The major cause of marital breakdown.

When I worked as a - couple, marital and family therapist in the NHS and privately I would give my patients a form to fill out. The questions were about - whether they agreed or disagreed on a number of issues. The list contained things like - attitude to money, attitude to frequency of sex, holidays etc. This was an excellent diagnostic tool, as being too divergent in their answers indicated potential problems. I was therefore not surprised about the report in Family Relationships by professor Sonya Britt of Kansa University who studied more than 4,500 couples and establishes a correlation between money and the failure in relationships. The reason appeared to be the level of intensity of the rows, their frequency and longevity. Its also took longer to recover any equilibrium after these rows, and to establish any real intimacy. Often referred to in systems theory as - a game without end. There is no real resolution to the problem, apart from leaving the field, and getting divorced. Money becomes a 'distance regulator' to use a term coined by one of the leading pioneers in family therapy in Britain, the consultant psychiatric at the Tavistock Clinic in London, Dr John Byng-Hall. I had the good fortune to know him very well as a colleague at the Institute of Family Therapy, and he also acted as one of my supervisors for a number of years. So money rows must be taken seriously in any relationship as they can betoken more critical problems further down the line.