D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
Is it just me? Or does divorce get a bad rap in this country. I wouldn't be asking except I've noticed recently that the men I've met in their 30s whose parents are divorced - and whose parents divorced when they were kids - are much... better... and more pleasant to be around than men of my own age ever were (that age being somewhere between 40 and death) - all the men in their 40s and up that I know having parents who are still together - however much they may seem to hate each other.
Is it because men under 40 often have moms who left their dads? I wonder. Their moms would mostly have been born post-WWII and come of age in the 60s and 70s when feminism was at its most radical stage - as in, active. I've heard the stories of a couple of these women. They weren't happy, didn't feel appreciated and wanted out of their marriages. They had kids. Jobs. But they wanted more. They wanted relationships within which they were respected. As people. Not just wives or mothers. And they wanted that respect in their marriages. Even if it meant leaving one to start up all over again in another one.
Contrast that to a few mothers I know of men in their 40s and 50s. Without exaggerating I can honestly say that they really really dislike their husbands. And most other men it seems. Yet they feel duty bound to NOT divorce. Divorce is the big bad. The equivalent of being run over by a bus on that one day you went out in dirty torn underwear. They are martyrs to marriage. And damn proud of it. Oblivious to the ridiculousness of going through life in this day and age - miserable. While their married status is so taken for granted by their grown male children that... well... I guess they don't realize - women today often go out without any underwear on at all because we'd rather be caught dead and underwearless than alive with visible panty lines.
Now I know divorce is hard on kids. They want their parents to stay together - even if they aren't happy being together. Kids care about their own happiness more than they do about the happiness of their parents. That much I know is true. But is it really "bad" for kids when parents divorce? Or is it possible it makes them better people? More empathetic to emotional distress? More accepting of drastic change? Less... judgmental of others? Because it's been my experience that the grown up men, at least, of divorced parents ARE better men. For women, anyway. They're more woman friendly, more inclined to help make a relationship... fun, more... respectful.
Okay, the above obviously isn't based on any evidence other than what I believe I've experienced and am experiencing but it is interesting to me that no one ever suggests divorce might have a positive affect on children - when they become adults. That having suffered through their parents' divorce has taught them what they need to know to have the kinds of relationships they really want to have with other people, relationships that work out, maybe not "forever", but for a time. And that when these relationships don't work out - even if you've gone the full nine yards and married - that you can leave. That living a martyred life is only for... martyrs. I don't really know. All I can say is that martyrs don't seem to like other people very much and I can't imagine that staying married for the sake of the children is a good thing at all. In fact, maybe it's the big bad.
