Psychology
In the case before the Manhattan court, Sage Kerry, head of healthcare investment banking at Jeffries, is in a divorce lawsuit of US$7 million with his estranged wife Christina. Sage and Christina, a housewife who was former Italian fashion representative, have two children. The two exposed each other in signed court affidavits presented to the court as drug users. Christina describes her husband as “a real life wolf of the wall street” due to his behavior of romping with hookers and using Hallucinogens, even in the presence of their children. Denying the accusations, Sage describes his former wife as a “mother who hides alcohol in her young daughter’s backpack”. He also had secret cameras installed into their 5th Avenue apartment and had videos showing Christina drinking and smoking cocaine. Sage had earlier filed for divorce and custody of the two children, which he temporarily won. The reason for the new lawsuit by Christina is in an attempt to get custody of her kids back.
Introduction
In the US, analysts consider that between forty and fifty percent of all first relational unions, as well as sixty percent of second relational unions ends up in separation. There are some well-known variables that put individuals at higher danger for separation. These include wedding at an early age, low income for one or both partners, unplanned premarital pregnancy, lack of religious connection, a separated family background, and sentiments of frailty. The most popular causes of divorce are absence of duty, excessive belligerence, betrayal, improbable desires, lack of balance in the relationship, and misuse of family resources. However, partners can settle some of these issues amicably and therefore avoid separation.
Commitment has a long haul perspective of the marriage that helps us not get overpowered by the issues and daily marriage difficulties (Denmark & Paludi, 2008). At the point when there is high commitment relationship, partners are extra secure and are ready to contribute further for a relationship to be successful. Commitment is plainly the reason couples stay together and others separate.
Economics of relationships model can be used to explain the strained and imminent annulment of the marriage of Kelly Sage and Christina. According to this model, satisfaction, in a relationship is equal to rewards minus costs and comparison levels of the partners (Denmark & Paludi, 2008). In our case, Christine married Sage while she was a fashion model, and made her a housewife. Despite the financial support that Sage offers Christine, the impact of the rewards has been diminished by the costs that the relationship has had on her. According to Christine, Sage has gone to the extent of forcing her to have sex with a drug boss who is his client after they smoked cocaine. Intimidating Christine and forcibly making her have sex with his client against her wish is a cost to her.
The commitment level in a relationship is measured by adding investments in a relationship to the satisfaction and subtracting the comparison level of alternatives (Miller, 2014). In the case of Christine, the investments in the relationship for her includes the two children they have sired during their marriage term. The reason she has filed a case in court is because she want custody of her two children. When Sage and Christine started dating and in the early stages of their marriage, they liked each other. However, as time went by, they changed and started to feel that the relationship was no longer mutual. During the early days of their relationship, both had an instinctive exchange relationship where Sage had an appetitive motivation to gain positively from the relationship. On the other hand, Christine might have been forced to leave her job by the fact that she had an aversive motivation to avoid motivation at all cost. Aversive motivation might be the reason she decided to leave her job and become a housewife.
On examining the comparison levels of Sage and Christine relationship, actions of both parties indicate that they contributed to making the relationship unstable and unhappy. Their relationship’s comparison levels, therefore, shows that the outcomes of their relationship fall short of both contrast levels and comparison levels of alternatives (Miller, 2014). The fact that Sage forced his wife to have sex with his client shows that he has no respect or his wife and himself.
For a marriage to exist and be stable, equity has to be struck in the relationship. Equity means that each partner benefits from the relationship in a direct proportion to the satisfaction or reward that he or she offers the partner. Therefore, your result in a relationship divided by your contribution should be equal to your partner’s outcome divided by his or her contributions. In the case of Sage Christine, the relationship seems to be pretty imbalanced with her being the one getting more financially but losing more mentally. Equity does not seem to exist as one partner appears to receive a lot in one instance, and the other receives a lot in the other. Inequality occurs when one party feels that he, or she is not receiving what is entitled to him or her.
The Equity Theory explains that females and males are accustomed to maximize pleasure and diminish pain. Therefore, society has an interest in persuading people to behave fairly and equitably, with groupings that reward those who are fair and punish the unfair. If people in a relationship feel that they are over appreciated, they can experience shame, guilt and pity for the partner. If underappreciated, a partner will feel used, wasted and full of hate towards the other partner. Therefore, people in a relationship are likely to attempt getting the balance in a relationship by restoring psychological equity, the actual equity or leave the relationship. It is on the basis of this theory that Sage decides that because the relationship that he is in is not fair, he will file a divorce. However, his wife feels that her share of the investment she made in the relationship (children) has been taken from her. Sage may also consider that the relationship with Christine is not equal because she is a housewife with no income while he provides for all the financial needs of the family. Sage might have gone overboard to having sexual relationships with other women because he wanted to feel that effect of superiority as the superior partner.
Marriages that mostly last for a lifetime are for those couples who believe that offenses are temporal. Such couples do not want to risk their investment in the relationship in the name of trying to maintain fairness (Aumer-Ryan, Hatfield & Frey, 2007). From the research paper ‘Examining Equity Theory Across Cultures’, it is noted that non-Americans have always felt that the life of women was better compared to that of a man. Other respondents argue that lives of men and women are different and incomparable. However, the results of the study fail to support such claims (Aumer-Ryan, Hatfield & Frey, 2007).
Inequalities in the matrimony led to another research conducted on the separation laws and rates in USA, which has the highest number of divorce in the country. However, both partners always claim to be undermined. More than sixty percent of the involved sample show that women usually initiate divorce (Kim & Oka, 2013). Research done by Mah-Hui and Ee suggest that the financial crisis in a formerly stable family has caused the divorce in ten percent of the cases studied (Kim & Oka, 2013). It also indicates that three percent of marriages that both partners were not well financially collapsed when the female gained financial stability before man got stable financial supply (Kim & Oka, 2013).
Therefore, there are various factors that can cause friction in a marriage and consequentially a divorce. One of these factors is where one of the partners feel that he or she is being used, and this often happens in an unstable relationship. In the case of such a marriage, the partner may choose to either create a psychological balance in the relationship, a real equity or decide to quit the relationship. In a relationship, balance is struck when the ratio of input to output for both partners is equal.
References
Aumer-Ryan, K., Hatfield, E., & Frey, R. (2007). Examining Equity Theory across Cultures. IJPR, 1(1), 61-75. doi:10.5964/ijpr.v1i1.5
Denmark, F., & Paludi, M. (2008). Psychology of Women. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Kim, D., & Oka, T. (2013). Divorce Law Reforms and Divorce Rates in the USA: An Interactive Fixed-Effects Approach. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 29(2), 231-245. doi:10.1002/jae.2310
Mah-Hui, M., & Ee, K. (2011). From Marx to Morgan Stanley: Inequality and Financial Crisis. Development and Change, 42(1), 209-227. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01693.x
Miller, D. (2014). Wife Claims Husband Forced Her to Have Sex with Prospective Client. Mail Online. Retrieved 15 November 2014, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2812409/Estranged-wife-claims-drug-loving-Wolf-Wall-Street-husband-forced-sex-prospective-client-seedy-partner-swap.html
