Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Married or Divorced? Examining Women's Happiness in Relationships
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast that dedicated to helping you identify and influence the most challenging human interactions, those involving patterns of high conflict behavior. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:23): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:24): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting and educational programs and methods all to do with high conflict. So in today's episode, we are going to talk about some research that's come out recently on women's thoughts about marriage. So this ought to be a fun one and probably a bit controversial or at least thought provoking. So we're going to talk about it. Is marriage better or worse for women? So first, a couple of notes send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or it's just as easy to go on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links for this episode. Thank you for listening. Speaker 1 (01:18): All right, bill. So today we're talking about some articles you read recently on Marriage and women and whether it's better or worse. So it's kind of interesting because you've kind of looked at, seen a broad array of research and thoughts on just the worst thoughts about marriage for women as opposed to research that shows maybe something a little bit differently. So first, we'll talk about a book that says that women should get divorced to find happiness. And this is a recent article that was in a couple of news journals, the Washington Post and Atlantic Monthly, and it's about a book that says women should get divorced to find happiness. I think that's going to be a very interesting conversation. So what did you find in that article, bill? Speaker 2 (02:11): The article I read was a summary by the author Liz Lens of a new book 2024 titled This American Ex-Wife, how I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. And she has a lot of statistics in there and talks about, for example, that 70% of divorces are initiated by women and she says that's because they're tired, fed up, exhausted, no longer in love and unhappy. Well, I've been a divorce lawyer for over 30 years and there are many reasons that women file for divorce first, and I do a lot of divorce mediation and in divorce mediation because it doesn't matter who files first. Sometimes they even flip a coin to see who's going to be one to file the petition. But also there's men who may be more eager to get divorce than the woman, but the woman may be the one that files because she's tired of just not knowing where he's at. Speaker 2 (03:22): And so I've had cases where women have filed, they don't want divorce, but they want to force the issue and have the man finally say, okay, I'm out or I'm in. And so filing for divorce can mean many different things. One of the things I find is that women tend to use lawyers more for divorce than men. A lot of men think they can handle it on their own. Maybe that's part of the way men are and women are more comfortable seeking advice. I know when asking for directions that women are better at asking for advice than men are, but it doesn't necessarily mean the fact they go to a lawyer that they're more unhappy than the man. But often the lawyer says, you need to get the paperwork started. And so women tend to file more. So that's one example of statistic that's true, but it's misrepresented. Speaker 2 (04:21): It's not quite like that. She does list other things that women tend to do more of the housework and more of the childcare, and that is true. However, what we're seeing today is a lot of men are stepping up and wanting to, for example, do half the childcare. I know of several men who are the primary caregiver while the woman is getting her PhD or working and the man's working. I did a divorce mediation with a woman who was a high powered appellate courts lawyer and her husband was a school teacher and he got out at three and he took care of the kids until seven when she would get home from a 12 hour day at the law office. She made about four times what he made and their roles were very clear, but they were the reverse of the ordinary, but we're seeing more of that. So I think it's hard across the board to say that it's one way she talks about historical statistics and that certainly makes sense. Historically, women, you go back far enough not only weren't equal but may have been considered property just like the children, but this is the 2020s and people have a lot more choices and a lot more awareness. And my belief is it depends on who the partner is. You can have a good marriage, an equal marriage or a bad marriage and want to get out. And both of those are possible. Speaker 1 (06:06): So a lot of it comes down to choice before we get married and our book Dating Radar, how to avoid maybe some of the high conflict types that might be out there that make a marriage very difficult. So yeah, I found the article to be pretty slanted toward divorce and that almost that you are almost a revolt should be led against marriage. Sorry, Hey, women get divorced. I mean it wasn't that cut and dry, but Speaker 2 (06:36): Almost, almost, Speaker 1 (06:38): Yeah, almost. And it's one woman's perspective and yeah, I look at, yeah, you're right, bill, we are in the 2020s and what rights don't women have, at least in most industrialized countries, western countries, there are a lot of countries around the world where this is still a problem and women are still very much lacking in rights. However, I think this article is probably looking more at western countries. So it's kind of interesting as a woman, I have been married, divorced, and remarried during my divorce period being single for several years. And what I found is you can be happy single, that's fine. A lot of people are single and they're happy, but a lot of many people are happy when they're married. And I love being married. It's just one of the greatest joys in my life. So you don't have to sacrifice happiness to be married, perhaps it comes down to choice and the personal choices we make about our own behaviors and what is acceptable and not acceptable in a relationship. And how you find that balance together. Speaker 2 (08:02): I think you're making an important point is that as an individual you can be happy. There's many happy women single, many happy men single, and one of the mistakes I think people make is that they're not a whole person unless they find this other half my better half. And you want to be a whole person and find someone else who's a whole person. If you're looking for a half and you're a half, that's usually not a good fit. People expect too much of the other and not enough of themselves. So we encourage people if they're getting divorced, get some counseling, work on yourself, some so you feel good about yourself and also about how you make choices. And then if you want to find someone who's also a whole person and have a happy marriage, there's a good chance you can do that. And the statistics suggests that there's a good chance you can have a happy marriage. Speaker 1 (09:03): Yeah, it's kind of interesting recently, bill, just a few days ago I was speaking with a young man who is currently in seminary studying, and he's from a country in Africa and very, very different obviously from the United States, but at the end of the day, happiness and marriage are probably pretty universal. So he was having a discussion about women's acceptance as pastors or leaders of churches should they be preaching from the pulpit, which is hotly debated, particularly in Christian circles. So he's writing a paper on it right now for one of his classes. So the discussion, he is strongly advocating that women should be allowed to do that. It should be okay, someone brought up the point that women are just as capable as men, they should have all the same rights. And he said, look, I didn't have a father growing up. I was surrounded by strong women who raised me. Speaker 1 (10:14): So I just decided to explore a little bit with him. And I said, okay, so Sam, I said, if those women were at work, who would've been taking care of you? And it kind of made him stop and think for a moment if they were working, could they have been at home? Who would've been home taking care of him? It's not necessarily a right or wrong thing whether women should be at work, women should be at home, women should be married, unmarried. I think it's trying to find the balance of what's going to work. So I think it's not as black and white as we want to think, and it's all about trying to find the balance. Speaker 2 (10:56): Finding the balance is exactly it. And I know families, especially ones I've handled in divorce mediations where one of them works halftime and the other person works. So the halftime person can be there when the kids get out of school. And whether it's mom or dad, the idea of having a child at home, having a parent at home after school, it's wonderful. And I say, if you can do that, that's a great idea. Kids today often don't have enough adult instruction and attention and may get themselves in trouble. And so having a parent who can be at home, traditionally that's been the woman. And I think growing up that's what I saw. My mother quotes didn't work and my father did, but my mother was on, I don't know how many community committees. She was essentially a social worker who was unpaid, and today she would've been a social worker who was paid. Speaker 2 (12:05): But I think it doesn't have to be a gender issue that having somebody at home, and it's really, I think every generation, every decade, it's a new question of finding the balance, which is the last thing you said. And I just really want to reinforce that all of this relationship stuff, it's finding the balance and I think the world is better off for men and women both being able to do just about everything and be able to contribute in ways that they were restricted from before. Both men and women, men are happy to be caregivers taking care of the kids. That wouldn't have happened necessarily 40, 50 years ago. And nowadays, we're seeing a lot of men and a lot of divorces that I do that come out with a 50 50 parenting plan and whatever was happening before, they're full on for 50% of the parenting. Speaker 2 (13:05): And the research suggests the kids are better off for that. Now, I don't want to say it's totally equal yet. Some of the research out of Sweden, for example, Sweden is probably the country that's just about the closest to truly egalitarian couples when they're together. And also when they divorce, they really, men participate in the marriage, men participate in the divorce. They have I think nine months of parenting leave after birth. Each parent has that. And so there's a good chance that the child's going to have somebody at home if they want to be. So I think it's a good thing for kids and a good thing for adults and a good thing for women. Speaker 1 (13:53): I agree. And I was just thinking about the difficulties. One of the points in the article is when this individual was married and had children, she felt like most of the work was put onto her for child rearing and working. And I can say based on experience, when you're a single parent and you have to work and you have to find childcare, get your kids to school, just do all of that yourself, something breaks. It's just common sense. There's no getting around that something's going to slip through the cracks for most people in terms of you're either going to have to make some sacrifices at work or you're going to have to make some sacrifices at home. And that typically means that it rolls downhill to the children, which is really unfortunate. So even if your other parent or your spouse is not in the marriage to the child rearing your household duties as much as you'd like, it just might be better than if you're doing this in separate households. Speaker 2 (15:02): Yes. Let me give you some statistics here that really speak to what you're saying right now. There's some research by, it's the Institute for Family Studies. There's a general social survey. I'm not sure how often it comes out, but in 2022, just less two years ago, they looked at satisfaction in marriage for women and then for men. And so what they found is vast majority of women are either pretty happy or very happy in their marriages. So when they broke it down to what percent are very happy, here's what they film. 40% of married women with children are very happy compared to 25% of married childless women, 22% of unmarried childless women, and 17% of unmarried women with children, which reinforces what you're saying, being an unmarried women with children is the hardest. And I can see how it's not the goal of women with children to do what Liz Lens is talking about is like, Hey, I can't wait till I'm independent. Speaker 2 (16:27): In many cases it may be I want more help. I don't want to not be married, I just want more help with the children. That may be the goal. But let me tell you about the men's statistics. Again, this is the very happy category because overall all the men, or almost all the men and almost all the women, were more happy to be married. So here's what it said. For men, 35% of married men with children are very happy compared to 30% of married men without children, 14% of unmarried men without children, and 12% of unmarried men with children. So being single with children seems to be the least desirable compared to being married. Her point of view seems to be coming from a bad marriage because marriage in general, majority of people say, Hey, this is a better arrangement for us than being out there single or being out there single with children. But I want to reinforce the idea that there are happy people who are single and not married, never want to be married or used to be and don't want to be anymore. To me, the good news is you can be happy single and you can be happy married. Speaker 1 (17:50): Absolutely. So with that, let's take a short break and we'll be right back. Okay. We are back talking about women and marriage. So Bill, what do you think about a lack of skills, perhaps relationship skills? Would everyone be happier to be married if they had these relationship skills? Speaker 2 (18:20): I really think so. My personal experience as a divorce lawyer and divorce mediator is that when I've taught my clients just certain skills like how to write emails using the Biff method, it's like, oh, I don't have to react to everything. He says, no, you don't. And the way you respond, you don't have to get down in the mud. With our new Ways for Families Method that has been court ordered in some court system, maybe a dozen court systems have court ordered that parents say, oh, I wish they had these skills before. And some say, maybe we wouldn't have had to get divorced if we had these skills before. So I think what it really does come down to is skills for relationships and not just skills for marriage, skills for work, relationships, friendships, et cetera. Sad to say, I think as a culture, as a society, we're actually losing those skills because kids aren't growing up learning them because the messages they get are all this extreme behavior you see on your screen. Speaker 2 (19:35): And what's ironic is a lot of families today have one child, and the child, if they're indulged in by their parents, doesn't learn how to negotiate, how to cope with stress because someone else takes care of that. Not to say, okay, we have to go back to having three or four kids in every family, but we have to have the skills. Children need to learn those skills. Some children learn those at school, and that may be the first place they have to share their toys and share things. But these skills, relationships, skills to me is one of the biggest things that society needs today and can learn. And we teach this in our new Ways for Families Method, our new Ways for work method, our new ways for life for adolescence method. And it's not that complicated, but we just have to put more of a value on it and keep the skills simple and teach them with a lot of repetition and encouragement. And the irony is, when I've represented people going through divorce and I slip in all these skills, at the end they say, bill, I think I'm a stronger person than I was at the beginning of this divorce process, and I didn't expect that. And that's very rewarding to me. Speaker 1 (21:03): Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking about circling back to the life of the kids, like you said, missing out on those relationship skills, getting to observe the modeling from two parents, resolving conflicts, speaking respectfully to each other, sharing ideas and being open to their partner's ideas and things like that. That's just also valuable. And another thought struck me, something I've heard from many young people who grew up in single parent homes, divorced homes, is that they were lonely when their parent is at work, they're lonely, and then they don't have a lot of memories of being together with their parent on the weekends. And if you're a single parent and you're listening to this thinking feeling like, oh, I'm doing a terrible job. No, you're doing a great job. It's really tough. Just keep building those memories with your children and doing the best you can for everyone. But I think that if as a woman, and I can speak from that perspective that I feel I have to sacrifice my personal ambitions, my career goals and have children, it's just not very congruent. I think if you have children, it's just such a huge responsibility. And so I think for myself at least, I'll just speak for me, sacrificing my career over children is always going to be the priority. Speaker 2 (22:38): Although you were able to do both, but I think you were working day and night, didn't you go to school at night and work in the daytime, but that was your kids were all teenagers by then, I think. Speaker 1 (22:51): Yes, they were teenagers, yeah. So yeah, working full-time and going to school, full-time, getting a graduate degree. So it was a lot. Yeah, and my kids have said occasionally that they felt like I was just absent even though I was there. It's hard to be completely present, but all in all, I think you have to make personal choices, obviously for yourself as a woman or a man, anyone involved in marriage and learn those relationship skills. So any last thoughts? Speaker 2 (23:28): Just I want to add a pitch here for grandparents and the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. So we shouldn't just put the burden just on mom or just on mom and dad, but relationship skills are for everybody and kids learn from everybody. That to society's pressure today on individuals is so strong that we need to really tell people, hang in there, you're doing the best you can and make the choices you need to make and let's all look out for each other. Speaker 1 (24:03): And for those in Gen Z who are delaying or not getting married very much, just know that marriage can be really great. It's really a wonderful thing. So don't be afraid of it. Just be wise about it, about your choices. So Speaker 2 (24:20): Just one more thing. I love this quote from David Brooks article, and that's about careers. He says, young adults now are so focused on their careers and thinking marriage and all that stuff. Maybe we'll deal with it later. And he has this quote, he says, he says, A good career and a lousy marriage won't make you happy, but if you have a great marriage and a crappy career, you will be happy. So keep intimate relationships as the top priority and your career second to that, and don't lose track of that, or you're not going to be as happy as you could have been. Speaker 1 (25:00): Yeah, mic drop. Nice way to wrap it up, bill. So listeners, we want to know what you think. So we've created a short poll asking your thoughts on women and marriage. We'll put the link in the show notes, and this poll will be open for one week after this airing. And then we're going to come back in the following episode with those results and talk a little bit more about it. Next episode, we'll be talking about child custody, whether joint custody should be the presumption or sometimes a sole custody warranted. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love it if you tell your friends and colleagues about us and leave us a review. Until next time, keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuel's, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.