Life events, meaning and narrative: the case of infidelity and divorce.

This article examines how three interviewees construct the meaning of the 'same' life events--marital infidelity and divorce--in radically different ways. All three narrate their experience, using narrative structures to reconstruct and interpret events and yet, because they have different points to make about the spouses' affairs and their divorces, they combine story elements in contrasting ways. Using narrative analysis, I show that what on the surface appear to be the same life events are, in fact, quite different events. I argue that stress research needs to attend more closely to the personal meanings of life events, and show how narrative methods can enrich studies of stress by illuminating how individuals make sense of difficult experiences.