The new divorce statistics have been out there for some time: Gray divorce is up. Way, way up. And more than seventy percent of the filings are by women.
Yet, you look at men who are having affairs, or complaining about sexless marriages, and none of them are willing to divorce. Come to think of it, mosey on over to The Scarlett Letter, and you will see many women cheating who are also terrified of divorce.
I swear to God, if people just weren’t so, so terrified of divorce, the rate of infidelity would drop by at least fifty percent!
But is cheating really the best solution? As I keep trying to explain to married men, you’re not doing your girlfriend any favors. I have run this pub for six years, and in all that time I have never heard from a single “other woman” — and that includes me! — who had a good childhood that left her feeling lovable and worthy.
These women accept you because of your sob story. It completely mirrors their own: How hard I had to work at home to feel accepted and loved. She thinks if she just works hard enough to show you how much better she will treat you than your wife does, you will evince what looks like plain common sense and leave your wife for her.
She will fall in love. She will waste years and years of her life on you, then return to the dating market years older, devastated that you did not love her back.
No one will help her pick up the pieces. Most of the friends she tells will scorn her and turn their backs on her. And the scars from your discard will hurt for many years to come. I know some mistresses, including myself, who are afraid to date now. Think about that.
When you set out to use her body and her companionship, did you really intend to ruin her life?
Why do people say that?
This is the oldest one in the book.
I find it very interesting that, no matter how many men I see who are terrified, so absolutely fucking terrified, of ending up in a little apartment alone eating tuna from a can, that they will cheat rather than divorce, what I see and read from these gray divorced women is that they are living in a little apartment alone eating tuna from a can, and they are liking it.
Even the women who don’t like it admit, after a period of difficult adjustment, that having freedom and peace in their life is better than any trappings of success they had to buy through being treated badly.
There’s also another, huge, subset of people this life isn’t new to: Half the people in America. Most of us don’t even have $600 in the bank in case the car breaks down. We look at those who actually have fat retirement accounts to divide, and go: Wah, wah, wah. Cry me a river.
Those of us living on shoestring budgets just go about our business and live. We don’t consider it cause for suicide. Right now, I don’t even have a kitchen floor, drywall, sinks, or cabinets because I had water damage and the HOA screwed me over. I will fix it when there’s money, and right now, paying down bills is more important.
I am dealing with it. It’s not the end of the world.
Why can’t men do the same thing?
What is it about a house and accounts with money in them that is more important than not being treated like shit? Why, when the thought of divorce arises, does it suddenly become all your money?
If two people are sharing a home, and one person carried the children, pushed them out, nursed them, mothered them, and cooked and cleaned and took care of the home so those children you both wanted could have a normative childhood, why does the money all belong to you?
You wanted the children and house, too. Somebody had to take care of them. Kids don’t raise themselves. This is why the pot of money in the marriage belongs to both people.
Your forfeited romantic life and your forfeited happiness is the convenience fee you pay to pretend it is all yours.
Unless one of you is mentally ill, there are ways to bypass all this. And we ought to consider: Should divorce cost this much? Should it leave both people so much poorer they are afraid to end a marriage that resembles Hell On Earth?
No? Well, how the fuck is it going to change?
It’s going to change when enough people find the resources to point them to a better way, that’s when. It’s going to change when enough people speak and write about it and tell others about it.
How is that going to happen if everyone just remains shaking in their shoes while a shrewish spouse raises their blood pressure ten points, and they do nothing because they are afraid?
Let’s let Richard tell it:
There is family, accumulated social capital — friends, community, and extended relationships — and sometimes even professional considerations. After decades together, divorce can mean dismantling an entire social and economic ecosystem.
— comment on Medium.
Yep, that’s absolutely true.
But when we wring our hands over that, we are ignoring one blatant truth:
These people are requiring us to pretend about huge, important facts in our lives, and to playact happiness, for them, in order to keep accepting us.
These people are requiring you to perform and live a LIE. If you do not, they will reject you.
Is that good for anyone? And, if they do that, do they really love you? Do they care about your welfare at all? Why do you want the approval of someone like that?
I thought about this a lot when my ex-affair partner dumped me to go back to his wife. He had moved out, quite unexpectedly, and the fam was all upset. His wife was running around, telling everyone she knew that he was “depressed” and “crazy.” His adult children, especially his daughter, started working overtime, guilting him for leaving a woman who had treated him in ways they never even knew about.
Are these loving actions? Really, if my husband ever announced to me that he was unhappy enough to move out, my first move would have been to ask why he was unhappy, what I missed, and what I could do about it. And most people in their twenties or thirties, if a friend came to them in the same marriage situation, would at least see their friend’s side, too, and not just the spouse’s.
None of these people would ever expect a friend to live the way they were asking my ex-affair partner to live. All these people thought of themselves and the spouse before they had any thought for him. Which, incidentally, is what drives a lot of these men out of the marriage to begin with! Think about it. You do not want to break the news of a divorce because, Ohhh, these people will be upset, these people will be upset!
But then they will go back to their own homes and their own marriages, (where one hopes they are happier and presumably having sex), while expecting you to live in your situation for their comfort. While your life is maybe twenty percent of theirs, but your life is one hundred percent you having to live in it. Is that fair? Do those people even think about that? NO!
I had much the same dilemma in my thirties. You see, I divorced my mother. People aren’t any more understanding of that than they are a marriage breaking up.
I saw that all these people cared about was that my mother was upset. Nobody asked me why I felt the need to drop out of my family. Nobody asked what I was upset about.
Nobody cared.
And that was when I realized, my friend, that I wasn’t really losing anything.
I had no family, at all. Not really. These people didn’t give a living shit about me. They just wanted me to still be there doing what they wanted me to be there doing. It was all about them and their comfort, no matter what I was suffering. And I suffered with my mother, let me tell you!
Why are you working so hard to keep people happy, who don’t care about your happiness or your well-being? Isn’t that the very definition of love? That the person care about your happiness and well-being?
Worse, what are we showing and modeling to others when we accept that this is the price of admission to the groups we call “friends” and “family?” That performing the right script is more important than being honest, so the people who say they love you, love the you you really are.
Do you want the people you care about to live this way? Do you want your son or daughter to live this way? What kind of marriage do you wish for your child?
If we do not step up, reveal our lives, our marriages, and our feelings the way they really are, then nobody else feels strong enough to do that, either. What we end up in is a miserable society in which everyone performs, performs, performs, performs. A society no one wants to live in, yet we all enforce the pretending because no one has the courage to demand real love.
And in stepping up and ending the pretending, you give everyone around you the courage and the permission to do the same. If we want a society of people who are happy in their lives, that requires ending the pretending.
Wouldn’t it be a happier world if we all acknowledged that people do best when their needs are met? When they remain in marriage because they are happy to, and not because they’re told they owe it to others to keep pretending a happy marriage?
Are you doing anyone a favor by not being honest? And do people who demand performance from you really care about you?
Why is what they think more important than how you feel? And, is that right?
I just want you to think about this tonight as you repeat to yourself, yet again, “I just have to stay.”
“I just can’t divorce.”
If you ask me, more women are getting this right than men. And when I hear from therapists, they all say they hear this from all their divorced clients:
“I am glad I did it. I stayed much too long.”
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