Who Divorces Whom?

Last updated on: April 27, 2009 at 8:04 am by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Who Divorces Whom? 2009-04-27T08:04:00-05:00 Fr. Dwight Longenecker

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This comment came in on my recent article at Inside Catholic:

Feminist Shere Hite once bragged that 91% of divorces were initiated by women. Even today over 2/3rds of divorces are the choice of women and not because, as those who rely on sexist stereotypes insist, her man cheats on her or beats on her. Rather, all but a tiny number of women who present their man with divorce papers report that their reasons are such things as “I fell out of love,” “I need to find myself,” and “I love him but I’m not in love with him anymore.”

Are these statistics true? I must admit, that in my years of ministry I have been involved in only about half a dozen marriage breakdowns. In each case the woman divorced the man. In each case, the man was not guilty of violence or infidelity in the classic sense. In one case the woman blamed him for an isolated case when he lost his temper, but his side of the story was that she nagged him, screamed at the kids, swore and raged the whole time, and he finally lost it.

Another woman said he engaged in a sexual act in which ‘she felt like she was raped.’ The man’s side of the story was that she withheld sexual relations for two years and continually used it to taunt him and blackmail him for what she wanted. Others accused their men of vague and unprovable things like ’emotional violence’ or ‘verbal violence’ or having an ’emotional affair.’

Do women initiate divorce more often than men? If this is so, I suppose women would argue that the man doesn’t want a divorce when things go wrong because he wants to keep his little woman just where he wants her. However, the cases I have experienced do not bear this out.

I am sure there must be situations where a long suffering woman finally has to get out of a marriage to a monster for her own genuine safety and well being. Perhaps there are many such cases.

However, my experience matches that of the commenter above. What about you?

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