Looking back, while I was trying to keep my family together. She was trying to get the most out of our separation.
Once I accepted that we weren't going to be a conventional family, I was able to see things with clarity.
Accepting it is the hard part.
If you're married to someone that has experienced being in an unconventional family then this will feel a lot more normal to them, which absolutely sucks. I really feel for you man.
I know it won't make you feel any better, but when you get into your late 40s (assuming you're younger due to the age of your daughter) it will dawn on you that there's nothing you could have done differently, it's not anyone's fault.
The cruel joke of life is that you don't know what to do until middle-age, and by then you have the briefest of moments to make the most of it because your physical / mental endurance is on borrowed time at that point. That sounds work-related, but the same things apply to people's social lives too. They don't recognize their compulsive behaviors and mistakes until they're old enough to know better. Some never do.
I suggest you hang in there until then, and do your utmost (swallowing whatever shit is necessary) to stay in good terms with your ex - for your daughter's sake.
Going by children of divorced parents, doing this anyway is the best thing you can do for your child, your spouse and your self.
Women get rights, men get obligations.
Of course it can be very difficult not to leap from painful experience to dramatic generalization. But it's the sort of thing we all have to work on in order to have HN be the kind of community we're trying for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If men comtemplating suicide could realise this and see it as the light at the end of the very dark tunnel then they might keep their faith in themselves and their future.
I was struggling with identity and responsibility when the kids were young and and extremely helpful person on a forum told me that my life would not forever be “swamped husband supporting family with young kids”…or even “parents in a faily of four”…sure I’m still a father of two kids, but they’re off doing their own things and my relationship with my wife is a LOT more like the one I had as a couple, before being parents.
You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.
But that's not a random sample. Given the widely perceived bias against men, one would expect only the men with the strongest cases to try for custody, and you would expect them to have better outcomes than average men.
If as an experiment you randomly selected a group of men and got them to file for custody, their success rate would probably be lower.
Actually, even on close-to-even odds, men don't try anyway (losing has a much larger effect if you're a man). See my response in this thread elsewhere for why I declined to fight when my estimated odds were 3/5.
All of this is anedoctal but in my experience I saw many women willing to use false accusations of violence knowing it was a win win. They knew they wouldn't be punished even if it was proven the accusations were false. And that is a powerful tool to get custody.
And of course for younger children the custody to the mother is often enshrined into law directly.
Both situations happen.
Someone will be hurt, or by the actions of a member of the second group or by the societal actions to protect the second group.
I just wish the compromise was clear and we abandoned the kind of puritanical thinking that we "ought to protect group X" no matter what. We need to talk, qualitatively and quantitatively, about all the sides of the coin.
You're pulling that statistic from where? At least from the US census bureau, here are the stats from 2002 that go all the way back to 1994 [1]: "In the spring of 2002, an estimated 13.4 million parents had custody of 21.5 million children under 21 years of age whose other parent lived somewhere else. About 5 of every 6 custodial parents were mothers (84.4 percent) and 1 in 6 were fathers (15.6 percent), proportions statistically unchanged since 1994 (Table A). Overall, 27.6 percent of all children under 21 living in families had a parent not living in the home."
[1] https://valme.io/c/mens-rights/88qqs/a-tale-of-two-children-...
That's a nice statistic. Where did you get it?
> You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.
Well I apologise for that, every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5.
It only seems like that because you're looking at the raw numbers. When you look at the actual stakes, it's quite different.
Let's say we play a coin-toss game: Each time I win the toss, I give you $1. Each time you win the toss, you give me $100.
Would you play? Think it's not fair? Okay, lets make it fair.
Each time you win, you win $1m. Each time you lose, you pay $1m. Would you play against me (I'm not rich)? Would you agree to play against Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos/etc?
It's not just the odds that matters, it's the fact t, even on even odds, in some cases you stand to lose much more than the opposing side.
That is completely absurd risk reward ratio to reject.
Not really. The impact of losing is "lose hundreds of thousands, be in debt for the next decade and have my work (and life in general) suffer", while still having to deal with having to then fight for access continuously.
The impact of winning was "losing hundreds of thousands, be in debt for a decade, and still have the risk of custody reversal in a future case".
The only winning move here is not to play[1] unless the odds are greatly in your favour - it's cheaper for the female so the female's impact in a win or a lose is substantially less.
Regardless of the risk/reward ratio, when 10 lawyers tell you not to bother, you'd be stupid to ignore their advice.
In any case, I still want to now where you got your statistics from.
[1] All I had to deal with after that was to enforce the contact. That took 3 court cases (luckily, all in my favour).
Also, filing does not costs "hundreds of thousands". That is just not true. Poor people have those hearings and while it costs money, it costs significantly less.
This discussion requires the same standards for all arguments, and no appeals to authority.
Irrelevant - I didn't present it as stats applicable to the populate, I presented it as "10 lawyers I spoke to".
Parent presented the 50/50 statistic as a fact, I want to know where he read that.
I also don't find your unique experience useful though.
IMO, divorce sucks worst for whoever is the most conscientious person and invested in the family, regardless of gender.
PS - I am divorced too (no kids though) - sorry to hear you’re going through that.
Wealth changes the equation. When you are certain that you can look after your kids indefinitely or for a sufficient amount of time you can go on with your life, take a sabbatical, or whatever floats your boat. You don't need the same energy GP mentioned as someone who needs to work from 9 to 5 the next day after the divorce.
This is a more thoughtful way of putting it. Thank you. I do think that men tend to get the raw end of the deal when it comes to custody though.
(Presumably people file because they expect a better life outcome for themselves from divorce than from not divorcing. This could be because they expect a better outcome due to divorce, as you say; or that they expect a worse outcome if they don't divorce, which is my alternative possible interpretation. I'm neutral on which is actually the case.)
Scenario 1
The woman and the man expect their happiness in marriage to stay around 5/10.
After five years of divorce they have recovered a bit, but the woman recovers more and is now 6/10 but the man is 4/10.
Scenario 2
An alternative is that even though they are both 5/10 in happiness to start with, the woman's expected future happiness in the marriage after five years is only 3/10 while the man's is still 5/10.
Suppose they divorce and both recover the same to 4/10 after five years.
Analysis
In both scenarios after five years the woman will be happier if she divorces, and it may make sense for her to file for divorce depending on her risk tolerance.
Woman filing for divorce more could be evidence for scenario 1, which is my interpretation of your post. It could also be evidence for scenario 2, which is incompatible with your interpretation. It is not so simple to say that more filing is evidence for a better recovery for women.
This is not what I intended. I was just trying to counter the suggestion by me_im_counting that men are likely to do better following divorce because of reasons like (according to him) men find it easier to remarry, women are more likely to keep the kids, and men divorce in response to cancer. All of those, as explanations, are in tension with the fact that men are less likely to be initiating divorce.
We can assume overall these tend to impact men and women differently, with for example women tending to get more access to kids but losing income as they spend time on childcare, and men tending to pay more to their ex-wives and losing time with the kids.
You argue that women gain more from divorce than men overall as women are the ones who file for divorce in the majority of cases.
Let's accept for the sake of argument that women do relatively better out of divorces all things considered. The explanation for this could be good post-divorce outcomes for women, which are the factors above such as ease of remarrying or custody. This is what I see as the core of your argument.
An alternative explanation might be that in a bad marriage, women are in a particularly vulnerable position relative to men. In that case even with worse outcomes from divorce for women, it might still make sense for women to file for divorce more often.
I think it would be hard to find convincing evidence either way. But it's plausible the tension may just be apparent and there is another explanation.
I don't understand. If bad marriages effect women more often then men, then women do better from divorce. The divorce initiation data doesn't tell us who's happier overall (insofar as such interpersonal utility comparisons even make sense), and I didn't make a claim about this. That data point only tell us who expects to benefit from divorce relative to where they are.
I think you're arguing against a position I don't have.
It wouldn't exactly show that women "recover better" versus men, which was your original wording, but that is not perhaps the most important point - I'm more trying to tease out nuance than argue against you.
One factor confusing the issue is that a number of reasons mentioned in the thread, such as cancer, remarriage, and access to children, are not particularly relevant to your argument.
The original post of this thread said divorce was lose-lose and that men are the biggest losers. My point, perhaps clumsily made, was that it is possible that some men take advantage of a relatively strong position in a bad marriage. So even though they lose from the divorce itself more, the increased initiation from women may partly represent a relative weakness within the marriage leading to women losing more in a bad marriage prior to initiating divorce (and men gambling that they won't divorce due to the costs involved).
That still feels clumsily expressed, but I hope you can understand where I'm coming from. Again it's an attempt to add a little more nuance to the overall analysis here.
That being said, who files is not a perfect signal. I know a few women who filed when it was in reality the husband who ended the marriage.
That's a pretty big assumption, especially considering how irrational many people are when it comes to divorce.
Personally, I've always assumed the discrepancy was caused by women's higher standards and belief that they can get a better man that "treats them right". I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was completely wrong, though.
It seems that marriage as is is not working for women while works for men. Women then tend to end it.
Your mistake here is conflating what the 1% do with the rest of the world. Its like looking at the richest people in hte world, deciding that they're all men so there must be a patriarchy and that all men are rich. Nowhere near close to the truth.
> Plus, it’s significantly more common for men to leave their wives when their wives get diagnosed with cancer than vice versa.
Citation definitely needed. At least anecdotally, women seem to be just as capable of leaving a sick spouse as men and in fact are supported by society for doing so more than a man in a similar situation.
I simply don't understand why anyone would ever propose marriage in the first place under these circumstances, let alone remarry after experiencing divorce.
Men feel more lonely after divorce and women feel happier after divorce.
Men are more likely to find new partner sooner after divorce, women are more likely to stay single for long time.
Does that take into account how much work both are putting in towards earning? Or it's just considering the net numbers? Women may be worse financially looking at just the numbers, however, may still be ahead when their efforts into earning are taken in account. Or when the damages they did are properly taken into account for determining what the position of justice should be.
How is financially better calculated? Things like child support and alimony seem to not be counted for a lot of purposes - like tax - so the woman could be poorer on paper while actually having more money in practice.
Being primary caregiver, even with child support financially costs quite a lot. Not just in direct expenses, but also in job opportunities and in terms of what jobs you can have, how you can progress on the ladder.
Mothers are awarded child support nearly 2 times as often as fathers are
Fathers are awarded nearly 10% less, on average, in child support
Fathers receive less of the awarded child support than mothers
More than 25% of fathers live apart from their children
On the reverse, men being taken half of their wealth plus having a pension to pay is the overwhelming majority of cases (even when both are working) in the majority of Western countries. And one never reads any story about a woman becoming homeless or killing herself after a divorce while those stories are numerous on the male side...
An entire industry exists just to bleed families dry by getting women to claim abuse (mental abuse is enough) to get the kids, 1/2 the man's stuff and a steady income. The entire "civil court" legal system is broken in the US. It is what Trump specialized in, civil court cases just to fu*k with people and bully them into getting what he wanted.
A recent story where it happened to a dad, who eventually got killed by the father in law : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_z0AfxT2bE No coverage or sympathy from either the media or the politics.
My ex and I managed to share joint custody of our dog for years, until she moved away and we decided she should keep the dog. Much harder to do that with a child.
Impossible *
If you involve kids, I think it gets quite a bit worse here. My experience has been that family law is mostly a level playing field, but mothers still have the upper hand. This again is something which no one really cares about or will do anything about; you have to suck it up and carry on. There is no way around it.
Whether or not this is true in the statistical sense, I don't think it's a really useful piece of information. Everyone's relationship is different, as are the ways they react and cope (or don't) with it ending.