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Comment by andrew_gs | Hacker News Reader

I'm divorced. By the time you make the decision to leave your partner your life is in a bit a shambles. Something you thought would last together is about to end and if you have kids with your ex (I have 3) then you're about to enter into one of the most stressful and complicated parts of your life.

Of course the suicide right is going to be higher, but you shouldn't compare it against the part of the population who is happily married, you would have to compare it to the people who are desperately unhappy in their marriage and don't get divorced. At the end of my marriage I still dearly loved my wife, but hadn't been happy for years and I was wishing for death to give me a noble exit from a situation I couldn't see a way out of myself.

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Guys take all the blame for divorce. I’ve know married women with kids that were monsters and everyone pitied them. There’s a strong, verging on psychotic, bias towards women in society and family court.

I'm not sure this is the general case. In the case of most divorced couples I know of, the "monster" tends to be whichever party I'm less close to.

It’s true. I’ve talked a lot of guys off the edge of a cliff. You try to warn the new generation but they don’t listen, guys always got to learn the hard way.

It’s because for every one of those there’s a battered wife, and before the 1970s women had little ability to escape that kind of thing except at incredible cost.

People can be awful to each other. Gender doesn’t matter.

Sorry but that’s a pretty outdated and sexist perspective. I think it’s because men really don’t have any advocates.

In the UK, not the US, but I hear this here too.

It depends a lot. Very little time in court (no fault divorce, informal agreement re money, and child just stayed with me) and the family courts here are secret so will not comment on that courts, but as for society it depends a lot.

My own experience is that no one who knows me at all well blames me. Some of my ex-wife's friends do - the ones who do not know me mostly. Why should I care what they think? My friends have been supportive, so have my (extended) family.

The only thing that annoys me is that she has been playing on racial stereotypes to gain sympathy. More that people are ignorant enough of other cultures to believe her uncritically than anything else.

I got divorced in the UK and my understanding was that it was not possible for the two parties to simply agree to have a divorce.

I had to sign a paper where I agreed I committed all sorts of "faults" just for the court to process the thing and make the divorce official. To me it doesn't matter -- the legal system of the UK is archaic regardless. A divorce is nothing more than a contract agreeing to share financial and child responsibilities.

They were quite uncooperative as well to get the paperwork necessary to register the divorce elsewhere in the EU, but that might have breen Brexit.

When was that?

The law was changed from 2022 (I delayed starting my divorce proceedings by a few months to benefit from it) and we now have no-fault divorce. Essentially, all it needs is for one party to want to divorce and the a certain lapse of time after you married. The only grounds for opposing it are very narrows ones like jurisdiction.

The divorce case is separate from those over money and children which are also optional. You can just have informal agreements over both unless someone wants to go to court. That is why I spent very little time in court - in fact the divorce itself happened with need to attend hearings with the application made through the family court website.

Even before the change judges would try and find for an allegation of a fault (usually "unreasonable behaviour") and most lawyers advised clients not to contest divorces. One lawyer I consulted told me that in the previous 20 years he dealt with one contested divorce (contesting the end of the marriage that is, obviously going to court over child and financial arrangements is common).

Was before 2022 indeed.

Yeah I hear the legal system is draconic in the UK for men. Men’s mental health in general seems like a joke in England. British TV: “men are four times more likely to commit suicide but how can they help women defeat sexism???”

Yes, and no. Mostly the issue is (as in many other countries) a tendency to assume children should be brought up by women, together with inadequate systems to enforce access after divorce.

On the other hand I have come across many cases where the less affluent former spouse (especially one who did not work while married to look after the children) does not get a fair amount of child support and these are mostly women. Not a problem in my case as I was the one who was earning and the primary parent.

The biggest criticism I would make is not of the courts, but society and the police do not take domestic abuse of men seriously. They also do not take emotional abuse such as controlling behaviour seriously despite it now being a crime. This is pervasive - the Crown Prosecution Service classifies domestic abuse as "violence against women and girls" and then mentions in passing that men can be victims too (40% of violent abuse victims, in fact, but you would not know that from their manuals).

I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point where we need male advocates.

I think we hit that point two decades ago and now it is so blindingly obvious that opinion is beginning to change.

because of the rates of physical abuse of men against women vs vice versa?

“Spousal abuse” is more than just hitting, it’s psychological and emotional stuff too. Male police officers, due to work related trauma, have high rates of spousal abuse. But even higher rates are found among lesbians. It’s made a lot of researchers rethink what’s going on.

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