Well since the three year old topic is already resurrected, I’ll go ahead and chime in.
Divorce in general is more common these days for a handful of reasons.
First, as western society becomes more secular and organized religion (ANY religion) plays a smaller and smaller role in peoples lives, marriage…which is/was originally a religious construct seems less sacred, so the notion of breaking vows made before a God you only halfheartedly believe in doesn’t seem like quite as large of a taboo as it once was.
Secondly, people confuse commonality with true compatibility. I’ve known several people that got married talking about “ohhh we have so much in common it’s like we’re soul mates”. When questioned about the specifics of what they have in common it’s usually trivial likes and dislikes…we both like the same bands, we have the same favorite movies, we have the same favorite color etc. But people, especially younger people today tend to be so blinded by initial attraction that they ignore differences that could be HUGE obstacles. A religious person, especially a devoutly religious person is likely to run into trouble marrying an atheist. One half of the relationship holds to a belief system that means they believe their partner is essentially damned to hell, the other half believes the person they love (which should include respect) is naive and foolish for believing in an invisible man in the sky. Other issues range from children, idea’s regarding gender roles, and lifestyle preferences “I like the country she likes the city” etc. These issues are easy to ignore during a casual dating phase when you’re likely so concerned about turning off the other person that you go out of your way not to “make a big deal” about things that really are a big deal. Once married and living under the same roof these issues will inevitably come up.
My preferences in music and movies are pretty strong, but if I’m married and my wife wants to watch a Julia Roberts movie I can suck it up and sit through it graciously…my religion, my feelings on having a family, what kind of home I want to have etc…not as easy to compromise on an if we aren’t on the same page, things could fall apart.
So most marriages that fall apart are ones that never should have happened in the first place, and they happen easily because marriage as an institution just doesn’t have as much meaning to people as it once did. But why are so many women being the ones to initiate? Well for one, it’s much easier today for a woman to get a job to support herself financially than it was with previous generations. A lot of women stayed in bad marriages because they simply couldn’t afford to not have their husbands paycheck. Which leads to the second reason…how many men have you heard of being awarded spousal support FROM their wives? And a mans obligation to continue financially supporting a woman a he no longer sleeps with doesn’t end when she starts fucking another guy…it only ends if the guy she’s fucking decides to marry her take the financial responsibility off your hands. So if I started dating a divorcee that was getting alimony from a fairly well off doctor or lawyer ex husband…I can A.) continue sleeping with her and enjoy not having to support her, and maybe even benefiting from her ex’s paycheck…or B.) I marry her myself, lose her exes paycheck and turn a financial asset into a financial burden…hmmm.
Along a similar issue, while I’m not sure of the exact numbers but from what I can tell the legal system seems to believe that having a penis makes you an inferior parent when it comes to deciding child custody, but your financial obligation to those children doesn’t disappear when they do.
Then, you need only go to a bar or club…somebody mentioned Sadie Hawkins and that’s a stellar example. Women don’t approach men, they don’t know how and that’s usually ok because they don’t have to. Put an attractive well dressed man at one end of the bar and an attractive woman at the other and I guarantee you the woman will be approached by FAR more men than the man will with women…even if he’s attractive he still has to do most of the work for a relationship to begin and progress.
Plus any woman that the man meets will have to factor in that he has financial obligations to another woman, and to children that she herself did not bear. This in many ways lowers his viability as a potential mate since any children she has with him will be sharing his resources with another woman’s children. I know a LOT of girls that actually have a policy of not even starting a relationship with guys that have kids from previous relationships…they call it “baby momma drama” and they want NO part of it.
So why would women initiate divorce as often as they do? Between social norms and outright laws, they have a whole hell of a lot more to gain and substantially less to lose than men do in divorce. And if you ladies know any men that are “commitment phobes” trust me, while they may not know how to articulate it, these are the fears running through their mind when they think about marriage.
