Washington (H24N). A model developed through a 14-year study on marriage can predict divorce with 93 percent accuracy, researchers say.

Much research divides marriage into two critical periods for survival: the first seven years and the midlife, when children are young teen-agers.

The study of married couples, which started in 1983, examined marital health through watching interaction between the spouses in both confrontational and non-confrontational settings. Four years later, the couples were contacted again and reassessed. Of the 8.8 percent of the couples who were divorced at that time, the average number of years married was 5.2 years.

The study, published in the National Council on Family Relations Journal of Marriage and the Family, continued contacting those who remained married the first seven years, and by 1996 27.8 percent of them had divorced. The average length of marriage for those who divorced during the second half of the study was 16.4 years.

Those couples that experienced negative feelings during conflict with their spouses at the beginning of their marriage were more likely to get divorced within the first seven years of marriage.

For the couples who made it into the second phase of marriage, the better indicator was a lack of positive feelings during non-confrontational settings in the early part of their marriage, namely no passion about anything.

"It is clear that divorce prediction with a high level of accuracy is possible, and that models that contain continued martial dissatisfaction, thoughts about divorce and separation, and the wife-demand-husband withdraw pattern will predict divorce versus marital stability," conclude the study’s authors.

Eighty percent of people who divorce cite growing apart, losing closeness and not feeling loved or appreciated as the major reasons for separating. Forty percent cite severe and intense fighting as the reason for divorce.

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