Friday afternoons

[Just_Me]

Just an interesting snippet about divorce that also includes a little bit about "regrets".

There is no epidemic of divorced women who made the decision to file for divorce who now are saying: I should not have done that; I should not have filed for a divorce; I stupidly and frivolously was induced to file for a divorce merely because the option was available and it was a mistake. Here and there, maybe a few. But in the main?

Studies show that most women -- even when they were NOT the instigators of their marital breakups -- are measurably happier for being divorced, once the throes of litigation have passed and change is settled. The divorced disgruntleds -- a notable portion of them men, and a notable portion of them in the religious right anti-women's-rights movement and/or father's rights movements, and a notable portion of them abusers and controllers or otherwise the cause of the breakdown of their emotional marital relationship -- resent not having been granted the power to force their spouses to stay with them. But the spouses who divorced them did so after fully considering that the divorcers' own lives would be the better for it. And since no law in the land CURRENTLY can force one legally competent law-abiding adult human being to reside with another (let alone sleep in that other's bed), consider what "divorce reform" really means with regard to the engaging of techniques and devices and schemes of law to induce those individuals who otherwise would want to be divorced to "voluntarily" remain "married."

It will make them think harder about getting divorced? Bunk. This is paternalistic crap that presumes that women often make rash decisions on life-altering matters that they have not thought through thoroughly, even agonized over for long periods of time.

It will force them to "try harder" to work out their differences? Bunk. It's been proved through research that women typically don't give up on their marriages except after "trying everything" first to "fix" them, and that many women who file for divorce in fact never wanted to "be divorced" in the first place. (See Myths and Facts About Motherhood and Marriage.) And why should we be surprised? In our culture, it's often women moreso than men who, prior to experiencing it, want to be married! (Are they capricious loonies? Is this some kind of delayed post-partum psychosis? Or were they fed Cinderella stories too often in childhood...)

And also this last little snippet

Women's reasons for filing for divorce -- whatever they may be -- are not "frivolous." No human being's rational choice on an issue of this magnitute is frivolous because quite simply: NO one else has the right to say to a woman -- or to ANY person -- "your life as it is now is good enough for you."