Letters to the Editor
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The real cost
Calculate your net worth, and then cut it in half.
Say goodbye to the family home, and imagine your kids living in a crappy apartment, and going for weeks without seeing them. Forget about hurt feelings, because that will be the least of your problems.
OH, don't forget to cut your retirement and social security in half too. Unless your spouse remarries you will be paying for the rest of your life.
Would you sign a contract like this in order to have sex with any of these women?
Unless you are fabulously wealthy, and your wife has a great income and will refuse to become the stereotyped "woman scorned"- the future will be grim.
Really, this for most people is how this will all play out. My parents are both on marriage number three so I have experience here.
Also look at those who have come before. You will tire of every sexual partner over time.
You will not find a sea of available women willing to get hot and heavy with now that you are a sad, single, (likely broke) disneyland dad. You have been coupled for many years, and probably don't remember the crushing loneliness that singles often feel.
We all have the urge, it is nothing new. We all feel your pain here. Monogamy can feel depressing at times. But if you can save your marriage, then try.
Just try to picture a life for yourself in the future with your spouse, something positive that will help you through these times. Imagine holidays where you get to see your grandchildren, for instance. Be proud of what you have already accomplished together.
Or leave, with integrity.
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Saturday, September 8, 2007 09:27 PM Anonymous and Parson Jim, you both are STONED. Any man who lets himself become a "slave" and hands over his cajones deserves what he gets.
My own father dumped my mother (she was a homemaker with no workplace skills) in the late 1970s. He took everything, as everything was in his name, and paid no alimony, and paid only pittance in terms of child support when he made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He chose to move across country and never see me or my brother. Believe me, we wish he'd been there.
Your fantasies about poor, victimized men living under the iron rule of -ooooo- scary---- women -- are just that: fantasies. The LW has a set of balls, apparently, so use them and be honest with himself and his wife. I have ZERO respect for dudes who claim to be victims. Have some self respect, dudes. It's like claiming your wife beats you.
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Saturday, September 8, 2007 09:27 PM Anonymous, yeah right, sure. Cry me a river.
You have really swallowed the kool-aid on that one. Sorry, but these things are always two-way streets, and I am quite sure he contributed to the break-down of the marriage and the judge looked at his assets compared to his wife's and made the appropriate decisions. Plus I always wonder, if he knew things were so wrong, etc. why have multiple kids with a crazy woman? Cry me a freaking river.
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Hey skh, have fun dying alone in your apartment.
And on this fine sunday afternoon I will take my gorgeous spouse into the bedroom and play.
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don't worry as much if she works....
The scenario I described with the friend...screwed by his ex...screwed in the divorce...occurred mainly because the woman had not held a job since she was 23. The divorce took place 20 years later.
Many of the women who visit salon.com, and who thus are reading this, do not fit the demographic of the woman who has never held a job. It is this set-up...the daddy who goes to work and the mommy who never returns to work after the kids...that is the worst one for abuse of the guy.
These women are frightened, angry and most likely, angry at themselves for buying into a ridiculous scenario...ie, 'I think I'll develop absolutely no skills during the prime of my life. Surely, that will work out well in the end..." The anger at themselves is directed at the husband, who bought into this absurd scenario, right along w/the wife. Bad set-up.
Intelligent beings are meant to be productive. Kids get older. Being a mommy is a temporary job. The men who fear divorce most have a wife who is not working or who works for a minimal salary.
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Bitter, and self-hating
Wow, Anonymi 2:05 and 2:10. Of course men must be punished in a divorce. The reality, though, is a man will be punished under the law if he is at fault or not.
And the above poster is correct - men should avoid women who are not earning money, and should work hard to get them back to work as soon as possible after the children are born.
Oh, and if you think no-fault divorce is behind women's victimization in these situations, you can thank the National Association of Women Lawyers:
http://www.abanet.org/nawl/about/history.html
"The Uniform Divorce Bill
"The greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken" is the description given by committee chair Matilda Fenberg to NAWL's pioneering work to create a Uniform Divorce Bill. At the 1947 NAWL convention in Cleveland, it was voted to draft and promote a bill that would embody the ideal of no-fault divorce. A draft prepared by Fenberg, working with NAWL past presidents Helen M. Cirese and J. Helen Slough, was approved at the 1952 convention in Berkeley, California.
Although the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws had attempted to produce such a bill since its founding in 1892, Fenberg was informed that the Conference could receive bills or suggestions only from the ABA. Fenberg-who had been the first woman student at Yale Law School in 1919-then undertook a campaign to convince the ABA to create a Family Law Section. Three years later, in 1955, the section was approved. Fenberg was appointed chair of the Subcommittee on Migratory Divorce. In 1960 the bill was introduced to the ABA, which sent it to the Conference.
In 1965, the Conference commenced the task of drafting, and in 1970 produced, the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (amended in 1971 and 1973). By 1977, the divorce portions had been adopted by nine states. Following this, the momentum for uniformity waned, but the ideal of no-fault divorce became the guiding principle for reformof divorce laws in the majority of states."