The other day, we encountered Jillian Dunham, the 37-year-old who had her eggs frozen because she can’t find a husband.
Who is to blame for men’s unwillingness to become husbands and fathers? Could it be the phenomenon of “frivorce”? This portmanteau of “frivolous” and “divorce” was coined by Men’s Rights bloggers to describe situations in which a woman leaves a marriage that is not objectively bad, but which she perceives as failing to satisfy her emotional needs. The Douchebag Credo: “I gotta be me.”
One of the best books about the disastrous decline of the American family is Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s The Divorce Culture. To summarize briefly a very complex argument, marriages are falling apart because people have forgotten what marriage is about, replacing traditional beliefs with what Whitehead calls the “love family ideology.” The decline of marriage is also part of what Christopher Lasch analyzed in The Culture of Narcissism as “a society that has lost interest in the future.” How does this manifest itself in everyday life? At Jenny Chancey’s Ladies Against Feminism blog, a commenter named “David J.” explains:
Ladies, here’s one of the biggest reasons, if not THE biggest reason, that Christian young men are leery of marriage: the behavior of their mothers — your Christian sisters.
My wife and I were married at age 21, two days after graduating from a conservative Christian college. We have three sons, ages 23, 20, and 16. The oldest graduated from a Christian college last year and is a 6th grade teacher. He is tall, good-looking, brilliant, fun, heavily involved in a very good church, and has many friends of both genders. But he is not even dating, let alone looking for marriage. My second son is a junior at a Christian college and will be going into law enforcement. He is also tall, good-looking, smart, hard-working, and very popular. He is playing the field, not dating seriously. The youngest is obviously not of marrying age, but he is seriously estranged from his mother.
The reason? Their Christian mother filed for divorce, without biblical grounds and contrary to our pastor’s and Christian marriage counselor’s advice, 4.5 years ago, after 26 years of marriage. She later withdrew that filing but then re-filed two years later. The divorce was final a little over a year ago. She immediately began dating online, then met, “fell in love” with, and married a twice-divorced man who lives 400 miles away — all within a span of 13 months. She has now relocated, taking our 18-year old special needs daughter with her.
My sons are shell-shocked, both by the unbiblical divorce (commonly referred to in the “manosphere” as a frivolous divorce, or a “frivorce”) and by the rush into an unbiblical remarriage. They are asking themselves why they should even contemplate marriage when their primary example of Christian womanhood and wifehood has demonstrated that nothing protects them from a unilateral, frivolous divorce at any time — not the law, not the woman’s profession of faith, not the input of Christian counselors, not the church (which is afraid to step in or “take sides”), not the length of the marriage, not even the interests of the children. Perhaps most importantly for this audience, my sons also saw that other Christian women will do nothing to protect them from a frivolous divorce.
I’ve learned that mine is not at all an isolated situation. In fact, two-thirds of all divorces today are initiated by wives, and only rarely for non-frivolous/biblical reasons.
So, if you really want to raise the level of interest in marriage for Christian young men and/or increase the number of potential suitors for your daughters, (1) don’t divorce their fathers and (2) don’t sit silently by while your Christian sisters initiate frivolous divorces.
Parental behavior communicates a powerful message to children, and how parents treat each other is part of that message. Bail out after four kids and 26 years of marriage? Why? Do you really think you’ll be happier as someone else’s third wife? You think he’s Mister Perfect, but his first two wives just weren’t good enough for him?
Many people see remarriage as a fresh new chance at happiness with a partner whom they should have chosen in the first place. But the statistics reveal that second or later marriages are much more likely to end in divorce.
Not only does marital failure replicate in this way — people who have divorced once are more likely to divorce again — but it also replicates in the subsequent generations:
The National Opinion Research Council conducted a survey of adult children of divorce that spanned more than 20 years. Here’s what they found: In 1973, adult children of divorce were 172% more likely to get divorced than adult children from intact homes. In 1999, adult children of divorce were only 50% more likely to get divorced than adult children from intact homes . . . which sounds like good news.
However, the bad news is that the survey also found a 26% lower rate of marrying in the first place among adult children of divorced parents. . . .
Children of divorce often experience expectations of failure, fear of loss or abandonment and fear of conflict throughout their lives. These anxieties are reflected in their romantic relationships by poor partner or behavior choices, giving up too quickly when problems arise or avoidance of any perceived level of commitment.
People see statistics like that and say to themselves, “Well, my choices won’t follow the trend,” but exactly where the hell do you think trends come from? Trends don’t cause human behavior, human behavior causes trends. Your choices, your decisions, your actions inevitably have far-reaching ripple effects on others, and yet narrow-minded selfishness causes people to think they can live according to the Douchebag Credo — “I gotta be me!” — without consequences. These are the same people, of course, who blame “society” for their problems without pausing to look in the mirror and realize they are part of “society,” too.
You can’t outsource personal responsibility. And failure replicates.
Of course and it was the best haggis I ever had.
. . .best haggis I ever had
Not exactly, high praise.
: )
I like haggis but I’ve notice it is either really good or so bad one can’t eat it.
I knew Han Holzer (the original ghost investigator) he had a marriage like that. After a few years of marriage his wife decided she was a lesbian. But they remained in the same house living on different floors raising their daughters.
My wife and I married “on the cheap” – my pastor from growing up conducted the ceremony, which was held at a nearby state park in late July – nothing fancy, but beautiful nonetheless under the trees near the river. After the ceremony, we had a reception and dance without alcohol at the local community center – just a simple supper (her parents insisted on hiring the caterer), a cake baked by another local lady I’d known for years while growing up, and a small dance. All in all, I think we figured we’d spent under two thousand dollars for everything, and this was in 2009.
On the other hand, my darling bride (of 35 years, 8 months and 17 days) and I attended a wedding a few years ago that cost a clear pile of money; the reception was in a swanky club, with a sit down dinner for about 200 people, two open bars, the works. The happy couple had already been shacked up for 2 years and had bought a house together.
Within a year, they were divorcing. I think that there’s a moral to that story somewhere.
It’s not impossible, simply more difficult. Many manage it, usually by growing up, but are there enough of them? I mean this seriously. One mistake that those of a more conservative bent often make is hand wringing / worrying over every little social failure. An analogous situation to the whole vaccine brouhaha can be posited: Having some marriages fail may be good for society because it makes visible the cost and destruction. Too much success can breed complacency.
Understand, by no means am I making the argument that we are in that situation today, at least not where marriage is concerned. If anything, we are in the “complacency” situation where family fracturing is concerned. The question would be why, and aside from the obvious factor of self-serving reading of the situation by many people, there’s the equally important role of our accumulated social and fiscal capital as a society. 3%, 5% perhaps even 10% fatherless children we can handle. I think we’re very near the point where serious social disruption is upon us.
Few, if any, of the “social indicators” that actually matter are getting better.
I was not speaking of finances so much as unearned abandonment.
What would a supposedly Christian woman be doing reading Cosmopolitan in the first place?
If she had other women out there telling her that there was this “perfect” husband out there, just waiting for her, and she listened, then she was somehow dissatisfied with her current marriage.
Somehow, some way, this man failed. It is the husband’s job, his first job, to keep his wife happy.
About 40% of all 1st marriages end in divorce. About 60% of the time, the plaintiff is female, about 30% male, and about 10% some sort of joint filing. Where children are present, the share of filers who are female is higher. Roughly a third of women who file have grounds of some sort. So, 0.4 x .6 x .66 = .1666
My apologies, I did not catch the reference to your state. My argument is based on academic research I’ve done on the topic, and I was surprised to find how recent the tender years doctrine actually is. Most folks assume it’s been that way ever since we tossed feudalism aside.
No, it’s his job to earn a living, pay his bills, pay his debts, educate his children in various ways, maintain order in his house, and keep his drinking and temper in check. It is not his job to cater to her strange whimsies and will likely do her no bloody good.
Nearly all of us fail, in the sense that we’re not in middle age the people we wanted to be or that we could have been had we played our cards right. However, only a select few of us are understandingly abandoned.
Your just assuming of presence of fault. Survey research on the reasons people offer for divorce suggests the smart money does not do that.
What? I cannot advocate something because Newt Gingrich was a lousy husband and Rush Limbaugh has never been able to manage domestic life well?
Mr Deco wrote:
Actually, I have gotten out quite enough, and I have seen those women, between 45 and 55, who’ve just shed husbands or simply want some action on the side, because their husbands aren’t taking care of business at home.
If women are looking for emotional thrills in middle age, it’s because they aren’t getting them at home. They’ve reached the point where the kids are out of the house, and menopause is either around the corner or already setting in, and they are just flat out horny. It is a tough time for some husbands, and that’s when they’ve got to work harder to keep their wives.
Reagan was influenced by having been the defendant in a divorce suit. He was stung that Jane Wyman had charged him with ‘mental cruelty’. Per Nancy Reagan, RR had no clue his marriage was troubled until the papers were served.
Whatever her talents and virtues, Wyman was a piece of work. She ran through five civil marriages to four different men and it’s a reasonable guess that four of them were invalid because she never got a lawful divorce from her first husband. (She never in her life acknowledged being married to him but Edmund Morris found the certificate on file in Los Angeles County). Mr. Reagan was the only one married to her for more than about four years at a stretch and the only one who sired any children by her.
Mr Deco wrote:
And in all of that, not one word about taking care of his wife.
Aye. Ever seen the film The Best Years of Our Lives? Great movie. There’s a wedding at the end. It takes place in a private home. Groom in a suit, Bride in a white dress, minister, a few friends, and piano accompaniment. The film was an exercise in social realism, i.e. the world as the filmmakers knew it in 1946.
No apologies needed. You’re right about “tender years,” insofar as misconduct by the wife is concerned at a general level. That is, once the “no fault” regimen became the norm, “tender years” custody became the default, regardless of the wife’s misbehavior.
I mentioned (or more accurately, I guess, I implied) on other threads here, that presumption has caused more child neglect and abuse than anything else. The statistics show that “household” or “family members” abuse children. The vast majority of perpetrators are Mom’s new boyfriend[s], and fathers have been powerless to stop it.
Again, I could write a book, but ethical considerations prohibit that.
I’ve answered you below. Sorry, no respect for your opinion, here.
No, not one word about fuzzy things that please people, because those are not obligations which can be set down in cold print and described with any degree of precision.
All of thatis taking care of his wife and children. The problem is expectations. That is, if people believe in a fairy tale, they inevitably will be disappointed. I do not expect or demand that my wife comply with all of my wishes or desires at any given moment. I remember that Paul’s injunction was to love my wife as Christ loves the Church. That implies, infinite love, mercy, grace and sacrifice for her. I cannot speak to how women discharge their obligations. That does not concern me as I am not a “wife.” But I can say, many, many men are placed in Catch 22s where there is nothing they can do to meet the expectations of their spouse. As I said, I’ve seen too many of these things over the years in my profession.
Our Missouri graduate wrote:
What Mr Deco listed were things which could be just as well performed by a hired hand: they support the family physically and financially, but there is more to being a husband and a father than that.
IIRC, He and Jane did not have kids of their own. Michael was adopted and not a natural child. I don’t recall any others they had.
Wyman really was a piece of work. It’s a real testimony to God’s work that Michael turned out OK.
Perhaps. We’ll never know. Reagan was in favor of the bill, regardless, because of the Wyman Frivorce.
They are asking themselves why they should even contemplate marriage when their primary example of Christian womanhood and wifehood has demonstrated that nothing protects them from a unilateral, frivolous divorce at any time
And they’re right to ask themselves this.
The answer is don’t get married.
Marriage is no longer a Christian institution. Sad, but true. It was long ago taken over by the state and refashioned into a legal shiv which any wife can stick into the heart her husband at any time and for any reason.
You lost your job? Frivorce.
Wife loses interest in you because you’ve become domesticated and boring? Frivorce.
Wife decides in middle age that she needs more Eat, Pray, Love narcissism in her life? Frivorce.
And you, the husband, the sucker, the rube, the fool, get to pay for it all on pain of being dragged to jail. What a deal!
And if you try to resist, all your wife has to do is tell the police she’s frightened of you and you’ll be thrown out of your own home like a bum. If she’s feeling particularly vindictive, she can tell them you’re a kiddy fiddler.
“But my special lady would never do that to me!”, thinks every sucker, just before the divorce shiv is slipped between his ribs and then cruelly twisted.
So why get married? This is not your father’s institution of holy matrimony. It’s a form of indentured servitude which exists mainly to sate Western women’s egotistical demands for a Big Day and something shiny on their finger.
Women don’t care about marriage. All those glossy bridal magazines they read aren’t about marriage, they’re about weddings. That’s not the same thing, fellas!
The man is not the head of his household, as he should be in a Christian marriage. At best, you are only the head of your household on sufferance, pending the wife deciding to enlist Big Daddy government to kick your teeth in.
Have you been paying attention to all those commercials and sitcoms that portray you – Mister Average Husband – as a doughy, emasculated fool under the thumb of your know-it-all wife? They’re trying to tell you something.
Should we not render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s? Marriage belongs to Caesar now. Let the gays have it – they truly love weddings. Any heterosexual man would be a fool to get married under the current anti-male, anti-father legal system.
God will understand. He doesn’t ask his faithful to stick their heads in the lion’s mouth.
By saying “what did David J. fail to do to keep her happy” you are making the mistake that so many men make about women: assuming there is something wrong that you CAN fix with a sufficient amount of observation, logic and sacrifice. Sorry, guys, but women are not programmable robots lacking personal agency. Stop being so arrogant and assuming you can fix a woman as if she is a piece of malfunctioning machinery – as it is always the man’s fault for being less than perfect when SHE does something wrong!
Those two years? I have quite the different potential interpretation. That was likely the wife getting cold feet after her Christian community astonishingly failed to engage in the you-go-girl divorce empowerment script that the mainstream culture promotes from every corner. She scurries back home to escape the unexpected criticism, lines up some new escape plans while psyching herself up for the resulting criticism that she now knows will be coming her way, and has two years of “trying again” – after she is already 100% emotionally checked out of the marriage, that egg has likely been unscrambled for some time – to give a convenient excuse to the “it’s always the man’s fault when a woman does something wrong” crowd that she was an innocent, sinless victim of a hapless failing husband. It’s not like having intertwined finances and joint property is any bar to a divorce court, they’re very good at handling that part of the process from the woman’s perspective, so I hear.
Pray for the safety of that special needs daughter. She is now at very serious risk of sexual abuse, if not from Mommy’s new husband right now, then from Mommy’s new boyfriend(s) after marriage #2 inevitably implodes.
Mr McG wrote:
Allow me to quote from that famous American philosopher, Sam Kinison: you’ve got two choices: you can either love women, or suck a big dick!
For Mr J’s Christian sons, to remain Christian they’ve got to either marry a woman or remain celibate. The alternative is continual fornication, which the Christian knows to be sinful.
Somehow, some way, it has managed to work out pretty well for me! Must be dumb luck, I suppose.
AwD wrote:
And therein lays the entire misunderstanding: you don’t “fix” women, you work on the marriage.
It is entirely possible that Mr J is a true saint of a man, as perfect a husband as there could have been, and the now former Mrs J was just a heartless harridan, but, in my experience, when someone complains how terrible his spouse is, the problem is more frequently the complainer’s than the talked about husband or wife. And when he writes about it, in public, and tells us that not only did she leave for “unbiblical” reasons, but she has also poisoned their sons against marriage, it’s a big red flag.
Another red flag for me. If the now former Mrs J is so very terrible, why did she take the special needs daughter? Having such a child is a great way to scare off potential suitors and next husbands, and the bad woman would have been more likely to leave the special needs daughter with her sainted but now abandoned ex-husband. The notion that she did so just to suck money from her ex-husband is specious: unless he’s a millionaire, he can’t provide enough support to pay all that the daughter will cost.
All in all, I do not believe that Mr J’s story is the whole truth, and I’m not confident that it is even half of it.
That is provably correct.
Indeed, we are very much not in possession of the whole story. And it is very likely true that there are things that Mr. J “should have done” in order to work on his marriage; maybe those things would have worked, maybe not. As it is equally likely that there were things Mrs. J should also have done. But it doesn’t take a terrible woman to divorce her family in today’s culture – it fills her ears with lies about how her children will be better off if she’s happier, for instance. How very easy would it be for her to buy into that if she’s very unhappy (reasonably or not) herself! But as a Christian she does not have grounds for divorcing a faithful husband no matter how poor a husband he may otherwise be.
All it takes to kill the marriage dead is for the wife to decide that following the Bible’s instructions to wives is too much trouble and heartache, and that the right thing for her to do is believe Satan’s lies about how everyone will ultimately be better off if she leaves and shacks up with a different man. Even Christians will often give divorcing women cover, by blaming the husband’s (very real) flaws for her decision to break her marriage vows. Sorry, but no – that’s not acceptable for a Christian.
Do ethical considerations actually prohibit the writing, or only the publishing? Could you leave the manuscript with an attorney to be published posthumously, or if that isn’t enough then on a certain distant date, like Samuel Clemens did with his memoirs?
I know that. I’m just frustrated.
If conservatism means anything, it is a tendency to preserve traditions, on the grounds that they presumably formed for a reason — so if you want to change it, you damn well better be able to explain that reason, and explain why it no longer applies.
Sure, there were those who kept by that standard; but clearly not enough, and I don’t see how we can reverse it without hashing out how it happened in the first place.
True. A hired hand could do the work. But he does it because he’s hired, not because he loves the people for whom he does it. Why the male gets the blame for being unable to keep his wife satisfied is not clear to me. There are mutual obligations in a marriage. As I said above, the husband’s consist of infinite grace, mercy, love and sacrifice. What happens when those things case to be “good enough.”
We don’t know David J. How do we know he failed to do the “right” things? I hate to be repetitive, but I’ve seen too many men who were willing to do anything to keep their marriage intact, but who wound up on the receiving end of a divorce, simply because their wife was bored or had some fantasy of a marital Beulah Land somewhere over the next hill. (Or, more precisely, Beulah land being on the other end of a bunch of cables in the form of somebody’s social media profile.)
Where is the wife’s responsibility? Does she have none. Is a marriage’s success solely the responsibility of the husband. That seems to feed into Feminism’s “Men/Fish/Bicycle” dictum which lays all problems ever encountered by women at the feet of the dreaded “Patriarchy” (Meetings on Saturday in my basement, because my wife won’t let me use the family room.)
A very apt comment. The end began when Marriage ceased to be viewed as a Sacrament and became viewed as a Civil Contract. From there, it was just a few short steps from Civil Contract to Convenient Arrangement. That’s where we are now.
Quite the opposite. They were examples of people exhibiting traits that would make them lousy advocates for a certain position. We can and should be better advocates.
Not luck. You (and I, I hasten to add) married women whose commitment to our marriages was absolute, as was yours and mine. Divorce was not an option in my world. I married a little later in life than most of my peers. But I made damn sure I found a woman who was on the same page as I when it came to the sanctity of those marital vows.
I should also say, it helps to have good examples. My father was 15 years older than my mom and died when she was still relatively young. They married later in life, as well. She’s now 86 and never remarried, because “once you’ve experienced that sort of love, you know you’ll never find it again. It’s not worth even trying.”
Ah, that explains a lot: considering an issue in “all else being equal” terms, when it’s actually a dependent variable. So, perhaps we can get more opposition to it, now that the misperception has been corrected?
Allow me to quote from that famous American philosopher, Sam Kinison: you’ve got two choices: you can either love women, or suck a big dick!
Those are the options? Mmmkay. Neither of them – lady-loving or dick-suction – requires marriage though.
For Mr J’s Christian sons, to remain Christian they’ve got to either marry a woman or remain celibate.
Marriage in 21st century Western legal jurisdictions bears little or no resemblance to what people understood as marriage in Jesus’ time. Indeed, it’s a hollow mockery of everything the Bible says about the duties of husbands and wives.
The institution itself is no longer fit for purpose. The Caesars took it over and it is now their plaything, which is why they were able to redefine it to include two men or two women with only token resistance from so-called conservatives.
Christians can either pretend everything is fine – and pray they don’t end up like Mr J – or come up with new ways to commit to each other as Christian men and women. My belief is that God gave us all two eyes and a brain for a good reason, so we should use them to avoid walking into obvious traps.
TELL ME ABOUT IT!
My two year-old loves the British cartoon “Peppa Pig”. While it’s generally unobjectionable and even sweet – nuclear family, pleasant children, loving parents – Daddy Pig is frequently portrayed as a bumbling fool, usually right after he proclaims himself to be “something of an expert” at doing this or that.
Nobody’s perfect, and one can mine some comedy out of people making mistakes, pratfalls, and the like, but why have TV fathers always got to be portrayed as fools?
I have no sympathy for conservatives decrying gay marriage. You destroyed straight marriage first, with no-fault divorce. There is nothing left to defend
With the caveat that it wasn’t just conservatives who destroyed straight marriage*, I entirely agree. It strikes me that, if people are really so concerned about the state of marriage in our country (as well everybody ought to be), then it makes a LOT more sense to fix “straight” marriage before worrying about the alleged destruction that will be wrought by a relative handful of gay people getting hitched.
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(*) Many people including me lament the entitlement mentality of today’s generation: they want whatever they want, and they want it NOW. But where did they learn this? From their parents… who started off by wrecking the institution of marriage. “I’m tired of you” and “You’re stifling me” and “We need to follow our own paths” and “If we aren’t happy, the children won’t be”, &c. Marriage is hard… and these people didn’t want to put in the time either to find a truly suitable spouse or to make it through the nearly-inevitable rough patches that couples go through.
And they taught their kids that bailing out, NOT putting in the effort, was OK.
I still need to read the rest of the thread, but I’m going to go ahead
and address several comments at once, since they tie together.
You can’t make someone else happy. One of the key signs of an abuser is that they will try to make you feel responsible for their happiness; all of their other manipulations rely on it.
Ooooh. That’s what you meant. Well, I agree that if your marriage partner takes a vow to take no other lovers, then you’re damn well responsible for taking care of that business yourself.
I’m trying to wrap my head around how you could “hire” someone to support the family financially. You could persuade (charity) or coerce (court mandate) or some combination thereof (taxes), but I do not see how you could pay someone to pay the bills.
There have been those who claim that bachelors are “selfish” for keeping their incomes to themselves, but that just sounds like entitlement to me. Protection and provision are sacrifices and acts of love, and you seem to be discounting that.
One of my very favorite movies
I misread your statement as “such suits by wives are the end of perhaps 15% or 20% of all marriages [that end],” and he may have to.
My wife was 19 when we were married; I thought that it would work out, but who can really ever know?
I didn’t have the good example; I had the bad example, because my father decided that he’d rather be with someone other than my mother, when they had kids who were 7, 3 and 1½, and he did this in 1960, when divorce was not nearly as common. He also found child support to be more of an option than an obligation, and we grew up dirt poor for awhile.
I can’t say that I consciously promised that I’d never do that to my wife and kids, but we’re still married today.
I try to take it as a compliment to the actual perception of my sex. Comedy is found in the thin line between the expected and the nonsensical. Taken as a whole, the trend is misandric; in a particular role, it’s funny because everyone expects the man of the house to be confident enough to take on any task that needs doing, but not so incompetent as to fail them all.
Straight white men in our media culture are now portrayed as evil, bumblers, fools. Especially in commercials — the husband is made to look like a moron, and the wife to look like a genius.
My dad’s dad left his mom for his mom’s sister. When my mom and dad got married, they essentially turned “until death do us part” into a threat, not just a promise — there was no way that the other one was leaving vertical. My mom and my dad are both still alive, which is enough to say that they’re still married.
“If the now former Mrs J is so very terrible, why did she take the special needs daughter? Having such a child is a great way to scare off potential suitors and next husbands, and the bad woman would have been more likely to leave the special needs daughter with her sainted but now abandoned ex-husband. The notion that she did so just to suck money from her ex-husband is specious: unless he’s a millionaire, he can’t provide enough support to pay all that the daughter will cost.”
She didn’t take the special needs daughter to begin with. I sought 50/50 custody. We lived within 1/2 mile of each other, both in the same school district, so our daughter could go back and forth and always be at the same school Our daughter herself suggested a week on/week off schedule, but my ex refused that approach. At the mediation where we ultimately settled the various issues, my ex implored me to agree to 25% custody on the argument that our daughter needed the continuity of being in one home for all school days/nights. I ultimately agreed to that proposal (one evening every week, every other weekend, all school off days, all spring breaks, and 50/50 at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and summer) because we were able to reach agreement on all the other issues, including the mirror image 75/25 arrangement for our youngest son (which turned out to be moot because of how she treated him; he ended up with me nearly 100% of the time). All that went out the window when she remarried and relocated 400 miles away. I thought long and hard about seeking to reverse the custody ratio for our daughter (and would have had a strong case, because she was moving to a remote, poorly served rural area with lousy schools and virtually non-existent special ed programs, etc.), but ultimately decided, with the counsel of my pastor and wise friends who loved both me and my daughter, that going to war over custody would be very stressful and unfair to our daughter. To spare her that torture, I now drive a total of 1600 miles for every visit with my daughter — 800 down and back to pick her up, 800 down and back to return her.
By the way, there is no doubt in my mind that money was a significant factor to my ex, as was power. After the settlement, my ex complained often about how she was suffering financially. It would have been noticeably worse if she received 50% less in child support. (By the way, she had a job paying her about $32,000/year, plus very good benefits, including very cheap health insurance; child support and alimony increased that by another 50%. To support one adult and one child, she was doing fine.) But just as important was the ego trip. For me to have been an equal parent to our daughter and primary parent to our son would have been a blow to her ego and to her public image as perfect mom. If you’ve ever read the novel Jewel, about the mother of a special needs child who puts her husband and her other kids through hell because she has to do every conceivable thing for the special needs child, only to realize late in her life that most of what she put the rest of the family through ended up making little or no difference to the special needs child, then you have a pretty good picture of my wife’s approach to parenting our daughter.
What you read in the OP of my story isn’t the whole story, not by a long shot. In particular, it doesn’t tell you anything about the marriage leading up to the divorce or provide any details of the numerous ways I could say that my wife hurt me and failed me as a wife. But the story in the OP is, to the best of my ability, objectively accurate and a fair summary of the divorce itself.
Welcome! I can’t imagine being in either your real situation, or the one where you found yourself on the front page of a relatively high Page Rank blog. Don’t worry, we’re mostly civil.
[…] Who is to blame for men’s unwillingness to become husbands and fathers? Could it be the phenomenon of “frivorce”? This portmanteau of “frivolous” and “divorce” was coined by Men’s Rights bloggers to describe situations in which a woman leaves a marriage that is not objectively bad, but which she perceives as failing to satisfy her emotional needs. The Douchebag Credo: “I gotta be me.” One of the best books about the disastrous decline of the American family is Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s The Divorce Culture. To summarize briefly a very complex argument, marriages are falling apart because people have forgotten what marriage is about, replacing traditional beliefs with what Whitehead calls the “love family ideology.” The decline of marriage is also part of what Christopher Lasch analyzed in The Culture of Narcissism as “a society that has lost interest in the future.” […]