Research shows that people can have different ideas about the development of relationships. “Soulmate theorists” believe that there is only one person in the world that they can live a happy life with, whereas “workitout theorists” believes that a relationship can be successful through communication and problem solving. This study investigates if there is a difference in the way people approach intimate relationships depending whether their parents were divorced or married while they were growing up.
Because research in this area is new, the hypothesis for this study is bidirectional. Parental divorce may be explained by children due to the fact that their parents weren’t “soulmates.” On the other hand, children may believe that the failure of their parents’ marriage was because they did not work hard enough at making the relationship work. Participants in the present study were male (32) and female (21) undergraduate students. They were asked to complete a demographics questionnaire concerning their parents’ marital status while they were growing up and the Relationship Theories Questionnaire developed by Franiuk et al. Children of intact marriages (N = 42) will be compared to children of divorce (N = 11) in regard to their relationship theories. Results indicate no relationship between parental divorce and their theories on relationships.
