Question

Chen and Anne come to counseling because they are on the brink of a divorce. After five years of marriage, Anne sees Chen as a highly controlling individual who micromanages their bank account. She’s tired of her husband always nagging about money, and says she doesn’t feel like she’s getting anything positive out of her relationship. Chen considers Anne’s spending extravagant. He blames her family background for creating her lack of responsibility. From Chen’s perspective, what theory about marriage would explain the relationship failure?

Answer 1

Answer: Social exchange theory

Explanation:

Social exchange theory is defined as the concept that determines social attitude and acts are produced due to exchange mechanism.It consist of cost and benefit as negative and positive consequence respectively for social behavior.This theory depicts about increasing benefits in terms of money,energy etc and reducing cost.

According to the question, social exchange theory will be the concept for perspective of Chen in divorce scenario .He will be specifying Anne's behavior of spending money in speedy manner as negative aspect that is leading to maximize cost rather than benefit .This can lead to risk of social relationship and their own marriage.

Thus, divorce claim by Chen is based upon cost maximization of social exchange theory that is bothering him as Anne is spending rapidly due to her family background.