The Divorce Rate is Too Low

Audio version now available.

 

The divorce rate in the United States has been reported in the 40-50% range for as long as I’ve been paying attention. That range is too low.

 

I’m not suggesting statistical inaccuracy. I’m saying a higher percentage of marriages should be ended.

 

We have some clearly defined societal red lines that if crossed, both participants and bystanders of a marriage acknowledge justification for divorce. Physical abuse, child abuse or neglect, and infidelity cross that red line. But emotional abuse and financial abuse do not cross the red line in our society, and sexual abuse is so poorly defined and stigmatized that one person’s coercion is another person’s obligation.

 

If we want to get healthy, we need to move the red line. Emotional and financial abuse need to not only cross that red line, they need to be ingrained in our children as despicable violations of decency.

 

We’ve made a lot of progress as a country and civilized world in recent decades. We now widely acknowledge the importance of protecting and treating our mental health. A school psychologist I worked with was the first person I heard use the mantra, “Mental health is physical health.” And his message resonated. About the same time as I witnessed him sharing his philosophies with students, players on the high school soccer teams I coached started to talk openly, with me and with each other, about their therapist appointments or when they were feeling anxious or depressed.

 

So help me understand this…

 

Mental health is important. Recognizing and managing our emotions has real seats at the healthcare and developmental education tables. And yet, emotional abuse within marriages and other committed partnerships runs rampant. And we accept it. Why?

 

If you don’t understand my question, or think I am exaggerating, I suggest that maybe you don’t know what emotional abuse looks like.

 

My wife, Sheri, and I were recently having a six-way conversation with two other couples. One of our friends told a story about her husband criticizing her cooking. She infused a little deflecting humor into the anecdote, but the jab clearly hurt her a little. Another participant in the conversation was a good story teller. When his wife interjected to add color or detail to his stories, he dismissed her in a way that was uncomfortable to his audience. These might feel like innocuous slights. My two examples might sound like normal–the way married couples interact.

 

And that’s exactly my point.

 

Humans instinctively seek companionship. For most of us, a monogamous romantic relationship is our primary form of companionship. Either because of sexual desires or a need for security or any of a million other reasons, we feel compelled to find someone with whom to join forces. It is natural. And in the courting process, we put our best foot forward like a peacock with its fully fanned-out feathers.

 

But then we make commitments to each other. We get comfortable. We face adversity and encounter stress. And pretty soon, we show our partners our claws far more often than we show our feathers.

 

Emotional abuse exists on a continuum. On the vile and vicious end is a person who might call his partner a fucking bitch or tell her she is too stupid for her opinions to matter. It is probably not hard for you to imagine sliding those behaviors, at least if they happen consistently, across the red line of abuse.

 

But if you don’t say things like that, don’t breathe a sigh of relief quite yet. There is room for lots of painful behavior on the emotional abuse spectrum. My above examples of criticism and dismissal have a place on the other end of the continuum–harder to see but still delivering cumulative pain over time. Silent treatment, gaslighting, manipulation, dismissed feelings, turning conversations to ways you feel violated, and a refusal to engage in difficult conversations is all emotional abuse. We take the most important person in our lives–the person we eagerly showed our peacock feathers–and shit on them slowly through emotionally abusive patterns, comfort, frustration, and ignorance. But because these behaviors are so societally normalized, we accept them as just part of being married.

 

I used to call my wife names and curse at her. But I also tried to convince her my parenting decisions were better than hers, that when she brought up the same resentment a second time that she needed to “get over it,” and that she was the one with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol because her father was an alcoholic. Emotional abuse isn’t always clear and obvious. Sometimes we need to know what we are looking for to spot it. But don’t let the nuance and subtlety exhaust you. It all comes down to respect.

 

My wife should have divorced me. Even once we got past the period when I called her names and cursed at her, I still demonstrated plenty of other behavior located across the emotional abuse spectrum–behavior that justified divorce if only we had the societal will to move the red line.

 

In the United States, 69% of divorces are initiated by women. Some pundits claim that the gender gap is because women have unrealistic expectations. That’s certainly a matter of perspective. If an expectation of emotional safety is unrealistic, then I guess the misogynists have a point.

 

I hate the traditional wedding vows.

 

I know what you might be thinking. If you are worried that I’m going to rant about the word, “obey,” then you’d better buckle up, buttercup. My objection to the traditional wedding contract goes much deeper than one outdated word.

 

Vows to stay together, “in sickness and in health,” and, “until death do us part,” have done irreparable damage to our culture.

 

“I’m an alcoholic, and addiction is a disease. I am sick. You vowed to stay with me.”

 

“You committed to this marriage until death do us part. If you leave me, you can explain to the kids why you chose to destroy our family.”

 

I vomited in my mouth a bit while typing the two chart-toppers on the wedding-vow-manipulation greatest hits.

 

Honor and obey, until death do us part, and in sickness and in health are as relevant as the chastity belt and dowries to modern marriages. There should be only one wedding vow:

 

“If you do not treat me with respect with total consistency, I vow to divorce your ass.”

 

We have some fantasy of marriage as the melding of two people into one. That is so gross. Marriages succeed when two mentally healthy people treat each other with respect. In doing so, they find ways in which they want to interact with each other. Ways like sex and conversation and parenting and shared finances. When two become one, that’s called codependency, and it takes a lot of therapy and years of recovery work to pry the individuals apart again.

 

In addition to a single wedding vow focussed on respect, all marriages should have a prenuptial agreement that serves two purposes.

 

People think of prenups as legal instruments to protect rich old men from gold-digging young women. Please cleanse that image from your mind and consider the prenup for the modern world.

 

Women are uniquely financially insecure when pregnant or as new mothers. But because women are instinctually predisposed to nurturing, they often voluntarily extend their financial exposure while raising their families. Our current system for divorce leaves mothers and fathers fighting over financial resources and child custody. Why is that all not defined as part of the establishment of the marriage contract?

 

If a couple mutually agrees that one partner will stay home with the kids while the other partner works outside the home, the distribution of assets and income in the event of divorce should be addressed up front. Likewise, conditions for custody distribution should be spelled out in the marriage contract. Addiction, legal convictions, physical abuse, neglect, emotional abuse, etc. should have pre-defined, negotiated consequences. Consequences like no unsupervised visits. Why do we wait for a jurisdictional roll-of-the-dice to see if the stay-at-home-mom and her kids will starve to death, or if an incoherent judge will award every-other weekend to an active alcoholic? Women are afraid to leave emotionally abusive situations, while men threaten to fight for 50/50 custody as just another form of gaslighting and manipulation.

 

I know we all want to believe in the fantasy when we get married. My fiance and I scoffed at the idea of a prenuptial agreement as though it weakened our love for each other. At least that’s how I remember it. It’s entirely possible that I manipulated my future wife into agreeing to my sanctimonious fairytale. I had a penchant for such emotional arm-twisting back then.

 

When you go out on a lake in a boat, in most jurisdictions, you are required to have a lifejacket somewhere on the vessel for each passenger. Preparation does not mean the boat is predestined to sink. Predefined financial security for partners, and predefined physical and emotional safety for the kids, is actually quite attractive to women who have enough life experience to understand the gravity of a marital contract. If you think legal instruments of security are unromantic, you might not have the capacity to be an emotionally safe partner. A rejection of my wedding vow and a modern prenuptial agreement signals an interest in leverage more than love.

 

There is nothing more romantic than partners who recognize that there are conditions to their love. I encourage us to enter into relationships with easily executable out-clauses. The best way to ensure that we keep showing up for each other is to make it easy for us to go our separate ways. It is hard to cross a red line when we understand that doing so might leave us lonely. Humans need motivation. Comfort, habits, and love-blind commitments are the enemy. The reason I A.B.D. (always be dating) is because I know my wife will lose interest and respect for me if I don’t. The thing we have going is pretty important to me, so I am motivated to respect my wife always. I have left the continuum of emotional abuse behind because I believe in my soul that emotional abuse is grounds for divorce.

 

And I don’t want to be divorced.

 

We need to move the red line to encompass emotional abuse, financial abuse, and intra-marital sexual abuse. We need single-vow marriages, and prenuptial agreements need to become standard. That we continue to enter into the most important legal and financial arrangements of our lives using archaic language and fantastical optimism is like expecting a unicorn to fly us from the chapel to the reception.

 

In the near-term, more toxic and dysfunctional marriages need to end. There need to be consequences. In the long-term, the awareness of the kind of predefined consequences I am suggesting will likely result in a much lower rate of divorce. Instead of viewing marriage as a romantic fantasy, people will view marriage as a contract with clearly defined conditions for execution.

 

As unromantic as all this talk of contracts and consequences sounds, the resulting respectful behavior will be an unstoppable aphrodisiac. If we want marriages to last, we need to expect the need for consistent effort to never end.

 

Let’s put the peacock feathers away. Respect is quite a bit more attractive.

 

If you are ready to explore emotional safety in your committed partnership, please consider joining us in the Marriagevolution.

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