February 29th - that boring hackneyed old crap again

[LineRunner]

I've just switched the Breakfast News over, as it's now on its second report of the day on manicures, only to find ITV's equivalent is having a rather large and silly segment on 'ladies popping the question'. With a psychologist. And, for some inexplicable reason, Michael Portillo. (Will he now go on anything?)

Does anyone really care who proposes to whom and when? Is it just me who finds this stuff tediously whimsical and infantilising?

To even pretend that women 'get the upper' hand in crucial social and economic relationships once every four years is shallow and specious, I reckon.

linerunner would you think the situation would have been better if you had not been married?

I am not staunchly defending marriage here BTW but thinking about the fact that women's position in society has not really moved on.

The trouble with averages is that they don't necessarily translate into advice for individuals.

On average women may be unhappier married than single, because a significant portion of women are married to tossers. Doesn't mean you will necessarily be unhappier married, it depends if the person you are marrying turn out to be a tosser.

(my calculations assume that more women are married to men-who-make-them-miserable than men are married to women-who-make-them-miserable)

I was terribly unhappily married.

Nobody outside the situation can understand why. As has been said to me, well, he didn't hit you, he didn't cheat and he didn't drink. What other reasons could there possibly be?

Some people are just constitutionally not suited to partnership, I'm one of them. That seems alien to most women. They cannot understand it. Even single friends my age seem to be longing for a relationship. I can't understand that.

I got sick of being permanently responsible for the happiness of 4 other people - the kids and XH. That the state of the house was my responsibility, despite working more hours than him. That he was seen as the breadwinner, despite me earning more. Sick of lack of independence - why would you want to go away without your partner? Why wouldn't you want to live in their pocket?

I am so much happier single. It's totally changed my life (I've lost 6 stone with minimal effort, am fit, healthy apart from the fags, have gone back to my music - so happy)

The kids are happier, and now have a relationship with their father that doesn't go through me.

I don't understand why people want to tie themselves to someone forever. I think there should be a 2 year review clause in any marriage, so you can walk away without fault. I don't know about anyone else, but at 25 (when I got married) I was a different person than I am now, and so was he. People change, and traditional marriage requires that they suppress or ignore that change.

Gosh, I am cross about this

Sardine, I don't feel I got any protection financially through divorce as opposed to splitting up. I didn't get any of my Ex's pension. I got two expensive bundles of joy called children to raise, as Ex was allowed to abrogate all responsibilities on that front bar mininal child support, and I got the house - but also the mortgage. He took 'his' car 'because he needed it for work.' I was told to get to work on the bus and 'get childcare'. I had two consecutive solicitors who said I had to suck this up, because there was a small amount of equity in the house at that time. (There isn't now.)

His new girlfriend rang me up to tell me, 'You should get a better paying job so Ex doesn't have to keep paying you child support.'

I felt like I'd had the wolves set on me.

Trills, I get the tosser argument. (I should know!) But if the structual inequalities weren't still in place, women wouldn't be so dependent on whether men decide to be decent or not. The inequalities are still there; just possibly better hidden these days.

linerunner but don't you get a lovely warm glow when people tell you how fabulous X is for paying what he is legally required to?

That's one of my favourites. That and how nice it is of him to "babysit" them. IT'S CALLED SPENDING TIME WITH YOUR CHILDREN, IDIOTS. My sister babysits. XH PARENTS.

'I don't understand why people want to tie themselves to someone forever. I think there should be a 2 year review clause in any marriage, so you can walk away without fault. I don't know about anyone else, but at 25 (when I got married) I was a different person than I am now, and so was he. People change, and traditional marriage requires that they suppress or ignore that change'

I love it CrunchyFrog, I love it. This 'til death do us part' stuff makes no sense to me either. I would go so far as to say that I think it's totally unrealistic to promise to stay together with someone else forever - if it work out, great, but it will be because you are compatible partners who respect each other and work at your relationship, not because you 'promised' yourself to each other one day many years ago.

And I'm really pleased for you that your life has turned around in such a positive way

Ah yes, CrunchyFrog, I am positively aflame with gratitude. Can you tell?

My favourite moment post-divorce was when ExH asked if I would be sending the children to private school, as 'they deserved the opportunity'. He was paying £20 a week at the time and I had just lost my much-loved university job because I couldn't do the hours/childcare mix.

Actually looking back I think ExH and the then girlfriend behaved the way they did because they were in denial over what they had brought about. I was meant to be 'fine' because they were so guilty. That might also explain why his parents wouldn't lift a finger to help. That would have meant them acknowledging what their son had done. Explains a lot.

I'm with you on this, Crunchy - I find our society's obsession with lifelong monogamy, and the idealisation of the couple bond, very alienating. And baffling.

Also, as marriage clearly isn't forever any more, I would like to see pre-nuptual agreements becoming the norm.

I'd also like the tax situation made fairer. For example, more men than women are NRPs. I understand that NRPs (mostly men) pay child support calculated on earnings after tax, NI, pension construbutions etc. OTOH, most lone parents are woman and very dependent on childcare in order to work. In my current work, if I claim a necessary childcare payment for doing an unsociable-hours late meeting, the childcare reimbursement - even if paid directly to the babysitter - is regarded by HMRC as income and I pay tax on it and it leads to a reduction in tax credits eligibility. Now that's what I call a structural inequality.

Divorce is definitely a woman's friend.

Only if you don't get taken to the cleaners, which does sometimes happen.

I think it always happens - detriment - where there are children, as judges don't seem to understand the concept of potential loss of earnings, loss of promotion and loss of ability to take up career-enhancing opportunties (late meetings, early starts, overnight conferences, trips abroad) when one is a lone parent.

Anyway, the joyous news is that 'Women Can Propose To Men Today' is being covered on This Morning and will be covered shortly on Loose Women.

A tip: don't watch This Morning or Loose Women.

It's much better for your blood pressure.

Christ line what a shitty situation you had.

I did laugh in your OP re Micahel Portillo.

I was told a really annoying bit of info the other day about marriage - there's this statistic kicking around about how postgraduate students who're married finish, on average, faster than unmarried ones (yay, go marriage!), and this is usually explained as the result of nice kindly supportive spouses providing financial help and encouragement. OTOH, postgraduate students with children (married or not) finish more slowly (not surprisingly). What pissed me off was that if you take into account the gender of students, the married/non-married effect is like this:

Fastest: married male students without children
Next: male and female unmarried students without children
Next: married female students without children
Next: male students with children
Next: female students with children.

I am sure this isn't surprising to anyone but it pissed me off anyway.

Trills I am kind of drawn in to Loose Women like a moth to a flame. I often have it on in the background when dealing with routine emails. Jane McDonald's on now doing a special proposal piece.

Thanks for the comment, GetOrf. It has helped being able to articulate a few things here, on February 29th!

I'm another who has to watch Loose Women if I'm at home. I loathe it but I just can't help it. It's the same reason why I watch Jeremy Kyle, listen to LBC and the Jeremy Vine show

Think of it as Zeitgeist 101, JosieRosie.

Brilliant LineRunner! And now I have something to say to DP when he asks why I'm watching/listening to this bloody crap stuff

It's serious stuff, though, Josie.

I once heard of an academic argument on the rapid travel of children's chants around the country with no apparent outside agency other than the children themselves. The main chant/song used as an exemplar was 'One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl....'

The silly arse author clearly didn't know it was the theme song for Magpie - a massive children's programme at the time. More time in front of the box needed for that social scientist, methinks.

. I've heard lots of adults talk about 'PUTTING SOMETHING ON THE END OF IT' in bellowing tones - wonder where they could have got that from????

Do you remember when Jennifer Saunders did her spoof, Vivienne Vile? It didn't really work out as well as her stuff usually does, probably because Jeremy Kyle is beyond parody.

No, never seen it LineRunner. Agree - totally beyond parody. Unmissable TV in my house though

And there are also lots of people screaming these days about being ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.

You'll have to practice that.

DC: What's on the box tonight, Mum? Anything good?
Mum: What, ON NATIONAL TELEVISION, you ask? I don't know. I'll just check the NATIONAL TELEVISION guide.

(For anyone just joining this thread, we are discussing the transmission of stupid cultural ideas via various forms of agency in a post-modern world.)