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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27036 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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The issue of modern divorce was discussed here last week in the context of yet another round of wider discussion about the Sexual Revolution. (It's pretty much becoming tiresome at this point, but anyway.) Everyone who bothered to chime in seemed to agree with the notion that divorce is usually a net negative for the wife, both romantically and economically. It appeared to me that there's mostly a consensus about that here.

Fair enough. However, I've seen online data indicating that a) roughly 40% of all marriages end in divorce b) roughly 80% of divorces are initiated by the wives c) in cases where the wife is college-educated, that figure is 90%. In other words, in cases of marriages that fail, modern women are more likely than not to voluntarily put themselves in a disadvantageous life situation.

So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

I think the stat is that 80% of divorces are filed by women, which is different than "initiated by". If your husband cheats on you, or hits you, and you file a divorce, who really initiated it?

I was a regular Manosphere reader back when that scene existed and found most of their arguments compelling, no matter how cringey that sounds to most people. Based on what I’ve seen and read there and elsewhere, I think the idea that a significant chunk of married men in any modern feminized Western society of unrestrained hypergyny beat their wives and/or cheat on them is simply preposterous. The large majority of men aren’t even in a position to cheat. Either way, all of that aside, if domestic violence, cheating and similar behaviors (drug addiction etc.) were indeed the cause of most divorces, then logically about 40-50% of all divorces would be initiated by the husbands. But this isn’t the case, far from it.

You might be too optimistic. Stats vary but a depressingly high portion of people do apparently cheat. Male likelihood to cheat, as well as abuse a partner, are both higher than a woman’s so you wouldn’t expect an equal ratio.

roughly 80% of divorces are initiated by the wives c) in cases where the wife is college-educated, that figure is 90%. In other words, in cases of marriages that fail, modern women are more likely than not to voluntarily put themselves in a disadvantageous life situation.

Why do you frame it as a disadvantage? Marriage on average raises a man's self reported happiness level and on average lowers the woman's. It's an institution that on the face of it benefits men's happiness over women; and the reverse is true whereby divorced women are significantly happier than divorced men. In terms of gender dynamics the 'bicycle needs the fish more than the fish needs the bicycle', men need women more than women need men. The fundamental cause of this divorce disparity is that men aren't bringing enough into their relationships on average and they are incapable or unwilling to bridge this gap, hence leading to a greater number of women filing for divorce. Men as a collective simply haven't adjusted to the new reality where they need to bring more than a decent paycheck to a relationship.

I frame it as a disadvantage because the big majority of commenters here also did so. If your romantic and economic prospects in life are likely to permanently erode due to a certain life decision, then yes, it can objectively be framed as a disadvantage. And no, I don't believe in such survey results for one second, nor in feminist allegories regarding fish and bicycles, especially when I never saw a bicycle look for a fish.

I'd love to see the study around marriage happiness (not challenging it exists, genuinely interested, since I haven't heard it before).

I'm torn here because I think:

  • Focusing on self-reported happiness, an unreliable metric (to put it very politely) as the key to the value of marriage is both simplistic and self-serving to make the point
  • Kind of agreeing that, sometimes, men just don't bring much to the table

I know many single people who express interest in getting married. Unrealistic expectations abound. Overweight men ask why only overweight or single-mother women are interested. Women want strength and masculinity, but then try to bully their dates into submission within just a couple of weeks. Nobody seems interested in becoming a great lay or compromising on vacation destinations / home decor.

I think we're at a bit of a standoff in the sexual market where nobody recognizes their value or lack thereof.

It reminds me of these idiotic calls for "Financial Transparency" and discussing salary at work. No, learning that you're worth literally half your coworkers will not be an easy pill to swallow. Especially when your fundamental personality or intelligence is the reason why you're paid less.

In my intuition, those happiness statistics are only possible in modern society which aggressively subsidizes women on several levels. What were those marriage happiness statistics in 1950? 1900? 1800? etc. Maybe I am wrong.

I don't think men really understand how women think, I certainly don't. I can create models to rationalize behaviours 'oh that handbag is a way of showing status and affirming one's position in the pecking order' but I don't weigh status so highly, so I can't appreciate why they'd spend so much money on them. Designer goods still don't make sense to me.

I suppose women wouldn't understand why I buy Steam games and then don't play them. Anyway, I think their mental state is hard to understand and we should be wary of trying to explain them, given fundamental differences. We're stuck with what they say (not usually too helpful, given incentives) and whatever models we make up. But our models may well be very wrong, since we don't understand their thought process and it's our thought processes that we try to insert on them, since we can't access theirs.

Consider the women on reddit who are like 'hey everyone here is really sex-positive and says it's no problem that I have an Onlyfans but when I bring it up on dates the men get the ick instantly, what's going on'. Their models of men are bad, why would they bring that up? Or the women who get that hideous plasticky Bogdanoff look, they're bad at modelling how men rate attractiveness. Or the highly accomplished 30/40-year old lawyer women who go 'I have this prestigious job and lots of money, why aren't equally prestigious men attracted to me'. Modelling the other sex is very difficult, people fail at it all the time and we should try to do it less.

Modelling the other sex is very difficult, people fail at it all the time and we should try to do it less.

I was with you up until the very last clause. Shouldn't the conclusion be the opposite? Modeling the other sex is very difficult, people fail at it all the time and we should practice it more. In fact, the number one issue seems to be that people aren't even attempting to model the other sex, they are simply typical-minding and assuming the other sex thinks how they think but with the opposite sexual orientation.

I don't think modeling the other sex is easy at all, I'm certainly no good at it (though I'm not good at modeling other people of any sort), but trying and failing and then updating your models iteratively is going to get you way closer than not trying at all.

Consider the women on reddit who are like 'hey everyone here is really sex-positive and says it's no problem that I have an Onlyfans but when I bring it up on dates the men get the ick instantly, what's going on'. Their models of men are bad, why would they bring that up? Or the women who get that hideous plasticky Bogdanoff look, they're bad at modelling how men rate attractiveness. Or the highly accomplished 30/40-year old lawyer women who go 'I have this prestigious job and lots of money, why aren't equally prestigious men attracted to me'.

These three are simple cases of projection, I think.

How am I projecting? I assure you that I am not a highly accomplished or renumerated professional.

I could just as easily go for the 'hey I'm a nice guy with a stable job and I don't beat women why am I not attractive' angle. It's instant mental arithmetic for me to see why these sassy, solvent, sophisticated women struggle finding a partner but it's clearly much harder on their end: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4754914/Where-good-men-gone.html

I presumably have similar blind spots and am unaware of them, underweight them or just can't fully wrap my head around them consistently, like a student who's struggling through some complex, counterintuitive mathematics in class, will probably fail on the test.

I meant the women in these examples, not you.

I think men and women are different. I do not think we are aliens to one another, incapable of deciphering how those strange opposite-sex brains work. That you don't personally value the status signified by a handbag doesn't mean you aren't capable of understanding why a name-brand purse is a status signifier. A woman is perfectly capable of understanding why you collect Steam games and don't play them. She might think it's stupid, just like you think caring about a purse is stupid, but these are not strange alien behaviors, they're just male/female-focused behaviors. The women who affect mystification at the fact that men are turned off that they have an OnlyFans are either in denial, or have genuinely lived in a cultural bubble where, essentially, the men in their lives are lying to them because it's not politic to admit "Yeah, I don't actually want to date a camwhore even if I say it's perfectly legitimate work." Men too fall prey to these fallacies from living in a bubble and then being unable to grasp that sometimes what people in their social circles claim to believe is not actually how most people feel.

You might as well argue that no one is truly capable of understanding a person from another culture. (Maybe you do believe that too, I don't know.)

The women who affect mystification at the fact that men are turned off that they have an OnlyFans are either in denial, or have genuinely lived in a cultural bubble where, essentially, the men in their lives are lying to them because it's not politic to admit "Yeah, I don't actually want to date a camwhore even if I say it's perfectly legitimate work."

It's easy to say this as an older gentleman. But the cloud of preposterous bullshit surrounding gender relations has only gotten thicker and thicker as I've gotten older. I fear the younger generation has no way back. When we were young bucks, "slut shaming" was an extremely online topic, and more or less every person in the real world knew that nobody loved a slut. Liked a slut sure. But nobody loves a slut. You can't make a ho into a housewife was common knowledge.

Now "slut shaming" discourse is practically part of middle school sex ed, and highschools will suspend you for having a private conversation with a buddy that a female classmate might overhear and find offensive. There was an article about just such a case, I believe in my state, but I can't seem to find it now. I'm guessing 2016-2018ish. Lying about how men regard sluts was fringe when we were growing up, now it's institutionalized.

You only see men being frank about why they wouldn't commit to a slut in stigmatized venues like Andrew Tate, the Whatever Podcast or Pearly Things. Places normies are told not to go, and told horror stories about how they are all evil, vile Nazi's that will try to seduce you into white supremacy. And frankly, it's such a marginalized view, these venues are scarcely the best advocates of it either.

You see young men talking, sheepishly, about being put off when the woman they are dating has fucked 10-20x as many partners as them, and being put off by it. They feel like it's immoral to preserve their own dignity and standards. They seek reassurance that they aren't crazy for being grossed out by it, they've been gaslit to such an extent on the topic.

And the biggest lie told about all of this is that slut shaming is something done by men, especially bitter single men, although this has never been the case anywhere in the world.

So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

I think this can be explained by how women stand to gain more by initiating divorce , and also have more options afterwards. They can rebound faster.

One more that i've not seen anyone mention yet: men cheat to fuck, women cheat to upgrade.

When a man finds a mistress, he keeps it as secret for as long as he can. If and when the wife finds out, she files.

When a woman finds a mister, she keeps it a secret only for as long as necessary to set up an exit strategy. When she has one, she files.

Certainly not the only reason but a contributor at least.

Relationship therapist Esther Perel has a famous line that "The victim of the affair isn't necessarily the victim of the marriage." In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage. For a variety of reasons, I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman. The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

Rarely are divorces truly "out of nowhere," more normally divorce filings formalize the death of a marriage that has already broken down completely. Long processes of fights, counseling (secular or religious), compromises, deals, fights, betrayals, and failures precede the actual legal process. The actual filing often reflects a situation where there is no marriage going.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash. Absent any care for his wife's feelings, most men will have no real interest in doing laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms. Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

In my own marriage (which is great and nowhere near divorce), my wife and I have a regular fight about chores that goes something like: she thinks I don't do enough chores around the house, I think that I would totally do them if she would stop doing them first. She's home more than I am for a variety of work reasons, and she has a lower tolerance for seeing dishes in the sink, for seeing a full laundry bin, etc. I'm at work later, left to my own devices I will happily spend a few hours doing all that, but I won't reflexively do it when I get home from work, while she will sit there during the day working and see the dishes and they will bug her and she'll do them.

Because I'm out of the house more for work, as is typical for men, I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work. I'd be perfectly happy eating three dollar egg sandwiches from the local store, spending my time out drinking with friends, showing up back at ten or eleven at night and going to sleep before leaving in the morning.

Keep in mind that men typically control more of the finances. Both in terms of assets and income, and servicing debts and taxes. I would have vastly more ability to mess with marital assets than my wife would: I make more money, I know where the assets are, I would know how to move them around.

This is before we get into things like Exit Affairs, when an extramarital relationship is just a tripwire to make her file, or physical abuse.

So the dynamic is often that a man stops doing anything around the house, stops substantively being a husband, and then a wife files. So the decision these women are making when filing isn't "Happily Married Woman vs. Divorced Woman" it's "Abandoned, but legally married woman with no legal tools to control her spouse's use of marital assets, still expecting divorce vs. Divorced woman, with legal tools to control spouse's disposal of marital assets."

In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage. For a variety of reasons, I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman. The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing

The problem I have with this response is that it essentially encourages one to disregard hard empirical evidence and then advocates for the exact opposite of what that evidence suggests. Now i understand that marriage and divorce are extremely complicated and also deal with two human beings that can never really be quite understood through sheer empirical analysis, but your point essentially boils down to "majority of women file for divorce, men to blame".

My problem with your comment is the idiocy of identity politics evident in it. My comment doesn't blame men for the breakdown of marriages. It points out the characteristic ways that each gender reacts to a marriage that has already broken down.

My comment doesn't blame men for the breakdown of marriages.

The comment in question:

In the same way, the person that initiates the divorce isn't necessarily the person that ended the marriage.

I speculate that is more likely for men to "quiet quit" on a marriage, in a way that is less possible/likely for a woman.

The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash.

Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work.

This is before we get into things like Exit Affairs, when an extramarital relationship is just a tripwire to make her file, or physical abuse.

So the dynamic is often that a man stops doing anything around the house, stops substantively being a husband, and then a wife files. So the decision these women are making when filing isn't "Happily Married Woman vs. Divorced Woman" it's "Abandoned, but legally married woman with no legal tools to control her spouse's use of marital assets, still expecting divorce vs. Divorced woman, with legal tools to control spouse's disposal of marital assets."

Yes, and?

Let's compare this to the list of statements offered in the comment that suggest women could play a role in the conditions that lead to divorce:

Does it get exhausting finding things to get offended by?

she thinks I don't do enough chores around the house, I think that I would totally do them if she would stop doing them first

This reminds me I should finish my "mental load" effortpost. I got derailed when the war started, so it's almost 2 years old overdue.

Makes sense, too much mental load on you.

Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

I don't know that many single dads, be they widowers or divorced, but that seems like an unfair accusation in a comment I mostly agree with. Most dads don't bother with those things because they expect, fairly or not, that their wives will take care of it. The lone dads I know won't let their kids fall sick without treatment, or leave them wearing tattered/undersized apparel. In terms of schooling, well, the bare minimum is making sure their kid is attending one in the first place, and while I do expect they won't be as engaged in the finer details of performance in class, I don't expect them to not care at all.

"Often" is not the same as most or every, but my point still stands.

Dude, read the comment. The comment does not, CANNOT, apply to single dads. This comment is about parents in a collapsing marriage. To be weird about how I'm not inclusive of single dads when talking about dads going through the early stages of a divorce is just...so damn politically correct.

But you do agree with my point:

Most dads don't bother with those things because they expect, fairly or not, that their wives will take care of it.

Exactly. When he's checking out of the marriage, he can safely stop helping out with things like that and assume they will still get done, while putting pressure on his wife at the same time. He doesn't schedule doctor's appointments, but neither does he feel that endangers his children's health, he merely assumes it will inconvenience his wife. A wife is much less safe making the same assumption, and is much less likely to.

A man will stop doing anything around the house when he checks out of his marriage. Men typically do fewer chores around the house to start with, and have a greater tolerance for mess/disorder/eating trash. Absent any care for his wife's feelings, most men will have no real interest in doing laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms. Often this extends to kids: he's not scheduling doctors appointments, buying them clothes, keeping track of their schooling.

It is not at all obvious to me that you're still talking about "checked out dads" after you get to the section where you say that men are doing fewer chores to start with. Most widowers don't care about their wives ongoing feelings (because they're dead), but they do that nonetheless because they care about the kids.

And more than that, most dads, even before they're in the process of divorcing, aren't doing that stuff in the first place! Stating the obvious can sometimes makes a reader implicitly assume that you're trying to make an argument that isn't so.

Of course, now that you've made yourself clearer, I can't say I disagree with your thesis.

Fair enough. Glad we cleared that up.

If the statistics were the other way, nobody would even bother doing all this rationalization and theorization to explain away the reasons one party is much more likely to want a divorce than the other. This is all coming from a strong prior of "there's no way it could be meaningful in a way that reflects negatively on them that women usually initiate the divorce".

Not only could it be rationalized, "Men are worse off than women after divorce but file anyway" would be explained quite easily, @faceh already did: their wives stopped having sex with them.

Because I'm out of the house more for work, as is typical for men, I could also just do another common thing men do and just...stop coming home after work. I'd be perfectly happy eating three dollar egg sandwiches from the local store, spending my time out drinking with friends, showing up back at ten or eleven at night and going to sleep before leaving in the morning.

I feel that.

I used to live in Japan, where what you describe is pretty much the stereotypical "salaryman" lifestyle. it's often held up to show how men are so miserable in modern society. But I always thought... it's not that bad. It gives them a lot of freedom and independence to do guy stuff, while also heavily focusing on their career. Guys don't necessarily want to come home at 5PM sharp so that we can cook an elaborate meal, clean the house, and have "family time" watching Disney movies on the couch for 4 hours. Once in a while, sure, but doing that every single day sounds like a nightmare to me.

I can vouch that the pressure/requirement to come home, as opposed to rolling directly into a workout or after-work drinks, sucks.

I also don't think it would be fair to live a salaryman lifestyle. Being a parent from 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM is already pretty tough. Getting together as parents to split the mental load from 5:30 on, most of the time, is worth the investment.

The woman might be the one who files the divorce papers, but in a lot of cases the man checked out a long time ago and has been, sometimes willfully sometimes passive-aggressively, baiting her into filing.

This is going to be very hard to quantify because I'd wager it's always a slow spiral that eventually takes such a sharp downturn that one party finally pulls the chute. Who pulled away first? What was the first defection? I don't think you can draw a strong conclusion as to who pulled away from whom, especially from the outside.

Is it the man 'checking out' of marriage for entirely internal reasons, or is it partially a response to the wife being less sexually available, or putting less effort into housework (esp. if housework is shared,), or has the wife become openly and constantly critical of him even if not directly abusive?

I would sincerely believe that if two people spent 10 years or more together, the ultimate destruction of the relationship is due to the two parties each reciprocating in small wounds which go untended and thus slowly kill the coupling rather than one side unilaterally having changed feelings out of the blue.

What I would guess is that the man is the one who more often wants to fix it rather than throwing it out and buying a new one, vs. a woman seeing no reason to repair what is damaged when it's easy enough to find a replacement.

Is it the man 'checking out' of marriage for entirely internal reasons, or is it partially a response to the wife being less sexually available, or putting less effort into housework (esp. if housework is shared,), or has the wife become openly and constantly critical of him even if not directly abusive?

Probably. I'd bet from each perspective they are justified in their actions. The point I was making was less that either side is more or less likely to be a bad partner, or more or less likely to fix it if its broken, than that men typically have an easier time disappearing on the job, where women draw more benefits from formally filing for divorce.

So for something like this

I would sincerely believe that if two people spent 10 years or more together, the ultimate destruction of the relationship is due to the two parties each reciprocating in small wounds which go untended and thus slowly kill the coupling rather than one side unilaterally having changed feelings out of the blue.

the man is going to tend to take more informal steps (spending less time at home) and covert steps (my paycheck stops going into a joint account without explanation), where the woman will benefit more from an overt step like filing for divorce.

That's a good clarification.

I think the incentive is for the man to hedge bets by trying to avoid the divorce while preparing for such an event given how disruptive it would be.

For the woman, that time is spent working up to the point where she actually decides to do it, then doing it without much preparation for afterwards.

I know that most studies on divorces and breakups show that they're rarely impulse decisions, but more often something the person has done a lot of thinking on but of course appears impulsive to the partner who was not privy to that thought process.

I would also guess that the woman puts more effort into fixing the marriage in the first round or two of counseling then concludes it can’t be fixed because her husband won’t put in the effort.

Assuming counseling is highly effective. I’ve never seen someone start therapy graduate from therapy. I have seen people with illness stop going to see the specialist once cured.

I think therapy is a racket.

Anecdotally, I've started therapy and been discharged a few times. First time, college counselor kept asking me if I was suicidal in a way that started to seem like she was encouraging it, then when this led to no changes after several sessions, said to just stop coming. (The South Park script for this one basically writes itself.). The most recent happened because the medication seemed to be working and the therapy side of things was just kinda coasting.

Basically, college counselors suck. Male therapists are more likely to try to problem-solve, if you can find one who wasn't trained specifically not to problem-solve (Dr. K of Healthy Gamer has videos on this, but he puts out so many videos it's a pain to dig up one in particular when commenting from my phone). And a therapist/psychiatrist team is better than either separately. Also, Dr. K's recommendations are better than any therapist I've ever dealt with (the only one that came close, I lost because of losing my insurance for a few months).

I plan to become a psychiatrist, and I think therapy is overrated, at least when considering the vocal segment of the Overly Online who think everyone should be in therapy.

But it is possible to overhype something that is good for some people, some of the time, and the research I've read shows that therapy is pretty effective for many mental disorders, often being considered the first line intervention, such as for depression, anxiety, and so on.

And there are many different types of therapy, from the bullshit Freudian and Lacanian kind to the much better validated CBT. The thing is, even the shittiest forms of therapy that exist, such as the former two examples that are built off pure pseudoscience, work empirically, being better than placebo (or at least no therapy at all), though CBT is usually better. I wager much of the benefit in any of them is purely from the simulation of a helpful, non-judgemental "friend" who'll let you vent to your hearts content and won't tattle on the pain of their friend-card being retracted, and while you could substitute that for an actual friend, apparently those are getting harder to come by and have scheduling conflicts.

Besides, most reputable therapists (especially the ones who aren't into the Freudian crap) at least pay lip-service to the notion that their clients should always be temporary, and that they should be directed elsewhere if several sessions show no benefit. And if the client is showing up to sessions after they're satisfied it's not working, then I lay the blame for their stupidity on them. If they still want to go, well apparently they're getting their money's worth somehow. People go for haircuts and manicures even when the damn keratin just keeps growing back, and barbers aren't a scam.

Don't discount the value of "Freudian" psychotherapy. Part of this is driven by the usual "all the good ideas associated with this have been stolen and become core tenants of the successors" bit. You'd be surprised how much of his stuff is still present and useful.

The other piece is that the "true successor" actually works great. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is probably the most direct on that front, and if you talk to someone who knows CBT, DBT, and Psychodynamic therapy well they'll point out it is mostly all the same shit just with different words for the same concepts.*

The thing CBT primarily does differently is that it attempts to operationalize things by adding in components of homework, written self reflection and so on, but the fundamental insights are essentially the same.

It's tempting to think they are "different classes" but it's more like going to a calculus lecture, and then doing another course with the same content but you get problem sets afterwards.

There are purists out there, especially in Europe but generally people just roll their eyes at them.

Care to share those studies? How many of them are longitudinal?

I originally read that on the Wikipedia page, and when I tried to hunt down the citations, linkrot has eaten the Google Books excerpt that was supposedly cited, at least the one supposedly claiming that metanalysis showed they were all equivalent. However, after some hunting, I did find that claim in a different, well cited meta analysis down below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotherapy

Large-scale international reviews of scientific studies have concluded that psychotherapy is effective for numerous conditions.[8][22]

One line of research consistently finds that supposedly different forms of psychotherapy show similar effectiveness. According to The Handbook of Counseling Psychology: "Meta-analyses of psychotherapy studies have consistently demonstrated that there are no substantial differences in outcomes among treatments". The handbook states that there is "little evidence to suggest that any one psychological therapy consistently outperforms any other for any specific psychological disorders. This is sometimes called the Dodo bird verdict after a scene/section in Alice in Wonderland where every competitor in a race was called a winner and is given prizes".[151]

Further analyses seek to identify the factors that the psychotherapies have in common that seem to account for this, known as common factors theory; for example the quality of the therapeutic relationship, interpretation of problem, and the confrontation of painful emotions.[152][153][page needed][154][155]

Outcome studies have been critiqued for being too removed from real-world practice in that they use carefully selected therapists who have been extensively trained and monitored, and patients who may be non-representative of typical patients by virtue of strict inclusionary/exclusionary criteria. Such concerns impact the replication of research results and the ability to generalize from them to practicing therapists.[153][156]

However, specific therapies have been tested for use with specific disorders,[157] and regulatory organizations in both the UK and US make recommendations for different conditions.[158][159][160]

The Helsinki Psychotherapy Study was one of several large long-term clinical trials of psychotherapies that have taken place. Anxious and depressed patients in two short-term therapies (solution-focused and brief psychodynamic) improved faster, but five years long-term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis gave greater benefits. Several patient and therapist factors appear to predict suitability for different psychotherapies.[161]

Meta-analyses have established that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy are equally effective in treating depression.[162]

The bolded section is the one I can't easily verify, at least not when it's 9 am and I've been up all night studying.

Specifically regarding CBT, I found the following metanalysis-

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23870719/

Results: A total of 115 studies met inclusion criteria. The mean effect size (ES) of 94 comparisons from 75 studies of CBT and control groups was Hedges g = 0.71 (95% CI 0.62 to 0.79), which corresponds with a number needed to treat of 2.6. However, this may be an overestimation of the true ES as we found strong indications for publication bias (ES after adjustment for bias was g = 0.53), and because the ES of higher-quality studies was significantly lower (g = 0.53) than for lower-quality studies (g = 0.90). The difference between high- and low-quality studies remained significant after adjustment for other study characteristics in a multivariate meta-regression analysis. We did not find any indication that CBT was more or less effective than other psychotherapies or pharmacotherapy. Combined treatment was significantly more effective than pharmacotherapy alone (g = 0.49).

Conclusions: There is no doubt that CBT is an effective treatment for adult depression, although the effects may have been overestimated until now. CBT is also the most studied psychotherapy for depression, and thus has the greatest weight of evidence. However, other treatments approach its overall efficacy.

And when speaking of CBT as applied to more psychiatric conditions:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/

We identified 269 meta-analytic studies and reviewed of those a representative sample of 106 meta-analyses examining CBT for the following problems: substance use disorder, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, depression and dysthymia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, insomnia, personality disorders, anger and aggression, criminal behaviors, general stress, distress due to general medical conditions, chronic pain and fatigue, distress related to pregnancy complications and female hormonal conditions. Additional meta-analytic reviews examined the efficacy of CBT for various problems in children and elderly adults. The strongest support exists for CBT of anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, bulimia, anger control problems, and general stress. Eleven studies compared response rates between CBT and other treatments or control conditions. CBT showed higher response rates than the comparison conditions in 7 of these reviews and only one review reported that CBT had lower response rates than comparison treatments. In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies. Moreover, except for children and elderly populations, no meta-analytic studies of CBT have been reported on specific subgroups, such as ethnic minorities and low income samples.

Addressing the specific claims of similar efficacy to the forms of therapy based on pseudoscientific principles:

CBT for depression was more effective than control conditions such as waiting list or no treatment, with a medium effect size (van Straten, Geraedts, Verdonck-de Leeuw, Andersson, & Cuijpers, 2010; Beltman, Oude Voshaar, & Speckens, 2010). However, studies that compared CBT to other active treatments, such as psychodynamic treatment, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, found mixed results. Specifically, meta-analyses found CBT to be equally effective in comparison to other psychological treatments (e.g., Beltman, Oude Voshaar, & Speckens, 2010; Cuijpers, Smit, Bohlmeijer, Hollon, & Andersson, 2010; Pfeiffer, Heisler, Piette, Rogers, & Valenstein, 2011). Other studies, however, found favorable results for CBT (e.g. Di Giulio, 2010; Jorm, Morgan, & Hetrick, 2008; Tolin, 2010). For example, Jorm and colleagues (2008) found CBT to be superior to relaxation techniques at post-treatment. Additionally, Tolin (2010) showed CBT to be superior to psychodynamic therapy at both post-treatment and at six months follow-up, although this occurred when depression and anxiety symptoms were examined together.

Compared to pharmacological approaches, CBT and medication treatments had similar effects on chronic depressive symptoms, with effect sizes in the medium-large range (Vos, Haby, Barendregt, Kruijshaar, Corry, & Andrews, 2004). Other studies indicated that pharmacotherapy could be a useful addition to CBT; specifically, combination therapy of CBT with pharmacotherapy was more effective in comparison to CBT alone (Chan, 2006).

Anyway, therapy seems to beat placebo, and works synergistically with drugs, even if you cynically notice that therapy based off nonsense does much the same thing as more considered approaches, but it's not in dispute that it works. At least I have the consolation of being able to throw drugs at people instead of just talking at them if/when I'm a licensed shrink, for all the quibbling about if SSRIs work, ain't nobody claiming their ADHD isn't being helped when they're zooted up on stimulants.

You should consider that the sample you are looking at to make you believes this is abnormal. People graduate from therapy all the time. Most people with mental illness have some form of stressor(s), if that stressor goes away (mother in law, college, law school, better control over a chronic illness, they age into a better frontal lobe or coping mechanisms) then they may no longer need therapy.

People who are doing ok to well and get therapy anyway are less likely to stop, as are people who are doing really poorly, but plenty of the middle wraps up and moves on.

I think you may be seeing what you want to see here, given how commonly therapy stops.

I have graduated from therapy, and I know many others who have.

I wonder how much of this dynamic is the systemic fault of counseling being female-coded: highly subjective, no rules allowed for assigning blame except the “yes, dear” dynamic, no logical framework undergirding the conversations, etc.

Once I discovered a mental health paradigm which worked due to being the opposite of the above, I dove in with both feet and have never regretted it.

If by "fixing the marriage" you mean "making unilateral demands" I can buy it. Otherwise I've literally never heard of a single story of this ever in my entire life. I've never had a friend, man or woman, relate one two me. I've never heard one second hand. I've never seen it written in any sort of blog/editorial. By all means, if you've got anything you can show me, any anecdote no matter how poorly sourced, so show this has happened to anyone ever and been documented, please share.

I'm surprised by this. In every couple I have known that ended up getting divorced, it was the wife who was putting in more effort in order to try and repair the relationship. Now that is only perhaps 5 or 6 couples, and of course I am an outsider, so it's possible things looked different from inside the marriage, but from the outside this was the appearance at least. It was pretty evenly split as to which partner was the one I was talking to, but pretty unilaterally the wife was the one pushing for counselling etc. As far as I know none of them were ended by cheating, but form the "grown apart" perspective. Of those, I think the wife was the one who filed for divorce in one and the husband in another and I am not sure on the rest.

In every experience I have personally had, the woman has always been the one doing the most to maintain the relationship, though, so I think it's likely from the repair perspective as well, which makes sense. Maintaining and repairing a relationship is emotional work which is much more likely to be feminine coded.

Where the wife is having an affair I can see this changing however as the emotional target of their work may well be the other guy. But where the wife maintains an emotional attachment to the husband it seems highly likely she will be the one working most to fix it.

I keep trying to write a thoughtful and well-balanced post recounting my own experiences on this matter, but it always turns into me venting about the wife. So I'll not post anything substantial, but I do have to make a post to stop myself from constantly writing more text only to scrap it again.

Sorry.

No need to be sorry! Sometimes things hit too close, and sometimes a rant is what is needed. Not even high decouplers can generally decouple from everything.

Don't tempt me, lest I spill tens of thousands of words on the subject, to nobody's benefit and everyone's detriment.

it was the wife who was putting in more effort in order to try and repair the relationship.

Describe this effort. Was she sucking his dick more? Giving him more space for his hobbies? Encouraging him to spend more time with his friends? Noticing he needed another beer? Offered to watch his favorite show with him and not ask a million questions because she wasn't paying attention on her phone?

Or was she dragging him to couples therapy so she and the therapist could harangue him that he needs to whittle away even further at the 15 minutes he gets to himself in the shower to hear his own thoughts to fulfill her needs more.

In every relationship/marriage I know of, the man is working more hours doing 50% of the housework, watching the kids, keeping the budget and investing. Their wives are consistently reducing their hours or quitting entirely to be stay at home moms, while still expecting their husbands to go 50/50 on housework and childcare, and still complaining that their "needs" aren't being met.

The number of things their husbands do that "don't count" is astronomical. Only female coded housework like cooking, cleaning and laundry goes on their mental tally. Yardwork, repair, maintenance is all invisible. I rebuilt the wall of our garage that was rotting out and my wife complained that I didn't do anything that weekend. It's a ubiquitous experience among the men I know.

My wife got chickens. She tells everyone she does all the work. I let them out, I feed them, I top off their water, I get their eggs, I put them up at night. I even built their coup and set up the fence for their pen. Lately she's been wanting them to free range, but I've gotten stuck with letting them out, putting them back up, and checking on them from time to time.

Once or twice a month she cleans the chicken crap out of the coup. Now she wants a dog and promises she'll do all the work. My reticence is causing her to invoke a lot of therapy language about her "needs".

A buddy of mine's wife constantly complains that he's not doing enough, when he changed jobs out of his dream career so she could be a stay at home mom, with the house she wanted, and the new car she wants. He moved across the country like she wanted so they could be closer to her family. He sucked it up and had more kids than he wanted because of how she felt. And it all amounts to zilch to her. It's just expected. The bare minimum.

The only world where a man isn't putting in enough effort is a world in which all his contributions are profoundly devalued or ignored. As is often the case I see around me.

Jesus, dude, the marriages you say represent every relationship/marriage you know of sound positively miserable.

I have known of relationships like those you describe, even been in at least one with a woman who would probably fit your personal model of all women (i.e., unreasonable, harrowing, emasculating Void) but I have personally been in, and seen many other, relationships that do not follow that model at all. And yes, I've also seen relationships that fell apart because the woman was putting in the effort and the man had checked out.

That you think "Putting in the effort" means "sucking his dick more and bringing him beer" tells me the problem may not be exactly what you think it is.

If your couples therapist is ganging up with your wife to tell you to cut down on your shower time, you have a truly crappy therapist.

That you think "Putting in the effort" means "sucking his dick more and bringing him beer" tells me the problem may not be exactly what you think it is.

This is kinda antagonistic and unworthy of you.

This whole series of exchanges reminds me that everyone, myself included, is reasoning from first principles that we derive from our own lives and relationships. Check, as it were, our privilege; and set aside our resentments.

In every relationship/marriage I know of, the man is working more hours doing 50% of the housework, watching the kids, keeping the budget and investing.

Then you are in a very different bubble to me. Someone joked up above about how given she does all the households paperwork she would have to file a divorce for him as well, and that rings true to me. My brother's wife is the one who organizes the bills, and the bank accounts, same with my cousins wife and so on and so forth. I don't know a single relationship where I am familiar enough with it, to see those things where the woman is still not doing the bulk of the housework/child rearing and working.

If the work you do is not being valued then you need to make sure your wife understands it and values it. If she doesn't then that is a shortcoming of hers. If she says you didn't do anything, tell her you spent 8 hours fixing the garage. Tell her you spent 2 hours cleaning up and feeding her chickens.

I've been married twice. My 1st wife was a stem cell scientist , my 2nd wife is a lawyer, from different backgrounds and continents. Both of them value (or in the case of my first wife valued before she passed) the work I did for the household and vice versa. I have never ever in my life in any serious relationship not felt valued or that they did not have my back. But part of that is setting and enforcing your own boundaries early on. Your wife doesn't need to give you space for hobbies. You're a grown man. You certainly have to be cognizant of how much time you are spending gaming or whatever, but she doesn't get to tell you no on that. My wife came out the other day while I was raking up the leaves. She told me I had been working for too long, she had made some hot chocolate, that I should come in warm my feet in front of the fire and then go play "your barrel game" (otherwise known as Baldur's Gate 3), so I could relax for part of the weekend. But even if she hadn't it is up to me to make time and space for the things I want to do. You are not responsible for fulfilling ALL of your wife's needs and she is not responsible for fulfilling ALL of yours.

What you are describing are unhealthy relationships where your input and work is not being seen or valued. But that is in my own experience not the norm, either in my own relationships or the majority of those I see around me. If your wife isn't doing her share of looking after the animals she wanted, then tell her she has to. Create, lay down and enforce your own boundaries. Because no-one else will do it for you. Now ideally you should have been doing this from day one. You're complaining essentially about being walked all over, but you are the only one that can change that. Say no when you need to do so. You have to value your own time and work before anyone else will. You are not a martyr. You're the head of your household. In my experience almost every woman responds well to having control taken in a protective and confident way. Draw up a rota and tell her, tomorrow is her turn to feed and clean the chickens and stick to it. You don't take a turn until she does. When she minimizes your work, correct her. In private at first, but if she keeps doing it, simply state the truth to whomever you are talking to. People wanting pets and then not wanting to spend time looking after them is a cliche, everyone knows someone like that. Don't let her make you smaller than you are. You're a fucking rockstar and she is lucky to have you!

For whatever it is worth, I am sorry your work is not noticed and valued in your relationship. I am sorry your wife doesn't have your back in that way. That sounds like it must be a miserable and isolating experience. You sound like you work hard to look after and provide for your family, and to improve their living conditions. I know that takes a lot of work and dedication, and I applaud you for it, even if no-one else does.

There’s a pretty simple explanation- most divorces are mutual and in our culture paperwork is the woman’s job.

But also, yes, women are misled about what divorce can do for them. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t be mutual so often.

The other possibility is that men are the ones who give cause for divorce at very high rates. I think the evidence opposed this though.

That paperwork comment made me laugh out loud. Yes, if my husband and I were approaching divorce, I would have to initiate the formal process. Just like I do our taxes, pay our bills, handle all the child's appointments, plan our travel, etc.

So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

Probably similar to the reason a gambler would keep playing even when they're way up and the odds are not in their favor going forward. They could walk away from the table, stick the money in an index fund and enjoy the benefits of it for years to come, or they could go another round and maybe double or quintuple their money!!!

More directly, people in general are bad at considering the long term costs of an action when they perceive a short term benefit that would remove what they perceive as a source of discomfort.

I also think that women, in particular, when they've grown up being showered with male attention, and the had their pick of suitors, they expect that they'll still be a hot commodity once they're out of their marriage. They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.

I don't know how to get across to a woman whose recollection of the dating world is "I went on fun dates with hot guys who paid for everything" that if she tries that now she'll find herself rejected more often and her pickings will be much slimmer.

(This doesn't explain why college educated women are more likely to initiate divorce, I suspect that has more to do with sheer social status)

IMPORTANT EDIT: college educated women are not 'more likely' to initiate divorce than other groups, only that college educated women who get a divorce are the ones initiating it 90% of the time, and husbands 10%. College educated women are less likely to be involved in a divorce either way.

This is not to say that no women end up happy after initiating divorce. My own mother seems to have ended up being quite happy after divorcing and remarrying (my dad is doing alright too). Just that you would have to take claims that they're happy with a grain of salt because they will be VERY vested in projecting the appearance of happiness and retroactively justifying their decision even if from the financial side of it they are OBJECTIVELY worse off.

Like seriously, how many people would you expect to pull the divorce rip cord, find themselves alone and relatively poor (compared to their previous status) and just as unhappy as before, and would then openly proclaim "I made a big mistake, it was all my own doing, and I have irretrievably worsened my quality of life!"

Does the ego even permit that sort of open admission?

they've grown up being showered with male attention

Well, gosh, now I feel the Victimhood Syndrome coming on. Where was my male attention being showered on me when I was growing up? Clearly, if every single woman in the world gets male attention, this was not alone something I deserved, but my natural birthright. I now demand reparations! Every single man on here owes it to me!

Or conversely, we could all cool it with "the other side gets it all and I get nothing, that's not fair".

There's good points in this comment, but it loses everything for the "women - entitled bitches" trope.

No, I think it's just a basic fact on the ground that in the world of social media, no female will be wanting for male attention unless she is actively trying to avoid it.

The situation is such that even females who don't actively broadcast availability will still get men knocking on their proverbial door to see if they're available.

I don't think there's any benefit to the conversation to deny what seems to be an obvious truth, then reason from there.

Every man on here owes it to me!

Be careful what you wish for. The odds are good but the goods are odd.

Like Medusa, I can petrify with a gaze, so a host of admiring statues crouched in homage before me?

But then who would you argue with?

The odds are good but the goods are odd.

That's hilarious. First time I read it. Thanks.

I've heard this in reference to fujoshi in the anime community, along with "by and large, they're bi and large."

The odds are good but the goods are odd.

I first heard it from my daughter (at the time an MIT freshman) 20 years ago.

They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.

I think you're overhyping this a bit. Many is the couple where the guy suggests an open relationship, not realizing that even their middle-aged wife/partner commands about 50,000x the desirability in the hookup market even if things have evened out a lot in the longterm partner market.

Yes, it isn't nearly as hard for a woman to find sexual partners as it is for men at almost any age.

But if she's expecting to leave the marriage and find someone else who will emotionally and financially support her that's a bigger ask.

I also think that women, in particular, when they've grown up being showered with male attention, and the had their pick of suitors, they expect that they'll still be a hot commodity once they're out of their marriage. They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.

A buddy has a theory that this is how the "Karen" archetype comes into being. A former hot girl abruptly stops getting heretofore assumed male attention because of the tyranny of age and gravity. For some subset (the Karens) their brain cannot process how or why this might be. They cannot shift to a "graceful" aging. Instead, they turn up the volume and demands as they simply believe the world doesn't realize what a hot commodity they have in front of them.

I've never been one for armchair psychology, but this theory is, at least, sort of fun?

It has legs, I'd say.

To me the Karen archetype (I admittedly don't like to talk about it as if its an objectively measurable phenomenon) is a woman who has an inflated sense of self-worth because she's borrowing somebody else's status (usually her husband) to try to get her way. Hence why it seems Karens often have husbands who are in the military or are veterans, or cops, or well-known local businessmen.

But I don't have any objective stats on it.

(This doesn't explain why college educated women are more likely to initiate divorce, I suspect that has more to do with sheer social status)

Importantly, they're not. They're more likely to initiate divorce, conditional on the couple getting divorced. Education is strongly anti-correlated with getting divorced.

Ah, yes, I will correct my post because this is an IMPORTANT point when analyzing the data.

Probably a whole other thread could be thrown down on why more educated couples are less likely to divorce, and I'd bet a BIG one is "they can grasp the financial implications of the action and are less likely to act on impulse."

I think this is just Simpson's Paradox popping up for two populations. Yes, women that are divorced will tend to be less happy than women that are married, but these are not actually identical populations of people. I find it entirely plausible that people that get divorced improve their lot in life relative to staying married, but that their lot in life is worse than people that just have successful marriages. Thinking about some traits that improve success in marriage:

  • High concientiousness
  • Low neuroticism
  • Financial success
  • High loyalty
  • Low time-preference

I would expect these to correlate with general happiness.

This seems to imply that there would be quite a lot of people who would simply be better off overall never getting married (in that there's no way they can find a partner who will satisfy them long term) and seems like our society doesn't have a ready answer to that particular category.

Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

Why isn’t the most direct explanation—that many women are unhappy in their marriages and leave because of that—on the table?

Everyone who bothered to chime in seemed to agree with the notion that divorce is usually a net negative for the wife, both romantically and economically

I don’t really understand how one can objectively rule out that they were really unhappy in the marriage and are happier outside of it, even though they’re poorer or have fewer partners or whatever afterwards.

Tbh this kind of sounds like an MRA revenge fantasy. I’m sure that women (and men) probably overestimate their out-of-marriage prospects a bit, which would lead to “too many” divorces, but most people also have a really strong “make it work” determination that probably counterbalances this somewhat.

I don’t really understand how one can objectively rule out that they were really unhappy in the marriage and are happier outside of it, even though they’re poorer or have fewer partners or whatever afterwards.

Sometimes they leave because they're just looking for the "next best thing." And when it turns out they were lied to, they find themselves right back at square one, feeling just as 'unhappy' as they gaslight themselves into feeling, thinking that the grass was greener on the other side. It isn't a new phenomenon that women jump from one relationship to another in their younger years, chasing something fresh and new. Why should anyone think that internal dynamic automatically dissolves, just because they got married? The same relationship fatigue set in for them, just as it did before.

Why isn’t the most direct explanation—that many women are unhappy in their marriages and leave because of that—on the table?

It can be.

But the financial burdens that a divorce triggers will cause a TON of unhappiness as well, so doing the objective calculation would probably make it a net negative for most women to initiate divorce... UNLESS she has a wealthy replacement husband lined up (most women wouldn't).

Given two options with negative utility, are the women actually picking the one that has slightly better utility for themselves, especially over the long run?

And besides, this just pushes the question back:

Why didn't these women pick better partners that they'd be happy with with long-term?

Why are they agreeing to these long-term commitments in the first place? Presumably they intend to maintain them.

If we work off the assumption that women have full agency, then a failed marriage can be avoided by picking a better husband up front, and a divorce is ultimately an admission that they didn't pick well.

, so doing the objective calculation would probably make it a net negative for most women to initiate divorce

Most women don't divorce. If 40% of marriages end in divorce and 80% of these are initiated by women that means 68% of women don't initiate divorce

There are other factors at play, no?

Uncertainty about future finances and dating is a lot less compelling when you’re risking a beating each weekend. Or, as I understand is more likely, when you’re picking the other woman’s hair off his collar.

The notion that 40% of all husbands, or even the majority of those, in modern Western societies beat their wives regularly and/or cheat on them is not something I can take seriously.

I have some bad news for you, then.

Approximately half of [Americans] in married relationships cheat at least one time during the course of the marriage.

To bring something up, only to admit it is marginal in the next sentence, seems like apophasis.

But infidelity explanation might make more sense. As 78% of women compete for the attention of 20% of men, in a society in which polyamory isn't mainstream, 58% of women have to settle. To then see their second choice having his pick of litter, so to speak, must inflame a sense of not only betrayal but also of inferiority.

Jealousy feels like a perfectly adequate explanation to me. I think you might be overcomplicating the issue.

I sometimes wonder if I'm on the same planet as people talking about divorce statistics. Speaking of the divorce of my parents, my dad got really paranoid over time, stopped working, started drinking excessively, and kept getting into arguments over ridiculous things; the last straw was a big blowout fight with some light physical violence involved. I think people asking this question have a tendency to assume that all men that get divorced are just like them. Some women make really poor choices? Well, some men do, too. And it's hard to speak so broadly about all divorces. You couldn't reduce the circumstances that led to Raskolnikov killing the old woman to a set of statistics.

Historically, divorce was very difficult to obtain, and it was more likely than not that the father would retain custody of the children (so there were definitely cases where the wife was blackmailed with "if you ever want to see your kids again..."). If a woman was at fault in a divorce, she was ruined socially and probably economically as well. Even where the husband was the offending party (e.g. cruelty or infidelity), a divorced woman still found it difficult to resume her life afterwards.

So for various reasons, it was men who usually initiated divorces. Move on to the 20th century, and we get the Reno Divorce, where now (if you are sufficiently wealthy to be able to afford it) you can get a divorce after spending enough time to qualify as a resident of Reno, Nevada.

Now women were initiating divorces, and as the decades passed, expectations for marriage changed, economic stability outside of marriage became possible for women, and changes in the attitudes of the law towards alimony and child support and child custody, as well as property and asset division, began to favour women, the balance tilted towards women being the ones who had the upper hand in divorce.

However, the shoe on the other foot is earning ability: if you're a housewife with custody of the kids, you have more expenses and now have a reduced income (whatever alimony was awarded to you). If you're not working, your situation does become worse than it had been. If you are working, can you get decent job or are you stuck because you haven't established a career before and during marriage?

Romantically, men - it seems - are much more reluctant to partner up with a woman who has children. So the ex-husband may be able to find a new wife and start making babies with her, but the ex-wife finds it more difficult to find a partner.

I think that the desire for independence, and that now you don't have to stay in an unhappy marriage and put up with a possibly abusive husband, still over-rides any downsides perceived for divorce. And I think that applies to men as well as women - I don't think men would want to stay in an unhappy marriage just because 'I'll be the loser economically' otherwise.

Historically, divorce was very difficult to obtain, and it was more likely than not that the father would retain custody of the children (so there were definitely cases where the wife was blackmailed with "if you ever want to see your kids again..."). If a woman was at fault in a divorce, she was ruined socially and probably economically as well. Even where the husband was the offending party (e.g. cruelty or infidelity), a divorced woman still found it difficult to resume her life afterwards.

This is why I'm not against divorce legally or even culturally (cue: But TollBooth, aren't you a TRAD?). I've been in enough relationships (and exited them) to understand that the same person who you feel deeply connected and wholly in love with in Month 2 can be the same person who you literally never want to speak to again in Month .... 8. I've been safe enough to avoid getting married, but it is not at all hard to understand that some couples in the exact same situation - and millions of similar ones - would. If that turns out to not be a good match, an exit ought to be possible.

But the costs of divorce for both partners seem quite high. What's more, I've seen no evidence that pre-marriage cohabitation (i.e. a practice run) helps. Anec-datally, I've seen it do the opposite. So, we've a situation in which lots of people are entering into an agreement that will entangle them deeply for a long period of time. Financial and social penalties abound. It's very hard to actually tell if you and the other person are going to "make it" no matter what you do.

Quick aside: Pre-marriage counseling, usually in a religious context, in my opinion, does nothing to help with the choosing of a partner. Instead, I think, it mostly just doubles the level of commitment on the part of each party and kind of builds in a fatalist co-dependence. As Catholic as I am, I've seen many catholic marriages that probably should've ended drag on (til death!) out of a grim determination to the idea of marriage. More on that later.

Yet, it's close to self-evident that a stable, two parent household is the basic building block of society. If they start to disappear (even more than they already have (!)) bad things happen. But The Institution hasn't kept up from its 1000+ year history of being, at its core, an economic contract for mutual survival and reproduction. I don't know how to fix that, but I have a hunch it's important.

On folks who get into and stay in marriages because of an external commitment to an idea / ideal (mostly the very religious) ... That selection bias ought to be obvious. Anyone who can commit themselves in a meaningful way to an abstract idea, ideal, or metaphysical concept is going to have a level of self-discipline, thoughtfulness, self-awareness etc. that puts them into pretty safe territory across a whole host of Big Decisions in life. That's not the audience that matters.

But the costs of divorce for both partners seem quite high. What's more, I've seen no evidence that pre-marriage cohabitation (i.e. a practice run) helps. Anec-datally, I've seen it do the opposite.

I'm in a bit of a different situation. I don't see how a long-term relationship can be successful without a practice run, especially given the complaints around chore splits and finances.

Yet you're correct in that the data suggests rolling directly from living separately -> marriage is more successful. It doesn't compute for me. I've always ascribed the difference there to "only the most religious/susceptible to social pressure can resist cohabitation before marriage" and so will stick out relationships at a higher rate.

It's my belief that Cohabitation undermines the ultimate marriage between the same couple, because it throws off the stakes and the leverage between parties. A lot of couples get into bad habits during cohabitation, and it is difficult and muddy to straighten them out after marriage. When you get married without having lived together, you have a clean slate.

One other thing pre marriage counseling offers is some basic conflict management tools that many young people especially young people with a single digit number of relationships may not have developed naturally.

I think that the desire for independence

The desire for independence is a meme.

I spotted this in the mod queue, with the Volunteer Jannies considering this a bad post, but this isn't really anywhere close to bad enough for me to put my mod hat on, but as a prolific user in good standing, I'm sure you could do better than that.

Pithiness/brevity isn't outright disallowed, but if you're going to dismiss an effort-post, or at least a line of it, going into more detail would be desirable. Or at least do more than just call it a meme.

So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?

It might be useful to look at the reasons people give when they get divorced. The top reason (75% of couples cite) is lack of commitment, followed by infidelity (60%). A substantial number also cite substance abuse (35%) and domestic violence (25%). If your husband is cheating on you or beating you maybe you don't care that getting divorced is economically bad for you.

60% infidelity seems insanely high. Figures from the UK* show adultery given as the reason for divorce by 7.5% of men and 8.7% of women. Crime victimhood figures show 5% of adults being victims of domestic violence. Either Americans are far worse than I thought or those figures are wrong. My money is on the latter.

*It's worth noting that until 2022, the divorcing partner was forced by law to given a reason for divorce. Hence most divorces were either codifying separations that had already happened (one of the reasons allowed) or recorded as 'unreasonable behaviour', which was the essentially the dump stat for amicable divorces.

Apparently the source is this study of 52 divorced couples who had gone through a certain pre-marital counseling program. Another 2012 study had 37% of couples reporting infidelity as a reason, 22% drug or alcohol problems, and 13% physical violence. I think one obvious reason for the discrepancy is the UK numbers seem to be coming from legal filings while the US numbers are from reports of divorced people.

If 5% of adults are domestic victims, and 25% of divorcees report domestic violence, that only requires 5% / 25% = 20% of adults get divorced at some point. Which is quite achievable. There’s a lot of ways these proportions could be screwy, but it passes the sniff test.

As for infidelity, well, it’s 8% that seems low to me. The UK has similar rates to the US. It’s hard for me to imagine divorcees having a lower adultery rate than the national average. I’d have guessed a comorbidity—adulterers usually also being “unreasonable” or commiting violence—but the UK data specifically has a “combination” category, and it’s nearly empty. Maybe a reporting stigma, where giving adultery as the reason has some legal effect or just is embarrassing?

IIRC in the US before no-fault divorce, if you could prove your spouse knew about the affair and slept with you anyways you could get the divorce denied by spousal reconciliation(no idea how often it happened), and it wouldn’t surprise me if something like that really affected division of assets in the UK. It might also have just been easier to check ‘unreasonable behavior’ than to include evidence of an affair if such is required.

Notoriously, there was a period between the late 1980's and the final legislative adoption of no-fault divorce in 2022 when the "law in lawyers' heads" was that even trivial unreasonable behaviour was grounds for divorce if the filing party's subjective opinion was that it was intolerable. So you could file for divorce on the grounds that "he leaves the toilet seat up and I find it intolerable to continue living with him as a result" and the husband's lawyer would advise him that he had no chance of defending the divorce, and should accordingly concede to avoid legal costs.

So the vast majority of divorces were filed on grounds of unreasonable behaviour because it was a de facto no fault divorce. Whereas if you alleged adultery the respondent could demand that you prove it. Even if you could prove adultery, your lawyer would advise you to file on grounds of trivial unreasonable behaviour to avoid unnecessary costs and acrimony. So the only people who filed on grounds of adultery were the people who wanted an acrimonous divorce and were willing to ignore their lawyer's advice to get one.

The Major government attempted to fix the problem in the 1990s by moving to no-fault divorce but only after compulsory mediation and a one-year waiting period. The law was never brought into force - I am not sure why.

I remember reading a while back that China saw the divorce rate go down after requiring a mere thirty days cooling-off period before you could proceed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/18/china-divorces-drop-70-after-controversial-cooling-off-law

But of course marriage rates are down too so it's all a big muddle of cause and (maybe) effect.

Fundamentally I think the big factor that even gov't can't easily control is the perception that there are more options out there than ever which is to say someone who is contemplating divorce and looks around to see what they could (in theory) get instead find it more appealing even if that is an unrealistic expectation.

I remember reading a while back that China saw the divorce rate go down after requiring a mere thirty days cooling-off period before you could proceed.

This goes for prettymuch every major life decision, though. People are prone to inertia and frequently the straw that breaks the Camel's back only does so for a short while.

I don't think there is a consensus. The claim that a wife who divorces makes her situation better is simply socially disfavored, and the posters chiming in to say otherwise were bringing the weight of that social consensus in behind their posts.

Romantically, I would guess the wife's situation at divorce is very poor; she doesn't want to be with her husband. So even if her situation sucks more than she thinks afterwards, she may be making only a lateral move.

she doesn't want to be with her husband

But whomever she finds later, assuming she still wants a long-term relationship, is likely to be even worse than her husband - that's the point.

If one values harm inflicted onto some other person, equally or more, than the same harm suffered, than one is either indifferent or prefers to inflict such harm.

But even if the one is considers suffering a loss 1 util to inflict the loss of 2 util onto a hated person to be not worth it, if one is able to inflict the loss of 4 util at the same cost, one may prefer to engage in mutually destructive activity.

Back in the old days, one theory I came across in the Manosphere was that cases of “divorce rape” are usually explained not simply by vindictiveness or greed or resentment but also by the intent to destroy the ability of the ex-husband to attract another wife, especially one who’s more attractive. Assuming that this is true, I don’t think it’s done just out of spite, because it’s a big blow to the social status of a woman for her husband to leave her and find a more attractive wife.

Worth pointing out that there's a difference between having a term in your utility function for wanting someone to suffer, vs a term for carrying out implied social threats in order to confirm their initial validity.

Which is to say, a lot of people do things that seem irrational when they are in bad situations, because those behaviors are either evolved or socially engineered (or generally, both) as credible threats intended to avoid those bad situations in the first place. The reason we get so jealous and angry at being cheated on that we might just kill you (or otherwise cause huge harms) is not because the jealous reaction makes sense, it's a threat to avoid cheating in the first place. Same thing for lots of suicide threats/attempts, many types of vengeance and respect-based posturing, etc.

I disagree with the proposed consensus.

Maybe you could argue that if a random marriage were forced to be broken up, that would on average tend to hurt the wife more.

But I would expect that the worst marriages in the country tend to hurt the wife more on average, so allowing the market to choose which marriages get broken up in the normal fashion should help wives more on average.

AFAIK the usual story is either "women grossly overestimate their market value" or "women underestimate how destructive a signal divorce initiation is, initiate to create pressure on the husband, and the outraged men escalate by actually going through with it".

I have no idea whether there's any truth to either of those.

signal divorce initiation

I suppose you mean the act of threatening with divorce initiation used as a signal / as blackmail?

Not sure how exactly it works legally, double unsure whether it works the same way in Germany as in the US, but yes the goal is said to be a signal to the husband along the lines of "see how serious I am, accede to my demands".

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