Men's view of being divorced for not sharing the load

[TheAmusedQuail]

It isn't really like me to be interested in the bloke's POV, because I'm firmly feminist.

But I do like to have a view of both perspectives on things in life (e.g. although left-wing, I do take a gander at, for example, Reform perspectives despite vehemently disagreeing with them).

I wonder about the perspective of men who women leave for not adequately contributing to the family load (housework, childcare, mental load). From my POV, my ex, while useless with me, wised up a little with his 2nd wife. Not totally, leopards don't change their spots, but he's not the asshole he was while I was married to him.

I wonder how other men who are divorced for being lazy etc rationalise it and feel about it. Do they regret coasting into marital breakdown because they didn't share the housework? For not doing more of the parenting? For not cooking a couple of times a week?

I have suspicions about how this gets framed by them, but there must be other men like my ex (who is no paragon of virtue) who wise up a bit and hold themselves culpable.

My DH got better when his own son set him an example!

That's fabulous! Well done to your son. Was it leading by example or shaming DH into it?

My ex continued to be useless until he remarried, when he seemed to shape up. But I think this is down to his new wife being a very different person to me. She put her foot down and insisted that he do his part and would not accept anything less - good for her. I let him get away with murder because he would get arsey and argumentative with me if I tried to get him to help. We had kids (who stayed with me, and he didn't see much of them when he left) and apparently that was 'my job' He didn't have to help at all. With his second wife he was much older and they had no children so getting him to be an equal partner might have been a touch easier.

But I think it was really down to me being a bit beaten down and submissive and his second wife (RIP, she was a cracking lady) standing up to him and not being afraid to make him shape up.

Some of them do start paying attention to this when on their 2nd or 3rd wives (they finally got the message lol).

It's astonishing though that the vast majority of men would rather get a divorce and lose half their house, pay CM, lose half their savings, half their pension, live less comfortably and see their kids a lot less than to do their share of domestic work. The mind boggles - they know how it will end and still they do it. When will they ever learn?

Yes, this happened to a friend of mine. Did absolutely nothing when married to her. Would take the children out occasionally, but all baby stuff was left to her, and household. He left her for another woman, went on to have another three children with her and she did not tolerate his incompetence. She would go out and do her own things leaving him in sole charge, have nights out after work so he couldn’t just work late or go to the pub. Not sure if he actually learned anything or just had to face reality!

My good friend is currently divorcing her H for this very reason. I strongly suspect, from the things that have been said, that he has buried his head in the sand for years. He earns very well and is pretty much a workaholic. He sees it that he has worked his backside off to provide for his family. Which he has. But in the midst of all of that, he chose not to listen to her. For years.

He has also thrown the menopause as a factor in their separation. But doesn’t understand that she has been worn down after years of trying to get him to work as a team. Marriage counselling failed as he saw it as a means to an end - turn up and get her off his back.

But according to him, he has done everything to support his family. He just can’t see that the salary on its own wasn’t enough.

Oh and he is only mid 40s and still in very good shape. I strongly suspect that there will be a new, younger gf quite soon. Then a new family. And he will be a better husband to her. If this happens, it will deeply hurt my friend.

Interesting that some of these men shape up with a second wife. I wonder if it's less the case that the second wife is better at standing her ground and more the case that the man has to face up to the reality that the first wife's expectations were totally normal. I wonder if they dismissed their first wives as being unreasonable nags, only to realise that they were indeed the problem when their 2nd wives took issue with the same stuff.

My exh apologised to me, for not understanding just what it takes to run a household, not just cooking but everything plus I worked pt- he begrudged i wasn’t full time but afterwards he said he knew there was no way I could maintain the household including dd with Sen, work more than I did outside the home without affecting him and his career. I got a good divorce settlement

I think it's a combination of factors. My ex definitely thought it was me. Thought I was unreasonable, that we could live in shit because he wasn't doing more housework because I just happened to have higher standards than him (I'm NOT houseproud!).

He was broken by our divorce though. And when the same thing started to repeat itself with the new wife, I think he must have wised up a bit.

I also think there is an issue of men just growing up a LOT later than women. I'd say my ex wasn't a real adult until at least his mid 40s. Whereas I had to grow up at 20 when we had our child. Having a kid definitely didn't force adult-hood upon him!

I wonder about all this with my ex. Apparently he got a cleaner which I guess isn't surprising. But he still doesn't manage to have clean clothes in the right sizes for the kids when they're at his, or look after them in other ways. I wonder whether his new partner notices this and what she thinks. Or maybe he's concentrating on her and their new child and that's all she cares about. Can't really ask though, but intrigued about how it's playing out and will over time...

My DH is definitely a better husband to me and father to our children than he was to his ex and his older children, I often feel guilty about that.

He tried his shite in the early days when ours were babies but I made it clear he shape up or fuck off, I could never have stayed married to the version of him that appeared after we had kids.

I was just thinking that I wonder if a lot of it comes down to the marriage / dynamics of the relationship rather than a man just being "useless".

We read a lot on here about women who put up with A LOT. There are several threads running even today from women who do absolutely everything from childcare, looking after pets, cleaning the house, cooking but apart from complain about it, don't really do anything to address the problem.

There are always comments on these threads along the lines of "no way would I be putting up with that" and I think that's the difference... I have friends who do literally everything, whinge about doing everything, but then when you tell them to speak to their husband they go "oh it's not worth the hassle" or "he won't change so what's the point".

I'm not blaming the women by the way, I just think that it often works both ways and like you say @Thatwaskindoffun , if you lay your cards down from day one then it just makes life a lot easier and clearer for everyone!

My ex husband continued to be useless, claim I was a terrible mother for whatever reason took his fancy that day, then found a new partner who presumably took on everything again. He’s not had his daughter overnight or over for tea for over 3 years and it took 11 years to get any maintenance out of him.

When I divorced him it was based on being separated for whatever the legal minimum time was back then, and I said off the cuff “you’re lucky it wasn’t for unreasonable behaviour” and he responded “I wasn’t that bad was I?”. He was also abusive alongside being a shit parent and partner (surprise!), so my flabber was indeed gasted.

Leopards don’t change their spots.

I think the majority of them don’t think or reflect at all.

They just get arsey and/or properly aggressive when anyone asks them to do anything, and moan that it’s all so unfair.

That feels rather unfair and probably mostly inaccurate. I think many of us went / are going through the process of trying again and again to explain and negotiate and rectify things and establish some balance we can live with, in everyone's interests. And this includes being very clear about what's unacceptable.

It's incredibly damaging and eventually it cannot be sustained. It seems more likely that having experienced the reality check of consequences the first time round, these men listen better and actually react meaningfully the second time.

Leading by example and living far more equally with his long term partner. He often cooks when he comes home.

IMHO they just are very entitled, think their ex wives nag and if they get emotional/ upset call them " crazy"
They just think women are there to serve them with housework, cooking and sex

I don’t think it’s a choice in the way you’ve framed it. They often don’t think their wife would ever leave them (especially if she’s made herself finically dependent) and get very, very complacent. Then, inevitably, there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back - often something relatively trivial - and she leaves him. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

I think fewer and fewer women are tolerating unequal partners, especially as so many women contribute financially to the household (often as the breadwinner). The generation of men who are under 30 will more than likely have grown up with a mother who has always worked so will not have the same misogynistic expectations as older men who likely grew up with a SAHM. So I do think things will change for the better.

My ex had a specific issue which he felt I was totally unreasonable about. It was part of his reason to break up with me.

In a subsequent relationship, his issue was turned back on him, and boy did he not like it!

I saw him after that relationship broke down and he admitted that he had been wrong to insist on it when with me, and he hadn't understood how it really felt till he experienced it. Pyrrhic victory for me though, the damage had been done and there was no way we could reconcile romantically.

Your thread made me think of this article.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink_b_9055288/amp

I think they tell themselves that the relationship breakdown absolutely wasn’t their fault. That the wife didn’t have sex with them often enough, she nagged etc. Despite the ex having told them that they didn’t pull their weight numerous times and explaining it’s hardly conducive to an active sex life. I think they do behave a little better next time because they are more scared of having to start all over again but not because they are sorry or have realised their failings. If they were recognising this then lots of us would be commenting “He apologised years later.” and we’re not.

Agree and a lot of the time the 2nd wife is a bit more naive (men love that) and believes the narrative that the ex is crazy so goes above and beyond and puts up with some crap because she doesn’t want the relationship to fail and let the ‘crazy ex win’ or she wants him to think she is better or simply she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy thinking of ways to hate the ex. They also get massively involved in the argument that the man usually creates about his children with his ex wife, helping their new husband to battle the ‘wicked ex.’ And before you know it 5 years have passed, the new wife didn’t realise her husband is a lazy twat and now has to either put up and shut up or start over again herself. And she has the added insult of knowing she was told but didn’t listen or she ‘stole’ him in the first place. In all of that men are the villain through lies and manipulation.

I think there's truth here. I contacted an ex boyfriend after a decade and he said sorry he wasn't quite the great boyfriend he made himself out to be.

I thought - ha someone else has learned him.

I always ended up being 'the one before the one' for my partners. I don't even think my standards are that high 😂.

It could also be because a man with children sees his wife cooking, cleaning up after, laundering etc for the children and starts thinking of her as the housekeeper/ maid. And treating her accordingly.

Also, generally, men know that their child's mum won't let the child suffer (be late for school, go to bed hu ngry, not get to the party etc) so they can safely let go of the rope.

I can't remember who said it - marriage is an invention to keep lower- class men content by providing them with all the perks and services upper-class men get; but, while the aristo gets a range of servants as well as a wife, the pleb gets just the wife, whonhas to do it all.