonic relationship equilibrium will pervade a liberal society. And so, it can be argued that the cultural change arising out of social emancipation would manifest itself in the shift of society from the ‘unequal’ equilibrium to the ‘unstable’ or ‘acrimonious’ equilibrium. Indeed, an instance of this shift can be seen while comparing societies at different levels of gender equality. For example, Guatemala is roughly ten times more gender unequal than Sweden, but Sweden has a ten times higher divorce rate than Guatemala. 3
Requisite references appear later in the paper.
Note that, while no case can ever be made for slowing down on the path of greater woman empowerment, both rising acrimony among partners and weakening of the institution of marriage are, arguably, not in the best interests of the modern society. 4
For example, continued decay in the institution of marriage may lead to societal situations like in Japan, where fertility rates have drastically fallen to the extent that the population is actually shrinking. This phenomenon has been accompanied by emergence of a high end market for emotional services ranging from intimacy to grief (https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21706321-most-japanese-want-be-married-are-finding-it-hard-i-dont and https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21706321-most-japanese-want-be-married-are-finding-it-hard-i-donthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aLEu1lx8bg).
It is in the pursuit of an answer to this question that the idea of a mandatory legal separation period becomes instrumental. We find that the restriction of legal separation mitigates any adverse impact of gender equality on stability of healthy marriages. Of course, one can ascribe many other benefits of such a legal device that appeals to the emotional nature of human decision-making. However, we show that even when partners are completely rational (and behave as the classical Homo economicus), the legal directive mandating a trial separation period serves a crucial role in limiting the friction between equality and stability of marriages. And this would explain, within the rational paradigm, why modern societies have continued with the concept of ‘legal separation’ in their divorce laws under mutual consent category, even when it goes against the essence of Bentham's ideals.
Finally, note that break ups can, typically, be legally regulated only if unions are legally recognized. Hence, in light of our findings, one may argue that giving legal status to a union of partners, as a marriage or otherwise, is likely to increase the chances of the union being stable.
We are unaware of any other paper rationalizing this device of ‘legal separation’ in modern divorce laws. Also, to the best of our knowledge, there is no other paper that looks through a ‘formal’ model at the dynamics within a marriage consequent to a dispute that may or may not cause irreversible breakdown in relationship. This is quite in contrast to the importance accorded to these issues by Kitson, Babri, and Roach (1985) and White (1990); who argued that divorce must be studied as intertemporal processes in addition to the conventional demographic approach. Also, unlike other papers, we adopt a gender neutral perspective by considering partners to be identical in all conceivable socio-economic dimensions. This allows us to isolate and focus on the internal dynamics of a marriage without any interference from mismatch in outside options available to the partners.
The majority of related literature has analyzed stability of marriages in terms of trade off between gains from staying in marriage and outside options available to partners. In fact, Becker (2009, p. 331) states unequivocally,
A husband and wife would both consent to a divorce if and only if they both expected to be better off divorced.
In contrast, our model shows that couples may divorce even when outside options are less than gains from marriage. Further, instability of marriages in our model manifests itself in break ups that occur in the very first period of conflict among partners. This is consistent with the observation of Becker (2009), which states that majority of separation and divorces in USA occur within the early years of a marriage (see the last paragraph of Becker, 2009, p. 327). Note that while Becker (2009) explains this observation by invoking imperfect information among partners, our assertion is derived in a complete information setting.
Also, as mentioned earlier, our results are consistent with widespread empirical observations of greater economic independence of women being associated with greater divorce rates. Further, our results nicely relate to the empirical findings of Nock (2001), which state that equally dependent spouses are more likely to get divorced than their counterparts. We argue that equally dependent partners are likely to be observed in emancipated communities that will never accept a hegemonic equilibrium and so, partners would coordinate on the unstable or acrimonious equilibrium. Finally, in line with the UK government report (HM Government, 2010), our results imply that marriages are likely to be more stable than unregistered live-in unions, as the latter cannot be subjected to legal separation period while breaking up.
Model
Consider two identical partners
This model represents couple interaction consequent to a single dispute. So, an end to the game by some partner making up does not preclude possibility of future disputes arising and similar game unfolding again.
The period payoffs in our game, at any period
As mentioned earlier, if any partner
Note that the value
Anecdotal instances can be found where such sense of abandonment leads to a downward spiral of self-loathing that culminates into acute depression.
In this paper, we focus on relationships that are not fractured beyond repair. Hence, we impose the following regularity condition on the parameters that ensures that both partners attach a substantial amount of value to their relationship:
We denote this infinite horizon relationship game by
The first result states that any pure strategy equilibrium must either involve quitting at the first period by both partners, or making up by only one partner in the first period. In either case, the game ends in the first period.
Hence, in any pure strategy, SPNE of
Now, we consider any possible SPNE of
We interpret equilibrium (i) of Proposition 1 as an unequal (no-break up) equilibrium, because one partner remains absolutely inflexible, while the other remains absolutely accommodating. Similarly, we interpret the equilibrium (ii) as an unstable (immediate-break up) equilibrium, because both partners are unwilling to work through their dispute and quit at the earliest opportunity leading to a break up by ‘mutual consent’. Thus, Proposition 1 underlines a dichotomy between equality and stability in a relationship, even when both partners value it high enough (so that
We feel that the problem gets accentuated as one's own notion of self-worth expands. That is, bigger the ego of a person, greater is the hurt, pain and fear of being quited upon. Perhaps this is why many show-business celebrity spectacle marriages dissolve soon after.
In contrast, it is in the patriarchy-stricken societies, generally in relatively rural areas, that one gets to see the unequal equilibrium of Theorem 1 playing out. Such backward societies, typically, have long lasting heterogeneous marriages that are ‘domineering at best and abusive at worst’ in nature. A common feature of such marriages is the stark male domination that manifests in social practices and sartorial choices, irrespective of income or the educational levels of the partners. Unsurprisingly, divorced women in these societies usually face a precarious and insecure future, not to mention, a severe social stigma that leads to an almost negligible outside option in terms of our model. Quite disappointingly, this equilibrium continues to survive even when we allow it for partners having ‘different’ outside options
In the following result, we show that there is a mixed strategy SPNE in this game where partners mix by putting positive probability only on both making up and fighting. 9
In the context of human relationships, we find it difficult to believe that people in real life take decisions to break up in probabilistic manner. Hence, we ignore any mixed strategy equilibrium where partners put positive probability on quitting.
where
Therefore, if we show that
Note that a partner may make up unilaterally under the mixed-strategy SPNE specified in Proposition 1 but the probability of this happening in any period could be very small for a large range of parameter values. And so, if one is prepared to accept the idea that no relationship between human beings can exist without disputes and conflicts then Theorem 1 and Proposition 1 paint a grim picture. They posit that even when the relationship is sufficiently valuable (so that
Now, it is highly unlikely for the unequal equilibrium to frequent a society that celebrates human equality. Then, from Theorem 1 and Proposition 1, it follows that most relationships in a gender egalitarian society are likely to be brittle or acrimonious. Moreover, long periods of acrimony is may be expected to decay relationships to a level beyond repair where
In contrast, unstable equilibrium is likely to be observed in more parochial (and almost always, patriarchal) societies, where gender inequality manifests itself in play of the hegemonic relationship equilibrium. Anecdotal evidence confirms this by reflecting the proliferation of legal break ups via mutual consent divorces in advanced liberal societies all over the world, with very small rates of divorce in more primitive patriarchal ones. A striking example of this pattern holds for two countries: Guatemala and Sweden. While the Gender Inequality Index for Sweden is
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index#Top_ten_countries and http://lac.unwomen.org/en/donde-estamos/guatemala.
However, this bleak scenario is not beyond repair. If we alter the game
Such arrangement may also be specified in a legal contracts such as ‘prenuptial agreements’ that are increasingly used in marriages involving partners with huge value of assets.
The Modified Relationship Game
Where
Is The Equilibrium Payoff to Partner
In
The following corollary states this idea formally:
Thus, Corollary 1 shows that the absence of any opportunity to quit over a period of time allows any one partner of a healthy enough relationship to make at least one more effort to patch up things, even when he behaves as the narrowly self-interested Homo economicus. And so, if there is enough of a relationship left to retrieve and restore (as captured by the parameter restriction
In fact, there is much anecdotal evidence across the world where sparring partners found it possible to make up amicably during such periods. And so, the legal directive of trial separation can be seen as a mitigating influence upon the dichotomy between equality and stability of relationships in our model and thus, it is a very effective instrument in strengthening the institution of marriage. Further, in recent times, some societies like the states of Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana in USA have come up with novel codes of marriage law, especially designed to reduce the chances of grant of quick divorce by mutual consent.
Our paper provides a rationale for the extensive prevalence of the non-utilitarian construct of mandatory legal separation in utilitarian societies. It does so by theorizing divorce as an intertemporal process, unlike the traditional methods of analyzing divorce in terms of outside options or demographics. Contrary to the assertions of Becker (2009), this approach underlines the possibility of divorces even when outside options are less than gains from marriage. We also present a justification for the curious tendency of partners to spend long periods of acrimonious fight before making up, even when they could have done so at the first period of fight. Finally, our paper posits that unions that are not legally recognized are may be more unstable in comparison to a legally recognized marriage.
It would be very interesting to empirically substantiate these findings. We leave this exercise for future research.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
