Marriages don’t last anymore because..

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Had a debate with an colleague about why divorce seems so much more common now.

They said that in past generations, couples stayed together because they wanted to work through things and were more committed to making relationships last. I said I think it’s mainly because women have more freedom and independence now. Yes, most of the childcare still falls on women, but that was even more true in the past. Back then, loads of women didn’t have the opportunity to work full time and build careers like their husbands, so they relied on them for financial stability. Now that women can provide their own stability, they’re simply less likely to tolerate an unhappy marriage.

To me, that just seems like basic common sense but my colleague laughed and said I was completely wrong. According to them, people today just can’t be bothered to put in the effort and treat relationships as disposable. They also scoffed when I said women still don’t have the same opportunities as men.

It’s had me thinking, I honestly thought this was just obvious, but now I’m wondering what others think. AIBU, or is my colleague?

I've noticed on the relationship board, the women who are trapped in shitty marriages tend to be the ones who have subscribed to a traditional way of life, taking on all the housework and caring responsibilities and the man earns all or most of the money.

When you drill down to the real reason the wife doesn’t instigate divorce when she’s clearly unhappy, after all the usual bollocks of “DH works 50 hours a week, is having an affair with Claire from work, and spends most of his free time (when he’s not with Claire) cycling or down the pub. But he’s a great dad and the kids would miss him”. The real reason is nearly always money. Wife wouldn’t be able to afford the nice house in the nice area on her own. And the nice house in the nice area is of course usually where her support network is and where the kids’ schools are.

I think it’s got harder now to be single due to the cost of living crisis. Housing isn’t affordable, food prices are ever increasing, and wages definitely aren’t!

I think we’ll start to see more women who have careers (and therefore, would have had options not that long ago) stuck in unhappy marriages because they can’t afford housing. I think it’s already happening.

.... because men are not worth while anymore.
Sorry - "most".

Now, that is bollocks!

relationships break down for many reasons.

what's different now is people don't have to stay in an unhappy/unhealthy one. Financial freedom means more options.

You’ve nailed it.

We've not talked about who is initiating the break up though, OP is assuming it's women but what are the stats? It won't just be who actually starts divorce proceedings though, as that might not be the person who decided to leave.
Do men now feel it's easier to leave as well as women?

Is your colleague a man? Men often don’t see misogyny in the same way that white people often don’t see racism and those from wealthier backgrounds don’t understand the barriers and difficulties faced by those who live in poverty- when it’s subtle and not overt as it was more in the past, if you’re not in the affected group it’s easy not to see it.

FWIW I agree with you. I also think men as a group are more free to walk away because the social stigma of divorce has gone- true for women too but men are still freer from the impact of having children than women are, so it’s easier for them to give up when things get tough.

The gender pay gap alone shows women do not have the same opportunities as men.

@chiseltip yabu. My dsis divorced and I guarantee she has never even seen TikTok. 😁

She divorced because her husband was a nasty, violent controlling misogynistic b*stard who made her life a misery. She wasn't self obsessed or self-centred.

She wanted her child to grow up in a calm happy household, without fear and seeing a healthy relationship, and she was brave enough to flee when she saw the chance.

Same, genuinely brings a chill to my bones when I think of how many women would have been trapped with absolute arsehole husbands for their whole lives.

Women can marry the state instead and be supported by the taxpayer instead of a husband. So women are enabled to make poor decisions in choosing the father of their children, and men can walk away from their responsibilities knowing the state will pick up the tab.

As I understand it, the more women became assertive, the greater pressure it put on marriages where the man thought they were in control and that lead to divorce.

Today, marriage is an uneccassary legal prpcess that shockingly still removes women's rights to be married, so maybe fewer marry and hence fewer need to divorce when one party realises they set the bar too low.

I guess if you look at the situation 50 or so years ago if you got pregnant you were pressured to marry. We don't have that pressure now, so fewer people who aren't suited are forced to marry.

Marriage (the ceremony etc) is bloody expensive too. I really can't be arsed to get married and have been coupled up for over 15 years now with children. Years ago it wouldn't be socially acceptable. I do feel some people destroy their relationship with excessively stressful weddings that cost a bomb (sometimes via loans) and pressure the relationship before they marry, so although it seems like they haven't tried in their marriage, the cracks were there before, and they were committed due to the effort and money they may have already put in.

I don't think the woman's finances have much to do with it. Certainly in the town I live in the average wage is not enough financial freedom for families to split. It is much easier financially to stay coupled up and work on the relationship in this day and age. Housing costs and bills prohibit people divorcing at the moment.

Lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates are completely because women don't have to take that shit anymore

And why has that relationship become unhealthy?

Because the people involved have lost perspective.

Lol, yes.. I suppose I didn’t disguise that very well, but yes, he is a man. I’ve probably drip fed this story, but he’s known in the office for being a relentless debater. I get that he doesn’t see these things himself, but given how argumentative he is, I can’t imagine he doesn’t go home and share these views with his wife. When he tells her that women have the same opportunities as men, and that the reason there are more men in senior roles is simply because “the best person gets the job” rather than companies “giving it to a woman,” what does she say to that?

The mind boggles.

@PrincessFairyWren I think you nailed it it here saying that men now mostly expect the 1950s wife values about cooking and housework, but society has removed the notion of them being responsible family men.

Many men now behave this way imo.

Plenty of women on Mumsnet waiting for a proposal that never comes. It's not just women who don't want to get married.

Oh please. How do you pick when so many people lie? How many men do you think are looking at child sa? How many of them are in forums sharing how they secretly abuse women? There was a recent crackdown of one with like 70k men in it. Imagine how many others there are. You can't tell just by looking at most of them. We need to stop blaming women and expect more from men.

I do agree that they should be held accountable for child support with more legal action though!

Somewhere between the two.

Women have lost patience with men who are basically looking for a replacement mother and sex.

Men who won't change their working hours, do their own laundry, let alone their kids. Yet they don't earn enough to be a breadwinner.

I have some empathy for men working 60 hours a week to bring home the equivalent of 2x salaries and and a wife working around those hours (e.g. a hospital doctor where the shifts are unpredictable) and it seems understandable that he wants a hot meal and some clean socks for the next day BUT [eta - he is bringing home the salary that means she doesn't also work a paid job out of the home] and many men seem to want this while working for barely minimum wage. Suck it up, buttercup, that of you aren't bringing in 2 salaries and sharing half with your wife, you can't expect your wife to be grateful to work a job and run a home around you.

Everything that you wrote is absolutely right OP. A lot of people stayed in marriages that were marriages only on paper, didn't they? There are still a few of those around, now in fact.

Also there was shame around divorce back then. My father's parents were divorced, it was quite unusual at the time and I know the family felt shame around it and never spoke of it.

Now I'm older and separated myself, I have a lot of admiration for my grandmother for taking a stance. He had an affair; she was a tough woman. They had 5 teenagers, some still at home at the time.

It did all result in me never meeting my paternal grandfather though which is a shame because accordingly to all he was a lovely person but had been affected by something he experienced during WWII. I think that he felt guilt and shame as well. Thank goodness things have changed in all respects around separation.

Im 60. My parents met young ( 12 and 14) and were each others only partner ever. My father did National Service after the war then teacher training then , when I was a toddler and my brother was a newborn, he started at University followed by a masters degree. By then they had 3 children. My mother looked after us , my father focused entirely on his career . The marriage wasn't always happy but , after my mother had dealt with bringing up the 3 of us with very little money,there was no way she was leaving my father once they were financially comfortable. Neither of them could have afforded to live as they did in their 40s, if they'd split and she wasn't going to allow someone else , with the career she hadn't had, to come along with their own money and enjoy the benefits of my father's professional career that she had put up with so much to support . They were both born in the 30s when divorce was a social disaster and that was always there. No one on either side of the family had ever divorced. My marriage ended with my husband's affair and my parents were appalled that there would be a divorce. I had known something was going on for while but , if I tried to speak to my mother about it, she would shut it down. Her mantra was always ' you get married, you stay married' . I've been very happily married to my second husband for 22 years in December. She remains quietly appalled that I divorced my first husband. Societal pressure to remain married in previous generations was huge. The shame for women as single mothers was huge. My best friends father left her mother in the 70s. She said they just didn't speak about it and she felt deeply ashamed. Her mother was looked down on because she was raising children alone . Things have changed hugely. The past is a different country.

I'm not surprised that your colleague is a man.

I'm sure there are plenty of men who need to believe that the divorce rate has skyrocketed because "people" no longer put in the effort they used to, rather than because women no longer have to put up with them.

I expect more from both men and women. While I agree it’s a father’s responsibility to take care of his children, I expect women to make better choices in the father of those children - that’s their responsibility. The welfare state enables bad choices and poor judgment and foists the problem onto other taxpayers.

I think you’re both right and I also think there’s even more factors at play than both of your arguments.

Yes, you’re right, women have more independence, money & options now, they don’t have to stay in shitty marriages. Although I do think cost of living, especially now, this is probably less relevant, we see so many threads here from women who simply can’t afford to leave.

Yes, he’s right, I do think relationships have become disposable, people have become disposable. Look at online dating for proof of that, “matching” with hundreds of people, messaging 10+ at a time, dating multiples, ghosting etc. There is less incentive to work at something when with the tap of a finger there are 20 people waiting in your messages.

But I also think there are other things, social stigma has reduced I would say, divorce isn’t a dirty word so much as it once was. We now have no fault divorce so there isn’t so much of a blame game. Lots of factors really.

My split happened because he became increasingly lazy - both in the house (actually he probably was always this lazy, it just didn't show as much until there were kids) and in the relationship - eg. going the entire day without even exchanging 2 words with me, then wanting to wake me up for sex in the middle of the night, and have a lie-in to catch up on his sleep whilst I got up with the kids.

And because I kept working, burning myself out at the time and wondering if I should be doing this, I had the freedom to tell him to get lost when I discovered that my reluctance to have unfulfilling sex with a man who ignored me and expected me to do all the housework meant he'd started sleeping with other women when on work trips.

Among my friendship group, the women in unhappy marriages are only staying in them because they can't see a way out, because they've all given up jobs when they had kids, and now would struggle to support themselves.