New columnist Hugo Schwyzer explains that men are too willing to muddle through a mediocre marriage—and women are less inclined to settle.
Vicki Larson had a piece at the Huffington Post the other day, “Why Women Walk Out More Than Men,” citing research indicating that two-thirds of contemporary divorces are initiated by women. Why, she wonders, are men so comparatively reluctant to file for divorce?
Larson notes the “bad behavior” of men like Sean Penn, Jesse James, Tiger Woods, and Tony Parker, habitual cheaters all, and 
asks why it was their wives who chose to end the marriages. Is this a case of men trying to have their cake and eat it too, combining domestic comfort and sexual novelty? Larson isn’t sure.
One thing I’m sure of: infidelity is far from the only reason women initiate divorce more often than men.
Though most statistics indicate men are more likely to cheat than women, the percentage of women who are unfaithful is rising. At the same time, the percentage of divorces women initiate is climbing, too. If there were a simple correlation between infidelity and divorce, then we’d expect men to be initiating divorce more often. But that’s not the case.
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The reason women are more likely to leave is less about cheating than it is about their unwillingness to settle.
Men and women are raised with very different attitudes toward marriage. Though marriage rates are falling, popular culture still foists a romantic ideal of connubial bliss onto young girls. When I ask my college students if they’ve ever fantasized in detail about their wedding day, 80 percent of young women raise their hands. (Only about 10 percent of the guys admit to the same.) Yes, young women are more likely to want to delay marriage, but their expectations of romantic fulfillment are as high as ever. Boys, on the other hand, grow up in a “guy” culture that sees marriage as the end of freedom.
Put simply, boys are taught that marriage is about “settling down” while girls are taught that marriage is about finding enduring fulfillment. And it’s obvious who has the higher set of expectations.
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I met the woman who would be my third wife in 2000. I was 33. I had already burned through two ill-advised marriages in my 20s; my drinking, drug use, and infidelity ruined both relationships. At 31, I got sober. I changed my life. After two years of focus on my recovery, I was ready for something completely different, something stable.
Elizabeth was unlike any woman I’d ever been with. There was no destructive, overpowering chemistry. There was no hint of drama. We were intellectually compatible, from similar social backgrounds. We shared the same values and aspirations. She was hitting 30, eager to be married. I was eager to do something right this time. We were engaged within four weeks of our first date and married within a year.
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Too many of us confuse being a good man with the willingness to endure.
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Elizabeth and I never stopped having those wonderful conversations. We never cheated on each other, never raised our voices in anger to each other, certainly never threw vases or glasses at one another. And of course, we had no “heat” together. The lovemaking was tender but awkward. I couldn’t orgasm without thinking of someone else—and as I found out later, neither could she. By our first anniversary, we were having sex barely once a month.
I never saw it coming. Fifteen months into our marriage, Elizabeth told me calmly that she wanted a divorce. She’d made a mistake, she said, in settling for compatibility and friendship. She wanted more. She deserved more. “And so do you, Hugo,” she added.
I begged her to reconsider. Sure, I’d noticed the lack of passion. Yes, I was unhappy about our sex life. But I was damn sure not going to cheat; after two disastrous failures, I took my marriage vows seriously. Elizabeth and I had a nice house, two nice careers, two nice dogs, many nice friends. At this point in my life, I thought nice was enough. Nice was worth settling for.
Elizabeth wanted more than nice. She wanted passion, romance, and friendship with a spouse. I told her she was unreasonable; she told me I was selling both of us short. She filed for divorce, telling me I’d thank her someday. “When hell freezes over,” I replied.
Six weeks later, hell froze over.
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I moved out of the house I shared with Elizabeth and into a little apartment. A fortnight later, I met the woman who is now my fourth and final wife. We’ve been together over eight years now, and though our marriage is far from perfect, it has the combination of both deep friendship and genuine heat that Elizabeth knew we both deserved.
If I’d had my way, Elizabeth and I would never have divorced. We would have gone on being nice for years and years, each of us vaguely dissatisfied but resolutely committed to what we’d begun. We would have had children. Eventually, one or both of us would have had an affair out of desperation. One way or another, the marriage would have ended. My way would not only have postponed the inevitable, it would have made the inevitable much uglier.
Too many of us confuse being a good man with the willingness to endure. Too many of us think that a “real man” keeps his promises—even when those promises are making him miserable. Good marriages need more than a grim resolve not to leave no matter how bad things get. Men are more likely to forget that than women.
And so, as the statistics tell us, men are more likely to be left.
—Photo by Alex E. Proimos/flickr
About Hugo Schwyzer
In my limited experience, when the women initiates the divorce/break-up it’s only after the man has practically forced her into it. I think men are less comfortable being seen as the “bad guy” who abandons his wife and kids, and would rather be passive-aggressive and force a preemptive strike by the wife.
BS, if you look at statistics, women initiate first and gets guy by surprise in majority of cases. Guys role is normally to be more aggressive, to think he would be passive aggressive in this case is dumb, and research supports it if you google it. Author hit a nail on a head, guys ready to settle down, while women want romance and friendship. Two words that doesn’t work well together. In fact nice guys who try to start with friendship, most of the time fail and get no romance.
Hugo. I’m sorry any of us go through this. I’m not going into one-upmanship, but I can’t wait till I get to my disclosure article where my abuse as a child was heinous leveraged against me. I was shown at gun-point by two sheriffs who sneak-attacked me in my own shower…oy vey…too much to tell and its all sick-making. $140,000 in lawyer fees alone, I was horse-dragged through life.
Well written article sir! I feel relief when I read such things…that I’m not alone in many aspects.
I think more women initiate divorce more for several reasons…
1. Women gre up listening to stories of divorced women that took their exhusband for everything he was worth. They got part of his retirement, house, house contents, children, car etc… It gets worse if the divorced woman went on to find a man that had more money or was better looking. Divorce is then viewed as a positive that enriches a woman and creates options and opportunity. It is fortunate for males the courts are more interested in justice and equity now as my exwife found out to her horror. (No princess you are not getting everything just because you are female.)
2. Women are wrapped up in how they feel . Instead of problem solving or addressing why they feel a certain way its easier to pull the plug and feel better instantly. This only postpones the real issues for the next relationship she will enter.
3. She has a larger number of female friends, relatives and co-workers that are divorced. She then gets to here a nonstop litany of male bashing and gets negative advice.
4. Hollywood glamorizes divorce by showing the postives. Female audiences want to see strong independent women that left their horrible husbands and went on to live in Shangrila finding true love in the process. Hollywood rarely shows the downside of divorce.
hear a nonstop litany (need to spell check)
(This has been up for a year and a half, so I may have already said this.)
The question of child custody has to play a big role in many cases. The divorce structure most often means that a man who gets divorced will get less time with his children, so a man who asks for divorce is asking for something that means he will be less able to see his children grow up. A woman who asks for divorce generally has less danger of “losing her kids” to the divorce.
We could actually test this with the statistics. If there are no children in the marriage, are the percentages the same? Are men without kids more willing to ask for divorce than men who have kids? I honestly don’t know.
Yeah, let’s take marriage advice from a guy on his fourth wife. It’s a good thing you don’t have any kids from a previous marriage, bro. I’m sure people with habits like yours will totally allow for stable households raising children who don’t grow up and commit crimes.