Breakdown of Relationships

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Breakdown of Relationships There are theories of relationship dissolution and these give possible reasons as to why couples break up. Duck (1999) suggested that relationship breakdown is due to three risk factors, this includes; lack of skills, lack of stimulation and maintenance difficulties. Lack of skills is when some people have poor communication skills, so they have poor quality conversations and do not indicate interest very well. Duck (1991) argued the lack of social skills can be seen as a disinterest and lack of effort to maintain the relationship, so it breaks down. Lack of stimulation; the social exchange theory suggests that people look for rewards in a relationship of which is ‘stimulation’. Maintenance difficulties is when couples cannot give their relationship the constant support that it needs and this may be because partners cannot see each other often enough e.g. long-distance relationships. Rollie and Duck (2006) have developed a model of termination of close or friendly relationships, which includes six stages. The model starts with breakdown where one partner becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the relationship. If dissatisfaction is sufficiently great, it leads to the intrapsychic phase. This is where the unsatisfied partner begins to think about the costs and rewards of the relationship. Hints about their dissatisfaction may be dropped, but will not be openly discussed. This then leads to the dyadic process, the dissatisfied person confronts their partner and explains why they are unhappy. The couple discuss their feelings and future and during this discussion they may bring up reasons for staying in the relationship but also reasons to leave. The breakup of the relationship is made public to friends or family and this is known as the social process. They may help to mend the relationship or sabotage it. The grave-dressing is when
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