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I never in 25 years even thought about divorce. I never expected perfection and always appreciated his good points.

My filing was because he wouldn't give up his girlfriend. Unhappy? Read my profile and tell me-who wouldn't be?

[This message edited by trumanshow at 9:55 PM, September 17th (Tuesday)]

Personally I don't think it's unhealthy at all not to want to be married ever again.

Sean, I don't either. My SO is a BH and has expressed many of the same things you have. I do understand. Divorce royally sucks. It's not something I want to experience again, either.

What's the statistic for men having an A compared to women having an A?

At least in my M, I did everything. If there were plans to be made, I made them. Kids to pick up, I found someone. A marriage license to get, I got it. Etc. so maybe some women file as just another job they do for the relationship.

My WH wants a D, I won't file for him. Although I am pretty sure he wants me to.

Sometimes we do not know everything about the statistic being presented.

I asked for the divorce and we were supposed to go together to a paralegal and hash it out ourselves. Instead he jumped the gun, hired an attorney and filed as the petitioner.

So he was the one who filed first, not me.

If you want to generalize, how about this:

Could the number of WOMEN filing for divorce be in direct correlation to their cheating spouses???

That was 100% why my marriage ended in divorce. Period.

Me too. Except that my ex blackmailed me into filing. Said he wouldn't give me any more money unless I filed. Nice.

I think that's another common tactic. My xH was the same way. It's like they cheat, they lie, they go out on DATES while still married (and call them "dates" as if they are single!) but heaven forbid they file for divorce because that "would make them look bad".

I am not angry but do feel like there are many good reasons to leave a marriage.

I am the one who filed for divorce but it was NOT what I wanted to do, it was what I was FORCED to do. Now you are saying "Forced? How were you forced to file?" Well, first off he abandoned me when I was too ill to care for myself and I wasn't allowed to drive. He refused to take me to doctors or urgent care and left me for hours at a time to spend his time with others. Then there was his cheating on me from year one of our marriage that I discovered in year 10 of our marriage. I left but came back when he promised me he wasn't that man anymore. But the true force was when I asked him a question about his affairs and he flew into a rage, yelled in my face that I "had better know the consequences for asking questions" and then followed me into the bedroom where he shoved his fist into my face and screamed at the top of his lungs to "get the F out of HIS house". It was absolutely the 1 thing that I can and never will allow in my life...Physical Abuse is the ultimate reason for divorce for me.

I still loved him with all my heart and I cried when I moved out but I knew that if I stayed, the next time he would hit me. I am not a punching bag and I could not allow my grandchild to be exposed to his threats of hitting me. I never wanted a divorce but I did want him to act like he was married and not spend all of his free time chasing other women or hanging with the guys getting drunk. I wanted a husband and companion not someone to pay the bills. I wanted the whole "for better, for worse in sickness and in health" that we vowed to each other. What I got was verbal, emotional and physical abuse and also severe abandonment when I didn't fit his "perfect wife" ideal. He left me long before I moved out. He only wanted a wife if she was someone he could control and destroy.

I believe that too many women stay in abusive marriages out of fear or the inability to leave and stay safe. I do not believe that I have any right to decide what is an OK reason to divorce for someone else. Who knows, there may be someone out there who feels that my reasons for divorcing my xnpdwh were not OK. They don't live my life and I do not live theirs so I won't judge.

This means one or two things to me. Men are either really bad at marriage OR (and I believe this one more) women just expect way too much from men

Exactly. This makes perfect sense. Throw some percentages out there, call them statistics, then make conclusions based on your own preconceived beliefs. I believe that's how many researchers work. Could explain all sorts of things.

Yep. Many people expect too much from relationships and their partner's and far too little from themselves.

Like I asked on the other thread...HOW IS THIS A GENDER THING?????

I was naive when I got married..I got married very young..

I endured a lot of disrespect and abuse during my marriage and I put up with it because I was naive enough to think all marriages were similar and that my marriage was "normal"..

In the last 5 to 7 years of my marriage, my WH 's desires and expectations were veering way off into left field to the point of being sick and unreasonable....I rarely ever felt like I was enough for him..

In a way D-day was a relief because I knew I could tell WH to take his unreasonable expectations of me and shove them where the sun doesn't shine..

I agree with Nature Girl..

Just because somebody wants a D, things are not simple or cut and dried..

If I file for a D this afternoon, I am looking at starting over in my early 60's..

I have been the sole or main bread winner during our long marriage..My WH was employed on and off but has no savings or pension..

I am retired (due to health reasons and the downsizing of my company) with pension in payout status..My pension income is barely enough to make basic ends meet living in a house that is already paid off..

My WH lives in the same house as I do, separate bedrooms..He seems to be working the system for all its worth, because he refuses to find a job, I think he was advised not to find one, knowing that we are separated and that D will be in the picture at some point..

A lot of women are like me..They are frustrated and unhappy with their living situations and partnerships with S..

If there is a way I can legally extricate myself from my situation without needing to move in with family or go on food stamps I would love to know about it..

So no, statistics flawed....Most of us honest women and men who are aren't greedy just live the best way we know how and don't expect much more than the basics of human kindness..

[This message edited by doggiediva at 3:39 PM, September 17th (Tuesday)]

I also think things were a lot easier when life expectancy was like 40 years and much of the time spent on actual survival and not being eaten. Makes the whole, "so how do you feel about us/that?" communication seem rather silly. More like "RUN!!!!!" and hope they're slower than you. Ah prehistoric love. So there's that.

Humans don't do relative comfort, time on their hands, lack of the same external boundaries our ancestors dealt with well, as a whole.

I was also young when I got married (21). We were married for a long time. I put up with a lot- depression, mood swings, anger, cheating, an affair, and unwillingness to contribute to the household expenses.

Whe I was told that I had a huge bonus coming my way, it happened to be the same week that he permanently moved to the couch.

I took control of my destiny and filed. A girl can only be treated like shit for so long until she takes a stand.

Turns out, he was back in the affair.

I didn't want to divorce, and except for the infidelity I would still be married. If I held an unrealistic expectation, I would have run for the hills long ago, well before the first D-Day. But I didn't, and was perfectly content taking the good with the bad.

From a purely academic perspective, you can make statistics tell any story you want. You CANNOT generalize to the entire population without more information about how those numbers were derived. There are too many unknown variables, for one. I could come up with a list of questions that could easily challenge the validity of those numbers, but I won't bore everyone with that. Suffice to say that your personal experiences are likely biasing your conclusions. While normal, it is incorrect to do so.

Don't read too much into it. You'll find the right person, and if not, that's okay too.

Put a couple of glasses of wine after traveling for work all day together with multiple grad classes in stats, and this is what you get!

Ever since I took a class in college about *scientific* studies....I put very little stock in the results of those so-called studies. Sure, they're good to peruse, but the majority of studies conducted just contain too much researcher/participant bias and/or *uncontrolled for* factors, that they can't be relied upon as a cut/dried "*my* conclusion is correct because my evidence says it's so," IMO.

If my MIL reads on the internet or in the newspaper that eating a square of dark chocolate a day will extend her life, then by golly she's gonna begin eating a square of dark chocolate every day (true story...she did read that somewhere and she did implement that strategy. Not sure what she'll say in a coupla years when a new study comes out that says that dark chocolate is toxic ).

Sultan told me of a study that he heard about that said that 50% of married women are cheating on their husbands. He said that he was at a table with 2 of his guy friends. He looked at one and thought "his wife isn't cheating on him," he looked at the other and thought "his wife isn't cheating on him" and came to the conclusion that *I,* then, MUST be cheating on HIM. (Yet another true story. NO shit.) Stbx based his insistence that *I* was cheating on him on *some* random study that he had heard about somewhere, somehow. Nevermind taking into consideration what he *knew* about me.....the study said it was true, so it must be.

Anyway. Sean. Your conclusion about women having unrealistic expectations of marriage....which therefore leads to marital unhappiness and, ultimately, divorce.....is just flat-out wonky thinking. Sure, maybe women do have unrealistic expectations....BUT I would be willing to bet that there are a shit-ton of men that ALSO have unrealistic expectations of marriage. As Inconnu said....you are familiar with us women BS's and have read our stories and seen the completely ridiculous crap that a lot of the WH's have conjured up. There are women on here who have gone through some really bad stuff (surgeries, deaths of family members, life-threatening diseases, PPD) and whose WH's have declared that they weren't being sufficiently attended to.

You have not reached a valid conclusion.

[This message edited by gonnabe2016 at 9:56 PM, September 17th (Tuesday)]

Without even reading the replies I have to reply to your original post.

I was completely blindsided by the A. He just freaked out and left out of nowhere. He made it clear that R was not an option, and gave me an ultimatum. I had no choice but to file for a somewhat fair D. Otherwise it would have been a fight and I was in no emotional state to deal with that at the time.

My view on your percentage is that most male WS are too irresponsible to take the steps necessary and would rather put the burden on their BS to protect themselves. It is not across the board but fairly common from what I've seen. ETA: maybe saying most WS regardless of their sex behave that way is more fair. I've seen plenty of female way wards do the same here on SI.

Just an off the cuff thought.

[This message edited by persevere at 10:19 PM, September 17th (Tuesday)]

. If you don't want to divorce, then why are you filing for it?

Seriously?

I'm just stuck here. I cannot believe you posted this question here. Just so you know, yes I filed. And no, I didn't want a divorce.

I filed because I was dealing with an extremely unremorseful narcissistic. Husband who flat out told me what he did was "none of (my) fucking business".

He was still seeing his slutface, still lying, sneaking around and cheating. Was I just supposed to stomp my feet until he did what I wanted him to do?

Should I have clicked my heels together and made a wish on a star to have a loving, faithful husband??

Or maybe I should have just sucked it up, stayed married to this Dooosh, and lived a horribly fake and unhappy marriage for the rest of my life?

So yeah, I filed. But it sure as HELL wasn't my decision. It wasn't even my top 5 ways to get through the infidelity hell. And I take great offense to your insinuation that not wanting a divorce can magically make you happily married.

Booooo. :(

Well to me there are only TWO reasons to file for divorce; financial or emotional. I would think it's safe to say that every reason probably comes back ultimately to one of those two. If you don't want to divorce, then why are you filing for it?

My xhusband told me he wanted a divorce on Valentine's Day, 2010. I begged him to work on the marriage.

My xhusband told me about his first affair in May 2010, and reiterated he wanted a divorce. I told him I could forgive him, and begged him to work on the marriage.

My xhusband admitted he had been having an affair with my best friend and he was in love with her in Sept 2010, and reiterated he wanted a divorce.

He wouldn't actually do any of the WORK to pay a lawyer, file, or even show up in court.

I filed. But I sure as hell didn't *want* a divorce.

Maybe its the men/women who are self centered who make the other spouse unhappy. Maybe we file because the marriage is over and we are tired of being abused emotionally, physically, and financially and to stay is like a slow death every day. I stayed 25 years when I should have quit the first time he verbally humiliated me in front of his friend and thought it was funny. Or maybe after he threatened me with divorce every time we argued, or the time he pulled my hair out, or the first time he cheated, or every fifth year he had us on the brink of financial ruin. I see too many men in marriages taking care of their needs while the wife is drained emotionally. Maybe that is why women are unhappy, not because they have an unrealistic view of marriage. My view was work together, love each other, stand by each other against the world and be faithful. Realistic? But what do I know, apparently I didn't love him enough.

Ok ! How about we just all agree that there are good men and bad ones and that there are good woman and bad ones . We can not let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. I would have never left my marraige or divorced In some situations man or woman , we have no choice, our spouse makes it for us .

I also think there is a 'men get screwed in divorce' factor.

In general, regardless of the whys and who is at fault and who wanted the divorce, men tend to end up getting the short end of the stick from our legal system in divorce. I think that is a factor in skewed statistics. Men are somewhat reticent to begin a process that they know will end up 'costing' them regardless of who is at fault.

In general, regardless of the whys and who is at fault and who wanted the divorce, men tend to end up getting the short end of the stick from our legal system in divorce

And there in lies the generalization problem, because in my D my xWH got it all and I got screwed financially. But you don't see me hating on men or making generalizations about them to justify my preferences about how I run my life. That if I marry again my H will have to sign a per-nup? That's purely a function of my life experiences and situation and says nothing about men and M. That I want to M again is purely because it is still my ideal in romantic relationships. As per usual, I'm not going to let what happened to me ruin my desires, preferences or outlook on life. If I let that happen, then I lose for sure, something I refuse to do.