How does a couple break up? Mathematical anatomy of a fall

By José-Manuel Rey , Universidad Complutense de Madrid , Jorge Herrera de la Cruz , Universidad CEU San Pablo

Anatomy of a Fall , the film by French director Justine Triet, winner of the Oscar for best original screenplay, uses as a MacGuffin the reconstruction of the fall of a body to carefully dissect the fall of the romantic relationship of the protagonist couple, Sandra Voyter and Samuel Maleski.

The process of relationship breakdown described in the film is not an exception, it is a prevalent phenomenon in the world in which we live.

Data shows high levels of marriage failure across the world, with a general upward trend since the last third of the last century.

For some Western marriage groups, the percentage of marriages that end in divorce after 25 years is 50%, which has popularized the statement that “one in two marriages ends in divorce.”

The all or nothing couple

In Triet's opinion , “it's rare for a relationship to work out, most of them are hell, and the film aims to delve deeper into that hell.”

Certainly, negative divorce statistics underestimate the number of unhappy relationships. Maybe most are hell. However, other relationships are not just lasting successes: they are better than relationships ever were. This dichotomy - majority failure or exceptional success - seems to sum up the state of contemporary marriage in the West, which has been called all or nothing .

Scientific studies establish that relationships decline , that is, the quality or satisfaction of the relationship decreases over time, on average. Some couples - the successful ones - stop their decline and stabilize at satisfactory levels forever. But most relationships fall parsimoniously into a state of discomfort so great that breaking up is a matter of time.

The goal of relationship science is to understand these disparate dips, how and why they occur.

The second law of thermodynamics of feelings

Relationship psychology says that maintaining a relationship over time takes effort. This is what has been called the second law of relationship thermodynamics.

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