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Divorce does funny things

theparisreview.org

201–210 of 386 posts

Re: Divorce does funny things

#201
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. What if the partner is a bad, manipulative actor, but it is just too difficult to dissolve the marriage? For the sake of children, financial commitments, costs, unfair legacy laws and so on? It’s certainly not unheard of, so I’ll keep sweeping personality assessments based on cheating at bay. There’s clearly also other reasons, I’m not saying cheating partners are always poor martyrs of circumstance.

Technically everything can be used to establish a (operational) perception of a person — and everything can be wrong. Someone wears a Rolex? Maybe they are rich and want to show off, maybe they inherited it from a dying family member. If they however additionally drive a super car, wear designer clothes the likelyhood of alternative explainations goes down. If someone is a nice, cordial and all around good person and…

I think it’s the case where I would put more weight on what you label as confirmatory signals than the infidelity itself. My key concern about a cheating asshole is that they’re an asshole.

Cheating on someone is just such a noisy signal. You don’t know why, or what’s wrong with the relationship. You mostly don’t know who is cheating, at best you have a biased sample. You don’t know what they are like to their parents or children, or frankly even their partners - are they loyal to them in other ways, caring for them when they need it?

Relationships are super complicated and judging them from outside takes a psychology degree and extra training. I’m not going to jump to conclusions from a Boolean variable.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#202
post #192
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not a uniquely American perspective. Generally humans (not all) value things like fairness and truth. Many will toss those to the side in the pursuit of things like money and power, but it’s pretty universal that screwing people over is viewed poorly.

The thing is in many cultures, or social groups, extra-marital affairs (usually for men) are normalised and accepted. It's simply not seen as a trust or fairness issue. And yes this can be mysogynistic and abusive, but these attitudes do exist.

I live in one of those cultures today and I’d emphasize the “tolerated” part. Not that dissimilar to physically hitting your spouse.

Nobody likes it but feel powerless to change it.

But I wouldn’t say it’s viewed positively or even neutrally.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#203
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to be upfront. "I love someone new, let's divorce / some other arrangement." There will be hurt feelings but that's life. The honesty will help everyone in the long run. It's entirely another thing to sneak around - to do something you promised not to do, but in secret, so you don't get caught. It is my observation and experience that the kind of person who breaks trust in secret is not someone I want…

If you admit to loving someone new you've very likely already cheated at the emotional level if not the physical. Where do you draw the line?

Because you can't choose to feel or not to feel something. Emotions just happen. You do choose what you do with that emotion.

I feel is totally ok to judge someone for their actions, not so much for things they have no control over.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#204
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you admit to loving someone new you've very likely already cheated at the emotional level if not the physical. Where do you draw the line?

I've never heard of "cheated at the emotional level". I don't understand how this could be a thing, you don't control your emotions. You are however somewhat free to act on them or not.

It as a "thing" for those that have an unhealthy attachment style. Those in such situations will tend to be controlling and suspicious of every minor thing in order to fend of the possibility someone else "infiltrating" the relationship. Is is the typical scenario where one partner tries to isolate the other from their social circles.

Depending on the culture, the fear is that such "emotional cheating" will either eventually lead to "physical cheating" or even worse (probably feared more by men), lead to a dissolution of the relationship (without necessarily involving cheating) (probably feared more by women).

Any kind of interaction of one partner with an outside party can become suspect of containing emotional content, which the other partner believes they are entitled to. In graver cases it may even imply a diversion of resources (time, mind space, wealth, etc.) towards the third party that the partner believes is entitled to.

If homosexuality and bisexuality wasn't an even bigger taboo, all relationships and interactions would have the potential for "cheating emotionally".

Re: Divorce does funny things

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five finger discount is when you steal. The condition of staying in good relations with your wife where she does not take the children and blast off is not having a romantic life on the side. You understand this condition but try to get around it by lying. Not because it is unfair or impossible. Just because you want to have good things without paying for them.

I find your stance to be incredibly naive and (yes I will use the word) sexist. Are you claiming that having an affair is the ONLY reason a woman might leave a relationship. Do you truly believe that as long as you do not f** someone else she should be chained to you? Do you truly believe that is all that is necessary for maintaining a relationship? You do not even realize the implications of what you are saying. If…

You thought all of that by yourself.

There are a lot of ways to breach a "contract" that is marriage, including a voluntary termination. However, being unfaithful is a good way to ruin your marriage, so if it means things to you please don't cheat your wife, unless explicitly being on different terms (and even then...).

This one is totally reasonable. It does not grant you any protection for the other cases, though.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are your 10 lawyers stats from? You realize that lawyers can just be repeating the same thing they found on google? Which could simply be a quote from a forum like this one. This discussion requires the same standards for all arguments, and no appeals to authority.

> Where are your 10 lawyers stats from? Irrelevant - I didn't present it as stats applicable to the populate, I presented it as "10 lawyers I spoke to". Parent presented the 50/50 statistic as a fact, I want to know where he read that.

I'd like to know too.

I also don't find your unique experience useful though.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#207

I am going through it right now too. Very short background: * Wife abusive from the beginning * Sexless marriage as she refused * Beating herself up for years * She's not earning (highly qualified) * Did not take care of child or home either * Tried to frame me however I figured and escaped * Living separately now * She filed false and frivolous violence complaint against me * Not letting me meet my child * Court gra…

I want to ask you about this, in hindsight do you think it would work better for your mental health if you didn't care as much?

Like, I can read this and see that alimony is a persistent threat and reality that comes as a byproduct of being successful in my aspirations. I can just assume that it is in my future if I pursue certain kinds of relationships. 30-50% of marriages fail (the lower bound being more applicable when removing teenagers and military), and marriage contracts have shitty conditions to them. It would be a shitty contract with shitty probabilities even if only 5-10% of them failed, thats a high risk for anything with any financial component.

So I can just assume that I'll periodically file some stuff that lawyers ask for, just as a routine matter with no expectation of benefit from the legal system.

But it doesn't have to cause me any mental consternation or stress, because it isn't unexpected.

Would that approach have helped you?

Re: Divorce does funny things

#208

The entire modern world is built off the backs of men that are willing to do the most dangerous of jobs.

I've been thinking that workforce gender equality would happen faster if men had a predictable choice of being subsidized in heterosexual relationships.

I think an even distribution of people would choose that.

Seems a lot of energy is spent on not considering how the funnels are different for men and women, and how that factors into dilution of the workforce pipeline by gender initially and over time. My thoughts are that this is a greater factor in everything about this topic. Like, a lot of understanding about the work place structure could be made by noticing that many men don't really want to be there while many women are there out of pride in lieu of other choices. (Many =/= most. Likely an even distribution of all populations experiencing the same thing, except the choice of subsidy.)

Re: Divorce does funny things

#209
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdata: the males I've personally seem "opting out" have major personal issues and are honestly dangerous to any potential partners, mentally and physically. Doesn't matter, if too many males opt out females would either have to be alone or compete for the remaining males. Competition would certainly result in changes in male behaviour (because they won't be competing for a mate). This is a vicious cycle which wo…

>if too many males opt out females would either have to be alone or compete for the remaining males. I don't know what's shaped your worldview, but this really isn't how things work, at all. >This is a vicious cycle which would result in more males having "major personal issues". Oh well. With the current trajectory of tech, we'll soon be able to identify these types from whatever tech they use and send out a robo-ta…

What are you even talking about? Care to elaborate?

Re: Divorce does funny things

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your stance to be incredibly naive and (yes I will use the word) sexist. Are you claiming that having an affair is the ONLY reason a woman might leave a relationship. Do you truly believe that as long as you do not f** someone else she should be chained to you? Do you truly believe that is all that is necessary for maintaining a relationship? You do not even realize the implications of what you are saying. If…

You thought all of that by yourself. There are a lot of ways to breach a "contract" that is marriage, including a voluntary termination. However, being unfaithful is a good way to ruin your marriage, so if it means things to you please don't cheat your wife, unless explicitly being on different terms (and even then...). This one is totally reasonable. It does not grant you any protection for the other cases, though.

You claim I made that up. Then lets analyze your comment.

> The condition of staying in good relations with your wife

You do not say "one of", you say "the".

> where she does not take the children and blast off

You define having "good relations" as merely "she does not take the children and blast off".

> is not having a romantic life on the side.

Define romantic. Actually, also define cheating. Where is the boundary.

Do not wiggle out of this. You made a crap comment. If it is not what you believe than amend it, but don't claim it is not stating what it is obviously stating.

As for your last comment:

I never claimed that "being unfaithful is a good way to ruin your marriage" is not true. I put you on the spot because your comment claimed that is all that matters.

Also, voluntary termination of a contract is not breach of contract. And while granted, having the initiative is beneficial in a divorce, depending on the culture and jurisdiction, the outcome of "the women taking the children" may have the same probability.

Also, this assumes, the case of a male in a hetero relationship, being the one who cheats. I find all variants of cheating (man on woman, woman on man, woman on woman, man on man, etc.) equally plausible. Up until your comment there was no assumption on the genders of the partners. Your comment assigned genders to the cheater and the cheated.

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