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SMNTY Classics: Divorced Women · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. Welcome to Stephan ever
0:08
Speaker 1: told your productive I Heeart Radio, Samantha, has there ever
0:19
Speaker 1: been a divorce, like a public divorce in your wife
0:22
Speaker 1: that really rocked you, really upset you public as in
0:26
Speaker 1: like famous or I mean either or I was thinking
0:31
Speaker 1: famous but famous? Okay. Um. I think there's many times
0:36
Speaker 1: where I have gotten shocked and saddened because you just
0:39
Speaker 1: want them to be forever and I'm trying to think,
0:44
Speaker 1: who's oh Danny DeVito Rita Parliament. They just seemed like
0:48
Speaker 1: forever to me, and it was really sad because they
0:51
Speaker 1: just genuinely seem to like each other. Then they divorced.
0:55
Speaker 1: I guess everything is okay, there's not. It wasn't a
0:57
Speaker 1: big splash. I didn't remember that, but yeah, may be
1:00
Speaker 1: really sad. Yeah there. I mean, obviously we don't know
1:05
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of celebrities lives and how that
1:09
Speaker 1: looks on an everyday basis, and it sometimes it just
1:13
Speaker 1: feels so different talking about it. I remember when we
1:16
Speaker 1: had Um the lawyer on who dealt with you know
1:19
Speaker 1: these big and I was listening to her talk like
1:22
Speaker 1: whoa I've seen her named in a couple of more
1:26
Speaker 1: divorces since then, and I was like, oh, well, you
1:28
Speaker 1: know her. Yeah, I can't think of one that comes
1:34
Speaker 1: immediately to mind, but there's definitely been couples where I
1:38
Speaker 1: have a sort of similar moment of like, oh, they
1:41
Speaker 1: seemed happy and I wanted you to be happy. One
1:44
Speaker 1: the I think it's a big one. Maybe Prince Charles
1:47
Speaker 1: and Prince Diana that made some huge splash. Definitely. I
1:52
Speaker 1: know this is probably a little dated, especially, but I
1:55
Speaker 1: remember it. I remember being a huge, huge thing and
1:59
Speaker 1: everybody's losing their mind. Maybe also Tom Cruise and Katie
2:02
Speaker 1: Holmes because the initial way they got together. Yeah. Well,
2:07
Speaker 1: and certainly you know Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and
2:11
Speaker 1: then Brad Pitt and Angelina usually yeah, you got the
2:14
Speaker 1: team Angelina, team Jennifer. Yeah. That is one interesting thing
2:18
Speaker 1: about these high profile divorces is you get that kind
2:22
Speaker 1: of discourse which is so ridiculous because we're like, wait,
2:25
Speaker 1: what about Brad. He's the denominator and this whole thing.
2:30
Speaker 1: He's the kind of the jerk that is to happen.
2:33
Speaker 1: But okay, cool, right, Yeah, And this was on my
2:37
Speaker 1: mind because I know recently we talked about Bill Melinda
2:40
Speaker 1: Gates and then it feels like the very next week
2:43
Speaker 1: it was an outs they're getting divorced, and from as
2:46
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't know much about their relationship, I was
2:51
Speaker 1: still sad to hear that, because you know, you hear
2:53
Speaker 1: about the work they've done together, um and the kind
2:56
Speaker 1: of nonprofit space and and so I did have a
3:00
Speaker 1: kind of paying like, oh for me being the maybe
3:05
Speaker 1: you can call me Jade or whatever. In my head,
3:08
Speaker 1: I was like, but how much of that was really Melinda? Sure?
3:12
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the bigger portion was probably kind of like
3:15
Speaker 1: the Bezos splash that happened when he and his wife divorced.
3:19
Speaker 1: His wife became pretty much the philanthropus and just gave
3:22
Speaker 1: away all the money. And I love that, and I
3:24
Speaker 1: feel like not to be too stereotypical in that, but
3:29
Speaker 1: I'm like, I do wonder sure, and I guess we'll see. Yeah.
3:34
Speaker 1: I feel like there's been a lot of announcements of
3:36
Speaker 1: divorce lately. John Laney just announcing divorce. Do you see
3:40
Speaker 1: the statement from the wife, No, I saw a heartbreaking
3:44
Speaker 1: Her statement said that she was heartbroken that he asked
3:47
Speaker 1: for divorce, so absolutely put it in his corner. MM hmm. Yeah.
3:53
Speaker 1: I mean, again, we don't know these people and we
3:55
Speaker 1: don't to because it is that's a difficult experience. I
3:59
Speaker 1: can't being public about all these things because again when
4:02
Speaker 1: we talked about the private level, he's just in a
4:04
Speaker 1: small community. Oh, it's a certain ridiculous so being on
4:08
Speaker 1: that kind of scale, yeah, I And I was thinking
4:12
Speaker 1: about that too when we decided to bring back this
4:14
Speaker 1: episode because a lot of it does go into the
4:16
Speaker 1: conversation of gold digging, which is obviously in a case
4:20
Speaker 1: like Bill Willenda Gates, it's way bigger than on a
4:25
Speaker 1: regular everyday person. But I've already heard that conversation around um.
4:30
Speaker 1: And then I was thinking about when I was young
4:32
Speaker 1: and in my small town, if somebody got a divorced
4:35
Speaker 1: that was like right and the failure and heavy quotes
4:43
Speaker 1: the family even Yeah. Yeah, So there's a lot of
4:49
Speaker 1: misguided ideas we have around divorce and women who are
4:54
Speaker 1: divorced for sure, and we thought we would bring back
4:58
Speaker 1: this classic episode to dig into some of the those ideas.
5:00
Speaker 1: So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You
5:07
Speaker 1: from how stup works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
5:15
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin, and this week
5:18
Speaker 1: krist and I are talking about a couple of different
5:21
Speaker 1: groups of women, but all of them are sort of
5:25
Speaker 1: maligned and mistrusted wives. Yeah, there's definitely stigma and sctereotype
5:32
Speaker 1: surrounding both women who go through divorces, particularly first wives
5:39
Speaker 1: and particularly first wives who are in very wealthy unions,
5:44
Speaker 1: and then trophy wives. Yeah, so two groups of women
5:48
Speaker 1: that people are sort of suspicious of, to say the least. Um.
5:52
Speaker 1: But yeah, without further ado, let's let's dive into talking
5:55
Speaker 1: about the divorcee. The woman that we tend to think
6:00
Speaker 1: of as older. Probably she's wealthy, she's swilling a martini
6:05
Speaker 1: holding a little dog, she's she's probably a real housewife, honestly,
6:09
Speaker 1: or she's a struggling single mom. Yeah, honestly, that is
6:13
Speaker 1: the more accurate representation of a divorce in the US. Well,
6:20
Speaker 1: and when it comes to divorce, it's no big surprise
6:23
Speaker 1: that America is pretty divorced happy. According to statistics from
6:28
Speaker 1: January two thousand eleven, we have the highest divorce rate
6:35
Speaker 1: really in the Western hemisphere. Uh, there were three points
6:40
Speaker 1: seven divorces per one thousand people, which is higher than
6:44
Speaker 1: the average EU country, which is at two point one
6:48
Speaker 1: divorces per one thousand people. So we get married all
6:51
Speaker 1: the time in the US and then we get divorced
6:53
Speaker 1: all the time of the US, but the divorce rate
6:55
Speaker 1: is not at an all time high and actually dropped. Yeah,
6:58
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of been kind of plateauing for the
7:01
Speaker 1: past several years. And I don't know. I mean, people
7:04
Speaker 1: fret so much about our divorce rate in America, but
7:07
Speaker 1: I also think that maybe that's a good sign that
7:10
Speaker 1: both our marriage and divorce rates are really high. People
7:13
Speaker 1: are seeking happiness, except that divorce can have bad effects
7:17
Speaker 1: on families. So anyway, like Kristen said, the divorce rate
7:21
Speaker 1: has actually gone down a little in the past twenty years.
7:23
Speaker 1: But let's break it down further. From nineteen sixty to
7:27
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the share of currently divorced or
7:30
Speaker 1: separated Americans jumped from five percent to fourteen percent. Divorce
7:35
Speaker 1: itself hit an all time high background the late seventies
7:38
Speaker 1: and early eighties after rising sharply in the sixties and seventies.
7:42
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think about the context of the time,
7:45
Speaker 1: what's going on socially in our country. We're getting women's
7:48
Speaker 1: lib We're getting civil rights movements, were getting birth control,
7:51
Speaker 1: and then suddenly people are like, I think I'm gonna go. Yeah,
7:56
Speaker 1: divorce becomes easier in a way or legally speaking. And
8:02
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating sources that we ran across
8:05
Speaker 1: was a nineteen sixty two Harper's bizarre article about the
8:09
Speaker 1: young divorcee and tracks her path from her first marriage
8:16
Speaker 1: and having kids, then getting divorced and dealing with her
8:20
Speaker 1: social life and personal life post divorce, and then leading
8:24
Speaker 1: up to remarriage because that at the time seems like
8:28
Speaker 1: the only option for her. Yeah, it was super It
8:33
Speaker 1: was an interesting, you know, faux profile of a woman,
8:36
Speaker 1: and it it noted the article noted the uptick and
8:39
Speaker 1: divorce in the country, and it really sort of fretted
8:42
Speaker 1: about the weird limbo that divorced women find themselves in
8:46
Speaker 1: because it didn't speak super negatively about the issue of
8:51
Speaker 1: a woman being independent. I mean, it was kind of
8:53
Speaker 1: like poo pooing it, but it wasn't saying that, oh,
8:55
Speaker 1: a divorced woman is a terrible person. But then it
8:58
Speaker 1: was sort of worried about the issue shoes of sex. Yeah,
9:02
Speaker 1: I mean, because if a divorced woman has kids. Obviously
9:05
Speaker 1: she has had sex before, so it's there. There's not
9:10
Speaker 1: the chastity kind of crown for her to wear around, right,
9:14
Speaker 1: And the article quoted a divorce attorney who had watched
9:18
Speaker 1: as his clients over the years morphed from older men
9:21
Speaker 1: who were leaving their wives for younger women into middle
9:25
Speaker 1: aged women who just wanted out despite the guilt they
9:28
Speaker 1: might feel. And also quote being felt by everyone around
9:32
Speaker 1: her to be selfish and irresponsible at the least seriously neurotic.
9:37
Speaker 1: And reading this article, Caroline, especially since it came out
9:40
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two, made me think so much about
9:44
Speaker 1: Mad Men and Betty Draper getting divorced from Don Draper
9:49
Speaker 1: and immediately getting remarried, And I was trying to think
9:52
Speaker 1: in the context of the show whether there were similar
9:56
Speaker 1: echoes of this Harper's bizarre article, but at least as
9:58
Speaker 1: it was portrayed in the show. She segues so quickly
10:02
Speaker 1: into her second marriage and it's too well to do politician,
10:07
Speaker 1: and she's a beautiful woman, so she's immediately kind of
10:10
Speaker 1: set back up as an esteemed wife and mother and
10:15
Speaker 1: not having to go through that divorce efe is Yeah, well,
10:19
Speaker 1: this article looked at sort of why a wife would
10:23
Speaker 1: just walk away from a husband. You've got a family,
10:26
Speaker 1: you've got a husband, what could possibly be wrong? And
10:29
Speaker 1: they spell it out. They say that it has everything
10:31
Speaker 1: to do with sex, sexual incompatibility, sexual limitations, simply looking
10:37
Speaker 1: beyond her husband for the first time, trying to escape
10:40
Speaker 1: the quote malaise of life, and asking herself in general,
10:45
Speaker 1: is this all there's going to be forever? And they
10:48
Speaker 1: write about it as if this is the first time
10:50
Speaker 1: that women are having these thoughts at all, that they're
10:53
Speaker 1: finally feeling the freedom to be like, oh wait, I'm
10:56
Speaker 1: not satisfied, not that that freedom to think that is
10:59
Speaker 1: not sincerely good. They do kind of frame it in
11:01
Speaker 1: a way of like, why why isn't this good enough
11:04
Speaker 1: for you? Well, and there seems to be this period
11:07
Speaker 1: post divorce that this young divorce in nineteen sixty two
11:12
Speaker 1: really enjoys her single hood. She doesn't want to say
11:17
Speaker 1: that the loss of her marriage, the divorce, having to
11:21
Speaker 1: take care of her children as a single mom are tragic,
11:24
Speaker 1: and she doesn't want to ask anyone's forgiveness, and she
11:26
Speaker 1: might in a way feel a little bit entitled to
11:30
Speaker 1: some admiration. But then she quickly notices that her married
11:33
Speaker 1: friends disappear and might this jumped out to me, and
11:37
Speaker 1: might be hanging out with her ex husband because she
11:41
Speaker 1: is more of a threat, she realizes, to the fabric
11:44
Speaker 1: of society, because she is a woman who will fully
11:46
Speaker 1: chooses to step away from the safety and security of
11:51
Speaker 1: being a suburban wife and mother. Yeah, and then it
11:55
Speaker 1: paints this sort of grim picture of this woman, this
11:58
Speaker 1: divorce who's going on dates where maybe she chooses to
12:03
Speaker 1: go home with the man, or maybe she just has
12:05
Speaker 1: to sit there through the whole dinner and figure out
12:07
Speaker 1: a safe way to tell him she doesn't want to
12:09
Speaker 1: go home with him. But so then they end up
12:11
Speaker 1: describing the men that she's going on dates with. These
12:14
Speaker 1: either fellow divorced people or no longer young bachelors, and
12:19
Speaker 1: they write, these men are vast consumers of female companionship,
12:23
Speaker 1: being as they are inhabitants of a world that makes
12:27
Speaker 1: it somehow unpleasant for people to do such things as
12:30
Speaker 1: eden restaurants, attend the theater, or even arrive at parties alone.
12:34
Speaker 1: And they seem to consume women, either by not being
12:38
Speaker 1: pleased with them or by marrying them. At a rate
12:40
Speaker 1: much faster than women of suitable age and circumstance can
12:44
Speaker 1: be produced. So then that leads us into a whole
12:46
Speaker 1: conversation in this article about people sort of feeling like
12:50
Speaker 1: they're at the end of their rope and they've just
12:52
Speaker 1: got to remarry or find someone who can fill that gap,
12:55
Speaker 1: because that's just what you do. Yeah, And and because
12:59
Speaker 1: of that, they usually end up remarrying for factors like
13:03
Speaker 1: the convenience that well why not, the companionship factor, and
13:08
Speaker 1: also it making more economic sense, and maybe even for
13:12
Speaker 1: sex without judgment. Yeah. Really, it was a really interesting article.
13:17
Speaker 1: It was a really interesting snapshot into this period in
13:20
Speaker 1: time when divorce was skyrocketing. But let's move back to
13:24
Speaker 1: some Pew Research Center statistics looking at what does actually
13:29
Speaker 1: increase the risk of divorce beyond just that malaise of
13:33
Speaker 1: life trying to escape it, and Pew lists having less education,
13:38
Speaker 1: marrying younger, just being younger and marrying during the seventies
13:44
Speaker 1: is in itself a factor. Well, thankfully, Caroline, we're in
13:47
Speaker 1: the clear. If we were to get married anytime, yes,
13:50
Speaker 1: I would have been negative a couple of years old.
13:53
Speaker 1: And so when you look at that age factor, men's
13:56
Speaker 1: median age a divorce is a little it's almost thirty
13:59
Speaker 1: two years old, and for women it's just about twenty
14:02
Speaker 1: nine and a half. Oh man, we're we we should
14:04
Speaker 1: have gone through our first divorces, Caroline. I know we divorced,
14:08
Speaker 1: and I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong
14:10
Speaker 1: or if I'm just making this up, but I feel
14:11
Speaker 1: like the stereotype of a divorcee is that she's she's
14:14
Speaker 1: much older and that she's been abandoned for a younger woman.
14:18
Speaker 1: But only about eleven percent of women six up are divorced.
14:24
Speaker 1: So well, yeah, because by that point probably if you
14:26
Speaker 1: stuck it out, then you're like, well, we've been together
14:30
Speaker 1: for thirty years, might as well make it fifty. Go
14:34
Speaker 1: for it. Um. I will say one thing though, about
14:37
Speaker 1: the rate of divorce kind of leveling off in recent
14:40
Speaker 1: years too. It's not so much because we've fallen in
14:43
Speaker 1: love more and more effectively, but largely because of the recession,
14:48
Speaker 1: because we didn't have money to divorce, so we stuck together.
14:51
Speaker 1: So people think that we will soon be seeing more
14:54
Speaker 1: of an uptick and divorce if we haven't already. But
14:58
Speaker 1: with that uptick and divorce, the question is will we
15:00
Speaker 1: see an uptick in this divorce stereotype which does feel
15:05
Speaker 1: very mad Men era when you start reading about it,
15:08
Speaker 1: thinking about women swelling. Martini's not so much the small
15:12
Speaker 1: dogs thing, but I am thinking of Roger Sterling's divorced. Sorry,
15:16
Speaker 1: I've been catching up on Mattman's lately. But Roger Sterling
15:21
Speaker 1: an older guy. He's probably in his fifties early sixties.
15:25
Speaker 1: He's a silver fox and he divorces his wife, who
15:27
Speaker 1: is the older divorce, classic wealthy Manhattan stereotype. Oh yeah,
15:34
Speaker 1: I was definitely interested in going into this episode and
15:37
Speaker 1: finding out how true the stereotype is. And basically, spoiler,
15:43
Speaker 1: what we uncovered is that the stereotype of this older,
15:49
Speaker 1: wealthy woman who's perhaps a little bit gold digging, it's
15:53
Speaker 1: only really, it only really crops up among the wealthy.
15:57
Speaker 1: It's not like your average divorce is always going to
16:00
Speaker 1: be gold digging, you know, with the small dog and everything. Um,
16:04
Speaker 1: And there's one example that's stuck out in the news
16:07
Speaker 1: from January, uh that sort of fit into this ugly
16:13
Speaker 1: stereotype that we have culturally. This is coming from the
16:16
Speaker 1: New York Posts, so you know, they had nothing nice
16:18
Speaker 1: to say. About the people involved. But Sue and Arnold's
16:22
Speaker 1: fifty six and her ex husband, oil tycoon Harold Ham
16:26
Speaker 1: were married for twenty six years they got a divorce.
16:29
Speaker 1: He writes her a check for more than nine and
16:33
Speaker 1: seventy four million dollars after paying her more than twenty
16:37
Speaker 1: million during their actual divorce proceedings, and the New York
16:41
Speaker 1: Post went crazy, frothing at the mouth over the fact
16:45
Speaker 1: that Sue Anne Arnold turned down the check for being
16:49
Speaker 1: too little, and they dubbed her angry. They definitely painted
16:52
Speaker 1: her as the typical angry gold digging divorce. Of course,
16:56
Speaker 1: her lawyers clarified that, like Well, accepting this check would
16:59
Speaker 1: actually risk the dismissal of her appeal that is in court,
17:03
Speaker 1: the appeal having granted her million dollars. So there's a
17:08
Speaker 1: lot of money at play in these sort of big name,
17:12
Speaker 1: top of the heat divorce proceedings. Well in the media
17:16
Speaker 1: love either uh super wealthy or celebrity divorce, and usually
17:23
Speaker 1: the women in these stories are painted as, like you said,
17:27
Speaker 1: either a little bit gold digging who are trying to
17:29
Speaker 1: grasp onto every penny in every vacation house they can
17:32
Speaker 1: possibly sink their manicured claws into or their objects to
17:37
Speaker 1: be pitied because they lost their looks and then their
17:40
Speaker 1: husbands moved on to someone younger, as in the case
17:46
Speaker 1: of say a Carol McCain, Senator John McCain's first wife,
17:50
Speaker 1: who in another grain of salt quote unquote news story
17:55
Speaker 1: in the Daily Mail profiling the dissolving of air marriage
18:00
Speaker 1: after McCain came back from the Vietnam War and ended
18:06
Speaker 1: up leaving her for his now wife, Cindy McCain. And
18:09
Speaker 1: was there an overlap in the marriage, Yes, there was.
18:12
Speaker 1: And while McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam,
18:18
Speaker 1: Carol McCain, who they report and used to be a
18:20
Speaker 1: beautiful swimsuit model, she was in this horrific car accident
18:24
Speaker 1: and it disfigured her and it was basically like, oh
18:27
Speaker 1: and now she you know, she wasn't attractive enough, essentially,
18:31
Speaker 1: and they did painted as a kind of a disgusting
18:34
Speaker 1: story on his end, But it always fits into these
18:38
Speaker 1: kinds of narratives are very formulaic in the way that
18:42
Speaker 1: they are told in such kinds of similarly salacious details. Yeah,
18:47
Speaker 1: and in addition to the whole Carol McCain being left
18:51
Speaker 1: behind by her ex. We've got the Jane Hawking narrative.
18:55
Speaker 1: She was left by Stephen Hawking, he left her for
18:57
Speaker 1: his nurse. And the guard In newspaper doesn't treat Jane
19:02
Speaker 1: Hawking in their story about her nearly as badly as
19:05
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail treated McCain, but they still write about
19:08
Speaker 1: her life with Hawking. Quote has left her a legacy
19:11
Speaker 1: of deep regret and though she tries to hide it, bitterness. Yeah.
19:16
Speaker 1: I mean, both of these stories were highly sympathetic to
19:20
Speaker 1: these women because both of them were left for other women.
19:26
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, Okay, I have not seen a
19:28
Speaker 1: theory of everything. The Stephen Hawking biopic that got all
19:33
Speaker 1: the Oscar attention, But during the Oscars and throughout all
19:37
Speaker 1: of the publicity for that film, you know that that
19:39
Speaker 1: is about Jane and Stephen Hawking's early romance. I could
19:42
Speaker 1: only think, Dear God, are we really creating this? I mean,
19:46
Speaker 1: there's this love story, but I'm just curious whether it
19:48
Speaker 1: includes the not so romantic ending of that marriage. I mean,
19:53
Speaker 1: and even within the marriage while it was still intact,
19:56
Speaker 1: she talks about how their relationship was not a perfect
20:02
Speaker 1: one at all. But you know, reality check again, no
20:06
Speaker 1: marriage is perfect. What I know, party pooper aller talk
20:11
Speaker 1: about a spoiler jeez um, Well yeah, I mean speaking
20:15
Speaker 1: of reality checks, this whole wealthy couple news story or
20:20
Speaker 1: the narrative that we're so used to hearing about divorces
20:23
Speaker 1: really hides the reality that, hey, it's not typically the
20:28
Speaker 1: woman who becomes super wealthy after a divorce. Men become
20:32
Speaker 1: richer by about a third after divorce and their earning
20:36
Speaker 1: potential does not get dinged because of it, while women
20:41
Speaker 1: tend to lose more than a fifth of their income.
20:44
Speaker 1: And also typically if women end up getting custody of
20:47
Speaker 1: the kids, they give up reaching their full earning potential
20:52
Speaker 1: to care for them. And plus it's hard to make
20:54
Speaker 1: up for those lost years of not working well married.
20:57
Speaker 1: So while you know, in these wealthy marriages, a man
21:00
Speaker 1: might have kept working, kept earning, kept moving at that ladder,
21:04
Speaker 1: and the woman didn't work. Then if she's suddenly divorced
21:07
Speaker 1: and she has to re enter the workforce, she has
21:09
Speaker 1: a lot of time that's left out on her resume.
21:12
Speaker 1: And that was one thing too that jumped out to
21:14
Speaker 1: me in that nineteen six Harper's bizarre piece The Sympathy
21:18
Speaker 1: with which the author notes that the young deforce has
21:22
Speaker 1: to go back to work. He's like, well, and then
21:26
Speaker 1: there's a whole job thing. Yeah, I mean it talks.
21:29
Speaker 1: It talks about how this woman, and in the beginning
21:31
Speaker 1: of her marriage, was so eager to to join the
21:34
Speaker 1: workforce to help out. But I'll thank god once once
21:37
Speaker 1: the husband got on a stable professional footing, she could
21:39
Speaker 1: get out of there. Well. And even not to say
21:42
Speaker 1: that that all of these divorce days don't have jobs before,
21:47
Speaker 1: but they might simply, especially in these wealthy relationships, their
21:51
Speaker 1: career was probably taking a back seat in whatever way
21:54
Speaker 1: that meant um to their husband's. And also too quick
22:00
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that this is a straight up pun had her
22:04
Speaker 1: enormative conversation right now, this is still I mean, because
22:09
Speaker 1: gay marriage is not. It has not been around legally
22:12
Speaker 1: long enough for us to even have built these stereotypes
22:17
Speaker 1: around gay deporsys. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, if you
22:21
Speaker 1: want to talk about a wife's career taking a backseat
22:23
Speaker 1: to a husband's, just look no further than the relationship
22:27
Speaker 1: between Elon and Justine Musk. And of course, Elon Musk
22:30
Speaker 1: is the PayPal founder who made a bajillion dollars, and
22:35
Speaker 1: Justine read a column from Marie Claire back in, and
22:38
Speaker 1: her narrative is one that's pretty familiar to anyone who's
22:41
Speaker 1: ever you know, watched a movie or seen a soap opera.
22:45
Speaker 1: Her wealthy, controlling husband leaves her, and she's a writer
22:50
Speaker 1: turned in her words, trophy wife, and she had loved
22:54
Speaker 1: books and reading and wanted to really shape and nurture
22:57
Speaker 1: her writing career. And her husband was like, no, no,
23:01
Speaker 1: you're not um and anyway, so he leaves his trophy
23:05
Speaker 1: wife and children in five children for a super young
23:10
Speaker 1: British actress whom he has since divorced and remarried. Um.
23:15
Speaker 1: But fortunately Justine Musk claims that she and the new
23:17
Speaker 1: wife actually get along. Yeah, I mean, and that adds
23:21
Speaker 1: a little bit of nuance reality nuance to this whole
23:25
Speaker 1: kind of trophy narrative as well, because oh, we don't
23:28
Speaker 1: have to start yet another stereotypical narrative about two women
23:32
Speaker 1: quote unquote catfighting over the quote unquote possession of a
23:36
Speaker 1: quote unquote man. Okay, no quote unquote around the man.
23:39
Speaker 1: But the thing is too them getting along might not
23:42
Speaker 1: matter so much because this jumped out to me, divorce
23:46
Speaker 1: rates for second marriages are higher than for first marriages,
23:52
Speaker 1: and the biggest reason why kids not getting along with
23:56
Speaker 1: their parents new love interest blame it on those kids,
24:00
Speaker 1: does Yeah, anybody who has seen down Nabby knows that
24:04
Speaker 1: even when the children are adults, that can really interfere
24:07
Speaker 1: with a new love match. I won't say anymore. I
24:10
Speaker 1: don't know what that means. I can only make Madmin
24:12
Speaker 1: references right now, I think, and I can't make Madmin references,
24:15
Speaker 1: so it works out perfectly. But one thing that's not
24:19
Speaker 1: really part of the popular stereotypes about divorces is the
24:23
Speaker 1: fact that women tend to be the ones who file
24:26
Speaker 1: for divorce or separation first. And we're going to talk
24:29
Speaker 1: about that more in detail in just a second. So
24:38
Speaker 1: in the first half of the podcast, we're talking a
24:40
Speaker 1: lot about this usually wealthier divorce a stereotype and how
24:46
Speaker 1: she has been largely stigmatized in a lot of ways,
24:49
Speaker 1: and at least starting in the nineteen sixties, when divorce
24:53
Speaker 1: was really on the rise, was presented with just the
24:56
Speaker 1: option of remarriage. So we were trying to add some
25:00
Speaker 1: nuance to that and ground it more in reality. And
25:04
Speaker 1: the next reality we want to talk about is how
25:07
Speaker 1: women statistically are likelier to file for divorce compared to husbands.
25:14
Speaker 1: And this is a little bit of a dated study,
25:17
Speaker 1: but nonetheless as a fabulous title coming from two thousand
25:23
Speaker 1: Margaret f. Brnnigg's and Douglas w Allen's these boots are
25:27
Speaker 1: made for walking? Why most divorce filers are women? Yeah,
25:31
Speaker 1: so we have this assumption that because of post divorce
25:34
Speaker 1: financial and social hardship, men end up being the ones
25:37
Speaker 1: to instigate the divorce in most cases. After all, women's
25:41
Speaker 1: standard of living usually declines, and as she ages, especially
25:45
Speaker 1: if she has kids, her quote unquote market value as
25:49
Speaker 1: a marriage prospect decreases, while the husband's market value increases.
25:54
Speaker 1: But the reality is a little different. The proportion of
25:58
Speaker 1: wife file cases hovers around two thirds, and a large
26:01
Speaker 1: portion of those women say that they're happier post divorce
26:05
Speaker 1: because of this sense of relief if they're getting out
26:08
Speaker 1: of a bad situation. Uh. And women are also more
26:11
Speaker 1: likely to instigate a separation, not just a divorce. And
26:15
Speaker 1: looking at why this is, there are a couple different
26:17
Speaker 1: reasons in this study. It partly has to do with
26:21
Speaker 1: assuring their innocence in any divorce proceedings to possibly secure
26:25
Speaker 1: custody or support rights. Maybe it's more convenient for them
26:29
Speaker 1: to file, but they also might be escaping a cruel
26:33
Speaker 1: or exploitative situation. And also, though Brinnigan Allen right that
26:37
Speaker 1: filing behavior is driven by self interest at the time
26:41
Speaker 1: of divorce, such as when there are marital assets that
26:45
Speaker 1: can be appropriated, and also again when they're being exploited
26:49
Speaker 1: within the marriage, like when the other person violates the
26:52
Speaker 1: marriage contract somehow, such as running around or being a
26:57
Speaker 1: super controlling, just being a really really wells you spouse
27:01
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And then, of course, when
27:04
Speaker 1: it comes to custody, who gets the kids is by
27:08
Speaker 1: far the most important component in deciding who files, and
27:12
Speaker 1: usually because women are the primary caregivers, they're going to
27:16
Speaker 1: be the ones to step in first and probably get
27:20
Speaker 1: primary custody for those kids. But Brinnigan Allan also predict
27:26
Speaker 1: that as men and women's labor force income becomes more
27:31
Speaker 1: nearly equal, they rte In other words, as things like
27:35
Speaker 1: the gender wage gap clothes and women continue entering the workforce,
27:40
Speaker 1: the difference in filing rates should disappear, so equal opportunity
27:46
Speaker 1: divorce filings for all Yeah, and so it seems like
27:49
Speaker 1: this whole women filing first thing is less about gold digging,
27:53
Speaker 1: our stereotype about gold digging and just wanting to get
27:56
Speaker 1: the money, and really more about for a lot of
27:58
Speaker 1: women being able to har a out a secure place
28:01
Speaker 1: after leaving a bad situation, trying to leave possibly a
28:05
Speaker 1: bad marriage, make sure that they have custody of the kids,
28:09
Speaker 1: less about trying to completely deplete their ex husband's bank account.
28:14
Speaker 1: But the thing is, there's also this this blame on
28:18
Speaker 1: women a lot of times for heterosexual marriages falling apart,
28:22
Speaker 1: whether they're the ones who filed or not, and sometimes
28:26
Speaker 1: whether the spouse was violating that marital contract or not.
28:31
Speaker 1: And this was something that Lynn Stewart Paramore at Alternate
28:35
Speaker 1: was railing against in response to this blog post she
28:39
Speaker 1: had read. I think it was featured on the Huffington's
28:41
Speaker 1: Post homepage about five ways that women were failing their
28:46
Speaker 1: marriages and basically saying, you know what, women, you are
28:50
Speaker 1: in charge of creating an emotionally safe environment, making sure
28:54
Speaker 1: that sex is happening on the rags, and if you're
28:58
Speaker 1: not doing these kinds of things and really maintaining the
29:01
Speaker 1: emotional health of your marriage. Well, it's on you because
29:07
Speaker 1: the guy's job is to make the money. They're pragmatic
29:11
Speaker 1: their logic. They're thinking about numbers and baseball. They're not
29:15
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, emotional nurturance, which is really just
29:20
Speaker 1: an insult to everybody across the board, and of course
29:24
Speaker 1: plays into very antiquated gender stereotypes. Yeah, and and Paramore
29:29
Speaker 1: says that these, all of these stereotypes about our behavior
29:33
Speaker 1: obscure the driving forces that can split a marriage. And
29:36
Speaker 1: she says that all of this finger wagging at women
29:39
Speaker 1: usually comes along with the off sided statistic that we
29:43
Speaker 1: also cited that women file for divorce twice as often
29:46
Speaker 1: as men. And what we hear less often Paramore rights
29:50
Speaker 1: is straight talk about the social and economic factors that
29:53
Speaker 1: drive the engine of divorce. The fact is that college
29:57
Speaker 1: educated people are more likely to stay together there and
30:00
Speaker 1: that there's a higher risk of divorce for people with
30:02
Speaker 1: lower incomes and less education. And she goes on to
30:06
Speaker 1: say that when people are struggling to pay the rent
30:08
Speaker 1: and keep a roof over their heads, the marriage problem
30:11
Speaker 1: isn't likely to be some kind of deficiency in managing intimacy.
30:16
Speaker 1: The sole thing, the glue that holds the marriage or
30:19
Speaker 1: any type of relationship together is not purely just intimacy
30:23
Speaker 1: or how often you're getting laid. All those sex is
30:25
Speaker 1: a huge reason for a lot of divorces to happen.
30:29
Speaker 1: There's so much more to it. And the fact that
30:31
Speaker 1: the more money you have and the older you are,
30:33
Speaker 1: the less likely you are to get divorced. That just
30:35
Speaker 1: means that there are other things that we need to
30:38
Speaker 1: dig into here about the reasons behind marriage is breaking up? Yeah,
30:41
Speaker 1: Because she goes on to site this u c L
30:44
Speaker 1: a study about how low income versus high income study
30:47
Speaker 1: respondents held similar romantic standards and had similar kinds of
30:52
Speaker 1: problems in relationships, and that is no big surprise. But
30:57
Speaker 1: the low income respondents were likelier to report that their
31:00
Speaker 1: relationships for being affected by economic and social issues like
31:04
Speaker 1: financial struggles, alcohol and drug abuse, etcetera. So when you
31:08
Speaker 1: have more resources, it can make it easier to cope
31:13
Speaker 1: with those relationship stressors that usually put a strain on
31:17
Speaker 1: any kind of marriage. Because and I can attest to this,
31:20
Speaker 1: if you're worried about money, you add something else to
31:25
Speaker 1: that and it just everything is just even more intensified.
31:29
Speaker 1: And that's just finance. Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially if
31:32
Speaker 1: somebody or both people are working multiple jobs, maybe somebody
31:36
Speaker 1: doesn't have health benefits. I mean, there's so many things
31:39
Speaker 1: that are rooted in money that can put so much
31:42
Speaker 1: strain on a relationship. Well, and that would probably go
31:44
Speaker 1: into the age factor as well in terms of people
31:47
Speaker 1: who marry younger are likelier to get divorced, because I
31:49
Speaker 1: think that also speaks to probably your earning potential at
31:53
Speaker 1: the time when you get married, but also the kinds
31:55
Speaker 1: of tools that you might be bringing in terms of
31:57
Speaker 1: life experience into conflict resolution. Thinking about myself getting married
32:05
Speaker 1: when I was twenty two, no, I would be divorced.
32:08
Speaker 1: I would absolutely be divorced. Oh yeah, it is horrifying
32:13
Speaker 1: to think about. I So I started going to therapy
32:17
Speaker 1: almost a year ago and it has changed my life.
32:20
Speaker 1: Would I say that everybody should go to therapy, Yes,
32:23
Speaker 1: I would, But it has been so helpful. This process
32:27
Speaker 1: of digging through like all the jumble that is my
32:30
Speaker 1: brain and my pile of emotions has been so helpful
32:33
Speaker 1: not only for making me a more functional human, but
32:36
Speaker 1: also more functional human in my relationships and so imagining.
32:40
Speaker 1: Like my boyfriend and I talked all the time about
32:43
Speaker 1: our faulty tool sets that we were provided with when
32:46
Speaker 1: we were younger, and so not having been able to
32:51
Speaker 1: add to that tool set getting married at a super
32:53
Speaker 1: young age. Not that I'm saying that there aren't totally
32:56
Speaker 1: mature like with it having it all together younger people,
32:59
Speaker 1: but I would also be in that probably divorced category. Okay,
33:03
Speaker 1: but let's say that we had gotten married in our
33:07
Speaker 1: early twenties and thanks to our faulty tool said's respectively,
33:11
Speaker 1: our marriages dissolved. Now let's talk about remarriage, because as
33:16
Speaker 1: common as divorces and also as probably painful as it
33:20
Speaker 1: can be, remarriage is still highly common. And this was
33:24
Speaker 1: reported on in November in Time magazine, and I believe
33:29
Speaker 1: that they were reporting on statistics out of the Pew
33:32
Speaker 1: Research Center, which we cite so often on the podcast,
33:35
Speaker 1: and they were writing about how round about there of
33:40
Speaker 1: all the new marriages in we're not first marriages. In
33:46
Speaker 1: half of those cases both spouses had been married before.
33:51
Speaker 1: So a big bulk of our marriage statistics are people saying,
33:54
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll give it another go. Why not?
33:58
Speaker 1: There is a huge drive for a lot of people
34:00
Speaker 1: to remarry, whether it is that nineteen two Harper's bizarre
34:04
Speaker 1: life convenience companionship thing or you know, a multitude of
34:08
Speaker 1: other things because you can fall in love again, Caroline,
34:11
Speaker 1: It's true. Oh my gosh. Well yeah, and Pew talked
34:15
Speaker 1: about these reasons possibly people wanting more life satisfaction because
34:19
Speaker 1: only half of divorced or separated people said they were
34:22
Speaker 1: happy with their family lives compared with married folks of
34:26
Speaker 1: whom were satisfied. So maybe there's just this drive to
34:29
Speaker 1: have a richer family life. But there's also the issue
34:31
Speaker 1: of commitment and stability. Uh. Pew writes about how divorced
34:35
Speaker 1: or separated people put more emphasis on making a lifelong
34:38
Speaker 1: commitment and financial stability than do singles or cohabitating partners,
34:44
Speaker 1: and they are more likely to say that these are
34:47
Speaker 1: reasons to get married. And men, as echoed in our
34:51
Speaker 1: podcast on Widowhood, men are more interested than women in remarriage.
34:58
Speaker 1: Men are more likely than women to view companionship as
35:01
Speaker 1: important to marriage, as compared with just thirty percent whose
35:04
Speaker 1: second marriage is quote unquote for love, and to say
35:07
Speaker 1: that financial stability is a very important reason to get married.
35:11
Speaker 1: And when it comes to men's reasons, for remarriage are
35:13
Speaker 1: also likelier than women to just like, companionship and financial
35:18
Speaker 1: stability is too big motivators. Yeah, as opposed to the
35:23
Speaker 1: thirty percent whose second marriage was for love. That can't
35:26
Speaker 1: be right. Come on, it seems like if you were
35:29
Speaker 1: going to go through that a second time, that wouldn't
35:33
Speaker 1: you be more motivated to do it? Well no, I
35:34
Speaker 1: was about to say, wouldn't be more motivated to do
35:36
Speaker 1: it for love? But no, By that point you probably
35:38
Speaker 1: realize that love can dissolve and you might be a
35:40
Speaker 1: little more pragmatic. Yeah. Well, I mean we've talked about this.
35:43
Speaker 1: We've done a previous episode looking at issues of divorce
35:46
Speaker 1: and widowhood, and men have typically typically are more driven
35:51
Speaker 1: to form those person to person bonds with a partner
35:54
Speaker 1: than women are. Women are like, I've got my girlfriends,
35:57
Speaker 1: I'm cool, I'm fine, I'm happy, I'm I've got healthy
36:00
Speaker 1: relationships all around me, whereas men are like, I need
36:02
Speaker 1: a cruise director. Well, that's why I'm really curious to
36:05
Speaker 1: see in emerging literature in the coming years similar kinds
36:11
Speaker 1: of data on gay couples, specifically looking at gay men.
36:14
Speaker 1: I wonder if the motivations would shift at all when
36:18
Speaker 1: you have two guys or two women, and how those
36:21
Speaker 1: kinds of gender stereotypical marital roles than maybe mix and
36:28
Speaker 1: match when it's it's two fellows or two ladies. Yeah, well,
36:33
Speaker 1: something that I thought about reading about this whole Like
36:36
Speaker 1: men are motivated by financial security and and remarrying. You know,
36:41
Speaker 1: earlier we talked about how women are way more likely
36:44
Speaker 1: to have their finances and their earning potential dinged post
36:47
Speaker 1: divorced than men are men. Just like I've just continued
36:51
Speaker 1: on this trajectory of my career and my earning potential
36:53
Speaker 1: this whole time, whereas a lot of women step off
36:56
Speaker 1: the track, you know, lean in all that good stuff.
36:58
Speaker 1: They've stepped off the track to there be at home
37:01
Speaker 1: or be with the kids or whatever. And there have
37:04
Speaker 1: been study findings talking about how like attracts like, especially
37:08
Speaker 1: when it comes to important things like money, beyond just
37:11
Speaker 1: personality and interests and those kinds of things. And so
37:15
Speaker 1: it almost seems like with finances being so important to men,
37:19
Speaker 1: they might be seeking out someone who has equal earning
37:22
Speaker 1: potential to themselves, like potentially a trophy wife. But for
37:26
Speaker 1: a woman who's already been financially danged after a divorce,
37:30
Speaker 1: she might not be able to sort of find a
37:33
Speaker 1: new mate who's earning potential is as great as her
37:36
Speaker 1: ex husband's, And so that would be something I'd like
37:40
Speaker 1: to learn more about. But that's just kind of a
37:41
Speaker 1: question that popped into my head as I was reading
37:43
Speaker 1: well and talking about the earning potential to and how
37:46
Speaker 1: divorce can impact women's incomes, especially as they get older.
37:51
Speaker 1: Sort of the sadder reality, the bleaker reality, I should
37:55
Speaker 1: say of divorce for women is that, according to the
37:58
Speaker 1: Social Security Administration, of divorced women over sixty five live
38:03
Speaker 1: in poverty compared with eighteen percent of never married women
38:07
Speaker 1: and fift percent of widowed women. So two percent is
38:12
Speaker 1: not huge, and even five percent is not doesn't sound
38:16
Speaker 1: like a huge percentage, is not this gaping gap, but still,
38:19
Speaker 1: when we're talking about across the country, that adds up
38:24
Speaker 1: to a number of people. Yeah, And the Social Security
38:27
Speaker 1: Administration was spelling out like, hey, well, at least widows
38:31
Speaker 1: have some sort of pension or um or women who
38:35
Speaker 1: have been in the workforce have accrued Social Security benefits.
38:39
Speaker 1: So like, there are different types of women in different
38:41
Speaker 1: types of life situations who are still having money come in,
38:44
Speaker 1: but those women who completely stepped off the career track
38:47
Speaker 1: haven't been accruing any social security benefits, which form a
38:50
Speaker 1: nice net for a lot of people. Yeah, but when
38:54
Speaker 1: it comes to the good, and there is a lot
38:56
Speaker 1: of good, especially because I would argue that this the
39:00
Speaker 1: divorce stigma is probably lower than it's ever been. We
39:04
Speaker 1: except that it is in a lot of ways a
39:06
Speaker 1: fact of life. It's kind of a roll of the
39:09
Speaker 1: dice at this point. And there was a column at
39:14
Speaker 1: More magazine from divorce coach Jill Brook, who I mean
39:18
Speaker 1: by virtue of her being a divorce coach, she's pretty
39:21
Speaker 1: pro divorce, but I mean she's she's really optimistic about it,
39:24
Speaker 1: saying that most over forty women realize, you know what,
39:27
Speaker 1: I might not get married again, but I really don't care.
39:30
Speaker 1: And she says the research finds it overall women are
39:34
Speaker 1: happier post divorced. Yeah. She says that they're finally able
39:38
Speaker 1: to focus on themselves, particularly obviously if the kids have
39:42
Speaker 1: left home and they have the resources to do so,
39:45
Speaker 1: which is also key. Um, you know, they're not responsible
39:48
Speaker 1: for anyone else's housework and shoes. They're no longer picking
39:52
Speaker 1: up a husband or a boyfriend's underwear off of the floor.
39:55
Speaker 1: And she talks about Dr. Barbara Bartlett, who's a sex
39:58
Speaker 1: therapist and psychio trist at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and
40:02
Speaker 1: says that Bartle sees a growing trend of financially secure
40:05
Speaker 1: women preferring to stay single and date. They enjoy having
40:10
Speaker 1: their own schedules without having to report to anyone, And
40:12
Speaker 1: plus you get the whole cougar factor that that's also
40:15
Speaker 1: becoming less and less stigmatized for an older woman and
40:18
Speaker 1: a younger man to get together. So there are options,
40:21
Speaker 1: There are options and more more stereotypes in which you
40:26
Speaker 1: can You can be an animal when you grow up,
40:29
Speaker 1: like a cougar um and I will stay though anecdotally
40:33
Speaker 1: I am want. One divorce story that makes my heart
40:38
Speaker 1: sing is a friend of mines mom who got divorced
40:44
Speaker 1: when she was probably in her mid forties, and it
40:50
Speaker 1: was a kind of nasty divorce. It was pretty heart wrenching.
40:54
Speaker 1: There were kids, you know, they had had a lot
40:56
Speaker 1: that she had been with her husband for a very
40:57
Speaker 1: long time. But she met this guy and they are
41:02
Speaker 1: in love and she seems younger than ever ever before
41:05
Speaker 1: and it really is like a second life for her,
41:08
Speaker 1: and it's just been really amazing to see her coming
41:14
Speaker 1: to life, especially being in what was in a lot
41:16
Speaker 1: of ways a very unhappy marriage, and it's like it
41:20
Speaker 1: couldn't have come soon enough. And her boyfriend also is
41:24
Speaker 1: divorced as well, and he has his kids too, and
41:26
Speaker 1: it's like for both of them, they're like, oh my god,
41:29
Speaker 1: you're amazing humans. So yeah, I mean I think that
41:32
Speaker 1: they're I'm I'm heartened to see that because we have
41:37
Speaker 1: longer lifespans than ever before, you know, like that that's
41:41
Speaker 1: also a reason why divorce happens. It's because, like humans
41:43
Speaker 1: really weren't built to like hang out with one human
41:46
Speaker 1: like fifty years. And one example of how we are
41:53
Speaker 1: ritualizing this kind of romantic transition, I don't even want
41:58
Speaker 1: to call it a loss, this romantic transition is through
42:02
Speaker 1: the more recent trend of divorce parties. How interesting this
42:07
Speaker 1: sounds like another thing that you sort of have to
42:09
Speaker 1: have those resources for. Well, yeah, you have to be
42:12
Speaker 1: able to, you know, buy a cake perhaps if you want.
42:15
Speaker 1: There are bakers who will sell you a divorce cake,
42:20
Speaker 1: and a lot of times they'll have a similar kind
42:22
Speaker 1: of wedding cake topper on it with the bride and
42:24
Speaker 1: the groom, but usually it's something really funny, like the
42:27
Speaker 1: bread dragging the groom out to a trash bin and
42:30
Speaker 1: just to drive home. Caroline. How how significant of a
42:34
Speaker 1: trend this has become. There's a BBC News headline from
42:38
Speaker 1: late the red hot business of divorce celebration. Interesting, so
42:46
Speaker 1: not not really too far I mean, it's on the
42:48
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, but not too far removed
42:50
Speaker 1: from the gender revealed parties that we've talked about before.
42:54
Speaker 1: People wanting an excuse to to throw a party and
42:56
Speaker 1: eat some cake, maybe be go to Vegas and live
43:00
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah. I also thought it was interesting that
43:02
Speaker 1: there's even a Wikipedia entry for divorce parties. And in
43:06
Speaker 1: that BBC News article they profile this woman who has
43:11
Speaker 1: now become a divorce party planner, who went to Vegas
43:16
Speaker 1: with her girl friends post divorce to kind of, you know,
43:20
Speaker 1: kickstart the whole post divorce process. They went to a
43:23
Speaker 1: shooting range. She brought her bridal gown and she shot
43:27
Speaker 1: it up with a machine gun and she had so
43:30
Speaker 1: much fun doing it she turned it into a business.
43:33
Speaker 1: And common kinds of things include skydiving parties where you're
43:39
Speaker 1: jumping into being single again. And there's even in the
43:44
Speaker 1: Netherlands a divorce hotel where couples can go together to
43:47
Speaker 1: like take care of the whole thing. You can file
43:49
Speaker 1: your papers, you know, get divorced, maybe have a little
43:52
Speaker 1: like post divorce pampering, and you're just like, all right, cool, yeah,
43:56
Speaker 1: see you later. Divorce interesting, but that is so far
44:00
Speaker 1: removed from the average woman's divorce experience. Well yeah, I
44:03
Speaker 1: mean the thing if you have the money at hand,
44:06
Speaker 1: after paying a divorce lawyer and like going through all
44:09
Speaker 1: of that and you know, renegotiating all of your finances,
44:12
Speaker 1: is now a single person and you can then go
44:15
Speaker 1: to Vegas with your girlfriends. It does seem like a
44:20
Speaker 1: bit of a Real Housewives e kind of pursuit. Yeah yeah,
44:24
Speaker 1: And and just like the Real Housewives, it's sort of
44:27
Speaker 1: tacky but also sort of just living your life by
44:30
Speaker 1: your own rules exactly. I mean, in the BBC did
44:33
Speaker 1: talk to a psychologist who said, yeah, this is you know,
44:37
Speaker 1: this could be seen as a healthy way to you
44:40
Speaker 1: create this new kind of ritual. I mean, we we
44:46
Speaker 1: it happens so commonly. I mean, it happens half as
44:50
Speaker 1: often as marriage does. So why not eat some cake? Why, Well,
44:55
Speaker 1: that's my attitude about everything. Why not? Yeah, it's true. Um,
45:00
Speaker 1: So I am curious to know if any podcast listeners
45:04
Speaker 1: have either thrown or attended a divorce party. Yeah, I'm
45:08
Speaker 1: just curious about knowing, Like, what's what's your divorce reality?
45:13
Speaker 1: Or is your life more like the nineteen sixty two
45:16
Speaker 1: Harper's Bizarre article where your fellow women and married people
45:19
Speaker 1: see you as sort of a suspicious threat or somebody
45:22
Speaker 1: to be pitied or are you just out there living
45:25
Speaker 1: your life excited to sort of be free of your
45:28
Speaker 1: you know, marital bonds. Yeah, what is the status of
45:33
Speaker 1: the divorce stigma? Mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com
45:36
Speaker 1: is our email address. You can also tweet us at
45:39
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got
45:42
Speaker 1: a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well, so,
45:50
Speaker 1: Christian and I have gotten an overwhelmingly awesome response to
45:53
Speaker 1: our O c D episode. A lot of you guys,
45:56
Speaker 1: whether you have O c D or just no with
45:59
Speaker 1: with O c D, wrote in thanking us for talking
46:01
Speaker 1: about the topic. And we have two letters here from
46:04
Speaker 1: women who are dealing with this thing called pure oh,
46:08
Speaker 1: and so we're going to read them now. This one's
46:10
Speaker 1: from Whitney. She says, First of all, I live in
46:13
Speaker 1: an area where it's not a good thing to be
46:15
Speaker 1: liberal or a feminist, So you guys have been like
46:17
Speaker 1: my feminist besties over the past year. Thanks Whitney. She
46:22
Speaker 1: goes on to say, thank you so much for your
46:23
Speaker 1: wonderful episode on O c D. I was diagnosed at
46:26
Speaker 1: the age of fifteen. I suffer from a form of
46:29
Speaker 1: O c D known as pure oh. I have intrusive
46:32
Speaker 1: thoughts of harming myself or loved ones, even though I
46:35
Speaker 1: am neither violent nor suicidal, and I've never really had compulsions.
46:39
Speaker 1: If you want further inside. This is also discussed in
46:42
Speaker 1: the first episode of another fantastic podcast called Invisibilia. I
46:46
Speaker 1: am very fortunate to have almost no symptoms eleven years later,
46:49
Speaker 1: thanks to antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. Thank you, Thank you,
46:54
Speaker 1: Thank you for calling out shows like Monk for misrepresenting
46:58
Speaker 1: O c D. It is not a cute, fun, or
47:00
Speaker 1: beneficial illness. Ever since I was a teenager, I loathed
47:04
Speaker 1: shows like Monk and What About Bob because they aren't
47:06
Speaker 1: helpful to o c D suffers and those with other
47:09
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. Either our experiences are invalidated because the o
47:13
Speaker 1: c D is seen as something minor, or we're seen
47:15
Speaker 1: as weird and our opinions don't matter. Every time I
47:18
Speaker 1: try to express opinions about those types of jokes in
47:21
Speaker 1: the media, I've gotten brushed off by both friends and
47:23
Speaker 1: family for overreacting because it's just a show. It may
47:27
Speaker 1: just be a TV show, but the things we watch
47:29
Speaker 1: both reflect and influence our attitudes. So thanks Whitney, and
47:35
Speaker 1: I've got one here from Rebecca. Also about pure Oh,
47:39
Speaker 1: she writes, I have a version of o c D
47:41
Speaker 1: called pure OH since childhood and was finally diagnosed as
47:44
Speaker 1: past fall. Purero is basically o c D without the
47:47
Speaker 1: outward physical compulsions. I spend hours and hours obsessing about
47:51
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, from the food that I eat
47:53
Speaker 1: to how my lesson plans are written out. I've had
47:55
Speaker 1: obsessions since I was a little girl. We once at
47:58
Speaker 1: our house bombed for fleas, and without telling anyone, I
48:00
Speaker 1: slowly but surely threw away or refuse to touch any
48:03
Speaker 1: of my belongings that I imagined may have been exposed
48:06
Speaker 1: to the mysteriously killing chemicals. I spent seven years in
48:10
Speaker 1: therapy with someone who didn't believe in O c D
48:12
Speaker 1: without compulsions, and it was an unbelievable relief to finally
48:16
Speaker 1: find someone who understood what was happening in my brain.
48:19
Speaker 1: I also have other anxiety issues in clinical depression, but
48:22
Speaker 1: I'm very high functioning, and I'm trying to spread the
48:24
Speaker 1: words so that others who have these disorders can get
48:27
Speaker 1: the help and compassion that they deserve. I'm hoping that
48:30
Speaker 1: you can help spread the word the pure o o
48:32
Speaker 1: c D is a real diagnosis. Just because someone isn't
48:35
Speaker 1: lining up their pencils and checking the oven over and
48:38
Speaker 1: over doesn't mean they aren't struggling. Thanks as always for
48:42
Speaker 1: helping to keep us all educated about current issues, and
48:45
Speaker 1: thank you Rebecca, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
48:49
Speaker 1: Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
48:51
Speaker 1: email address, and thrilling to all of our social media
48:54
Speaker 1: as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
48:57
Speaker 1: including this one with our sources. So you can read
49:01
Speaker 1: more about divorced women, head on over to stuff Mom
49:04
Speaker 1: Never Told You dot com for more on this and
49:10
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics isn't how stuff works. Dot com