a divorce thread

8 year anniversary in a month, minor miracle considering previous track record of me being outgrown by gf's

It often seems like the guys are just looking to...coast? Like get to an OK stage and leave it there and not have anything change. But the women ended up doing most of the housekeeping, cooking, child care (if applic), shopping, plus their part- or full-time jobs even up to equal wage-earning status. For my sister it definitely was like having 2 kids instead of 1 kid and a spouse--although it's fair to say she probably shouldn't have married a complacent youngest child whose mother had always done everything for him if she wanted a full partner.

It often seems like the guys are just looking to...coast?

This is the goal, yes.

yeah I don't know what to attribute it to, can't make too many generalizations. a couple instances have been wife-gets-bored/cheats on husband/ditches him scenarios. not so sure about what really drove the others, but in all cases the husbands seem blindsided.

part of me wants to make some sort of terrible sub-David Brooks extrapolations about what this all means on a broader social level but the more sensible part of me knows this is just some fluke of my own personal experience

In my anecdotal experience also, the husbands always seem to think everything is okay--or at least they have more to lose by rocking the boat so they'd rather not make any drastic changes. But that's...the problem?

^^^ feels v true to me, like the oldest story known to mankind kinda true

weird that with my 2 high school buddies it was the wife who performed the wilfully ignoring/evrything's okay role.

or at least they have more to lose by rocking the boat so they'd rather not make any drastic changes

this seems u&k to me, especially given CA's divorce laws

I don't know anything about divorce laws, that could be part of it. I meant that their lives are way more improved by being married than the women's are. The guys usually want to get remarried right away and get back to "normal," and the women can't imagine why they would ever get married again--or at least there's a very vocal strain of that.

but the rest just didn't keep up in life or in personal growth

what does this actually mean?

we don't know, that's why they divorce us ;_;

in CA a wife divorcing her husband gets 50% of his assets for the rest of his life

that's what she's entitled to by law, anyway. she could end up getting more, of course.

A lot of different things, probably too many to talk about like that, my bad. But from what I hear, just not expecting to grow as people or get more interesting or more cultivated or work on their emotional issues any more because they had what they wanted and it wasn't worth the effort going further?

Yeah, sorry for the lol, lauren, but it's funny that your sister didn't know that she had married a man.

basically, dudes who treat marriage as a paper transaction and do not expect to change anything about who they are or what they do?
if so, that's my sister-I-L's husband, tho they do not appear close to divorce

seems weird to marry someone with the expectation that they will later be a different person from the one you married, i dunno

some really great definitive anecdotal data in this thread update, good research everyone

Anyone ever notice how men drive one way and women drive a different way?

just happy to be part of the team

wasn't aware this thread was only for certified researchers my bad

maybe I will grow into it

obv haven't dug into sociological data, any1 w new information on why women are leaving their mans is heretofore asked to post here

this is an ilx thread, not a thesis

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, July 26, 2012 1:26 PM (Yesterday)

Oh that was the cool thread you started, n/m.

is there a happily married thread? I SHOULD START IT /marital braggin

how about "this is the thread where we talk about how awesome our marriages are"

I said it was anecdotal and so did shakey; I even specified that one of the examples is my sister. I never claimed to be impartial or w/e.

I'm sorry for posting that in the divorce thread, seems insensitive
I'm still p young so I dont know many divorcing couples. don't know that many married ones, either, I just married young I guess

yeah i'm being a dick but it's just weird how the anecdotal evidence is like 100 percent indistinguishable from every shitty sitcom of the past 30 years

But with all due respect, because I'm very fond of both pp and sunny and lots of you, the idea that a man is someone who got what he wanted when he got a wife and now he can just sit back and that that desire is crucial to "manhood" is a) even more of a generalization than anything I've posted, and b) in cases where it is actually true, seems like a big part of the problem?

Fair enough, but remember, I'm a wannabe shitty sitcom writer.

I thought sitcoms were all baout lazy jerks being married to sassy women way hotter than they are

tbf I haven't watched a sitcom in like 20 years or something

Archie grew IN the relationship, Edith grew OUT of it.

"every shitty sitcom of the past 30 years"

Yes we know, we wear their fake corporate logos across our chests proudly, quit hating on our national pastime please ...

Edith "grew out" of the relationship by dying of a stroke, I don't think that's really comparable to divorce

feel like i have a take on this even though i'm a man with a man. 1) i'm basically my mother. 2) i feel like i'm changing/growing faster than he is (i'm ten years younger). i've thought about making this cause for "moving on" but i sense 0 resentment/weirdness from him for my changes/choices (from what i can tell his heart is totally in the right place wrt "supporting" me), and it would be really unfair to him and to me to end things because i have expectations of him he can't meet. i find i have a lot of them! (based on poor models.) i think it's hard to to redefine expectations, basically. (if you're outgrowing a relationship, aren't you really just outgrowing expectations, and shouldn't you be able to redefine expectations if you want a relationship to keep happening.)

IDK, while we're generalizing anyway, I think that "I grew and (s)he didn't" kind of sounds like a rationalization for "I want freedom and adventure not boring marriage"? Because honestly I've never had any friend, male or female, who I thought got more interesting or cultivated over time. I've seen people take on more responsibility, or become better at negotiating relationships, and I guess that's personal growth of a kind but I don't know if that's what's being talked about here.

Or if not "I want freedom and adventure" maybe "I'm the kind of person who gets bored of sameyness"

yeah I dunno what's really meant by personal growth either

ps I am a man

btw I'm male

I've seen people take on more responsibility, or become better at negotiating relationships, and I guess that's personal growth of a kind...

this is def what I was getting at fwiw

also a male

i figured shakey was just talking about a mismatch of ambition. like one person hit 35 or whatever and was like, this is cool, and the other person was like, i want more of [x]

in both cases I was talking about yeah it seemed like the wife wanted to keep living (or revert back to?) their fun/glamorous/dynamic 20s or something. which seems like the opposite of growth to me but what do I know I'm just some asshole guy thinkin baout stuff

I guess I know only a few of divorced/divorcing couples.

In one, they married too young, the guy became more of an asshole than he already was, and the guy joined the navy after they got married, which she never really supported, and she hated the life (he chose to be on a sub so he was really away a lot, plus she had to live wherever). I didn't blame her at all - navy submariner wife is kind of a special situation and not what she signed up for at all, and the guy was a real dick.

In another, guy is a really good guy in a lot of ways and a stay at home dad who does an amazing job of it. But he's also failed to really look hard enough for work since he lost his job and is devoting himself to somewhat pipe dreamy projects that never go anywhere (and she doesn't really make enough money to make this work). He also got all weird while she was pregnant and started going out with women "friends", one of whom was clearly interested in him -- I don't know whether anything actually happened. OTOH since I've known them she has been a perpetually dissatisfied person about pretty much everything, and whenever I was around them she was constantly hard on him and he just took it from her. So harder to take a side there.

Neither of those fit the "coasting" narrative fwiw. In one it was the guy who drastically changed, and in the other the guy has ambition but it's somewhat unrealistic ambition.

My first divorce was because the guy spent 10 hours working with his buddies at the tv station, then would get home at 11:30 pm with all his friends/co-workers and they'd hang until 4 am, sometimes 6am. Any projects, parties, nights out, dinner, movies always involved him bringing along two or all of these guys. I felt I was married to five guys. They were at the table for Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday., his birthday...more reasons but that aspect is what sort of cracks me up now.