A General Systems Theory of Marriage: Nonlinear Difference Equation Modeling of Marital Interaction

Abstract

This article describes a new mathematical approach for modeling the prediction of divorce or marital stability from marital interaction using nonlinear difference equations. The approach is quite general for modeling social interaction, and can be applied to any time series data generated over time for two individuals. We pursued a balance model in selecting the dependent variables of this modeling. Both the mathematical methods and the theoretical gains obtained when using this approach are reviewed.