The Carnage of Divorce

You know I had to weigh in on this one. Kudos to anyone who makes the points Msgr. Pope makes in his post. I’ve ordered the book he discusses to see if any of the now-adult children’s thoughts provide me with ideas for how to ameliorate as much as possible the effects of our divorce on my children.

Lest anyone wonder, the “me (adult) first” attitude described in the pull quote above is prevalent in fundamentalist/evangelical circles too. Perhaps controversially, my assessment has been that it’s particularly common among women, likely as one of many effects of the rise and pervasiveness of cultural feminism, but also as one outworking of Gen. 3:16. (This is not to say that men don’t frequently cause serious marital problems with their own selfishness, but when it comes to pulling the trigger on a divorce due to personal unhappiness, statistics show the ratio is at least 2:1 and possibly as much as 4:1 by wives.)

One disagreement with Msgr. Pope is that the me first attitude is not limited to churchgoers who begin marriage with a low view of children (“Children are seen more as a way of accessorizing the marriage, as an ‘add-on’ rather than the essential work of a marriage”). As BJU graduates who took classes from Dr. Fremont, my ex-wife and I were as eager and intentional about having children as it’s possible to be. Nevertheless, 29 years later, my ex had very little hesitation about inflicting divorce on our four children (two in college, two teens at home) to punish me and (she thought) to improve her own life. I heard from her the rationalizations that children are resilient and that divorce was better for the children than living with unhappy parents (never mind that, at least the first time she filed, the near-adult children were caught completely by surprise and had never thought that divorce was even a possibility, let alone something they’d prefer).

Also, contrary to some of the comments on Pope’s post, divorce doesn’t necessarily have the benefit of teaching children of divorce what not to do. My ex’s parents were divorced. Her avowals during courtship that she’d never commit the same mistake turned out to be hollow.

My brother and I are both kids of divorce, and we’re about as different as can be. I’m fundy, conservative, etc., and my brother is agnostic, liberal, etc.. We both love our bicycles, and we get along, but the differences are stark. Hard to predict what will happen, though it’s often a faith killer for all participants. We knew our parents weren’t doing well, but both of us were totally shocked when our (liberal church) parents filed for divorce. My take is that while their reasons were not 100% from Matthew, but it was probably justifiable, and would have ended up with something very similar to what occurred if they’d tried to go through Matthew 18’s process.

Lots of reasons for divorce, starting with the fact that it’s only been economically practical for most since the 1950s, which is when the corner turned. I also believe that one of the big justifications for the Catholic doctrines around humanae vitae arise from the notion of marriage picturing Christ and the Church, which is something we would do well to remember as well. (and Catholics would say they’d do well to remember it better, too)

[Jim]

How have your children fared? Each the same?

The oldest objected to her first divorce filing and asked many perceptive questions about the (lack of) justification for divorce. When she filed the second time two years later, he just wanted certainty one way or the other. He and I were fine, I thought, but I unintentionally disappointed him on an unrelated matter about three years later and that together with her ongoing whispering in his ear about her complaints against me resulted in his cutting off contact. I’m praying for reconciliation. Outwardly, he has been the least affected, furthering his education, maintaining a good job, and doing well for himself.

My other two boys have more visibly not fared as well. One finished college and maintained a good job out of state for several years, but did not attend church, drank fairly heavily, and did not manage his money well. Earlier this year he lost his job because the business closed and also lost his car to repossession. He is employed part-time and renting a room from a friend.

My youngest son became seriously estranged from my ex within a couple months of our separation due to some serious mishandling on her part. What I expected to be 50/50 custody became 100% custody for me. To this day, he will visit her only occasionally and then only if accompanied by a friend or one of his brothers. With good reason specific to him, he does not trust her. He has finished his freshman year of college while living with his brother, but with the upheavals in his brother’s situation he will be returning to live with me shortly. I welcome the return and hope to get him back into church on a regular basis.

My special needs daughter is the one who has had to do the most shuttling back and forth between parents. Her personality is such that she has perhaps made the best of the situation better than her brothers. She is equally loving toward and eager to be with both parents. Nevertheless, she misses whichever parent she’s not with and gets upset at each parting. She has very slowly grown in her ability to assert what she wants but she is still very susceptible to being an emotional hostage, not wanting “to make mommy mad.”

Not at all what I envisioned for four generally good kids, all professing believers, growing up in a Christian home.

@dmyers … feel your pain.

I imagine that in conflict-filled marriages, it’s easy to think there is no benefit to the kids by “staying together”—especially when there is very little actual “together” other than a roof and some walls. But there are more consequences than meet the eye.

A friend told me some years ago that his marriage no longer existed. If they weren’t close, interacting like married people are supposed to, etc. it was “not really a marriage.” So divorce was the right thing to do.

I tried to make the case that marriage has objective meaning beyond/independent of the subjective experiences of the participants—even aside from the impact on the kids, etc. Based on, as Bert mentioned, Ephesians 5. He could not seem to see what I meant. But objective meaning, as in what actions and “things” mean from the point of view of the perfect Observer, is almost a lost concept entirely in our culture.

Very true, Aaron. Thank you.

A friend of mine and his wife have a long time struggling marriage. Recently he told me that he believed his wife would leave him if she could afford to do so. They are quite poor and it’s unlikely that if she divorced him, she would get enough alimony to be able to live on her own.

Joeb, thank you for your prayers. Our marriage was painful for at least the last 15 years and I considered divorce a number of times — both during times when I would have had to acknowledge that I had biblical grounds and later when I believed that I did have biblical grounds. But I never considered it for more than a few minutes because I could not do that to my kids. Having then gone through divorce anyway, my strong advice to anyone who is miserable in their marriage but does not have biblical grounds to divorce (and even to those who do have biblical grounds, if at all possible) is NOT to divorce. The costs are just too high. You will be even more miserable (with diminished productivity) for as long as the divorce takes and for years after. The same will be true for her. You’ll both be worse off financially. The two of you may regain some measure of happiness later on, but your kids don’t get the luxury of “recovering” or remarrying — they are forever stuck with the emotional/spiritual impact of the divorce proceeding and a period of utter turmoil; forever after they have to split birthdays and holidays, stress about “family” events (graduations, weddings, births), endure stepparents, and so forth — and that’s IF both parents behave as adults and do their best to be civil; it’s exponentially worse in most cases where at least one parent can’t/won’t put the kids first. Do everything else forever — individual counseling, marriage counseling, church discipline, even permanent patient suffering — but don’t divorce.

I have received much good counsel — from Christian counselors, pastors, true friends old and new, DivorceCare programs (I had to go twice — once in the midst of the divorce case and once a little while later when my ex announced her impending remarriage to a twice-divorced man she’d just met), Christian books (not necessarily specifically divorce-related), and select Christian bloggers. I am grateful for them all.

I do plan to remarry. When the divorce happened, my daughter was 16 and my youngest son was 14. Taking a page from Dr. Laura (!) and common sense, I vowed not to even date while the kids were still in school. My (special needs) daughter graduated at age 20 and my son at 19. After my son graduated and moved out of state to join his older brother, I relocated across the country to be near my aging parents, my siblings, and a host of cousins, nephews, nieces, and grand-nephews/nieces. I found a wonderful church (United Reformed) and laid plans to start looking for a quality Christian woman to court when, lo and behold, it turned out that there was a lovely, godly, wrongly-divorced lady in the very same church. And she had a special needs child of her own. We have courted now for a year and a half and plan to get married about this time next year. All along the way we have vetted each other on all the important things, but especially our commitment to the marriage covenant and to the authority of the church, and we have both been vetted by the church body, the church leaders, our respective families (including our children), friends, etc. To the extent it’s humanly possible to know the character of the prospective spouse and their level of commitment to divorce-less marriage, we will. And we know that our church will be there to support us and if necessary (God forbid) to correct us and even discipline us rather than stand idly by while one of us shipwrecks us. We hope to finally give our kids a marriage they can emulate.

God is good, and that would be true even if He had not led me right to my new love. Thank you for the well wishes.

(This is not to say that men don’t frequently cause serious marital problems with their own selfishness, but when it comes to pulling the trigger on a divorce due to personal unhappiness, statistics show the ratio is at least 2:1 and possibly as much as 4:1 by wives.)

I’d like to review your source, please. Can you please cite it?

….on the gender prevalence in divorce. Apparently it’s about 70% women, and has been replicated a number of times. Causes? Well, it “takes two to tango”, so I’m going to hesitate to answer that one except to say that there are—as my own mom admitted after my parents’ divorce—reasons for repentance on both sides.

One thing that comes to mind, per Aaron’s comment about staying together for the sake of kids, is that when I think about it, I can’t lay my finger on any Scripture that really has to do with this. It may be an excellent practical reason for riding out the storms of marriage, but I don’t know that it’s quite Biblical.

No question that divorce leaves marks, big and bad, but I wonder if we’re doing active harm, inadvertently, by looking at the practical instead of the Biblical.

Julie Anne: Multiple sources on the ratio of divorces initiated by wives are found in this law review article from 2000, titled “ ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women”: http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006fall/econ/586/001/Readings/Brinig.pdf.

Throughout most of American history, wives rather than husbands have filed for divorce. The proportion of wife-filed cases has ranged from around 60% for most of the 19th century [cite] to, immediately after the introduction of no-fault divorce [cite] , more than 70% in some states [cite]. Today [2000] , with some variation among states, it remains slightly above two-thirds.

The authors’ conclusion about the why of the 70:30 ratio is not flattering to women:

Our results are consistent with our hypothesis that filing behavior is driven by self-interest at the time of divorce. Individuals file for divorce when there are marital assets that may be appropriated through divorce … . Individuals may also file when they are being exploited within the marriage, as when the other party commits a major violation of the marriage contract, such as cruelty. Interestingly, though, cruelty amounts to only 6% of all divorce filings in Virginia. We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long.

As with so many other things, Satan promises freedom and relief from the difficulties of marriage through divorce, but actually uses that illusion or lie to wreak even more havoc.

…one thing to remember is that with no fault divorce, you do not need to allege adultery, cruelty, or abandonment anymore. Couple that with incentives to get exclusive custody(hint; perjury is rarely punished), and you’ll find that records from family court may not be terribly useful in determining the “why” of divorce.