There's A New Cause Of Divorce And Breakups In US Couples – And It’s On The Rise

Misinformation and disinformation. Two pesky little blighters that are causing serious problems in all kinds of really unhelpful places right now – including, according to a new study, romantic relationships.

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Over a series of in-depth interviews with 28 people in the US who had broken up with their partners over political differences, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Associate Professor Emily Van Duyn – an expert in communication – discovered that mis/disinformation “plays a key role” in such relationships coming to an end.

“It’s important to note that these relationships were not doomed for failure because of differing political beliefs,” said Van Duyn in a statement. Mis/disinformation had created a split in what they believed to be true and how they saw the world.

“They failed, at least in part, because those differing beliefs were associated with different realities that disrupted a shared identity and shared reality with their partner,” Van Duyn continued. “Scholars have found that this shared sense of reality is really important for the success and happiness of romantic partnerships because it fosters closeness.”

In an example of how the shared reality in a relationship can be disturbed, look no further than 48-year-old interviewee “James” (not his real name). He and his wife of 23 years once shared similar political views, both voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Then, she encountered a conspiracy theory video about Clinton, and subsequently, the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon. She believed what she saw – James didn’t. He challenged where the information had come from, and what she believed. Their concept of truth and reality began to diverge.

“James’s wife’s reality became her identity and his questioning of her reality a questioning of ‘her as a person’,” Van Duyn writes in the study detailing her findings. “After several years of his wife’s enmeshment in QAnon, James started to realize that ‘there were just things we could no longer talk about at all.’ Slowly, he refuted her comments less and less. ‘It was not worth entering into that conflict’ he said, ‘because it wouldn’t have been resolved.’ A few months into 2023, they both agreed they should file for divorce.”

It’s worth pointing out that this is only a small, albeit in-depth, study; the results can’t be taken to mean that the US is suffering from an epidemic of breakups and divorces due to the spread of mis/disinformation. It does, however, show that it can create problems and how it might do so.

Online spaces, for example, appear to have a part in such disruption, being geared up to send people down “rabbit holes” where they become fixated on mis/disinformation, with algorithms that keep you in one corner of the Internet, reducing the opportunity for these “facts” to be successfully challenged, either online or by partners.

“This kind of rabbit-holing behavior is often associated with online conspiracy groups or content because it drives people to persistently dig further into similar topics or theories,” Van Duyn said. “There’s some evidence that platforms — and social media platforms in particular — are feeding this behavior because their algorithms are recommending things or queuing up videos to play next that entice viewers to continue their engagement with the information for extended periods.”

The study is published in New Media & Society.