Reasons for relationship breakdown
Nowadays, there are a lot of people out there are experiencing relationship breakdown, especially teenagers. As a teenager, I’m sure that everybody had experienced relationship breakups before in their life. Whether it’s our own or our own friends, or even those famous celebrity couple, we all will still have problems with the relationship in our life. There are many different factors and reasons that cause a relationship breakdown. In this essay, I will explain and talk about why a relationship will breakdown and what are those several factors and reasons that cause a relationship breakdown.
Firstly, breakdown of relationships was originated by a famous social psychologist (Steve Duck) and his model named Duck's four-stage model (1998). Duck is a famous British social psychologist, his full name is Steve Duck (Steven W. Duck). Steve Duck is also the Daniel & Amy Starch Distinguished Research Professor and Chair, Department of Rhetoric, at the University of Iowa. Duck proposes that when people are experiencing a breakup they will go through several series of stages. Duck suggests a four-phase model in 1998, which happens during the termination of close or intimate relationships. Duck propose the first stage named intra-psychic phase, where one of the partners in the relationship becomes unhappy and dissatisfaction with the relationship. Then this leads to the dyadic phase, where the other partner involved in that. If the problem in the relationship is not resolved, then it will lead to another phase. For example, if the dissatisfaction is discussed but not solved, then it brings them to another phase which is Social Phase. Social phase is where friends and family become involved and the breakdown is made public. In this stage, both of the partners will have a negotiation over their children, assets or finance. If the problem is still not solved, then it led to the final stage, which is the grave-dressing phase. Grave dressing phase is where the two of the partners begin to have a breakup of view and start building life towards a new relationship.
There are also strengths and weakness of Duck’s model. One of the strengths of Duck’s model is it has reflected relationship into real life situation. For example, the model allows us to identify and know more details about the stages of relationship breakdown. The model also suggests a number of ways of reversing it. Besides that, the model has also face validity as the process of breakdown happening through phases that something most of the people can relate to their own experiences. However, cultural differences exist and this theory could be argued to suffer from cultural bias. Because of the different backgrounds and cultures of the couple in a relationship, they will more likely to have some misunderstanding problem between each other. Because of this, they will have some arguments over their different culture. Therefore, cultural difference is an issue fo...
