Talk:Divorce

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Women push for both marriage and divorce

It seems interesting that women are so often the ones pushing for a relationship to move forward to marriage, and then later they are the ones pushing for a divorce. Men, on the other hand, are often reluctant to marry their longtime girlfriend, and later are reluctant to head to divorce court. What's behind this, I wonder?

My guess is that women want security, and they know that guys will be more reluctant than they are to end the marriage once it's started. So women seek in marriage a kind of one-sided security, in which they get to stay in the marriage for as long as they want, but they guy doesn't.

Or maybe men just don't care much about the piece of paper one way or the other; they see the marriage as pointless, and they see the divorce as pointless, because it's mostly just a symbolic institution and an empty promise of lifelong commitment these days. Getting married was nothing gained, and getting divorced will be nothing lost.

Or maybe men are reluctant to get into marriage because they worry that a failed marriage would be worse than no marriage at all; and then, once in the marriage, they're still worried about having a failed marriage and don't want to give up easily.

Or maybe women's biological clock causes them to be in a hurry both to marry and divorce, while guys have the luxury of taking their time. Women think, "I gotta hurry up and lock this guy down while I still have my youthful beauty with which to entice him (or some other man, if he doesn't want to commit) into marrying me and raising our kids together." Then later they think, "Oh wait, this relationship isn't going well; I better hurry up and get the divorce taken care of so I can go find another guy before my looks fade any more than they already have."

Or maybe women, being more emotional, are just more prone to idealize and devalue their partners. They think, "Oh my gosh, this guy is so awesome! I gotta marry him!" Then later, when the marriage isn't going well, they think, "This guy is the worst scumbag who ever existed, and he deserves to rot in hell forever. I can't wait to divorce him." Meanwhile, the guy was thinking, at the time she was wanting to get married, "This chick is cool, but maybe not so cool that I feel like marrying her." Then later, when she was wanting to divorce, he was thinking, "This chick has some problems, but I don't see that it's severe enough that we need to get divorced."

Or maybe the mutual monogamy aspect of marriage bothers women less than it bothers men; since ours is a slightly polygynous species, men have more reason to be more reluctant about committing to only have sex with one woman.

Or maybe women just place a lot of importance on the aesthetics of marriage, e.g. having a big wedding, and once they've experienced it they don't really have much use for the marriage itself, if it doesn't live up to fairy tale fantasies. Marriage is just an item in a bucket list to check off before moving on to other experiences. The guy can then be blamed for the marriage's failure and people will stop bugging her to get married when she tells them, "I already gave marriage a try, and it was a terrible experience that I would never want to repeat. Men are such pigs." Men's Rights EXTREMIST (talk) 04:06, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

What high divorce rates

"High divorce rates, are nothing more than the result of a civilization recognizing the freedom to its people to create relationships and break them apart without much drama. Doing so ensures that incompatible relationships are weeded out and people have a higher possibility to find someone they are actually happy with rather than be miserable for the rest of their lives."

High divorce rates could mean that there are high rates of incompatible people getting married; that compatible people who were going through a rough patch in their relationship are giving up easily when they could've persevered and achieved success; etc. There is no guarantee that those who break up with their partners will have a higher possibility of finding happiness with someone new that they would've had if they'd continued trying to fix their existing relationship. Men's Rights EXTREMIST (talk) 05:03, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Free market analogy

"A parallel can be made in the free market, with the right of people to easily form companies and break them apart. This allows many permutations and people with similar interests to come together, as well as drift apart when a relationship isn't working. Arguing against divorce is the equivalent of saying that if someone formed a failed company with a con artist, he should never have the right to break apart from it till death. One can only imagine how well this would work."

With divorce, the more common scenario is that a woman's emotionality (which may be so severe as to be a mental illness) causes her to flake out on her marital commitment to her husband, who wasn't doing anything particularly objectionable. Maybe these women were unsuitable for a successful relationship anyway, or maybe they just need some help and encouragement to overcome the problems and make the relationship work.

If you want to make a comparison to the free market, this type of scenario is akin to one where, after an aggressive sales pitch from a supplier, you've signed a contract with them and now they're making excuses for why they can't fulfill their end of the deal, and even blaming you for not doing more to be a good customer. They demand to be released from their contractual obligations, and even to have the court award them treble damages for your alleged misbehavior. They claim that you manipulated them into signing an unconscionable contract. You plead with them to be reasonable, pointing out that you planned your production process around the agreed-upon delivery schedule that they've now abandoned, and you're facing a disastrous situation if they won't cooperate, but they just keep making new accusations that you are the one at fault. Etc., etc. Men's Rights EXTREMIST (talk) 02:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Authoritarian family structures

"Predictably, the countries with the lowest divorce rates are often the ones with miserable authoritarian family structures. Countries like Iran, Libya, United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan occupy one end of the list as low divorce heaven, while countries like the USA, UK, Finland and Denmark are populated with evil, amoral, divorce-happy heathens."

The example that comes to my mind is the Philippines, where the men do indeed tend to make pretty lousy husbands, but the women are some of the best wives in the world. On the other hand, the U.S. for the most part has great husbands, but some of the worst wives in the world.

It wouldn't surprise me if a system that makes divorce easily available to women tends to produce bad wives and good husbands, while a system that makes divorce hard to obtain tends to produce good husbands and bad wives. Men who have to worry about their wives leaving them are forced to step up their game; a culture of being a good husband develops out of necessity. Likewise, women who can't leave their husbands have to learn to make the best of whatever marital situation they're in, and by necessity become excellent wives who are expert at pleasing their husbands and have come to accept this as not just a duty but an accomplishment to be proud of and even a joy.

Men who don't have to worry about their wives leaving them can become neglectful or abusive toward their wives without suffering the most severe consequence of losing their wife; therefore, their game slips. Women who can leave their husbands on whatever whim they wish have less reason to learn how to be good wives, because if the relationship goes bad, they can just break up the marriage. So their game slips too. Men's Rights EXTREMIST (talk) 05:03, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

This Article Needs Trimming!

Too long. Off-mission. What is the point of all this? --Read-Write (talk) 02:41, 11 February 2016 (UTC)