At the NYT Room for Debate, Beverly Willett and Vicki Larson debate divorce:
Should a divorce be more difficult to obtain? Or is the process arduous enough already?
Willett writes:
Today, obtaining a divorce couldn’t get much easier. America’s no-fault divorce laws allow spouses to unilaterally walk out on their families for any reason. And many do just that. Spouses who want to keep their families intact, however, have no alternatives. Thus, the outcome of every divorce filing is preordained: the family will split up. We all want to be happy. But our current me-centered approach to divorce isn’t working, and children bear the brunt.
Larson responds:
Your [Parental Divorce Reduction] act ignores a fundamental shift in society — single motherhood. Some 40 percent of births today are to women who are unmarried but often cohabiting. Those couples, or fragile families, are poorer and less educated than married couples. Divorce rates have been falling for the past quarter century, especially among college-educated people. Many kids at risk of being stripped of “their rightful childhoods” are those born to unmarried mothers, who tend to form numerous cohabiting partnerships and have less money and resources, not children of divorce. These are the children who demand our help.
And much more from two women who have thought deeply about divorce. Take a look.
Categories: Children of Divorce, Marriage
Beverly Willet is the last person anyone should listen to about divorce; she lost all sense of perspective in her own. She chose a war of attrition rather than closure. I understand feeling betrayed by one’s partner—been there, done that. But there is nothing positive to be gained in staying with someone who loathes you. It isn’t good for you, and it isn’t good or healthy for any children in the mix.
With that said, how about turning it around (from the Parental Divorce Reduction Act):
Make this the requirements before getting married. Eight hours of premarital counseling with a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, or clinical social worker. Then an eight-month waiting period before a marriage license could be issued.
That would reduce divorce, no?
What a load of absolute crap. You have no idea how demeaning it is to stay with someone who does want to walk out who has walked out who lies and says they love you and cheats and cheats and drinks and drives drunk with your kid. And today as I went to the bank and found that my paycheck had fallen from 3K to just 1500 already 15 days late with the rent and 500 short of paying the full thing i called up my husband and said not only cant I pay the rent even if he gave me the 500 to pay it I would not have enough money for food or laundry. I need to work more hours I’d have to send my daughter to live with him until I could catch back up so I asked if I could please please go there stay there for two weeks so I could still be with her. His mother fills his house with food from the military commisary they have giant boxes of tide detergent and millions of rolls of toilet paper and a back up of everything light bulbs soup she buys him gas cards for his commute to the city. He spends his money on pot and bar whores and that is where I have to go back to stay and feel all unpretty and old and wanted/unwanted/love you baby I always come back to you/they’re just friends don’t I get to have any friends?/I’m not sleeping with her I’m just scoring her some pot
It is so demeaning and I hate this article and I hate this website for its completely out of touch marriage whitey white loftyness suck it up for the kid you don’t know what your talking about none of you
There is no such thing as a contract you can’t get out of! There is always an exit clause otherwise its slavery. You have to be able to break your contract if you want. Has nothing to do with your kids nothing. We are what it looks like when people who should get divorced refuse to for financial reasons and out of some twisted relic love or low self esteem. Not pretty not good for the kids. Now my daughter won’t be able to be tough enough to kick cheaters to the curb she’ll always try to work it out too like a sucker. I use to be young and cute not anymore I’m old I’m 41 men are different but I’ll never get asked out again I have to suck it up but if I was a better person a stronger person I’d figure a way out of this cycle you guys here advocate for.
Really its just so naive your husbands are all probably fkg around behind your backs you’ll see you’ll see sucking it up is slow death. The only thing I ever feel good about is reuniting families. Hmm wonder why? Thats got to be textbook psychology somehow. I just can’t reunite them fast enough. But its not my family I just can’t reunite mine. Ya’ll just do not know what your talking about and nothing I says gonna change your minds or change the world anyway. I wanted to change the law change the way people think of children and their rights people’s rights cause I thought people were being taken advantage of and hurt. But he said it was a lame thing to do and made fun of me each time I’d reunite someone so I’d hide it like people hide drugs. Something I’m so proud of I would not tell him about cause he’d say I should have spent my time doing something else for him and our family. I do it in the middle of the night though. Does not matter I’m sucking it up like the story says just going to pack up my stuff and go back to where I was not wanted just like the story says.
so so damaging these pro marriage campaigns. Blissful blinded love is the only reason to get married or stay married. Blissful nuts about one another romantic love so stop saying people should suck it up and stay married your messing with the self esteem of me and probably thousands of other women that think they just have to be married stay married or the world will fall apart.
Spouses who want to keep their families intact, however, have no alternatives.
Meaning, spouses cannot force an unwilling partner to stay with them. Why are we supposed to find this problematic?
Willett completely ignores Larson’s points that the proposed Act protects emotional abusers and adulterers. She implies that a spouse who would leave that kind of a marriage is “me-centered” and needs a “time out” to think about what bad, bad people they are for not “fighting” for their marriage.
What an awful woman.
I would support the kind of reform Willett is calling for where you have to attend some classes and wait longer before getting a no-fault unilateral divorce.
A couple that wanted a divorce could still get one. An individual who wanted a divorce could still get one, even against their partner’s wishes.
And if the couple still got divorced, they would have learned some things about parenting and divorce.
It’s kind of crazy to think that people should have the right to promise to stay together forever and yet be able to break up without a reason or a delay.
@mythago – if the act allowed fault divorce in cases of adultery or emotional abuse, would you support it?
So, I have been wondering if making it harder to get out of marriage really would keep people from marrying.
See, if you know that you can’t leave, you might hesitate to get married.
But on the other hand, knowing your partner can leave anytime makes it harder to commit to a relationship. So if you thought that they weren’t going to be able to just leave you unless you did something or agreed to let them go, you might actually be more willing to enter marriage.
This is a question I think someone should try to study.
I think Larson is right to bring up the question of parenting classes for couples who do divorce.
I think she makes a lot of statements at the end about how it might really be better for kids that aren’t borne out by the research, but perhaps there’s something I don’t know there.
I think it’s also important to talk about the problem of so many children being born to cohabiting couples. However, I don’t think that should be an argument against divorce reform. For one thing, what does it mean that being born in a marriage is better for kids if the marriage might break up?
marilyn, I really don’t think anyone should have to stay with a cheater or an alcoholic.
Both those things would be ground for divorce.
Why doesn’t anyone deal with Marilyn? She’s got some true things to say.
What Marilyn has said, while real, visceral, and undeniable, doesn’t help where the kids are.
Marilyn, I think you’re a victim of a culture that holds Romantic love, love, love, as the SOLE reason to “trade” with someone who could give you a child. Clearly you pretended this person was someone other than they were/are. A blindness that our culture continues to encourage to the great loss of children who love both their moms and their dads and are TORN APART by our choices made in the fire of desire or the sunlight of an emotion. Our children need MORE than that. They need BOTH of us, and they ALWAYS will. That they are here now with their needs can’t be changed. And no, I don’t think we should model surrender to them. But before we make more humans, we HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHY MARRIAGE MATTERS. It ISN’T an emotional state. It is making SURE that we have a level of commitment to another person at the SAME depth and level that we will demand of our children to their bioparents. You may have that commitment, but he doesn’t. Who is to blame for that? What’s the answer to our kids?
@Diane M.: what is the purpose of forcing someone who is leaving a cheater, or an alcoholic, or an emotional abuser, or a gambling addict to stay tied to that person for several months? Because we think they’re too stupid to mean it when they say “I would like the divorce process to begin right away”? Because we want to punish them by making them wait?
I find it amazing how often people who disapprove of something as immoral have a distorted view of exactly how easy and quick it is to do that thing. Divorce, for example; even the simplest no-fault divorce involves filing papers with a court, waiting for a hearing date and going in front of a judge to ask that the marriage be ended.
No, I don’t support forcing wronged spouses to have to gather evidence and air the family’s dirty laundry in public in order to get permission to leave a terrible marriage. That’s exactly what fault-based divorce is; the person filing has to allege, in a public filing, exactly why the other person made the marriage break down. (That’s what Willett refers to when she says her husband filed a paper full of lies. With no-fault he would simply have said that the objects of the marriage were irreparably damaged, or some like formulation.)
What’s crazy is the idea that if one person wants to leave a marriage, that it’s our job to be interfering busybodies and make them prove they have a reason WE think is good enough.
Also, Diane M., you are confusing civil marriage with religious marriage. People who get married are not making a legal agreement to “stay together forever”. Heck, many people who get married are not even making a religious agreement to stay together forever. “Till death do us part” is a Christian religious vow. It’s not a requirement of being married for everyone.
When I was a little girl there was a television show on TV and it came on after my grandmother’s ‘stories’ (soaps like as the world turns). They’d do just what mythago was saying have to prove that their spouse was insane or cheated. At the time I thought it was odd and I still do. Everyone has the ability to change their mind and act upon that otherwise you enslave yourself. Deciding to divorce does not mean that you are divorcing your kids you are related to them no matter what and have a duty to them no matter what. Parenthood is not something you opt into or out of like a marriage its something you become once you have offspring ready or not.
It’s all kinds of hard to get a divorce. We don’t have $500 extra dollars to get a divorce.
@mythago – the proposed law does not require people who are being abused to wait.
It does not force people to air dirty laundry either. It still allows no fault divorce.
Civil law was based on the idea that a couple would stay together forever until very recently. I don’t think it was primarily about religion. Lasting marriages make society more stable and in a more community and family oriented society that is valued. In a less wealthy society it is just neccessary.
At this point I think a lot of our benefits we give marriage don’t make sense if we aren’t expecting the couple to stay together. More importantly to me marriage itself works differently if you can’t rely on it lasting and I think we lose many of its benefits.
But i think the real question here is why not wait for no-fault divorces? Nobody is loding any rights.s benefits. kits benefits.
Mythago, when a couple divorces society gets involved. We tell them what rights they have about their property and their children.
From where I sit it’s crazy to tell someone she or he has to agree to a divorce no matter what if the other person wants it.
I do not believe that everyone is always making the best decision possible given their situation, but if they are, surely the person who wants to keep their spouse married to them is also right?
We also tell people that they must get along with their ex for the sake of their children. Good advice but just as interfering and judgemental as suggesting that a couple wait and consider the effects on their children.
I think the life experiences of the two women blogging about this are relevant to the discussion. They have blotted elsewhere about their lives.
The first woman Willett had a long term marriage with a husband acting as if he loved her until he started an affair with a co worker at a new job. Then he wanted to divorce her and marry the bad words.
Larson also had a husband who cheated on her, but she decided to leave him. I got the impression he cheated more than once, but I think she does not want to give all the details. In any case she made the reasonable decision that she did not want to put up with his behavior and left him.
It makes sense that Larson would want an out for spouses who were being cheated on. (Although a delay would still give them that out.) And it is a very reasonable point to make about this law.
It also makes sense that Willett would believe that time and some classes might have saved her marriage. People having affairs are not thinking clearly. Their brains are on drugs. Contrary to ro
Sorry about the break. Contrary to romantic ideals, people who love someone can fall in love with someone else. And sex plays a role.
So what if the delay could help some couples? How bad would it be for the others? Why not take a class or two before you make a huge life altering decision?
Amen to everything mythago said. In my state, I had to file for divorce and sign an affidavit that we had been separated for six months. Can anybody explain to me why there should be longer than a six-month waiting period? I desperately wanted the divorce for years before I saw an attorney to file for one; it took me that long to save up enough money to physically separate (an interesting story—how to physically separate without “getting myself” killed). No one, no how, no way could have convinced me to go back. Ever.
And to say I’m an exception because I was physically abused is wrong. There was no way for me to prove he physically abused me. He just did, is all. And goaded me with that fact I could never prove it. That’s the way it would work for most people enduring physical abuse. We don’t just live in a culture that doesn’t recognize emotional abuse as abuse, it doesn’t recognize a great deal of physical abuse as abuse either. No black eyes? No broken bones? Well, how do we know you’re not lying? He’s a pretty good guy. Are you sure you’re not exaggerating? I mean, how hard did he hit you? You didn’t pass out. It was probably just a love tap. Maybe he just pushed you, and you’re overdramatizing. He didn’t hit you, hit you—or you’d be in the hospital….etc., etc.
If you want to load a bunch of rigamarole on to the marriage process, load it up on the front end—make it a requirement for the marriage license. People are more willing to put up with a lot of extraneous hoop-jumping without a lot of resentment on the front end (ex.: I know a lot of non-Catholics who went through the Catholic premarital process in order to please their beloveds, who wanted to get married in the Catholic Church. Most of ‘em even raised their children in the Church, although they didn’t attend themselves). Doing it on the back end just builds up resentment that Big Brother is micromanaging one of the most painful, intimate decisions they’ve ever had to make because Big Brother thinks they aren’t adult enough to make it. And then requires them to shell out big bucks for it (there’s no way the cost would be as low as Willet’s “$100-$200 dollars; DUI counseling fees, which are done classroom-style, are higher than that) in addition to the cost of the divorce itself.
By the time people go through all that on the back end, where they are experiencing it as additional punishment, not only will they be super-reluctant to marry in the future, they will be advising any children they have to do some long-term cohabiting before thinking about getting married too.
It’s down to the question of “what is marriage”. Marriage is a legal arrangement, but to an individual couple who is married, it’s a lot more than that. Those couples expect that certain conditions will be met in order to experience their relationship as a marriage. The people who are best suited to determine whether those conditions are met or whether there is any likelihood of those conditions returning in a reasonable amount of time are the people who are in that marriage themselves. Both of them. One partner should not be able to hold the other hostage for a longer period of time. Think about who does that. If your guess was “abusers”, you’re right!
A point the article made in passing was, I think, the most important one. Why do we actually care if people marry? The truth is we don’t. Absent children marriage is acknowledged as an adult matter. No one is suggesting no-fault divorce be withdrawn from this population. So what we really want is for people to be better parents regardless of their relationship with the other parent. This covers pretty much all of the at risk populations not just people who married.
What is the benefit of pursuing a punitive policy to force a shrinking part of the population to stay married when what we want them to be is better parents. I see better outcomes for these types of interventions the I do for making divorce more difficult. Does anyone here truly believe that Ms. Willett’s behaviour was laudable? That it produced a benefit for her children. Did it make them closer to their father? More likely to marry?
@Mont D Law – “What is the benefit of pursuing a punitive policy to force a shrinking part of the population to stay married when what we want them to be is better parents.”
For crying out loud, waiting eight months is not a punitive policy.
And one way to be a better parent is to not have an affair and to not leave your wife or husband if you do.
“Does anyone here truly believe that Ms. Willett’s behaviour was laudable? That it produced a benefit for her children. Did it make them closer to their father? More likely to marry?”
Why does it always get turned into this? Does anyone believe that Mr. Willet’s behavior was laudable? That it helped his children? That it made them closer to him? More likely to marry? Do we even believe that he has a right to treat his wife like crap but have his children be close to him?
Could we put the blame where it belongs? On the cheater and the skunk who slept with him.
This is the thing that drives me wild. People who don’t want you to judge the cheating spouse and suggest that they take a little longer to think about it before throwing over the past 20 years of their life and their children’s well-being are somehow perfectly okay telling the person who has been lied to and misused that they had better be some weird angelic creature who steps out of the way and never shows anger in front of their kids.
In the end, Mont D Law, you are taking a side. It’s just that you’re on the side of the person having an affair who wants to leave not the person who wants their partner to take a little longer, attend a few classes, and stay away from lawyers.
LaLubu – The problem I have is that allowing unilateral divorce without fault causes injustice to some people.
So there needs to be a way to make things fair for them, too.
What I see here is divorce taking a little longer. So even if you couldn’t prove that he abused you, you would be able to move out, no?
I do see a difficulty here. People need to be able to get out of abusive situations. At the same time, there are many people who feel that they are being divorced unfairly. We can’t just completely ignore them.
I do not believe that everyone is always making the best decision possible given their situation, but if they are, surely the person who wants to keep their spouse married to them is also right?
No. The person who wants to force their spouse to stay married to them is wrong. People are not property. They cannot walk away from their legal obligations (to pay support, to see the children, to divide property fairly, etc.) but they absolutely should be able to walk away from the marriage. “But I didn’t break up with you” is the mindset of stalkers and abusers.
Neither you nor Willet care to acknowledge the effect of your desire to punish people on the innocent – you breeze right by La Lubu and others like her because you want condemnation for adulterers and people you think ‘casually’ divorce to be handed down on high from the government.
Diane what do you mean being divorced unfairly? If your in love and they are not you can’t force them to stay with you and work it out! They are free to go. What other contract can you get into that does not have a termination clause – yes there are penalties and procedures but a contract you can’t get out of is a contract with the devil.
Diane I would never punish my child by keeping her from her father because he cheated on me. What kind of a jerk would that make me?
Diane, I’m going to back mythago up on her response to this: forcing someone to remain married when they no longer wish to be married is close kin to forcing someone into a sexually-intimate situation they do not wish to be in. It’s coercion. The reason someone wishes to formally dissolve the relationship are secondary to the fact that they no longer wish to be in that relationship. Yes, I believe that the state can take an interest in protecting all members of the family through the divorce (allocation of financial resources, responsibilities for childcare, etc.), but the person who desires to stay married cannot and should not force, through law (or any other means!) the person who wishes to no longer be married to stay.
Apart from the coercion aspect, which is a deal-breaker in my opinion, it’s also a weird concern: who would WANT to remain married to a person who had made it clear they wanted out?! While I will devoutly work to keep my marriage healthy, if my wife ever decided she no longer wanted to be with me I’d be heartbroken but cannot imagine requiring her to stay! What sort of twisted version of love or fidelity is that?
Diane M., six months is a considerable period of time. Why on earth would there need to be a period of time longer than six months? What possible purpose could that serve other than punitive?
I don’t think Ms. Willett’s husband did the right thing by cheating. I think cheating is despicable. For myself, I would choose divorce when faced with a cheating spouse. Once the trust is gone, any meaningful definition of marriage is gone also. Divorce isn’t the end of marriage—the marriage ends long before the divorce. The divorce is merely the removal of the civil ties. The PDRA is a legal requirement for flogging the long-dead horse some more. It’s pointless, aggravating, and would put a longer-term chip on the shoulder of divorcing couples—pretty much a guarantee that any future relationships will remain nonmarital (and yes, will impact what divorced people recommend to their children about marriage).
Again, if people feel this is necessary, it should be loaded up on the front-end, as a premarital requirement. A time when people are more willing to jump through hoops; a time when it isn’t likely to add to pain, trauma, and anger. I think the PDRA would be the tipping point for many couples to just choose cohabitation instead—less entrapment, less expense.
I do not believe it is possible for a marriage in any meaningful sense of the word to exist in a situation where one person wants to stay married and the other doesn’t. Forcing people to stay together longer in such scenarios escalates the pain, anger and resentment. I can’t see that as a positive thing.
Divorces aren’t increasing due to a lack of oversight.
Diane M. “I do see a difficulty here. People need to be able to get out of abusive situations. At the same time, there are many people who feel that they are being divorced unfairly.”
Diane, in my experience as a legal services attorney these are not mutually exclusive categories. I have represented many women who were physically and/or emotionally abused by their husbands and the husbands resisted the divorce and believed they were being divorced unfairly. In many of these relationships there was a long history of promising it would never happen again, please for 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance, etc..
(In the end, Mont D Law, you are taking a side. It’s just that you’re on the side of the person having an affair who wants to leave not the person who wants their partner to take a little longer, attend a few classes, and stay away from lawyers.)
And you are on the side of the psycho who put her children through 5 years of hell complete with lawyers so she could be a martyr. Is the insulting each other part over now? Do we all feel better?
I have no objection to eliminating lawyers and judges and replacing them with mediators and arbitrators, for everyone not just volunteers and rich people. The legal process is ill-suited to divorce, like using a sledge hammer on a gnat. It is overly adversarial and often counter productive. But that raises a bunch of question around cost and quality control that no one has even begun to address.
Surprisingly where I live you can’t divorce your spouse without their agreement and all uncontested divorces require a 1 year waiting period. So 2/3 of what you want is already in place. Yet the divorce rate is pretty much the same but !surprise! our marriage rates are much lower.
So again, explain the benefit of pursuing a punitive policy that will have zero effect on unmarried and single parents? Please note my putative affection for adulators is not relevant to the question.
“Neither you nor Willet care to acknowledge the effect of your desire to punish people on the innocent – you breeze right by La Lubu and others like her because you want condemnation for adulterers and people you think ‘casually’ divorce to be handed down on high from the government.”
I think you’re breezing right past what Willett is saying. She didn’t want to punish her husband, she wanted him to stay married to her.
I don’t think she’s crazy to believe it might have worked for him to wait a little, take a class, and stay away from lawyers. They had been married over 20 years. Until the affair, Willett believed her husband was happy.
“they absolutely should be able to walk away from the marriage. “But I didn’t break up with you” is the mindset of stalkers and abusers.”
But they could walk away from the marriage. They just have to take a class and wait a little. Maybe things will work out, maybe they won’t. Nobody is being forced to stay married.
And I think it’s cruel and irrational to compare someone who doesn’t want a spouse to leave after 20+ years with a stalker or abuser.
Marriage is not dating. Wanting someone to try to work things out with you is not unreasonable.
@marilyn “I would never punish my child by keeping her from her father because he cheated on me. What kind of a jerk would that make me?”
A human jerk. Just like the kind of jerk who would cheat on his wife or leave her and his children for someone else.
I don’t think parents should take revenge and hurt their children. I do think that if we are going to tell parents they have to be nice to someone who cheated and left them, we should also tell parents to stop cheating and stay with their spouse and children.
@Annajcook – “Yes, I believe that the state can take an interest in protecting all members of the family through the divorce (allocation of financial resources, responsibilities for childcare, etc.), but the person who desires to stay married cannot and should not force, through law (or any other means!) the person who wishes to no longer be married to stay.”
Nobody is being forced to stay. They are just being told to wait and think a little. That is a fair thing to ask of someone who has made the commitment of marriage.
@annaJcooke – I think this actually gets at the heart of why I don’t see things the same way as others:
“who would WANT to remain married to a person who had made it clear they wanted out?!”
Someone who thought that the marriage could be fixed.
I think that marriages are much more fixable than our culture generally suggests.
Marriages, good marriages, go through bad times. During those times, they may not look like good marriages. I am not talking about abuse, just fighting a lot or feeling distant and out of love or bored or not having enough sex. These are things that people can change. Sometimes life itself gets better and so does the marriage.
It’s harder to get over adultery, but some people do it.
However, I don’t see adultery as proof that the marriage was terrible or the love was gone or anything like that. Maybe it was, maybe not.
I see adultery as something that will affect your thinking and make you unreasonable, almost crazy. Waiting a little might give you some valuable perspective.
Most people think you shouldn’t marry someone you don’t know well or when you are in the first rush of love. Many think you should live together first. Here’s someone you don’t know well and can’t live with. They are even more exciting because it’s an affair and they are new. Marrying them is a bad idea. Leaving your spouse and messing up your life is an even worse one.
A class on the effects of divorce on children might make you think twice, too. Maybe the cheater is just a little too over-the-moon to have thought about what he is doing to his children. Maybe he doesn’t know the research and thinks it will be good for his kids if he’s happy (it’s not that simple).
Keeping things out of court might help since you would be avoiding some conflicts for a while. That would give you some space to come back to each other without being already mad because your wife wanted to keep the house or without feeling you had to go forward because you were in court now.
Again, at the end of it all, if Willett’s husband had still thought that he wanted the nasty bit, he could have left Willett. The law would just have given him a little time to cool down and think more with his brain.
The law would also give his wife time to think about it and adjust to the idea.
And with a little tweaking, the law could mandate some discussion of how to co-parent well if you do get divorced after all.
@LaLubu – “Diane M., six months is a considerable period of time. Why on earth would there need to be a period of time longer than six months? What possible purpose could that serve other than punitive?”
The goal is obviously to give the couple time to think and not get divorced.
I really don’t see why it is punitive to wait.
I think the other thing that is going on is that the suggestion is that while waiting, the couple would take some classes and not get involved with the legal system. I think the idea is that this will make it possible to work things out.
And it may be that in some states, the waiting period is different.
It would make a lot of sense to ask the people proposing this change why eight months and would that affect any other waiting period?
But I don’t think it’s unfair to ask people to wait.
Diane M., you’re missing the point—-divorcing people have already waited and thought about their decision a great deal. This reminds me of nothing so much than the restrictions being put on abortion: expensive ultrasounds, 24-hour waiting periods (which require a hotel stay for most people)…..it’s all designed as punitive measures to prevent people from making the decision they truly want. Set enough obstacles in the way to block them.
Please explain to me how any of this is going to do anything except add cost, time, anger, pain and resentment. Why is it beneficial for people to begin their new divorced lives, new lives where they need to cooperate as co-parents, with an extra dose of negativity? Because that is exactly what will happen. People do not get divorced on a whim. I really don’t see any benefit in spending additional time trapped in a bad marriage with a controlling partner. And make no mistake about it—every toxic controlling partner being divorced would use this to his or her advantage, prolonging the misery for the one escaping his or her toxicity.
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And yet, when you look at the example offered by the Willett’s divorce, you see that everything Beverly Willett did just escalated the hostility. That’s what punitive “think it over” (as if one hasn’t already done so) laws do—create, amplify, and/or extend resentment.
Meanwhile, cohabitation offers a nice, crisp solution to all of the above.
How so?
(I think you’re breezing right past what Willett is saying. She didn’t want to punish her husband, she wanted him to stay married to her.)
How did that workout for her?
Because she lived in NY State she made him wait 5 years and forced him to move to NJ. What it didn’t do was convince him to stay married to her.
(I don’t think she’s crazy to believe it might have worked for him to wait a little, take a class, and stay away from lawyers.)
You have no evidence that is true in this case or any other. In places where these policies exist it has no effect on the divorce rate.
Someone (I believe it was Ernest van den Haag) once defined marriage as “a promise to stay together even when you don’t feel like it anymore.”
And that, indeed, is the crux of it. He went on to say that “without that promise, it’s not marriage. It’s just an affair with legal trappings.”
So for those of you who are confused about why there used to be the requirement of “fault” for divorce, and think that that requirement is entirely irrational, that’s the answer. It comes from an entirely different understanding of what marriage is.
And nowhere in the legal code was “I’m not in love anymore” ever grounds for divorce. The fact that it wasn’t it was tells you what the definition of marriage used to be.
@Mont D Law – but she didn’t have a way to have him take classes or stay out of the courts.
“In places where these policies exist it has no effect on the divorce rate.”
Are there any places where these policies really exist? I actually don’t think so.
Re: Someone (I believe it was Ernest van den Haag) once defined marriage as “a promise to stay together even when you don’t feel like it anymore.” And that, indeed, is the crux of it. He went on to say that “without that promise, it’s not marriage. It’s just an affair with legal trappings.”
Amen to that. It’s a pity that our society has dumbed down the meaning of marriage so much, and it’s equally depressing that Mythago, Annajcook, La Lubu, and their ideological confreres seem to be cheerfully enthusiastic about it.
It’s worth remembering that Ireland had a total ban on divorce up until 1995.
Re: For myself, I would choose divorce when faced with a cheating spouse.
I wouldn’t, necessarily, but I guess I take a pretty different view of marriage than you do.
(Are there any places where these policies really exist? I actually don’t think so.)
That is not true. Lots of places mandate classes and have lengthy waiting periods. The end result is no reduction in the divorce rate and lower rates of marriage.
Diane M. writes:
Diane, I think La Lubu has already said more or less what I would in response to this sentiment: that — much like with all of the burdens placed on women seeking abortions — it assumes the people seeking divorce aren’t in the best position to know what is best for them and the people intimately involved with their lives. It’s like concern trolling but in real life: presuming that WE are in the best position to judge for another human being what is the “right” or “moral” reason for divorce, what betrayals of trust they should attempt to forgive in their spouse, how long they should stick out a bad period before it’s deemed bad enough to leave.
Divorce is already a process, with legal hoops to jump through and all of the emotional and social transitions that come with separating out once-tangled lives. It is often extremely expensive financially and socially. I’m honestly not sure how one would be able to get divorced on a whim. And — again, as with the added hurdles for those seeking abortion services — every additional hoop to jump through disproportionately penalizes the most vulnerable (in this case those caught in poverty, in domestic violence situations, those whose immigration status will be jeopardized by a divorce, etc.).
I don’t think we’re going to come to agreement on this one.
I’m looking at so many things differently.
I see two sides in an argument between two people. The person who wants a divorce is not automatically right.
I see the possibility that the person being divorced is being unfairly treated. They made a promise and lived up to a bargain and their partner isn’t keeping their side of the bargain.
I see marriage as more than just staying together so long as it feels good. In fact I see love as more than staying together only when it feels good or even only when you feel love.
I see good marriages as something that will go through bad times.
I see waiting or taking a class as a reasonable requirement, not a terrible punishment for wanting to get divorced.
I see people having affairs as not quite rational or able to use good judgment.
I see affairs as things that make the problems a marriage has worse and can pull a person away from working out problems they might very well be able to fix in their marriage or life.
I am surprised by the extent to which people are angry at Willett and criticize her for wanting to stay married. It seems to me that this is what “divorce culture” means.
Why be more critical of someone who wants to keep their marriage together than someone who wants to leave?
Why so much sympathy for the idea that the person who wants to leave must know what they are doing, must have tried already, must have spent enough time getting divorced – even if their partner says they didn’t?
Why so much criticism and anger at a woman who was married over 20 years and had children by a man and didn’t want him to leave her? Why call her cruel? Why so much certainty that she is wrong about what happened to her?
As I said, I think this is part of divorce culture. Not only is marriage something you do so long as it is easy and you are happy, but trying to keep your partner is bad.
One final thought and then I need to think about something else.
I really don’t get why it would be difficult or punitive to wait.
I find the idea of covenant marriage a little scary. You definitely give up some of your freedom.
But this reform sounds like a different promise to me (with some slight tweaking):
If ever I want to divorce you, first I will go to some classes and get counseling and wait eight months – unless you are being abusive or have an addiction or are refusing to end an affair.
I will not suddenly spring a request for a divorce on you and proceed directly to court.
I could make a promise like that. I seems only fair.
In fact, I would be bothered by a potential mate who was not willing to make this promise.
Diane, we probably will not see eye-to-eye on this one. I do appreciate, though, that you are willing to articulate your point of view in a thoughtful manner.
I do want to say that I am not angry at Willett and/or criticizing her for wishing to keep her marriage intact. I understand that there are two people involved in the dissolution of a relationship, and that the person who doesn’t wish the relationship to end (if there is one) has a right to their experience of sadness, anger, loss. But ultimately I stand by my favoring of a legal framework that doesn’t put hurdles in the way of people who wish to end their legal marital ties. This doesn’t stop family friends, the church, or other support networks from encouraging a couple to pursue counseling or other options before seeking divorce. But it does protect people from one more avenue of manipulation of an abusive spouse, from prolonged legal ties to an abuser, and even in the absence of abuse places the decision-making power in the hands of the two people most intimately able to say when and how to dissolve their legal connection.
As I said before, a legal framework is already in place to protect vulnerable parties when it comes to dis-entangling material lives, caring for children, etc.
I am sympathetic about the notion that both peoples’ input is a good thing here, but I think (to return to the abortion analogy), just as the ultimately decision about what to do about a pregnancy lies with the woman whose body is implicated, so too the ultimate decision about whether or not to continue a relationship lies with the two people who have chosen to enter into the relationship. Either person has the right to say, for any reason, that they no longer wish to be so entangled. The laws can facilitate the break-up, but they should not compel people to remain together, even if “only” for another six months, or “until” they meet certain burdens of proof.
I don’t think we really have any other humane choice here but to trust the people involved about their own feelings here, and as much as we might want to compel someone to love us back, we don’t have the right to pressure them to do so. I’d argue it’s analogous to sex: yes, there are two people involved, and yes the person who wants the sexual intimacy with the potential partner has a right to their desire. But that doesn’t mean their desire has equal weight in the negotiation with the prospective partner’s non-interest. The uninterested person’s right not to have sex trumps the desiring person’s interest in having it. Similarly, the partner who can no longer remain in the marriage has an ultimate right to say “no” that extends beyond the spouse’s desire to keep saying “yes.”
Will mistakes be made? Yes. People will be impulsive, stupid, hasty. But I don’t think that gives us the right to say “we know better than you; prove to us that you really want out.”
Diane sounds great but its a free country so they can’t make you keep your promise. They can make you pay a penalty but not perform the task. Courts don’t require specific performance cause its slavery .
Diane, you don’t get why this would be so difficult or punitive because you’ve never been in this position. You’ve never been physically or emotionally abused (and apparently, have never known anyone in your personal life that has); you haven’t had any direct experience with how invisible it is, how difficult it is to prove to another person that you have been or are being abused—as well as how often abused persons are assumed to be lying about or exaggerating their abuse. You haven’t been married to a master manipulator.
This is what the actual proposal says from the website:
Notice something? There is no provision for those who have been emotionally abused (or sexually abused), there is no provision for adultery, incarceration is only a factor if it’s for five years (!), and who gets to determine whether someone is “refusing” to seek treatment for addiction? According to the wording of the Act, a person who is literally refusing to accept treatment, but who goes through the motions, could keep their spouse on the hook for a lot longer than eight months (via “relapsing”).
Diane M., there is no way to separate in legislation means of protecting people who are in harmful situations. There is no way for such persons to provide a level of proof of their situation that would meet courtroom standards.
I’m not upset with Willett. I don’t know her. The only reason I know of her situation is through her own writing about it. Through her own writing, my impression was that her actions escalated the contentiousness and could have been recognized very early on as futile. I think most people would have thought of her ex-husband as a cockroach had she just moved on. The war of attrition she conducted for five years did nothing but change her public image to one of “control freak” and gained public sympathy for her ex-husband, who normally wouldn’t have received any.
Willett and others were recommending longer classes/counseling and a longer waiting period; the fact that they’ve dropped it this much is a sign of how unpopular it is electorally. I still say that cohabitation will become much more attractive anywhere this passes.
I also find it curious that no one has responded to my assertion that if extra oversight is needed, why not place it at the front end, and make it a requirement of getting a marriage license?
Chesterton, on the people in his day who wanted to introduce liberalized divorce laws (and I think he had a point):
“They would attach to their very natural and sometimes very pardonable
experiments a certain atmosphere, and even glamour, which has
undoubtedly belonged to the status of marriage [historically].
But before they make this attempt, it would be well to ask
why such a dignity ever appeared or in what it consisted.
And I fancy we shall find ourselves confronted with the very
simple truth, that the dignity arose wholly and entirely out
of the fidelity; and that the glamour merely came from the vow.
People were regarded as having a certain dignity because they
were dedicated in a certain way; as bound to certain duties and,
if it be preferred, to certain discomforts. It may be irrational
to endure these discomforts; it may even be irrational to respect them.
But it is certainly much more irrational to respect them, and then
artificially transfer the same respect to the absence of them.
It is as if we were to expect uniforms to be saluted when armies
were disbanded; and ask people to cheer a soldier’s coat when it did
not contain a soldier. If you think you can abolish war, abolish it;
but do not suppose that when there are no wars to be waged,
there will still be warriors to be worshipped.”
For those of you who support the liberalized divorce culture of today: if people are free to leave a marriage whenever they aren’t happy, or aren’t in love anymore, then what makes it a *marriage*? What makes it, in any way, different from just being in a relationship?
Re: but I think (to return to the abortion analogy), just as the ultimately decision about what to do about a pregnancy lies with the woman whose body is implicated,
I don’t think the decision should rest with the mother. I’m against legalized abortion, except when the mother’s health is seriously threatened, so that argument is utterly unconvincing to me. The decision about whether the child’s life is to be protected ought to be made by society as a whole, acting under the illumination of the moral law, and not rest on the whims of the mother.
Re: so too the ultimate decision about whether or not to continue a relationship lies with the two people who have chosen to enter into the relationship.
I can’t possibly see why. If you got married, you involved society and the state in your relationship, and they should have some say in whether or not you can dissolve it. And I think it’s fairly clear that people very, very often don’t know what’s good for them, and make poor decisions. I wouldn’t trust a classroom full of third graders to make healthy nutritional choices, for example.
Re: Similarly, the partner who can no longer remain in the marriage has an ultimate right to say “no” that extends beyond the spouse’s desire to keep saying “yes.”
Again, I don’t see why. No one is being compelled to ‘love you back’, or even to live in the same house or share property. We have legal separation, after all. They’re just being compelled to *stay married*, and to not have the ability to legally marry anyone else.
Re: Diane, we probably will not see eye-to-eye on this one.
That’s for sure- I think we are coming from foundationally different perspectives of what mariage is and should be.
I really don’t get why it would be difficult or punitive to wait.
Indeed, you don’t. Do you not think that it would be helpful to your understanding to listen to people like La Lubu who are explaining why waiting is difficult and punitive, and to think about what it would be like to be in that situation – to have a spouse who is emotionally abusive, who’s been sent to prison for four years for hitting your children, or who has been on the same cycle of AA meetings/drunk/promising to do better for a decade (hey, they’re not “refusing treatment”!).
“Why not make them wait?” Because they already have to wait (you don’t get divorce off Amazon; it’s a court process); because waiting times punish those who have a very good reason to get out of a marriage ASAP; because the alternative to the wait period is forcing someone to prove to a legal standard that they are Worthy of ending the marriage; and because it takes the reprehensible view that “I don’t WANT you to leave me”, the stalker’s cry, is a valid argument that we should respect.
Re: I find the idea of covenant marriage a little scary. You definitely give up some of your freedom
I like the covenant marriage idea, and I hope more states start making it an option. Marriage is *supposed* to be about voluntarily giving up some of your freedom.
Re: However, I don’t see adultery as proof that the marriage was terrible or the love was gone or anything like that. Maybe it was, maybe not. I see adultery as something that will affect your thinking and make you unreasonable, almost crazy. Waiting a little might give you some valuable perspective.
This is a really good point, too. Adultery isn’t necessarily a good reason for breaking up a marriage, or proof that the marriage doesn’t work. There are plenty of functional marriages where one or more of the spouses cheat, and always have been. It’s the reality of corrupt human nature. A waiting period would, as you say, allow the wronged spouse to cool off and become more reasonable about things.
Hector, alcoholism, violence and theft are realities of corrupt human nature too; but even the sponsors of “covenant marriage” or waiting periods seem to think that the response to a violent spouse, or an unrepentant drunk, is not to scold the other person to “become more reasonable about things” and wait them out.