Locus of cause. In addition to the 18 specific categories described previously,
we coded people’s reports into five broad categories that reflected
who was responsible for the divorce: spouse only, self only, the relationship,
external factors, and cannot be determined. These classifications
were generally straightforward. For example, the spouse category included
responses such as “Unfaithfulness onmyhusband’s part. He had so
many women.” Examples of the self category included “The divorce was
caused by many years of things that I did wrong. Iwas not a good husband.
Myown insecurities meant not being able to showlove tomywife.”Atypical
response in the relationship category was “Incompatibility.We were
too young.We needed to go our separate ways.” Causes external to the relationship
are reflected in responses such as “My first wife died and my
daughter moved in with us. It was hard for my second wife to handle the
additional responsibility of the child. And I was working part-time because
I lostmyother job.” Finally, responses including “Alot of things. It’s
hard to say” and “I’m still trying to figure that out” were classified as undetermined.
Individuals who referred to problems such as “an affair” but
refused to elaborate were also placed in this category. In a fewcases (9%),
respondents’ attributions appeared to fit into two categories, so we determined
the primary code through discussion. Cases involving mixed attributions
also were considered separately in supplementary analyses.