April 22, 2015 • 44 mins
Society has always been a little suspicious of the divorced woman: Is she a gold-digging threat or a pitiful, jilted wife? Most likely, she's neither. Cristen and Caroline wade through the stereotypes to uncover the reality of life as a divorcee.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristin. And this week christ and I
are talking about a couple of different groups of women,
but all of them are sort of maligned and mistrusted wives. Yeah,
(00:27):
there's definitely stigma and stereotype surrounding both women who go
through divorces, particularly first wives and particularly first wives who
are in very wealthy unions. And then trophy wives. Yeah,
so two groups of women that people are sort of
suspicious of, to say the least. Um, But yeah, without
(00:51):
further ado, let's let's dive into talking about the divorcee.
The woman that we tend to think of as older.
Probably she's wealthy, she's swilling a martini, holding a little dog,
she's she's probably a real housewife, honestly, or she's a
struggling single mom. Yeah, honestly, that is the more accurate
(01:12):
representation of a divorce in the US. Well, and when
it comes to divorce, it's no big surprise that America
is pretty divorced happy. According to statistics from January two
thousand and eleven, we have the highest divorce rate really
(01:33):
in the Western hemisphere. Uh, there were three points seven
divorces per one thousand people, which is higher than the
average EU country, which is at two point one divorces
per one thousand people. So we get married all the
time in the US, and then we get divorced all
the time of the US, But the divorce rate is
(01:53):
not at an all time high and actually dropped. Yeah,
it's it's sort of been kind of plateauing for the
past several years. And I don't know. I mean, people
fret so much about our divorce rate in America, but
I also think that maybe that's a good sign that
both our marriage and divorce rates are really high. People
are seeking happiness, except that divorce can have bad effects
(02:15):
on families. So anyway, like Kristen said, the divorce rate
has actually gone down a little in the past twenty years.
But let's break it down further. From nineteen sixty to
two thousand and eight, the share of currently divorced or
separated Americans jumped from five percent to fourteen percent. Divorce
itself hit an all time high background the late seventies
(02:36):
and early eighties. After rising sharply in the sixties and seventies,
so it's interesting to think about the context of the time,
what's going on socially in our country. We're getting women's
lib we're getting civil rights movements, were getting birth control,
and then suddenly people are like, I think I'm gonna
go Yeah, divorce becomes easier in a way or legally speaking.
(02:59):
And one of the most fascinating sources that we ran
across was a nineteen sixty two Harper's Bizarre article about
the young divorcee and tracks her path from her first
marriage and having kids, then getting divorced and dealing with
her social life and personal life post divorce, and then
(03:21):
leading up to remarriage because that at the time seems
like the only option for her. Yeah, it was super
It was an interesting, you know, faux profile of a woman,
and it it noted the article noted the uptick and
divorce in the country, and it really sort of fretted
about the weird limbo that divorced women find themselves in
(03:44):
because it didn't speak super negatively about the issue of
a woman being independent. I mean, it was kind of
like poo pooing it, but it wasn't saying that, oh,
a divorced woman is a terrible person. But then it
was sort of worried about the issues of sex. Yeah,
I mean, because if a divorced woman has kids, obviously
she has had sex before, so it's there. There's not
(04:08):
the chastity kind of crown for her to wear around, right.
And the article quoted a divorce attorney who had watched
as his clients over the years morphed from older men
who were leaving their wives for younger women into middle
aged women who just wanted out despite the guilt they
might feel, and also quote being felt by everyone around
(04:29):
her to be selfish and irresponsible at the least seriously neurotic.
And reading this article, Caroline, especially since it came out
in nineteen sixty two, made me think so much about
Mad Men and Betty Draper getting divorced from Don Draper
and immediately getting remarried, And I was trying to think,
(04:49):
in the context of the show whether there were similar
echoes of this Harper's bizarre article, but at least as
it was portrayed in the show. She segus so quickly
into her second marriage, and it's too well to do politician,
and she's a beautiful woman, so she's immediately kind of
set back up as an esteemed wife and mother and
(05:12):
not having to go through that divorce safe is yeah, Well,
this article looked at sort of why a wife would
just walk away from a husband. You've got a family,
you've got a husband. What could possibly be wrong? And
they spell it out. They say that it has everything
to do with sex, sexual incompatibility, sexual limitations, simply looking
(05:35):
beyond her husband for the first time, trying to escape
the quote malaise of life, and asking herself in general,
is this all there's going to be? Forever? And they
write about it as if this is the first time
that women are having these thoughts at all, that they're
finally feeling the freedom to be like, oh wait, I'm
not satisfied. Not that that freedom to think that is
(05:57):
necessarily good. They do kind of frame it in a
way of like why why isn't this good enough for you? Well,
and there seems to be this period post divorce that
this young divorce in nineteen sixty two really enjoys her
single hood. She doesn't want to say that the loss
of her marriage, the divorce, having to take care of
(06:19):
her children as a single mom are tragic, and she
doesn't want to ask anyone's forgiveness, and she might in
a way feel a little bit entitled to some admiration.
But then she quickly notices that her married friends disappear,
and might this jumped out to me, and might be
hanging out with her ex husband because she is more
of a threat, she realizes, to the fabric of society,
(06:42):
because she is a woman who will fully chooses to
step away from the safety and security of being a
suburban wife and mother. Yeah, and then it paints this
sort of grim picture of this woman, this divorce who's
going on dates where maybe she chooses to go home
with the man, or maybe she just has to sit
(07:03):
there through the whole dinner and figure out a safe
way to tell him she doesn't want to go home
with him. But so then they end up describing the
men that she's going on dates with, these either fellow
divorced people or no longer young bachelors, and they write,
these men are vast consumers of female companionship, being as
they are inhabitants of a world that makes it somehow
(07:25):
unpleasant for people to do such things as eden restaurants,
attend the theater, or even arrive at parties alone. And
they seem to consume women either by not being pleased
with them or by marrying them at a rate much
faster than women of suitable age and circumstance can be produced.
So then that leads us into a whole conversation in
this article about people sort of feeling like they're at
(07:48):
the end of their rope and they've just got to
remarry or find someone who can fill that gap, because
that's just what you do. Yeah, And and because of that,
they usually end up remarrying for factors like the convenience though,
well why not the companionship factor, and also making more
economic sense, and maybe even for sex without judgment. Yeah. Really,
(08:13):
it was a really interesting article. It was a really
interesting snapshot into this period in time when divorce was skyrocketing.
But let's move back to some Pew Research Center statistics
looking at what does actually increase the risk of divorce
beyond just that malaise of life trying to escape it,
and Pew lists having less education, marrying younger, just being
(08:38):
younger and marrying during the seventies is in itself a factor. Well, thankfully, Caroline,
we're in the clear. If we were to get married anytime. Yes,
I would have been negative a couple of years old.
And so when you look at that age factor, men's
median age a divorce is a little it's almost thirty
two years old, and for women it's just about twenty
(08:59):
nine and a half. Oh man, we're we we should
have gone through our first divorces. Caroline, I know, would
be divorced. And I feel like, and correct me if
I'm wrong or if I'm just making this up, but
I feel like the stereotype of a divorcee is that
she's she's much older and that she's been abandoned for
a younger woman. But only about eleven percent of women's
six and up are divorced. So well, yeah, because by
(09:23):
that point, probably if you stuck it out, then you're like, well,
we've been together for thirty years, might as well make
it fifty. Go for it. Um. I will say one
thing though, about the rate of divorce kind of leveling
off in recent years too. It's not so much because
we've fallen in love more and more effectively, but largely
(09:44):
because of the recession, because we didn't have money to divorce,
so we stuck together. So people think that we will
soon be seeing more of an uptick and divorce if
we haven't already. But with that uptick and divorce, the
question is will we see an uptick in this you
wor say stereotype, which does feel very mad Men era
(10:04):
when you start reading about it thinking about women swelling
Martini's and not so much the small dogs thing. But
I am thinking of Roger Sterling's divorced starry. I've been
catching up on Mattman lately, but Roger Sterling an older guy.
He's probably in his fifties early sixties. He's a silver fox,
and he divorces his wife, who is the older divorce
(10:27):
classic wealthy Manhattan stereotype. Oh yeah, I was definitely interested
in going into this episode and finding out how true
the stereotype is. And basically, spoiler, what we uncovered is
that the stereotype of this older, wealthy woman who's perhaps
(10:48):
a little bit gold digging, it's only really, it only
really crops up among the wealthy. It's not like your
average divorcee is always going to be gold digging with
the small dog and everything. Um. And there's one example
that stuck out in the news from January uh that
sort of fit into this ugly stereotype that we have culturally.
(11:12):
This is coming from the New York Posts, so you know,
they had nothing nice to say about the people involved.
But Sue and Arnold his fifty six and her ex husband,
oil tycoon Harold Ham were married for twenty six years,
they got a divorce. He writes her a check for
more than nine d and seventy four million dollars after
(11:33):
paying her more than twenty million during their actual divorce proceedings,
and the New York Post went crazy, frothing at the
mouth over the fact that Sue Anne Arnold turned down
the check for being too little, and they dubbed her angry.
They definitely painted her as the typical angry gold digging divorce.
Of course, her lawyers clarified that, like Well, accepting this
(11:56):
check would actually risk the dismissal of her appeal that
is in court, the appeal having granted her million dollars.
So there's a lot of money at play in these
sort of big name, top of the heat divorce proceedings.
Well in the media love either uh super wealthy or
(12:17):
celebrity divorce, and usually the women in these stories are
painted as, like you said, either a little bit gold
digging who are trying to grasp onto every penny in
every vacation house they can possibly sink their manicured claws
into or their objects to be pitied because they lost
their looks and then their husbands moved on to someone younger,
(12:42):
as in the case of say a Carol McCain, Senator
John McCain's first wife, who in another grain of salt
quote unquote news story in the Daily Mail profiling the
dissolving of their marriage after McCain came back from the
Vietnam War and ended up leaving her for his now wife,
(13:06):
Cindy McCain. And was there an overlap in the marriage, Yes,
there was. And while McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton
in Vietnam, Carol McCain, who they report and used to
be a beautiful swimsuit model, she was in this horrific
car accident and it disfigured her. And it was basically like,
oh and now she you know, she wasn't attractive enough, essentially,
(13:29):
and they did painted as a kind of a disgusting
story on his end, but it always fits into these
kinds of narratives are very formulaic, and the way that
they are told in such kinds of similarly salacious details. Yeah.
And in addition to the whole Carol McCain being left
behind by her ex, we've got the Jane Hawking narrative.
(13:53):
She was left by Stephen Hawking. He left her for
his nurse. And the Guardian, uh newspaper doesn't treat Jane
Hawking in their story about her nearly as badly as
the Daily Mail treated McCain, but they still write about
her life with Hawking. Quote has left her a legacy
of deep regret and though she tries to hide it, bitterness. Yeah.
(14:14):
I mean, both of these stories were highly sympathetic to
these women because both of them were left for other women.
And I gotta say, Okay, I have not seen a
theory of everything. The Stephen Hawking biopic that got all
the Oscar attention. But during the Oscars and throughout all
(14:34):
of the publicity for that film, you know that that
is about Jane and Stephen Hawking's early romance. I could
only think, Dear God, are we really creating this? I mean,
there's this love story, but I'm just curious whether it
includes the not so romantic ending of that marriage. I mean,
and even within the marriage while it was still intact.
She talks about how their relationship was not a perfect
(15:00):
one at all. But you know, reality check again, no
marriage is perfect. What I know, party pooper aller talk
about a spoiler jeez um, Well yeah, I mean speaking
of reality checks, this whole wealthy couple news story or
the narrative that we're so used to hearing about divorces
(15:21):
really hides the reality that, hey, it's not typically the
woman who becomes super wealthy after a divorce. Men become
richer by about a third after divorce and their earning
potential does not get dinged because of it, while women
tend to lose more than a fifth of their income.
(15:42):
And also, typically if women end up getting custody of
the kids, they give up reaching their full earning potential
to care for them. And plus it's hard to make
up for those lost years of not working well married.
So while you know, in these wealthy marriages, the man
might have kept working, kept earning, kept moving at that ladder,
and the woman didn't work, Then if she's suddenly divorced
(16:05):
and she has to re enter the workforce, she has
a lot of time that's left out on her resume.
And that was one thing too that jumped out to
me in that nineteen sixty two Harper's bizarre piece the
Sympathy with which the author notes that the young deforce
has to go back to work. She's like, well, and
then there's a whole job thing. Yeah, I mean it talks.
(16:27):
It talks about how this woman, and in the beginning
of her marriage, was so eager to to join the
workforce to help out. But I'll thank god once once
the husband got on a stable professional footing, she could
get out of there. Well. And even not to say
that that all of these divorce days don't have jobs before,
but they might simply, especially in these wealthy relationships, their
(16:49):
career was probably taking a back seat in whatever way
that meant um to their husband's. And also to quick
acknowledgment that this is a straight up pun had her
enormative conversation right now, this is still I mean, because
gay marriage is not has not been around legally long
(17:10):
enough for us to even have built these stereotypes around
gay deporces. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, if you want
to talk about a wife's career taking a backseat to
a husband's, just look, no, further than the relationship between
Elon and Justine Musk. And of course, Elon Musk is
the PayPal founder who made a bajillion dollars and Justine
(17:33):
read a column from Marie Claire back in and her
narrative is one that's pretty familiar to anyone who's ever
you know, watched a movie or seen a soap opera.
Her wealthy, controlling husband leaves her, and she's a writer
turned in her words, trophy wife, and she had loved
books and reading and wanted to really shape and nurture
(17:55):
her writing career, and her husband was like, no, no,
you're not um and anyway, so he leaves his trophy
wife and children and five children for a super young
British actress whom he has since divorced and remarried. Um.
But fortunately Justine Musk claims that she and the new
(18:15):
wife actually get along. Yeah, I mean, and that adds
a little bit of nuance reality nuance to this whole
kind of trophy narrative as well, because oh, we don't
have to start yet another stereotypical narrative about two women
quote unquote catfighting over the quote unquote possession of a
quote unquote man. Okay, no quote unquote around the man.
(18:37):
But the thing is too them getting along might not
matter so much because this jumped out to me. Divorce
rates for second marriages are higher than for first marriages,
and the biggest reason why kids not getting along with
their parents new love interest. Blame it on those kiddos. Yeah,
(18:59):
anybody who has seen down Nabby knows that even when
the children are adults, that can really interfere with a
new love match. I won't say anymore. I don't know
what that means. I can only make Madmin references right now,
I think, and I can't make Madmin references. So it
works out perfectly. But one thing that's not really part
of the popular stereotypes about divorces is the fact that
(19:21):
women tend to be the ones who file for divorce
or separation first. And we're going to talk about that
more in detail in just a second. So in the
first half of the podcast, we're talking a lot about
this usually wealthier divorce stereotype and how she has been
(19:44):
largely stigmatized in a lot of ways, and at least
starting in the nineteen sixties, when divorce was really on
the rise, was presented with just the option of remarriage.
So we were trying to add some nuance to that
and ground it more in reality. And the next reality
we want to talk about is how women statistically are
(20:06):
likelier to file for divorce compared to husbands. And this
is a little bit of a dated study, but nonetheless
as a fabulous title coming from two thousand Margaret f.
Brnnig's and Douglas w Allen's these boots are made for walking?
Why most divorce filers are women? Yeah, so we have
(20:29):
this assumption that because of post divorce financial and social hardship,
men end up being the ones to instigate the divorce
in most cases. After all, women's standard of living usually declines,
and as she ages, especially if she has kids, her
quote unquote market value as a marriage prospect decreases, while
the husband's market value increases. But the reality is a
(20:53):
little different. The proportion of wife file cases hovers around
two thirds, and a large portion of those women say
that they're happier post divorce because of this sense of
relief if they're getting out of a bad situation. Uh.
And women are also more likely to instigate a separation,
not just a divorce, And looking at why this is
(21:13):
there are a couple different reasons in this study. It
partly has to do with assuring their innocence in any
divorce proceedings to possibly secure custody or support rights. Maybe
it's more convenient for them to file, but they also
might be escaping a cruel or exploitative situation. And also
though Brinnigan Allen right that filing behavior is driven by
(21:36):
self interest at the time of divorce, such as when
there are marital assets that can be appropriated, and also
again when they're being exploited within the marriage, like when
the other person violates the marriage contract somehow, such as
running around or being a super controlling just being a
really really wellsy spouse in one way or another. And then,
(21:59):
of course, when it comes to custody, who gets the
kids is by far the most important component in deciding
who files, and usually because women are the primary caregivers,
they're going to be the ones to step in first
and probably get primary custody for those kids. But Brinnigan
(22:21):
Alan also predict that as men and women's labor force
income becomes more nearly equal, they rte In other words,
as things like the gender wage gap clothes and women
continue entering the workforce, the difference in filing rates should disappear,
so equal opportunity divorce filings for all. Yeah, and so
(22:45):
it seems like this whole women filing first thing is
less about gold digging, our stereotype about gold digging and
just wanting to get the money, and really more about
for a lot of women being able to carve out
a secure place after leaving a bad situation, aation, trying
to leave possibly a bad marriage, make sure that they
have custody of the kids, less about trying to completely
(23:08):
deplete their ex husband's bank account. But the thing is,
there's also this this blame on women a lot of
times for heterosexual marriages falling apart, whether they're the ones
who filed or not, and sometimes whether the spouse was
violating that marital contract or not. And this was something
(23:29):
that Lynn Stewart Paramore at Alternate was railing against in
response to this blog post she had read. I think
it was featured on the Huffington's Post homepage about five
ways that women were failing their marriages and basically saying,
you know what, women, you are in charge of creating
an emotionally safe environment, making sure that sex is happening
(23:53):
on the rags. And if you're not doing these kinds
of things and really maintaining the emotional health of your marriage,
well it's on you. Because the guy's job is to
make the money. They're pragmatic their logic, they're thinking about
numbers and baseball. They're not thinking about, you know, emotional nurturance,
(24:16):
which is really just an insult to everybody across the board,
and of course plays into very antiquated gender stereotypes. Yeah,
and and Paramore says that these all of these stereotypes
about our behavior obscure the driving forces that can split
a marriage. And she says that all of this finger
wagging at women usually comes along with the off sided
(24:39):
statistic that we also cited that women file for divorce
twice as often as men. And what we hear less
often Paramore rights is straight talk about the social and
economic factors that drive the engine of divorce. The fact
is that college educated people are more likely to stay together,
and that there's a higher risk of divorce for people
(24:59):
with lower incomes and less education. And she goes on
to say that when people are struggling to pay the
rent and keep a roof over their heads. The marriage
problem isn't likely to be some kind of deficiency in
managing intimacy. The sole thing, the glue that holds the
marriage or any type of relationship together, is not purely
just intimacy or how often you're getting laid. All those
(25:22):
sex is a huge reason for a lot of divorces
to happen. There's so much more to it. And the
fact that the more money you have and the older
you are, the less likely you are to get divorced.
That just means that there are other things that we
need to dig into here about the reasons behind marriage
is breaking up? Yeah, Because she goes on to site
this u c L a study about how low income
(25:43):
versus high income study respondents held similar romantic standards and
had similar kinds of problems in relationships, and that is
no big surprise. But the low income respondents were likelier
to report that their relationships were being affected by economic
and social issues like financial struggles, alcohol and drug abuse, etcetera.
(26:04):
So when you have more resources, it can make it
easier to cope with those relationship stressors that usually put
a strain on any kind of marriage. Because and I
can attest to this if you're worried about money, you
add something else to that and it just everything is
just even more intensified. And that's just finance. Yeah yeah,
(26:28):
I mean, especially if somebody or both people are working
multiple jobs, maybe somebody doesn't have health benefits. I mean,
there's so many things that are rooted in money that
can put so much strain on a relationship. Well, and
that would probably go into the age factor as well
in terms of people who marry younger are likelier to
get divorced, because I think that also speaks to probably
(26:49):
your earning potential at the time when you get married,
but also the kinds of tools that you might be
bringing in terms of life experience into conflict resolution. Thinking
about myself all getting married when I was twenty two, No,
I would be divorced. I would absolutely be divorced. Oh yeah,
it is horrifying to think about. I. So I started
(27:12):
going to therapy almost a year ago and it has
changed my life. Would I say that everybody should go
to therapy, Yes I would, But it has been so helpful.
This process of digging through like all the jumble that
is my brain and my pile of emotions has been
so helpful. Not only for making me a more functional human,
(27:33):
but also more functional human in my relationships and so imagining.
Like my boyfriend and I talked all the time about
our faulty tool sets that we were provided with when
we were younger, and so not having been able to
add to that toolset getting married at a super young age.
Not that I'm saying that there aren't totally mature like
(27:54):
with it having it all together younger people, but I
would also be in that probably divorced category. Okay, but
let's say that we had gotten married in our early
twenties and thanks to our faulty tool said's respectively, our
marriages dissolved. Now let's talk about remarriage, because as common
as divorces and also as probably painful as it can be,
(28:18):
remarriage is still highly common. And this was reported on
in November in Time magazine, and I believe that they
were reporting on statistics out of the Pew Research Center,
which we cite so often on the podcast, and they
were writing about how round about there of all the
new marriages in we're not first marriages, in half of
(28:43):
those cases both spouses had been married before, so a
big bulk of our marriage statistics are people saying, you
know what, I'll give it another go. Why not. There
is a huge drive for a lot of people to remarry,
whether it is that Harper's bizarre life convenience, companionship thing,
or you know, a multitude of other things because you
(29:07):
can fall in love again, Caroline, it's true. Oh my gosh.
Well yeah, and Pew talked about these reasons possibly people
wanting more life satisfaction, because only half of divorced or
separated people said they were happy with their family lives
compared with married folks of whom were satisfied. So maybe
there's just this drive to have a richer family life.
(29:27):
But there's also the issue of commitment and stability. Uh.
Pew writes about how divorced or separated people put more
emphasis on making a lifelong commitment and financial stability than
do singles or cohabitating partners, and they are more likely
to say that these are reasons to get married. And men,
as echoed in our podcast on Widowhood, men are more
(29:51):
interested than women in remarriage. Men are more likely than
women to view companionship as important to marriage, as compared
with just thirty percent whose second marriage is quote unquote
for love and to say that financial stability is a
very important reason to get married, and when it comes
to men's reasons for remarriage are also likelier than women
(30:12):
to just like companionship and financial stability is too big motivators. Yeah,
as opposed to the thirty percent whose second marriage was
for love, That can't be right. Come on, it seems
like if you were going to go through that a
second time, that wouldn't you be more motivated to do it? Well? No,
I was about to say, wouldn't be more motivated to
(30:33):
do it for love? But no, By that point you
probably realize that love can dissolve and you might be
a little more pragmatic. Yeah. Well, I mean we've talked
about this. We've done a previous episode looking at issues
of divorce and widowhood, and men have typically typically are
more driven to form those person to person bonds with
a partner than women are. Women are like, I've got
my girlfriends, I'm cool, I'm fine, I'm happy, I'm I've
(30:56):
got healthy relationships all around me, whereas men are like,
I need a cruise to director. Well, that's why I'm
really curious to see in emerging literature in the coming years,
similar kinds of data on gay couples, specifically looking at
gay men. I wonder if the motivations would shift at
all when you have two guys or two women, and
(31:17):
how those kinds of gender stereotypical marital roles than maybe
mix and match when it's it's two fellows or two ladies. Yeah, well,
something that I thought about reading about this whole Like
men are motivated by financial security and and remarrying. You know,
(31:38):
earlier we talked about how women are way more likely
to have their finances and their earning potential dinged post
divorced than men are. Men just like I've just continued
on this trajectory of my career and my earning potential
this whole time, whereas a lot of women step off
the track, you know, lean in all that kind stuff.
They've stepped off the track to either be at home
(31:58):
or be with the kids or whatever. And there have
been study findings talking about how like attracts like, especially
when it comes to important things like money, beyond just
personality and interests and those kinds of things. And so
it almost seems like with finances being so important to men,
they might be seeking out someone who has equal earning
(32:19):
potential to themselves, like potentially a trophy wife. But for
a woman who has already been financially danged after a divorce,
she might not be able to sort of find a
new mate who's earning potential is as great as her
ex husband's. And so that would be something I'd like
to learn more about. But that's just kind of a
question that popped into my head as I was reading
(32:40):
well and talking about the earning potential to and how
divorce can impact women's incomes, especially as they get older.
Sort of the sadder reality, the bleaker reality, I should say,
of divorce for women is that, according to the Social
Security Administration, of divorced women, over sixty five of impoverty
(33:01):
compared with eighteen percent of never married women and fifteen
percent of widowed women. So two percent is not huge
and even five percent is not doesn't sound like a
huge percentage, is not this gaping gap, but still, when
we're talking about across the country, that adds up to
(33:21):
a number of people. Yeah, and the Social Security Administration
was spelling out like, hey, well, at least widows have
some sort of pension or um or women who have
been in the workforce have accrued social security benefits, So like,
there are different types of women in different types of
life situations who are still having money come in, but
those women who completely stepped off the career track haven't
(33:44):
been accruing any social security benefits, which form a nice
net for a lot of people. Yeah, But when it
comes to the good, and there is a lot of good,
especially because I would argue that that this the divorce
stigma is probably lower than it's ever been. We accept
that it is in a lot of ways a fact
of life. It's kind of a roll of the dice
(34:07):
at this point. And there was a column at More
magazine from divorce coach Jill Brook, who I mean by
virtue of her being a divorce coach, she's pretty pro divorce,
but I mean she's she's really optimistic about it, saying
that most over forty women realize, you know what, I
might not get married again, but I really don't care.
(34:27):
And she says that research finds that overall, women are
happier post divorce. Yeah. She says that they're finally able
to focus on themselves, particularly obviously if the kids have
left home and they have the resources to do so,
which is also key. Um. You know, they're not responsible
for anyone else's housework in shore as they're no longer
(34:48):
picking up a husband or a boyfriend's underwear off of
the floor. And she talks about Dr. Barbara Bartlett, who's
a sex therapist and psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital
and says that Bartlett's these a growing trend of financially
secure women preferring to stay single and date. They enjoy
having their own schedules without having to report to anyone.
(35:09):
And plus you get the whole cougar factor that that's
also becoming less and less stigmatized for an older woman
and a younger man to get together. So there are options,
There are options and more more stereotypes in which you
can you can be an animal when you grow up
like a cougar um. And I will say, though anecdotally,
(35:30):
I am want. One divorce story that that makes my
heart sing is a friend of mine's mom who got
divorced when she was probably in her mid forties, and
it was a kind of nasty divorce. It was pretty
heart wrenching. There were kids, you know, they had had
(35:52):
a lot that she had been with her husband for
a very long time, but she met this guy and
they are in love, and she seems younger than ever
ever before, and it really is like a second life
for her. And it's just been really amazing to see
her coming to life, especially being in what was in
(36:13):
a lot of ways a very unhappy marriage, and it's
like it couldn't have come soon enough. And her boyfriend
also is divorced as well, and he has his kids too,
and it's like for both of them, they're like, oh
my god, you're amazing humans. So yeah, I mean I
think that they're I'm I'm hardened to see that because
(36:34):
we have longer lifespans than ever before, you know, like
that that's also a reason why divorce happens. It's because,
like humans really weren't built to like hang out with
one human like fifty years. And one example of how
we are ritualizing this kind of romantic transition, I don't
(36:55):
even want to call it a loss, this romantic transition
is through the more recent end of divorce parties. How
interesting this sounds like another thing that you sort of
have to have those resources for. Well, yeah, you have
to be able to, you know, buy a cake perhaps
if you want there are bakers who will sell you
(37:16):
a divorce cake, and a lot of times they'll have
a similar kind of wedding cake topper on it with
the bride and the groom, but usually it's something really funny,
like the bread dragging the groom out to a trash
bin and just to drive home, Caroline, how how significant
of a trend this has become. There's a BBC News
headline from late the red hot business of divorce celebration. Interesting,
(37:43):
so not not really too far I mean, it's on
the other end of the spectrum, but not too far
removed from the gender revealed parties that we've talked about before.
People wanting an excuse to to throw a party and
eat some cake, maybe be go to Vegas and live
it up. Yeah. I also thought it was interesting that
there's even a Wikipedia entry for divorce parties. And in
(38:03):
that BBC News article they profile this woman who has
now become a divorce party planner, who went to Vegas
with her girlfriends post divorce to kind of, you know,
kickstart the whole post divorce process. They went to a
shooting range, she brought her bridal gown and she shot
(38:24):
it up with a machine gun and she had so
much fun doing it she turned it into a business.
And common kinds of things include skydiving parties where you're
jumping into being single again. And there's even in the
Netherlands a divorce hotel where couples can go together to
(38:44):
like take care of the whole thing. You can file
your papers, you know, get divorced, maybe have a little
like post divorce pampering, and you're just like, all right, cool, yeah,
see you later. Divorce interesting, but that is so far
removed from the average woman's divorce experience. Well yeah, I
mean the thing if you have the money at hand,
after paying a divorce lawyer and like going through all
(39:06):
of that and you know, renegotiating all of your finances,
is now a single person and you can then go
to Vegas with your girlfriends. It does seem like a
bit of a Real Housewives e kind of pursuit. Yeah yeah,
and and just like the Real Housewives, it's sort of
tacky but also sort of just living your life by
(39:27):
your own rules exactly. I mean, in the BBC did
talk to a psychologist who said, yeah, this is you know,
this could be seen as a healthy way to you
create this new kind of ritual. I mean we we
it happens so commonly, I mean it happens half as
often as marriage does. So why not eat some cake? Why? Well,
(39:52):
that's my attitude about everything. Why not? Yeah, it's true. Um,
So I am curious to know if any podcast list
or have either thrown or attended a divorce party. Yeah,
I'm just curious about knowing, Like what's what's your divorce reality?
Or is your life more like the nineteen sixty two
Harper's Bizarre article where your fellow women and mary people
(40:15):
see you as sort of a suspicious threat or somebody
to be pitied or are you just out there living
your life excited to sort of be free of your
you know, marital bonds. Yeah, what is the status of
the divorce stigma? Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've
(40:38):
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well, so,
Christian and I have gotten an overwhelmingly awesome response to
our O c D episode. A lot of you guys,
whether you have O c D or just no with
with O c D, wrote in thanking us for talking
about the topic. And we have two letters here are
(41:01):
from women who are dealing with this thing called pure OH,
and so we're going to read them now. This one's
from Whitney. She says, First of all, I live in
an area where it's not a good thing to be
liberal or a feminist, So you guys have been like
my feminist besties over the past year. Thanks Whitney. She
goes on to say, thank you so much for your
wonderful episode on O c D. I was diagnosed at
(41:23):
the age of fifteen. I suffer from a form of
O c D known as pure OH. I have intrusive
thoughts of harming myself or loved ones, even though I
am neither violent nor suicidal, and I've never really had
compulsions if you want further inside. This is also discussed
in the first episode of another fantastic podcast called Invisibilia.
I am very fortunate to have almost no symptoms eleven
(41:45):
years later, thanks to antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. Thank you,
Thank you, thank you for calling out shows like Monk
for misrepresenting O c D. It is not a cute,
fun or beneficial illness. Ever since I was a teenager,
I loathed shows like Monk and What About Bob because
they aren't helpful to o c D suffers and those
with other mental illnesses. Either our experiences are invalidated because
(42:09):
the o c D is seen as something minor, or
we're seen as weird and our opinions don't matter. Every
time I try to express opinions about those types of
jokes in the media, I've gotten brushed off by both
friends and family for overreacting because it's just a show.
It may just be a TV show, but the things
we watch both reflect and influence our attitudes. So thanks Whitney,
(42:31):
and I've got one here from Rebecca, also about pure Oh,
she writes, I have a version of o c D
called pure OH since childhood and was finally diagnosed as
past fall. Puro is basically o c D without the
outward physical compulsions. I spend hours and hours obsessing about
all kinds of things, from the food that I eat
to how my lesson plans are written out. I've had
(42:52):
obsessions since I was a little girl. We once at
our house bombed for fleas, and without telling anyone, I
slowly but surely threw away or refuse to touch any
of my belongings that I imagined may have been exposed
to the mysteriously killing chemicals. I spent seven years in
therapy with someone who didn't believe in O c D
without compulsions, and it was an unbelievable relief to finally
(43:13):
find someone who understood what was happening in my brain.
I also have other anxiety issues in clinical depression, but
I'm very high functioning, and I'm trying to spread the
words so that others who have these disorders can get
the help and compassion that they deserve. I'm hoping that
you can help spread the word the pure o o
c D is a real diagnosis. Just because someone isn't
lining up their pencils and checking the oven over and
(43:34):
over doesn't mean they aren't struggling. Thanks as always for
helping to keep us all educated about current issues, and
thank you Rebecca, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address and thrillings to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
including this one with our sources. So you can read
(43:57):
more about divorced women head on over to stuff mom
Never told You dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Doesn't how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristin. And this week christ and I
are talking about a couple of different groups of women,
but all of them are sort of maligned and mistrusted wives. Yeah,
(00:27):
there's definitely stigma and stereotype surrounding both women who go
through divorces, particularly first wives and particularly first wives who
are in very wealthy unions. And then trophy wives. Yeah,
so two groups of women that people are sort of
suspicious of, to say the least. Um, But yeah, without
(00:51):
further ado, let's let's dive into talking about the divorcee.
The woman that we tend to think of as older.
Probably she's wealthy, she's swilling a martini, holding a little dog,
she's she's probably a real housewife, honestly, or she's a
struggling single mom. Yeah, honestly, that is the more accurate
(01:12):
representation of a divorce in the US. Well, and when
it comes to divorce, it's no big surprise that America
is pretty divorced happy. According to statistics from January two
thousand and eleven, we have the highest divorce rate really
(01:33):
in the Western hemisphere. Uh, there were three points seven
divorces per one thousand people, which is higher than the
average EU country, which is at two point one divorces
per one thousand people. So we get married all the
time in the US, and then we get divorced all
the time of the US, But the divorce rate is
(01:53):
not at an all time high and actually dropped. Yeah,
it's it's sort of been kind of plateauing for the
past several years. And I don't know. I mean, people
fret so much about our divorce rate in America, but
I also think that maybe that's a good sign that
both our marriage and divorce rates are really high. People
are seeking happiness, except that divorce can have bad effects
(02:15):
on families. So anyway, like Kristen said, the divorce rate
has actually gone down a little in the past twenty years.
But let's break it down further. From nineteen sixty to
two thousand and eight, the share of currently divorced or
separated Americans jumped from five percent to fourteen percent. Divorce
itself hit an all time high background the late seventies
(02:36):
and early eighties. After rising sharply in the sixties and seventies,
so it's interesting to think about the context of the time,
what's going on socially in our country. We're getting women's
lib we're getting civil rights movements, were getting birth control,
and then suddenly people are like, I think I'm gonna
go Yeah, divorce becomes easier in a way or legally speaking.
(02:59):
And one of the most fascinating sources that we ran
across was a nineteen sixty two Harper's Bizarre article about
the young divorcee and tracks her path from her first
marriage and having kids, then getting divorced and dealing with
her social life and personal life post divorce, and then
(03:21):
leading up to remarriage because that at the time seems
like the only option for her. Yeah, it was super
It was an interesting, you know, faux profile of a woman,
and it it noted the article noted the uptick and
divorce in the country, and it really sort of fretted
about the weird limbo that divorced women find themselves in
(03:44):
because it didn't speak super negatively about the issue of
a woman being independent. I mean, it was kind of
like poo pooing it, but it wasn't saying that, oh,
a divorced woman is a terrible person. But then it
was sort of worried about the issues of sex. Yeah,
I mean, because if a divorced woman has kids, obviously
she has had sex before, so it's there. There's not
(04:08):
the chastity kind of crown for her to wear around, right.
And the article quoted a divorce attorney who had watched
as his clients over the years morphed from older men
who were leaving their wives for younger women into middle
aged women who just wanted out despite the guilt they
might feel, and also quote being felt by everyone around
(04:29):
her to be selfish and irresponsible at the least seriously neurotic.
And reading this article, Caroline, especially since it came out
in nineteen sixty two, made me think so much about
Mad Men and Betty Draper getting divorced from Don Draper
and immediately getting remarried, And I was trying to think,
(04:49):
in the context of the show whether there were similar
echoes of this Harper's bizarre article, but at least as
it was portrayed in the show. She segus so quickly
into her second marriage, and it's too well to do politician,
and she's a beautiful woman, so she's immediately kind of
set back up as an esteemed wife and mother and
(05:12):
not having to go through that divorce safe is yeah, Well,
this article looked at sort of why a wife would
just walk away from a husband. You've got a family,
you've got a husband. What could possibly be wrong? And
they spell it out. They say that it has everything
to do with sex, sexual incompatibility, sexual limitations, simply looking
(05:35):
beyond her husband for the first time, trying to escape
the quote malaise of life, and asking herself in general,
is this all there's going to be? Forever? And they
write about it as if this is the first time
that women are having these thoughts at all, that they're
finally feeling the freedom to be like, oh wait, I'm
not satisfied. Not that that freedom to think that is
(05:57):
necessarily good. They do kind of frame it in a
way of like why why isn't this good enough for you? Well,
and there seems to be this period post divorce that
this young divorce in nineteen sixty two really enjoys her
single hood. She doesn't want to say that the loss
of her marriage, the divorce, having to take care of
(06:19):
her children as a single mom are tragic, and she
doesn't want to ask anyone's forgiveness, and she might in
a way feel a little bit entitled to some admiration.
But then she quickly notices that her married friends disappear,
and might this jumped out to me, and might be
hanging out with her ex husband because she is more
of a threat, she realizes, to the fabric of society,
(06:42):
because she is a woman who will fully chooses to
step away from the safety and security of being a
suburban wife and mother. Yeah, and then it paints this
sort of grim picture of this woman, this divorce who's
going on dates where maybe she chooses to go home
with the man, or maybe she just has to sit
(07:03):
there through the whole dinner and figure out a safe
way to tell him she doesn't want to go home
with him. But so then they end up describing the
men that she's going on dates with, these either fellow
divorced people or no longer young bachelors, and they write,
these men are vast consumers of female companionship, being as
they are inhabitants of a world that makes it somehow
(07:25):
unpleasant for people to do such things as eden restaurants,
attend the theater, or even arrive at parties alone. And
they seem to consume women either by not being pleased
with them or by marrying them at a rate much
faster than women of suitable age and circumstance can be produced.
So then that leads us into a whole conversation in
this article about people sort of feeling like they're at
(07:48):
the end of their rope and they've just got to
remarry or find someone who can fill that gap, because
that's just what you do. Yeah, And and because of that,
they usually end up remarrying for factors like the convenience though,
well why not the companionship factor, and also making more
economic sense, and maybe even for sex without judgment. Yeah. Really,
(08:13):
it was a really interesting article. It was a really
interesting snapshot into this period in time when divorce was skyrocketing.
But let's move back to some Pew Research Center statistics
looking at what does actually increase the risk of divorce
beyond just that malaise of life trying to escape it,
and Pew lists having less education, marrying younger, just being
(08:38):
younger and marrying during the seventies is in itself a factor. Well, thankfully, Caroline,
we're in the clear. If we were to get married anytime. Yes,
I would have been negative a couple of years old.
And so when you look at that age factor, men's
median age a divorce is a little it's almost thirty
two years old, and for women it's just about twenty
(08:59):
nine and a half. Oh man, we're we we should
have gone through our first divorces. Caroline, I know, would
be divorced. And I feel like, and correct me if
I'm wrong or if I'm just making this up, but
I feel like the stereotype of a divorcee is that
she's she's much older and that she's been abandoned for
a younger woman. But only about eleven percent of women's
six and up are divorced. So well, yeah, because by
(09:23):
that point, probably if you stuck it out, then you're like, well,
we've been together for thirty years, might as well make
it fifty. Go for it. Um. I will say one
thing though, about the rate of divorce kind of leveling
off in recent years too. It's not so much because
we've fallen in love more and more effectively, but largely
(09:44):
because of the recession, because we didn't have money to divorce,
so we stuck together. So people think that we will
soon be seeing more of an uptick and divorce if
we haven't already. But with that uptick and divorce, the
question is will we see an uptick in this you
wor say stereotype, which does feel very mad Men era
(10:04):
when you start reading about it thinking about women swelling
Martini's and not so much the small dogs thing. But
I am thinking of Roger Sterling's divorced starry. I've been
catching up on Mattman lately, but Roger Sterling an older guy.
He's probably in his fifties early sixties. He's a silver fox,
and he divorces his wife, who is the older divorce
(10:27):
classic wealthy Manhattan stereotype. Oh yeah, I was definitely interested
in going into this episode and finding out how true
the stereotype is. And basically, spoiler, what we uncovered is
that the stereotype of this older, wealthy woman who's perhaps
(10:48):
a little bit gold digging, it's only really, it only
really crops up among the wealthy. It's not like your
average divorcee is always going to be gold digging with
the small dog and everything. Um. And there's one example
that stuck out in the news from January uh that
sort of fit into this ugly stereotype that we have culturally.
(11:12):
This is coming from the New York Posts, so you know,
they had nothing nice to say about the people involved.
But Sue and Arnold his fifty six and her ex husband,
oil tycoon Harold Ham were married for twenty six years,
they got a divorce. He writes her a check for
more than nine d and seventy four million dollars after
(11:33):
paying her more than twenty million during their actual divorce proceedings,
and the New York Post went crazy, frothing at the
mouth over the fact that Sue Anne Arnold turned down
the check for being too little, and they dubbed her angry.
They definitely painted her as the typical angry gold digging divorce.
Of course, her lawyers clarified that, like Well, accepting this
(11:56):
check would actually risk the dismissal of her appeal that
is in court, the appeal having granted her million dollars.
So there's a lot of money at play in these
sort of big name, top of the heat divorce proceedings.
Well in the media love either uh super wealthy or
(12:17):
celebrity divorce, and usually the women in these stories are
painted as, like you said, either a little bit gold
digging who are trying to grasp onto every penny in
every vacation house they can possibly sink their manicured claws
into or their objects to be pitied because they lost
their looks and then their husbands moved on to someone younger,
(12:42):
as in the case of say a Carol McCain, Senator
John McCain's first wife, who in another grain of salt
quote unquote news story in the Daily Mail profiling the
dissolving of their marriage after McCain came back from the
Vietnam War and ended up leaving her for his now wife,
(13:06):
Cindy McCain. And was there an overlap in the marriage, Yes,
there was. And while McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton
in Vietnam, Carol McCain, who they report and used to
be a beautiful swimsuit model, she was in this horrific
car accident and it disfigured her. And it was basically like,
oh and now she you know, she wasn't attractive enough, essentially,
(13:29):
and they did painted as a kind of a disgusting
story on his end, but it always fits into these
kinds of narratives are very formulaic, and the way that
they are told in such kinds of similarly salacious details. Yeah.
And in addition to the whole Carol McCain being left
behind by her ex, we've got the Jane Hawking narrative.
(13:53):
She was left by Stephen Hawking. He left her for
his nurse. And the Guardian, uh newspaper doesn't treat Jane
Hawking in their story about her nearly as badly as
the Daily Mail treated McCain, but they still write about
her life with Hawking. Quote has left her a legacy
of deep regret and though she tries to hide it, bitterness. Yeah.
(14:14):
I mean, both of these stories were highly sympathetic to
these women because both of them were left for other women.
And I gotta say, Okay, I have not seen a
theory of everything. The Stephen Hawking biopic that got all
the Oscar attention. But during the Oscars and throughout all
(14:34):
of the publicity for that film, you know that that
is about Jane and Stephen Hawking's early romance. I could
only think, Dear God, are we really creating this? I mean,
there's this love story, but I'm just curious whether it
includes the not so romantic ending of that marriage. I mean,
and even within the marriage while it was still intact.
She talks about how their relationship was not a perfect
(15:00):
one at all. But you know, reality check again, no
marriage is perfect. What I know, party pooper aller talk
about a spoiler jeez um, Well yeah, I mean speaking
of reality checks, this whole wealthy couple news story or
the narrative that we're so used to hearing about divorces
(15:21):
really hides the reality that, hey, it's not typically the
woman who becomes super wealthy after a divorce. Men become
richer by about a third after divorce and their earning
potential does not get dinged because of it, while women
tend to lose more than a fifth of their income.
(15:42):
And also, typically if women end up getting custody of
the kids, they give up reaching their full earning potential
to care for them. And plus it's hard to make
up for those lost years of not working well married.
So while you know, in these wealthy marriages, the man
might have kept working, kept earning, kept moving at that ladder,
and the woman didn't work, Then if she's suddenly divorced
(16:05):
and she has to re enter the workforce, she has
a lot of time that's left out on her resume.
And that was one thing too that jumped out to
me in that nineteen sixty two Harper's bizarre piece the
Sympathy with which the author notes that the young deforce
has to go back to work. She's like, well, and
then there's a whole job thing. Yeah, I mean it talks.
(16:27):
It talks about how this woman, and in the beginning
of her marriage, was so eager to to join the
workforce to help out. But I'll thank god once once
the husband got on a stable professional footing, she could
get out of there. Well. And even not to say
that that all of these divorce days don't have jobs before,
but they might simply, especially in these wealthy relationships, their
(16:49):
career was probably taking a back seat in whatever way
that meant um to their husband's. And also to quick
acknowledgment that this is a straight up pun had her
enormative conversation right now, this is still I mean, because
gay marriage is not has not been around legally long
(17:10):
enough for us to even have built these stereotypes around
gay deporces. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, if you want
to talk about a wife's career taking a backseat to
a husband's, just look, no, further than the relationship between
Elon and Justine Musk. And of course, Elon Musk is
the PayPal founder who made a bajillion dollars and Justine
(17:33):
read a column from Marie Claire back in and her
narrative is one that's pretty familiar to anyone who's ever
you know, watched a movie or seen a soap opera.
Her wealthy, controlling husband leaves her, and she's a writer
turned in her words, trophy wife, and she had loved
books and reading and wanted to really shape and nurture
(17:55):
her writing career, and her husband was like, no, no,
you're not um and anyway, so he leaves his trophy
wife and children and five children for a super young
British actress whom he has since divorced and remarried. Um.
But fortunately Justine Musk claims that she and the new
(18:15):
wife actually get along. Yeah, I mean, and that adds
a little bit of nuance reality nuance to this whole
kind of trophy narrative as well, because oh, we don't
have to start yet another stereotypical narrative about two women
quote unquote catfighting over the quote unquote possession of a
quote unquote man. Okay, no quote unquote around the man.
(18:37):
But the thing is too them getting along might not
matter so much because this jumped out to me. Divorce
rates for second marriages are higher than for first marriages,
and the biggest reason why kids not getting along with
their parents new love interest. Blame it on those kiddos. Yeah,
(18:59):
anybody who has seen down Nabby knows that even when
the children are adults, that can really interfere with a
new love match. I won't say anymore. I don't know
what that means. I can only make Madmin references right now,
I think, and I can't make Madmin references. So it
works out perfectly. But one thing that's not really part
of the popular stereotypes about divorces is the fact that
(19:21):
women tend to be the ones who file for divorce
or separation first. And we're going to talk about that
more in detail in just a second. So in the
first half of the podcast, we're talking a lot about
this usually wealthier divorce stereotype and how she has been
(19:44):
largely stigmatized in a lot of ways, and at least
starting in the nineteen sixties, when divorce was really on
the rise, was presented with just the option of remarriage.
So we were trying to add some nuance to that
and ground it more in reality. And the next reality
we want to talk about is how women statistically are
(20:06):
likelier to file for divorce compared to husbands. And this
is a little bit of a dated study, but nonetheless
as a fabulous title coming from two thousand Margaret f.
Brnnig's and Douglas w Allen's these boots are made for walking?
Why most divorce filers are women? Yeah, so we have
(20:29):
this assumption that because of post divorce financial and social hardship,
men end up being the ones to instigate the divorce
in most cases. After all, women's standard of living usually declines,
and as she ages, especially if she has kids, her
quote unquote market value as a marriage prospect decreases, while
the husband's market value increases. But the reality is a
(20:53):
little different. The proportion of wife file cases hovers around
two thirds, and a large portion of those women say
that they're happier post divorce because of this sense of
relief if they're getting out of a bad situation. Uh.
And women are also more likely to instigate a separation,
not just a divorce, And looking at why this is
(21:13):
there are a couple different reasons in this study. It
partly has to do with assuring their innocence in any
divorce proceedings to possibly secure custody or support rights. Maybe
it's more convenient for them to file, but they also
might be escaping a cruel or exploitative situation. And also
though Brinnigan Allen right that filing behavior is driven by
(21:36):
self interest at the time of divorce, such as when
there are marital assets that can be appropriated, and also
again when they're being exploited within the marriage, like when
the other person violates the marriage contract somehow, such as
running around or being a super controlling just being a
really really wellsy spouse in one way or another. And then,
(21:59):
of course, when it comes to custody, who gets the
kids is by far the most important component in deciding
who files, and usually because women are the primary caregivers,
they're going to be the ones to step in first
and probably get primary custody for those kids. But Brinnigan
(22:21):
Alan also predict that as men and women's labor force
income becomes more nearly equal, they rte In other words,
as things like the gender wage gap clothes and women
continue entering the workforce, the difference in filing rates should disappear,
so equal opportunity divorce filings for all. Yeah, and so
(22:45):
it seems like this whole women filing first thing is
less about gold digging, our stereotype about gold digging and
just wanting to get the money, and really more about
for a lot of women being able to carve out
a secure place after leaving a bad situation, aation, trying
to leave possibly a bad marriage, make sure that they
have custody of the kids, less about trying to completely
(23:08):
deplete their ex husband's bank account. But the thing is,
there's also this this blame on women a lot of
times for heterosexual marriages falling apart, whether they're the ones
who filed or not, and sometimes whether the spouse was
violating that marital contract or not. And this was something
(23:29):
that Lynn Stewart Paramore at Alternate was railing against in
response to this blog post she had read. I think
it was featured on the Huffington's Post homepage about five
ways that women were failing their marriages and basically saying,
you know what, women, you are in charge of creating
an emotionally safe environment, making sure that sex is happening
(23:53):
on the rags. And if you're not doing these kinds
of things and really maintaining the emotional health of your marriage,
well it's on you. Because the guy's job is to
make the money. They're pragmatic their logic, they're thinking about
numbers and baseball. They're not thinking about, you know, emotional nurturance,
(24:16):
which is really just an insult to everybody across the board,
and of course plays into very antiquated gender stereotypes. Yeah,
and and Paramore says that these all of these stereotypes
about our behavior obscure the driving forces that can split
a marriage. And she says that all of this finger
wagging at women usually comes along with the off sided
(24:39):
statistic that we also cited that women file for divorce
twice as often as men. And what we hear less
often Paramore rights is straight talk about the social and
economic factors that drive the engine of divorce. The fact
is that college educated people are more likely to stay together,
and that there's a higher risk of divorce for people
(24:59):
with lower incomes and less education. And she goes on
to say that when people are struggling to pay the
rent and keep a roof over their heads. The marriage
problem isn't likely to be some kind of deficiency in
managing intimacy. The sole thing, the glue that holds the
marriage or any type of relationship together, is not purely
just intimacy or how often you're getting laid. All those
(25:22):
sex is a huge reason for a lot of divorces
to happen. There's so much more to it. And the
fact that the more money you have and the older
you are, the less likely you are to get divorced.
That just means that there are other things that we
need to dig into here about the reasons behind marriage
is breaking up? Yeah, Because she goes on to site
this u c L a study about how low income
(25:43):
versus high income study respondents held similar romantic standards and
had similar kinds of problems in relationships, and that is
no big surprise. But the low income respondents were likelier
to report that their relationships were being affected by economic
and social issues like financial struggles, alcohol and drug abuse, etcetera.
(26:04):
So when you have more resources, it can make it
easier to cope with those relationship stressors that usually put
a strain on any kind of marriage. Because and I
can attest to this if you're worried about money, you
add something else to that and it just everything is
just even more intensified. And that's just finance. Yeah yeah,
(26:28):
I mean, especially if somebody or both people are working
multiple jobs, maybe somebody doesn't have health benefits. I mean,
there's so many things that are rooted in money that
can put so much strain on a relationship. Well, and
that would probably go into the age factor as well
in terms of people who marry younger are likelier to
get divorced, because I think that also speaks to probably
(26:49):
your earning potential at the time when you get married,
but also the kinds of tools that you might be
bringing in terms of life experience into conflict resolution. Thinking
about myself all getting married when I was twenty two, No,
I would be divorced. I would absolutely be divorced. Oh yeah,
it is horrifying to think about. I. So I started
(27:12):
going to therapy almost a year ago and it has
changed my life. Would I say that everybody should go
to therapy, Yes I would, But it has been so helpful.
This process of digging through like all the jumble that
is my brain and my pile of emotions has been
so helpful. Not only for making me a more functional human,
(27:33):
but also more functional human in my relationships and so imagining.
Like my boyfriend and I talked all the time about
our faulty tool sets that we were provided with when
we were younger, and so not having been able to
add to that toolset getting married at a super young age.
Not that I'm saying that there aren't totally mature like
(27:54):
with it having it all together younger people, but I
would also be in that probably divorced category. Okay, but
let's say that we had gotten married in our early
twenties and thanks to our faulty tool said's respectively, our
marriages dissolved. Now let's talk about remarriage, because as common
as divorces and also as probably painful as it can be,
(28:18):
remarriage is still highly common. And this was reported on
in November in Time magazine, and I believe that they
were reporting on statistics out of the Pew Research Center,
which we cite so often on the podcast, and they
were writing about how round about there of all the
new marriages in we're not first marriages, in half of
(28:43):
those cases both spouses had been married before, so a
big bulk of our marriage statistics are people saying, you
know what, I'll give it another go. Why not. There
is a huge drive for a lot of people to remarry,
whether it is that Harper's bizarre life convenience, companionship thing,
or you know, a multitude of other things because you
(29:07):
can fall in love again, Caroline, it's true. Oh my gosh.
Well yeah, and Pew talked about these reasons possibly people
wanting more life satisfaction, because only half of divorced or
separated people said they were happy with their family lives
compared with married folks of whom were satisfied. So maybe
there's just this drive to have a richer family life.
(29:27):
But there's also the issue of commitment and stability. Uh.
Pew writes about how divorced or separated people put more
emphasis on making a lifelong commitment and financial stability than
do singles or cohabitating partners, and they are more likely
to say that these are reasons to get married. And men,
as echoed in our podcast on Widowhood, men are more
(29:51):
interested than women in remarriage. Men are more likely than
women to view companionship as important to marriage, as compared
with just thirty percent whose second marriage is quote unquote
for love and to say that financial stability is a
very important reason to get married, and when it comes
to men's reasons for remarriage are also likelier than women
(30:12):
to just like companionship and financial stability is too big motivators. Yeah,
as opposed to the thirty percent whose second marriage was
for love, That can't be right. Come on, it seems
like if you were going to go through that a
second time, that wouldn't you be more motivated to do it? Well? No,
I was about to say, wouldn't be more motivated to
(30:33):
do it for love? But no, By that point you
probably realize that love can dissolve and you might be
a little more pragmatic. Yeah. Well, I mean we've talked
about this. We've done a previous episode looking at issues
of divorce and widowhood, and men have typically typically are
more driven to form those person to person bonds with
a partner than women are. Women are like, I've got
my girlfriends, I'm cool, I'm fine, I'm happy, I'm I've
(30:56):
got healthy relationships all around me, whereas men are like,
I need a cruise to director. Well, that's why I'm
really curious to see in emerging literature in the coming years,
similar kinds of data on gay couples, specifically looking at
gay men. I wonder if the motivations would shift at
all when you have two guys or two women, and
(31:17):
how those kinds of gender stereotypical marital roles than maybe
mix and match when it's it's two fellows or two ladies. Yeah, well,
something that I thought about reading about this whole Like
men are motivated by financial security and and remarrying. You know,
(31:38):
earlier we talked about how women are way more likely
to have their finances and their earning potential dinged post
divorced than men are. Men just like I've just continued
on this trajectory of my career and my earning potential
this whole time, whereas a lot of women step off
the track, you know, lean in all that kind stuff.
They've stepped off the track to either be at home
(31:58):
or be with the kids or whatever. And there have
been study findings talking about how like attracts like, especially
when it comes to important things like money, beyond just
personality and interests and those kinds of things. And so
it almost seems like with finances being so important to men,
they might be seeking out someone who has equal earning
(32:19):
potential to themselves, like potentially a trophy wife. But for
a woman who has already been financially danged after a divorce,
she might not be able to sort of find a
new mate who's earning potential is as great as her
ex husband's. And so that would be something I'd like
to learn more about. But that's just kind of a
question that popped into my head as I was reading
(32:40):
well and talking about the earning potential to and how
divorce can impact women's incomes, especially as they get older.
Sort of the sadder reality, the bleaker reality, I should say,
of divorce for women is that, according to the Social
Security Administration, of divorced women, over sixty five of impoverty
(33:01):
compared with eighteen percent of never married women and fifteen
percent of widowed women. So two percent is not huge
and even five percent is not doesn't sound like a
huge percentage, is not this gaping gap, but still, when
we're talking about across the country, that adds up to
(33:21):
a number of people. Yeah, and the Social Security Administration
was spelling out like, hey, well, at least widows have
some sort of pension or um or women who have
been in the workforce have accrued social security benefits, So like,
there are different types of women in different types of
life situations who are still having money come in, but
those women who completely stepped off the career track haven't
(33:44):
been accruing any social security benefits, which form a nice
net for a lot of people. Yeah, But when it
comes to the good, and there is a lot of good,
especially because I would argue that that this the divorce
stigma is probably lower than it's ever been. We accept
that it is in a lot of ways a fact
of life. It's kind of a roll of the dice
(34:07):
at this point. And there was a column at More
magazine from divorce coach Jill Brook, who I mean by
virtue of her being a divorce coach, she's pretty pro divorce,
but I mean she's she's really optimistic about it, saying
that most over forty women realize, you know what, I
might not get married again, but I really don't care.
(34:27):
And she says that research finds that overall, women are
happier post divorce. Yeah. She says that they're finally able
to focus on themselves, particularly obviously if the kids have
left home and they have the resources to do so,
which is also key. Um. You know, they're not responsible
for anyone else's housework in shore as they're no longer
(34:48):
picking up a husband or a boyfriend's underwear off of
the floor. And she talks about Dr. Barbara Bartlett, who's
a sex therapist and psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital
and says that Bartlett's these a growing trend of financially
secure women preferring to stay single and date. They enjoy
having their own schedules without having to report to anyone.
(35:09):
And plus you get the whole cougar factor that that's
also becoming less and less stigmatized for an older woman
and a younger man to get together. So there are options,
There are options and more more stereotypes in which you
can you can be an animal when you grow up
like a cougar um. And I will say, though anecdotally,
(35:30):
I am want. One divorce story that that makes my
heart sing is a friend of mine's mom who got
divorced when she was probably in her mid forties, and
it was a kind of nasty divorce. It was pretty
heart wrenching. There were kids, you know, they had had
(35:52):
a lot that she had been with her husband for
a very long time, but she met this guy and
they are in love, and she seems younger than ever
ever before, and it really is like a second life
for her. And it's just been really amazing to see
her coming to life, especially being in what was in
(36:13):
a lot of ways a very unhappy marriage, and it's
like it couldn't have come soon enough. And her boyfriend
also is divorced as well, and he has his kids too,
and it's like for both of them, they're like, oh
my god, you're amazing humans. So yeah, I mean I
think that they're I'm I'm hardened to see that because
(36:34):
we have longer lifespans than ever before, you know, like
that that's also a reason why divorce happens. It's because,
like humans really weren't built to like hang out with
one human like fifty years. And one example of how
we are ritualizing this kind of romantic transition, I don't
(36:55):
even want to call it a loss, this romantic transition
is through the more recent end of divorce parties. How
interesting this sounds like another thing that you sort of
have to have those resources for. Well, yeah, you have
to be able to, you know, buy a cake perhaps
if you want there are bakers who will sell you
(37:16):
a divorce cake, and a lot of times they'll have
a similar kind of wedding cake topper on it with
the bride and the groom, but usually it's something really funny,
like the bread dragging the groom out to a trash
bin and just to drive home, Caroline, how how significant
of a trend this has become. There's a BBC News
headline from late the red hot business of divorce celebration. Interesting,
(37:43):
so not not really too far I mean, it's on
the other end of the spectrum, but not too far
removed from the gender revealed parties that we've talked about before.
People wanting an excuse to to throw a party and
eat some cake, maybe be go to Vegas and live
it up. Yeah. I also thought it was interesting that
there's even a Wikipedia entry for divorce parties. And in
(38:03):
that BBC News article they profile this woman who has
now become a divorce party planner, who went to Vegas
with her girlfriends post divorce to kind of, you know,
kickstart the whole post divorce process. They went to a
shooting range, she brought her bridal gown and she shot
(38:24):
it up with a machine gun and she had so
much fun doing it she turned it into a business.
And common kinds of things include skydiving parties where you're
jumping into being single again. And there's even in the
Netherlands a divorce hotel where couples can go together to
(38:44):
like take care of the whole thing. You can file
your papers, you know, get divorced, maybe have a little
like post divorce pampering, and you're just like, all right, cool, yeah,
see you later. Divorce interesting, but that is so far
removed from the average woman's divorce experience. Well yeah, I
mean the thing if you have the money at hand,
after paying a divorce lawyer and like going through all
(39:06):
of that and you know, renegotiating all of your finances,
is now a single person and you can then go
to Vegas with your girlfriends. It does seem like a
bit of a Real Housewives e kind of pursuit. Yeah yeah,
and and just like the Real Housewives, it's sort of
tacky but also sort of just living your life by
(39:27):
your own rules exactly. I mean, in the BBC did
talk to a psychologist who said, yeah, this is you know,
this could be seen as a healthy way to you
create this new kind of ritual. I mean we we
it happens so commonly, I mean it happens half as
often as marriage does. So why not eat some cake? Why? Well,
(39:52):
that's my attitude about everything. Why not? Yeah, it's true. Um,
So I am curious to know if any podcast list
or have either thrown or attended a divorce party. Yeah,
I'm just curious about knowing, Like what's what's your divorce reality?
Or is your life more like the nineteen sixty two
Harper's Bizarre article where your fellow women and mary people
(40:15):
see you as sort of a suspicious threat or somebody
to be pitied or are you just out there living
your life excited to sort of be free of your
you know, marital bonds. Yeah, what is the status of
the divorce stigma? Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've
(40:38):
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well, so,
Christian and I have gotten an overwhelmingly awesome response to
our O c D episode. A lot of you guys,
whether you have O c D or just no with
with O c D, wrote in thanking us for talking
about the topic. And we have two letters here are
(41:01):
from women who are dealing with this thing called pure OH,
and so we're going to read them now. This one's
from Whitney. She says, First of all, I live in
an area where it's not a good thing to be
liberal or a feminist, So you guys have been like
my feminist besties over the past year. Thanks Whitney. She
goes on to say, thank you so much for your
wonderful episode on O c D. I was diagnosed at
(41:23):
the age of fifteen. I suffer from a form of
O c D known as pure OH. I have intrusive
thoughts of harming myself or loved ones, even though I
am neither violent nor suicidal, and I've never really had
compulsions if you want further inside. This is also discussed
in the first episode of another fantastic podcast called Invisibilia.
I am very fortunate to have almost no symptoms eleven
(41:45):
years later, thanks to antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. Thank you,
Thank you, thank you for calling out shows like Monk
for misrepresenting O c D. It is not a cute,
fun or beneficial illness. Ever since I was a teenager,
I loathed shows like Monk and What About Bob because
they aren't helpful to o c D suffers and those
with other mental illnesses. Either our experiences are invalidated because
(42:09):
the o c D is seen as something minor, or
we're seen as weird and our opinions don't matter. Every
time I try to express opinions about those types of
jokes in the media, I've gotten brushed off by both
friends and family for overreacting because it's just a show.
It may just be a TV show, but the things
we watch both reflect and influence our attitudes. So thanks Whitney,
(42:31):
and I've got one here from Rebecca, also about pure Oh,
she writes, I have a version of o c D
called pure OH since childhood and was finally diagnosed as
past fall. Puro is basically o c D without the
outward physical compulsions. I spend hours and hours obsessing about
all kinds of things, from the food that I eat
to how my lesson plans are written out. I've had
(42:52):
obsessions since I was a little girl. We once at
our house bombed for fleas, and without telling anyone, I
slowly but surely threw away or refuse to touch any
of my belongings that I imagined may have been exposed
to the mysteriously killing chemicals. I spent seven years in
therapy with someone who didn't believe in O c D
without compulsions, and it was an unbelievable relief to finally
(43:13):
find someone who understood what was happening in my brain.
I also have other anxiety issues in clinical depression, but
I'm very high functioning, and I'm trying to spread the
words so that others who have these disorders can get
the help and compassion that they deserve. I'm hoping that
you can help spread the word the pure o o
c D is a real diagnosis. Just because someone isn't
lining up their pencils and checking the oven over and
(43:34):
over doesn't mean they aren't struggling. Thanks as always for
helping to keep us all educated about current issues, and
thank you Rebecca, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address and thrillings to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
including this one with our sources. So you can read
(43:57):
more about divorced women head on over to stuff mom
Never told You dot com for more on this and
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