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Comment by Lutger | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'm supporting the way things are, so I don't know exactly what is confusing.

The comment I responded to has a fairly big assumption: that divorce is always a bad thing. I don't think that is a given.

People used to be quite stuck in the family or marriage system. Even when faced with violence and sexual abuse, there was often no way out. I've seen heartbreaking examples of this.

Though the tightness of past bonds may feel attractive in this era of fleeting connections, it was often not quite as cosy as what we long for. The freedom to move out of these traps was and is liberating for many. And yes, there is a cost to that freedom as well of course. I don't want to support anything, I just put a nuance here against a naive kind of nostalgia.

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> Even when faced with violence and sexual abuse

This style of concern trolling drives me up the fucking wall, given what we know about abuse statistics.

Step-fathers and live-in boyfriends are several times more likely to commit sexual or physical abuse on the mother's children than biological fathers. [1][2]

If biodad is actually abusing the children, then yes, by all means, get out.

But if you're leaving a non-abusive dad in order to "find yourself", or because you're "just not happy", you are, statistically speaking, endangering your children, unless you accept a lifetime vow of celibacy.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2845296/ [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077559501006004001

>If biodad is actually abusing the children, then yes, by all means, get out.

well kinda the point is that in the past you couldn't.

It didn't read to me as if the parent was talking about the abuse being done to the children but to the partner themselves, something that is far more common.

Do you think in a culture that does not allow for divorce that people would be accurately reporting abuse?

And how does one "get out" when that is not an option?

> This style of concern trolling drives me up the fraking wall,

It shouldn't because it isn't.

> given what we know about abuse statistics.

If marriages are safer for female spouses, I suggest it's because marriages have to compete with other relationships.

In my parents day (silent gen), marriage had little competition and were commonly a safe environment for abusers.

I personally witnessed mom in traction & my brothers broken. Most of her relatives/friends were mistreated by their husbands (possibly all but not everyone confided). Similar stores could be said by the children of that generation. And, my observations were far from unique. Family abuse was everywhere (victims confide in victims).

For my cousins' generation, many things are improved. eg:Their understanding of abuse. eg:The meaningful expectation for men to not mistreat their loved ones. eg:The expectation for men to support all obligations in a household (not just the ones they want).

Meanwhile, if we are more vocal about More Marriages than we are about better marriages, I suggest we have lost our way.

All of the divorces I know firsthand from my peers do not involve violence or sexual abuse, but more nebulous or obtuse statements about personal happiness and expectations from life.

I do think a culture of instant gratification and the myriad of stimulus that hits in rapid fire from all sides sets up even the most stalwartly to succumb to feelings or urges to do something opposite of their rationale, because they don't spend a lot of time ruminating and re-examining the source and cause of these feelings and harmonizing them with their goals and values, a sort of re-programming.

I am divorced, but do not want to go into the personal details. I did meet my ex when we were both in our twenties and did not have high body counts. Our divorce would be hard to define with cause(s). I know a large part of it was that my ex-wife struggled with giving up her career (that made her unhappy when she did not have kids) to be a stay-at-home mom when she pushed for having kids, but rejected my offer to stay at home if she wanted to work, and then happy she stayed home and vice versa all over again. Film and media echo this dislocation and dichotomy all the time. Films that show people working through things against all odds (yes a filmic reference but not to the point ;)) or the reality of dealing with everyday life with all of its tensions and releases, and unforeseen events and emergencies, is not common in non-action movies. Call it naive nostalgia, but I don't see that many happy divorced people who have not found someone. And the older we get the harder it is to find someone that can be more than a platonic friend.

I have now been remarried for many years with younger children, and we are all friends - my ex-wife and my current wife and my older children love their young siblings. I am very grateful to have kept those I love and care about around me. I will say that my current wife is traditional and not American and our differences and desires are not so dramatic and easy to harmonize with our life and family.

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