10% If Her First Name Ends With an I

~ Laura

Terry Martin Hekker writes today’s Modern Love column of the Times. Terry is reeling from a nasty divorce.

So I was predictably stunned and devastated when, on our 40th wedding anniversary, my husband presented me with a divorce. I knew our first anniversary would be paper, but never expected the 40th would be papers, 16 of them meticulously detailing my faults and flaws, the reason our marriage, according to him, was over.

Terry was completely devoted her life to her family and community and even wrote a book about the virtues of at-home life. Suddenly, her husband ditched her, and then the divorce court kicked her in the ass leaving her with nothing. The judge advised her, at age 69, to undergo some job training.

Terry bitterly regrets doing all the work for her community and family and wishes she had protected herself better.

I think it is time to rehaul divorce laws.

If one spouse is entirely responsible for the childcare or takes a more flexible job in order to stay at home on sick days, then that person is entitled to 50% of the other spouse’s salary after being married for a long period of time. Yes, that 50% of future earnings.

The larger earning spouse is able to manage a high stress profession, because the other person does the pick up from childcare, the parent teacher meetings, takes the car for the tune up, and makes dinner for the family. His or her mind is free to be entirely devoted to work, because the personal life is ably managed at home. The lesser earning spouse might have worked to put the other through law school or medical school. Together they made an investment in the larger earning spouse. And both deserve compensation.

In addition, the lesser earning spouse has no chance of catching up. If she never worked, then she’s really in hot water. Who is going to hire a divorced woman in her late 50s?

In addition to the 50% of future earnings, I believe there should be other penalties added on for malice and poor taste. If the man leaves his long time wife for another woman, he loses another 5%. If the other woman is younger, another 5%. If the other woman is the same age as the kids from the first marriage, it’s 10%. If the bimbo’s name ends in an “i” and the scumbag met her at Hooters, it’s another 10% off.

Anyhow, that’s how it would work in my court. Ann Crittenden had an excellent chapter on all this in The Price of Motherhood.

Published by Laura

47 thoughts on “10% If Her First Name Ends With an I”

  1. I saw this article in the paper and knew it was a lead pipe cinch you would post on it. Marriages end and there is betrayal and heartbreak and also you have to think how to handle the finances fairly.
    Now I am a tubby middle-aged guy with a LOT of scalp showing through my hair, and it’s been six years since anyone tried to pry me loose from my marriage vows (she failed, by the way) and my wife makes just less than three times what I make. And my wife and I have young children, so my perspective is a little different and forms around taking care of the kids, and only secondarily taking care of fairness to the adults.
    Once you make sure the kids are doing as well as they can out of the wreckage, you can think about the adults. Here in Virginia, as far as I know, there is an even division of property acquired during the marriage, which seems fair, and there may well be alimony in a case (paid-his-way- through-law-school-the-lowlife, e.g.) like the one in your post. If Mister Scumbag is off to Cancun with Brandi Of The Perky Bazongas, probably he has hidden some money before the divorce, and her lawyer should have worked to find whether that’s the case.
    I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that people will take a financial hit after a divorce – maintaining two households instead of one is costly. And being a stay-at-home spouse is riskier than it ought to be.

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  2. The inequality can persist after the divorce, too.
    In order to provide 24 hour child care coverage, I went to nursing school and started working nights. My second husband works days.
    Meanwhile my first husband is still sheltered from taking the kids to school; picking them up; taking them to the doctor, dentist, and orthodontist; school breaks, days off, and “admninistrative half-days;” and going after them when the school calls. And he can tell me “I won’t be taking the kids for the next 2 weekends because I’m taking my second wife on vacation.”
    I also don’t have the freedom to move to find a better job or cheaper housing, because I would be denying him visitation. Thus I am living in Manhattan so HE can work in the financial industry…but I don’t share in the bonus.

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  3. And for every year after the kids are out of the house that she does nothing other than “maintain the house”, she loses 1%. Yes, it’s silly to for her to retrain at 67, but it would have been sensible back at 43.

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  4. But Kate, what about at 43, they as a couple began working on house projects, going back to school, etc. Her unpaid work was supposedly valued and respected by her husband. They built a good life together, through both their hard work just in different areas.
    Then for her 55th birthday he comes home and informs her he has met a woman at work, and wants her to move out of the house. She does because frankly buying her out gives her some cash. She gets community property, but has to fight to get part of his retirement and everything else. There is no alimony. She goes to work as a teller in a bank and moves into a small apartment so that she has some money left when she can no longer work. Meanwhile, new wife moves into the house and vacation house that she spent 37 years building and creating. Her kids still have the option of going to the family home they grew up in for holidays, but it’s no longer their family there. It’s new wife’s.
    This is my aunt. Seriously, she married at 18, was a mother at 19. She spent her life devoted to husband and children and community. Her husband became an engineer, they were upper middle-class. Everyone thought they were the ideal couple. She is 60 years old, underemployed by her intellect. (Every college course she took during her marriage was for interest only, not a degree, she didn’t think she needed it.) When I think of what happened to her life I get really angry. Her husband’s new wife quit working when they married too, because he liked having someone at home.

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  5. What strikes me about these stories is the sheer, appalling selfishness of the husbands. I don’t think we should abolish no-fault divorce – research* has shown that it actually benefits women more than not – but I think a selfish spouse ought to pay AND be stigmatized.
    Why do some husbands (and wives, I’m sure) say, in effect, “Forty years down the drain and a family traumatized? And you know what? I DON’T CARE a whit! Tralala, it’s all about ME and MY selfish pleasure!” I think this is the root of the problem and is something no divorce law can fully address.

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  6. In all this fury, let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s the women who are twice as likely to initiate divorce, including older women. So there are just as many, if not more, stunned, dumped older men as there are women. Although they may not be as bad off financially, they may have something to say about having worked and slaved at a job they hated for 30 years to support their wives and their kids
    Interesting piece about it…
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/06/LVGJ96V2G61.DTL

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  7. Yeah, but Allison, that article was misleading. After listening to the author tell me that she ended her marriages because she pined for love, that’s not why most women are ending marriages. She gives these figures:
    Why are people older than 40 filing for divorce? The AARP study found that the top three reasons for women were: physical or emotional abuse (23 percent), drug and alcohol abuse (18 percent) and infidelity (17 percent). Men said they sought divorces because they fell out of love (17 percent), they had different values or lifestyles (14 percent) or infidelity (14 percent).
    Women are ending marriages for good reasons — abuse or infidelity. They weren’t leaving for younger men; Ashton Kutcher is taken. Women should walk out when abused, and society should make help these women as much as possible.
    Those numbers tells us that a large percentage of divorce is happening because guys have found love at Hooters.
    Marriage is about more than undying love. It’s also an excellent way to pool resources and avoid duplicating work. When one person assumes the less profitable work, it’s because they assume that they have a contractual relationship that will protect their interests. In every other aspect of our society, if someone breaks a contract, they must pay the price. Marriage should work the same way. If you break the contract for frivolous reasons, you must pay the price.

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  8. The no-fault divorce research I was referring to is by Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson; google “Wolfers Stevenson divorce” and you should find it.
    While fairly easy divorce has been a boon to abused women, it also seems to have encouraged (mostly) men to leave their relationships for frivolous reasons. In my more disgruntled-radical-feminist moments, I think easy divorce ought to be something only women should have access to. Certainly divorce ought to be something taken extremely seriously by men and women alike. Divorce because a marriage has become intolerable is one thing; “all about MEEEEE” divorces are inexcusable.
    Finally, I wonder if the men who dump their wives for Brandis, Candis and Sandis realize that this is very likely to alienate them from their kids. Very possibly forever.

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  9. Lisa V, I’m not exactly sure what you’re arguing – that people who lead a charmed life for some period of time are then entitled for it to extend until death? I understand that your aunt might consider spending three weeks trying to pick out the perfect shade of granite for the kitchen redo in the vacay home might be “valuable work”, but I’m arguing that divorce courts shouldn’t.

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  11. Kate, that is really a very simplistic view of what my aunt and many women do, completely belittling. She raised four children, took care of her elderly in-lawa until their deaths (changing adult diapers is not what I would consider a charmed life.) She cooked, she cleaned, she did his laundry, she held was what kept his head above water during his vast depression. And she didn’t decorate the damn houses, she designed their construction and acted as a general contractor. She built not just homes, but a life for her and her family, and expected she would get to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

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  12. Thanks, Anne. Yeah, totally with you, too. I think that women should try to prepare themselves, but it’s really hard. Even women that do work full time after kids, often switch to less demanding work, which pays less. They tend to not get raises or promotions because they are always leaving at 5:00 to get the kids from daycare. Women without kids make almost what a man makes. Women with kids make much less.
    re: your point about feminism and motherhood. I didn’t get that she was dissing feminism altogether, but maybe I missed that. I do think that feminism could do a better job of addressing the particular needs of mothers.
    Kate, I am not sure what to say to you, because you have such a skewed picture of what the average stay at home parent does. My neighbor has 3 kids who are, for the first time, all in school at the same time. While the kids are in school, she does all the laundry, buys the food, buys the kids new socks, returns phone calls to the school, deals with the special education bureaucracy to help her oldest son, and helps out with her husband’s paperwork for his paving company. It’s not long before the kids come home at 3:00, when she has to convince three kids to do homework, supervise playtime, etc…
    She doesn’t have a degree. She would only get a $25,000 a year secretarial job at best, and there would the expense of 3 kids in after school daycare.
    She and her husband have a deal. That by being home full time, it is better for the family. If he should leave her ten years from now, she would be royally screwed. If he breaks this deal, he should pay the price.

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  13. Isn’t the solution to make the IMplied contract EXplicit? Why not make pre-nups mandatory?
    Stay-at-home spouses should also have their own investment accounts and insist on getting a fair share put away in their own names. In fact I’m all in favor of putting all the real estate in the wife’s name only, especially if the couple’s retirement benefits are in the husband’s.
    But there’s nothing like working through the what-if scenarios with a lawyer to make starry-eyed love birds realize what they’re getting into. In fact, if that straying older husband had to look over a contract he signed 40 years ago showing x% of their assets going to the first wife for every year of marriage, they might not leave in the first place.

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  14. “I do think that feminism could do a better job of addressing the particular needs of mothers.”
    Yes, me too, but for this to happen more mothers need to be feminists.

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  15. I’m a huge fan of pre-nups. My husband and I have talked about a post-nup, now that we actually have communal property and he has an income that could get divided up.
    more mothers need to be feminists Not sure what you mean by that. If you mean that more mothers need to help define feminist thought and make other women more aware of the needs of the mothers, then yes. Totally. There shouldn’t be the divide between the interests and experiences of women with kids and women without kids. Mothers need to demand a place for themselves at the feminist table.

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  16. I’m jumping in again – responding to Laura – there should be, and is, a divide between the interests of the women, and men, ending marriages and the interests of the children left behind. And the divorce courts should heed the interests of the children, and do what they need to to the pursuit of happiness of each parent to ensure that the kids come out as well as can be.
    And I agree with the commenter who talked about the staggering irresponsibility of the people who walk out on their families, usually but by no means always men.

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  17. I think easy divorce ought to be something only women should have access to.
    How about just abused people? There is a difference between easy divorce and no-fault divorce. A divorce from an abuser should be easy. A no-fault divorce should be very hard.

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  18. [i]…but for this to happen more mothers need to be feminists.[/i]
    I have found myself become much more active in feminism since becoming a mother, mainly because of these issues.
    A couple of the members in my mom’s group discussion list brought up this site, which I thought was very interesting (Lorna Wendt’s story is similar to Hekker’s, but with a much better ending): http://www.equalityinmarriage.org/d/News/headlines.html

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  20. No, MC, I hadn’t read it. Thanks for the tip.
    Sandy, thanks also for the link to that site. I had heard of that woman before. Ann Crittenden talks about her in depth in her book. I also became more interested in feminist theory after I had kids. After 9 months at home, I read Betty Friedan cover to cover for the first time. Motherhood woke up the angry bitch in me.
    Dave S. Yes, of course the kids should come first. This discussion was mostly about the predicament of older women, who have grown kids. But even when the kids are young, the kids’ interests are best served if there mother isn’t shafted in divorce court.
    I am very interested in learning more about this topic, so I will read that Burggraf book. I want to know what happened to alimony. Why has there been this backslide? Why haven’t feminist organizations protected the rights of older women in divorce proceedings? Why is it that when I read the other blogs discuss this article, the dominant reaction is “Ha. She should have known better.” or “She got what she deserved.” None of these women bloggers ever wrote “What a scumbag that guy was.” I’m very puzzled by that.

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  21. “Why is it that when I read the other blogs discuss this article, the dominant reaction is “Ha. She should have known better.” or “She got what she deserved.” None of these women bloggers ever wrote “What a scumbag that guy was.” I’m very puzzled by that.”
    I hear you. To see some younger women almost exulting in the sight of a 65-year old woman deprived of health insurance is unedifying, to say the least.
    She married in the 1950s, for god’s sake. She fulfilled her part of the marital bargain that obtained for men and women of that generation. When the rules changed, she would have been well into her forties or even fifties, and could reasonably have expected that the new rules for were a newer, younger generation of men and women. What’s striking is not only the hostility toward the wife (she deserves to be punished), but also, as you point out, the lack of hostility toward the husband (he deserves to be rewarded). Wasn’t he part of that bargain, too? If punishment is deserved (note: I don’t believe this for a minute), why should it be meted out to only one of the two parties to that bargain?
    Burggraf is good on what happened to alimony.

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  23. When I was studying family law I noticed an anomoly regarding alimony (or actually maintenance as it’s called in my state): The woman had a better chance of getting half or more of the marital estate if she had done NOTHING to improve her chances in the workforce. That is, if a wife had taken a few courses or dallied around with this or that job, she was deemed able to support herself, resulting in unfair disparities in the property settlement. (Maintenance was usually set at a max 5 years anyway.) Ideally the wife would have a high school or less education, no skills, and be old, and of course have a good lawyer. But it didn’t seem to pay to look ahead and prepare for divorce “just in case.”

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  24. Many commentators on Hekker, Hirshman, and the rest of the articles have mentioned the idea of the domestic sphere as both female and devalued.
    The flipside of this is: if “family” is exclusively women’s concern and not all that important, is it any wonder that we get men who don’t hesitate to discard long-term marriages and break their childrens’ hearts all for a cute young bit of skirt? It’s obvious to me that someone who really cared for his “loved” ones would not do that.
    I believe that bringing men into the family circle, increasing their involvement with their children, and making marriages more egalitarian and based on friendship will decrease the divorce rate, and especially cut down on frivolous “we just fell out of love, boo hoo” divorces. Men who love their families will think not once, not twice, but a hundred times before running off with Brandi the Hooters waitress.
    This is what ran through my mind when I read Hekker’s piece. Sure, we could say that maybe Hekker ought to have kept her hand in the job market, just because nothing is guaranteed. But what really made me think was – what system produced a husband who could so blithely discard his family? And what can we do about it?

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  25. This is interesting to me b/c it came up recently in Canada: women have been taking their ex-spouses of many years to court for continuing support, arguing that it was not fair to expect them to retrain at 63 etc. And in some cases they won. I’ll see if I can find links….

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  26. *sigh* I can’t find them. But I know there were two cases last year where women had been divorced for a long time, spousal support agreements had run out, they went back for more, and got it. Which I thought was FABULOUS.

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  27. That newspaper article about the AARP report is misleading.
    Page 75 of the AARP report has a somewhat humorous chart that has 66% of the women saying the divorce was their idea and 21% of the women saying divorce was their spouse’s idea (like the article said); but it also has 41% of the men saying the divorce was their idea and 39% of the men saying that the divorce was their spouse’s idea.

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  28. That makes sense. The need to save face could definitely affect how people answer the survey.
    And thanks for the link. I’m still reading through the results and it’s just facinating. Apparently, African-Americans are much less freaked out getting divorced than whites and much more likely to enjoy having the house to themselves.
    Beanie Baby — thanks for the info on Canada. Why is our country always the furthest behind on these sort of issues?
    Allurophile — Really loved this comment – -I believe that bringing men into the family circle, increasing their involvement with their children, and making marriages more egalitarian and based on friendship will decrease the divorce rate, and especially cut down on frivolous “we just fell out of love, boo hoo” divorces. Men who love their families will think not once, not twice, but a hundred times before running off with Brandi the Hooters waitress.

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  29. Ailurophile’s comment is absolutely swell. And I’ve gone back and looked at Hekker’s piece again. So I’m thinking about my grandparents – paternal born 1890 and -94, maternal born 1890 and 1900. When they married, there was a clear notion of what the wife did and what the husband did, and if either spouse failed to keep the deal, there would be consequences. Partly legal/financial – alimony was lifelong, people had far less money and resources than they do today and maintaining two households was going to be draining – but a lot of it was social. A man who left his loyal wife was a cad. He would be shunned. Perky Brandi was a homewrecker. She would be shunned. Antique, those words sound, right? ‘cad’ ‘homewrecker’ – but it wasn’t going to be comfortable, for someone who broke the rules. Having a church home was important, being welcomed in Kiwanis, having the guys go fishing with you, Sodality, Oddfellows, Elks, bingo night. There was a fabric to society, and if you tore it, you had consequences. My father’s parents in particular had a marriage which was not all that fun, and – who knows? – potential consequences may have been part of why they stayed together.
    A lot of the posts here have a kind of morality play with the characters Mr Scumbag, Perky- Brandi- From- Hooters, Wronged- Wife- Not- Perky- Goddamnit- Because- She- Suckled- His- Children and then off-stage the kids suffering more or less from the abandonment depending in part on how old they were. Some of the suggestions are for beefing up the legal and financial consequences for ending a marriage (ten per cent more if he leaves her for a girl the age of his daughter!) and that’s kind of fun for the morality play aspect of all this.
    Hekker’s situation was utterly dire partly because her divorce happened so late – in their 60s. We don’t know too much from the article, but it looks like the couple had not accumulated that much money to be divided as community property, they still had a mortgage. They had put five kids through college, that may not leave you with much of a nest egg. She got the house. We don’t know how much the mister escaped with, except that he went off to Cancun with, who knows? maybe Perky Brandi. He must have been close to the end of his working life, too, though – there may not have been all that much blood to squeeze from that turnip.
    I think we’re not going to replace the cad- homewrecker sanctions from a simpler time. Too many options for making a nice life independent of Kiwanis and Sodality. Jacking up the cost to husbands of bailing can maybe do something, some of the time, but if you are in a house you have refinanced to the last ten thousand dollars of equity and Perky Brandi is beckoning, you can walk out and work for cash as a bartender or roofer and tell the ex to whistle for whatever a judge has told you to pay.
    Remaining in a marriage is, I think, going to be essentially voluntary from here on out. Ailurophile has it absolutely right on why people will want to stay in.

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  30. The writer who made the snide comments about at-home moms picking the color of granite for their kitchen is wrong. I am an at-home mom. I play and talk with my kids. I teach them. I write. I take them to interesting places that stimulate them. I talk with other at-home moms about interesting things and help in our community. I am especially proud of helping with a non-profit in our town for parents of children with disabilities and their families. This is not primarily fluff stuff. Sure I also have to do housework and cook — but that’s the major part of my life. Dont’ tell me employment means there is nothing superficial in your life. Tell that to my friends who tire of redundant uninteresting paperwork and meetings that go on and on without much really being done. Do not presume my life does not have as much meaning as a “working” mother’s does.

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  31. I read this piece in the Times on New Years Day. and it’s been aggravating me ever since. Here’s the other side of the story, from a man who is about to ask for a divorce.
    This woman is delusional! She apparently believes that she was the perfect wife and he left anyway. She takes no responsibility – NONE – for the alienation and loneliness that drove him out the door. And she believes he just woke up one day and frivolously wrote 14 pages of reasons why he was leaving. This is the definition of delusion.
    My wife is a terrific homemaker and mother, tremendously devoted. I worked hard, very hard, long hours for years to get us up to a very comfortable living. She told me she needed me to help more around the house – so I did. I did my small part – its just a fraction of what she does, but I only have a fraction of the time. So she asked me to be more involved with our 3 kids, and I did. At the end of a 14 hour day outside the home, I’d do homework and read books and get them to brush their teeth and tuck them in. And then she said you need to be more involved with the kids stuff – so I went to open school night, parent teacher conferences, soccer games, became a coach for baseball and soccer. And then she asked me not to finish up work AFTER DOING ALL THOSE THINGS because I was leaving her alone at the end of the night – and I said stop moving the damn bar, and realized I was never going to do enough to satisfy her.
    And I asked her to stop straightening the couch cushions and polishing the kitchen counter and come to bed with me – and she didn’t. And I asked her to get rid of a centerpiece on the kitchen table that I hated – and she didn’t. And I asked her to get rid of at least some of the 3000 knickknacks placed all over the house – and she didn’t. And I realized that despite all of my hard work, I lived in her house, on her terms, and had no say in what actuallly happened in her house. And that somehow, despite it all, I was now ranked below the couch cushions in order of value.
    So now I’m putting together my 14 page list of things that I’ll surprise her with after 19 years of marriage. And since we are in marriage counseling, I know that she takes no responsibility for our difficulties. Its all my fault.
    So let’s not hang the husband out to dry, because I put my life on hold for the sake of our marriage, our home, and our kids -just like the whiny stay-at-home wife who wrote this piece did. Now I live in a home that I pay for but isn’t mine, with a wife who is more interested in air freshener design improvements than in spending 5 minutes hugging – and my reward will be living in a fleabag 1 bedroom flat on rent-a-center furniture and asking permission to see my kids.
    So shut up and take responsibility. If it takes 2 people to build a healthy marriage, it takes 2 to destroy one.

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  32. JR —
    I think that the author of the article did say that she wasn’t perfect and that she made mistakes, too.
    I’m not a marriage counselor and a couple of short paragraphs can’t sum up all the problems you have. Still, I hope that before you guys get divorced, you give it one more shot. Go away on vacation together, without the kids, the 14 hour job, and the center piece on the kitchen table. If there is any scrap of hope there, maybe make some radical changes in your life. Ditch the 14 hour job for something with more reasonable hours. (It is a bit sad that you resent your wife for asking you to spend time with your kids. You are clearly overworked.) If you can’t pay the mortgage payments with a lesser job, then move. If you guys are having turf wars over the house and the stupid pillows, then buy a new house and redecorate together.
    I hope that you both work jointly to improve things, because nobody wants you in a fleabag. Good luck.

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  33. Laura –
    Thank you for the kind response, and you are right that a couple of paragraphs doesn’t get at it.
    My major gripe with the article is about tone: she’s the long-suffering wife who’s been cancelled, and he’s the alcoholic who dumped her on a whim. As someone who hasn’t slept in a year-and-a-half, wracked with worry over the decision that I have to initiate, I say: life ain’t like that. My reward for wanting to be happy will be to lose the house, the kids, the money, the friends, and just about everything else I’ve worked my whole life to gain. And while life won’t be a bowl of cherries for her either, at least she’ll be respected and maybe even pitied – I’ll just be a jackass.
    I have ditched the 14 hour job for a consulting gig. It’s more hit and miss, with a monstrous commute when I’m at the head office, and a little bit more travel, but I can work at home at least some of the time and can usually plan my day to be where I need to be, with kids, therapists, marriage counselors, et al. I don’t resent my wife for asking me to spend more time with the kids. I resent her for not recognizing that there is a tradeoff: if I am home with the kids during “working hours” for games, concerts and PTA meetings, I sometimes need to work for a bit after those things are done. And business trips, client dinners and late night work are not “abandoning her”, they are the price of admission to the new job.
    Leaving is my decision, and I’m not happy about it. Counseling has only made things worse, because now instead of quietly accepting things as they are and suffering with insomnia, I moved first to resentment and now anger. Anger at myself for allowing her, slowly but surely, to replace “me” with her vision of what I should be. And anger with her for failing to accept that my action is a logical outgrowth of the behaviours of BOTH of us.
    The ultimate factor leading me to leaving however is respect, for her and for me. In early 2005, for the first time after 20 years together, I met someone else (and its 15% because her first name ends with an “i”, she’s 15 years younger than I, and she is an exotic dancer). Our relationship was never physical, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t cheating. After a few great months of talking about life and enjoying each other’s company and mooning about the future we could have had if things were different, she moved on. And then I met someone else, someone whose name doesn’t end in an ‘i’, and whom I met through a professional acquaintance. And again, although it was never consummated, it was cheating. And again, she left me. But this time it was because she didn’t want to share me.
    And I decided I have to leave because I realized there’d be another, and another, until I either got caught or found someone willing to be a mistress. And that’s not how a marriage should end – its not what any of us deserve. It doesn’t show her the appropriate respect and I forfeit my self-respect. That outcome would allow her to believe that I was trading her in for a younger model; what I’m really doing is trading her perfect version of me for the real thing.
    So my issue with this writer is not only that she doesn’t take responsibility for her failings as a wife that contributed to the demise of the relationship, but also that she believes her husband was acting frivolously and thoughtlessly. After 40 years, she may have a right to be bitter, but she’d better give him a bit more credit than that.

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  34. Ah, JR, I was feeling empathetic until you spilled about the exotic dancer.
    Any woman whose husband leaves her for a 25-YO with an “i” in her name is bitter about two things: she’s been dumped, and society offers her husband the opportunity to hook up with someone new, but does not provide such an opportunity to her. It’s the unfairness of it all, you see. That’s why SAHMs flip out over the Younger Woman Scenario, in a way the working parent never will. Because the working dad runs no equivalent risk of being traded in.
    Say what you will, JR, but you didn’t leave your wife until the young hottie turned up. So if it hadn’t been for the existence of the younger woman, you would still be married. (Not claiming you’d be happy, but you would be married, and presumably working at it.)

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  35. Jen,
    I’m not looking for empathy, and I’m not proud of my behaviour. If I wanted empathy I’d never have brought it up.
    I’m not leaving my wife for a young hottie – she’s come and gone and we haven’t spoken in months. And the 2nd woman I met is not a young hottie – she’s more or less the same age that my wife and I are. In neither case were we ever more than friends who might have been something more if things had been different.
    My issue is that there is something missing from my life with my SAHM that these other freindships/near-miss romances bring. My wife represents the illusion of the perfect wife – wonderful homemaker, great mom, actively involved in everything. But she forgot something pretty important – me. She believed that all these things were what would make me happy, when what I really want is conversation, intimacy, affection, and an interest in the things that matter to me. She wanted me to change to help her around the house and with the kids, so I did. And she felt “unappreciated” for all the things she was doing. But these were all things she did for herself, believing they were the things I wanted. And she wouldn’t listen when I told her I wanted a dirtier house and takeout Chinese if it meant I could have an extra five minutes with her.
    These women aren’t the reason I’m leaving. That’s too pat an answer. But they are the reason that I know the difference between what I accepted as the way things were, and the new me that does not accept the status quo.
    My issue with the article is two-fold. One, she expressed her love for him through her home, her parenting, and her comuunity service, and I’ll give even money those were things that were WAY more important to her than to him, and then wondered why he would leave her. Two, her assumption that he traded her in for a chippie, when what he really did was look for someone that would care about him on his terms, not hers.
    This writer neither accepts the possibility that her focus was on the wrong things, and worse, assumes that his leaving was easy.

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  36. JR – I’m not Dr. Phil, but I just think that getting a divorce over centerpieces and PTA meetings is a little crazy. How does it happen that these new women in your life know the real you, but the woman you’ve been with for years doesn’t? Can’t you guys make radical changes in your lifestyle to make you more happy? Stop going to the PTA meetings. Take better vacations. It sounds like your wife really wants to spend time with you, even if it comes off as nagging.
    However, it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind. I don’t want to be too hard on you, JR, because you sound genuinely tortured and unhappy, but I agree with Jen. You might have less money and weekend visits with the kids, but you know that you’ll find new companions after a divorce. The promise of new love is a factor in your decision to go.
    Your comment has been bothering me all day, JR, because I think you are looking for approval and guidance . I hope that you can find someone to help you out. I’m just a blogger after all, and you need a non-virtual advisor.
    And, yeah, Jen. It is totally unfair that men have more options than women. My best friend’s 18 year old niece just admitted to herself that she was 5 months pregnant. Now at 18, she’s had to tell her mother, figure out how to graduate on time, and decide that she should have to choose a practical career like nursing, instead of becoming a designer. The 17 year old who knocked her up already has another girlfriend, didn’t tell his parents, and won’t contribute one cent to raising the kid.
    This whole business is unfair.

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  37. JR – you responded before I could plug in my reply.
    This writer neither accepts the possibility that her focus was on the wrong things, and worse, assumes that his leaving was easy.
    The writer didn’t go into great depth about the reason for their split. The point of the article was that she was left with means to support herself after 40 years of marriage. She focused on her family and community, because that was expected of her not only by her husband, but by society at that time. By working on those things, she was left without a means to support herself in her later years after a divorce. She wrote this article to warn other full time parents that they are putting themselves in a risky position.
    My riff on her piece was that she should be awarded alimony after 40 years of marriage and because she and her husband had a deal. The bit about Brandi and Mandi was just silliness, because I can’t help myself.
    I hope your wife has some job skills.

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  38. Laura,
    I wanted to give your last comments some thought before responding. I agree that the point of the piece was that the author was left high-and-dry from the perspective of the divorce court and her earnings potential. Her choice to be a SAHM had ramifications on her post-marraige life that were largely unpredictable at the time she married, because they were unimaginable.
    Which doesn’t change my underlying point, however. Today’s SAHM is making a choice, and they are doing it with eyes open. And what and how a SAHM chooses to live her married life will have an impact on outcomes. The author doesn’t comprehend that her choices within the context of being a SAHM impacted her husband. You wrote that she “completely devoted her life to her family and community and …. Suddenly, her husband ditched her.” What you never ask, which I hoped to shed light on, is: if she were so devoted to her family and community, WHY would he ditch her?
    In my case, my SAHM wife has made the same commitments, and has prodded and encouraged me to do the same. It was a little tougher for me because I am an introvert, a workaholic, and a child of a broken home with a series of poor male role models. But the breakdown eventually came when I realized that the things that made her a happy SAHM had alienated me as a husband. The parenting, the homemaking, the community involvement left no time for us to be “man and wife”. I spent years avoiding the problem, through commitment to work and other things, and convincing myself that this was what a “real man” was.
    I started suffering from insomnia 20 months ago or so, and started therapy once it was determined there was no phsical reason. Around the same time, I met the girl with the i in her name, and soon after began marital counseling. Through all this, I discovered my own delusion: that as much as I recognized all the great values of my SAHM, I was dissatisfied with the “man and wife” part of our marriage.
    The objectionable part of the author’s piece was the following: “Turns out we had a lot in common with our outdated kitchen appliances. Like them we were serviceable, low maintenance, front loading, self-cleaning and (relatively) frost free. Also like them we had warranties that had run out. Our husbands sought sleeker models with features we lacked who could execute tasks we’d either never learned or couldn’t perform without laughing.” And my reaction was: with that kind of attitude, you wonder why your husband left? A woman who figured out how to raise children and grandchildren across 4 decades, run a home, and devote time to the community never figured out that learning how to adapt as a woman with her husband was equally important? And I’m sure if you asked him, he’d say: how come you can handle everything life throws at you, but when I bring something up about “us”, its laughable.
    In my case, my wife got parenting and homemaking and community involvement and family and friends right. But she missed on being the woman I need, and didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t change to make me feel important and valued as a man.
    And so I stand at the crossroads, and I use centerpieces, air fresheners and couch cushions as illustrative devices of how I feel marginalized in my own home as a man. I am a good father, a good provider, and a kind and caring person. And totally dissatisfied with the relationship with my SAHM wife.
    By the way, about your other comments. I asked my wife what she wanted for XMas, and she described a romantic day trip to NYC – carriage ride in the park, etc. Then she added “with the kids”. And I knew at that moment she could never change, because she truly did not understand the problem.
    My emotions are on overdrive. Like so many men who were raised by single, working moms, I swore I would never do the same to my kids. Only when I realized that my absentee father was the problem did I realize that I had the ability to seek a better love relationship and still be a good father. I’m not running from or to anything, and I’ll not allow financial difficulties to prevent my kids from having anything. I’m not ducking responsiblity. But I have a right to find happiness, and I can’t find it in this home with this woman.
    I’m very sad that it came to this, but I can’t spend my life as a facade – happy father, husband, community leader on the outside, but feeling isolated, alone and abandoned at home.
    Hate to bust the bubble of anyone, but that’s how this man feels right before he “frivolously” divorces his SAHM.
    And let’s remember, when the words “til death do us part” were written, folks were dead by 45.

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  39. Dude – Does your therapist let you get away with this stuff? Get a new one.
    When you asked your wife about the vacation and she said the wrong thing, did you try to explain to her that you needed alone time? Probably not. You probably have not explained to your wife that you are unhappy with your bourgeois lifestyle — the materialism and community busy work — because you really don’t have an interest in making things work. She’s failing and doesn’t know why, but now you have a handy excuse for leaving. She’s a Martha.
    You want to resume your workaholic-frat boy life. You might not have the suburban house after the divorce, but you can return to your single bachelor pad that comes furnished with a great stereo, a bong, and a young hottie. Poor you.
    Accept responsibility, dude. You might care for your kids financially, but you will be screwing them up emotionally, if you take off. You want no part of commitment, because you have a nice alternative waiting for you. You can vacate the responsibility towards your kids, because you know your wife will pick up the slack.
    Being tortured and sleepless doesn’t make your ultimate decision anymore despicable. It doesn’t cleanse a faulty choice.
    It’s a nice thing to be happy, but there is no right to happiness. You have also failed to show me that you have been willing to make adjustments in your current life to get there. You just want freedom from commitment. You should have never gotten married.
    I’m sorry that you are so unhappy, but my blog is not the appropriate place to look for a pat on the head. I’m using my blogger’s privilege and shutting down comments on this thread. Good luck.

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  40. Risky choices

    When Terry Martin Hekker’s Modern Love column (non-select link, thanks to Jody) was published at the start of the month, Mieke emailed me to ask if I was going to blog about it. I sort of shrugged, and emailed back

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