Divorce is in the air.  It seems like this past year, the fastest way to lose weight is shedding your signficant other.  While I am not getting divorced myself (we aren't married), I find myself on the listening end of other people's divorce stories.  Plus, as family practice just as often includes counseling as blood pressure checks, I keep hearing the familiar words from so many ... "I am thinking about divorcing my husband"....

Saturday morning's announcement of Heidi and Seal bummed us out.  I was working, and the patient was actually a friend of the pair-  she was totally shocked to hear it.   They looked so perfect together, and maybe in many ways, they were.  Mostly, though, these divorce announcements I am hearing are coming from women in much more seasoned marriages- 15, 20, 30 years.  

One of the things I have noticed, as I listen to them tell of why they are considering letting it all go, is that after so many years of togetherness, which one would assume includes growth and change, is the battle for equity.  Once the kids are grown up and out, and these women have almost all been working full or part time while raising the family, the shift of household responsibility has stayed firmly on the wife and mother.  Finally, after all these years, a chance for freedom (probably for both parties), but only one of them is expected to still do the housework.  

This reminds me of the Life Lessons from Xena, Warrior Princess, a book of wit and wisdom my sister bought me many years ago.  If I remember mostly correctly, she said "Men don't understand the irony of fighting for freedom, so that they may spend the rest of their lives being waited on hand and foot".  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 

Earlier on in life, I was told by an old crone that there is no such thing as 50/50 in marriage.  It is always all over the place, and just as often 90/10.  You can't hold out for 50/50 because you will not be able to achieve it.  Of course, times have changed some, and as women yearn for more equality in the world, the burdens of raising a family and running a household are changing.  Or, perhaps, they are just falling through the floor.  I know there are men who do their half of the housework, the cooking, the shopping, the childcare, more or less, but I also know that those couples fight a lot about whose turn it is, and who did what last.  Maybe that is the only way to keep people honest, but it also means that there is a lot of fighting and scorekeeping.  As we don't have kids, this doesn't present the problem it would for others, but I also know my reluctance to marry anyone and have children has had so much to do with knowing I would not be getting the help I would want or need.  Equal is all fine and dandy as long as both people don't have to do anything.

Of course, the vow of marriage makes it harder to leave.  It doesn't work to storm out the door when you have property and children to manage.  Dating relationships can be a little easier that way, since the other can much more easily leave if you are not helpful and agreeable.  Men want someone more agreeable, women want someone more helpful.  The man says I would be nicer to you if you would do these things for me, the woman says, I would be more inclined to do things for you if you were kinder to me.  And on and on.  Except, now, women seem more inclined to throw the marriage out instead of working it out.  Faced with economic and social freedoms that has never previously existed (and perhaps not when they first married), they can find another way to live and support themselves.  Without all that BS of having to be a maid and a cook and girlfriend and endless mother.  

Still, we all need to eat and we all need to have a reasonable amount of tidiness in our lives.  Mutual care is the foundation of society and civilization.  While Downton Abbey might fascinate us, most of us would imagine we are in the upstairs half of the house rather than the downstairs half.  The singletons out there that are career bachelors and bachelorettes probably have a much harder time accepting the variations of cleaning, helping, cooking than they realize.  There is usually one who likes things much cleaner than the other cares about (not always the woman, btw).  And not everyone equally capable of not burning down the food.  How do we change this imbalance?

A patient the other day mentioned that after all these years together with her husband, after raising their children and sending them off to school, and they enter the years when they rekindle in their empty nest and hopefully reconnect, he would rather live his own life than be more helpful and kind to her.  Now, I don't know them, and I don't know her that well, but she doesn't want to end her marriage.  She just doesn't want to live the rest of her life as a helpmeet housemate rather than a loving partner. If this is what marriage is going to look like anymore, it isn't worth it.  She is beautiful, successful in business,  but still in that age bracket where dating becomes a nightmare until you are too old to care anymore.  And so she is deciding whether the burden of being alone outweighs the burden of living with a constantly demanding and critical spouse.  Sadly, she is not my only patient this week who shared the same sentiments, and will not likely be the last.  Few if any of the women I know who are divorcing desire cohabitation and marriage again.  

It's clearer and clearer to me that the model of marriage is hardly viable for many any more.  Not impossible, but reality shows that fewer and fewer people are getting out of marriage what they expected- or what they promised.  I am sure this is translating poorly to dating in the divorced scene, as we write dream lists of everything we want (more sex, more affection, more kindness, more good food, more activities) and everything that is a deal breaker (thicker waistline, balding, slow to go in bed, bad economics, a slob).  We become entrenched in what we believe we deserve, and expect that level of care from strangers in whom we have never invested.  We further wrap around us all the slights from our parents and siblings, and decide that we will never again tolerate that behavior.  Ultimately, that means we don't want to love (or even like) anyone unless we get everything we want.  Sounds like a winning plan.  

Like always, I ask people what they want, and help them identify how to get that in life, or change their opinion of the situation if it no longer works.  Maybe she and her husband will stay married, and live their own lives along side each other (it works for some), maybe they will divorce.  Maybe when she asks him what he thinks of how things are he will surprise her with a list of his concerns rather than just a critique of what she is not doing for him.  And maybe when they finally talk about what they want out of marriage, he will tell her he too wishes they could be better partners than just dejected and lonely coparents of adult children, and angry adult children of selfish parents.   

I think the world is changing for the better with regard to women's equality and human rights.  For every study that publishes that men and women are the same, another publishes that they are the opposite.  (Wonder where the gender divide falls on who authors those).  Sexism definitely hurts everyone, even if it seems to benefit men a lot more right now.  With sadness, I saw a newsvideo of a young woman in Bangladesh whose husband chopped off her hand because she dared take a class without his permission.  In tears, she talked about how glad she was that she won't have to live with him anymore.  And that she hopes to continue at school and become a lawyer.  While he is in detention now, will he change his mind about the role of wife?  Of course, mutilation causing handicap is a serious offense, much more important than spousal abuse, and he should be in jail a long time.  

Personally, I wonder why it is so hard to wrap around our heads, the idea that women want to be treated like people.  With their own hopes, ambitions, goals, desires, that are not solely tied to being a wife and mother and homemaker.  Even if they were, that still does not denounce equality.  We know that men the world round are rallying for more freedom (not sure if they really want democracy), but they are asking for equality between certain men- not between all people, male and female.  I am glad to know that women the world round are starting to stand up and demand their own rights as well.  I don't think it is going to be 50/50 any time soon, but maybe we can push it from the 90/10.