Changes in Attitude in Marriage & Divorce from the Golden Era to Now.

[PrettySquareGal]

I was married for 16 years. I initiated the divorce in 2014 even though I knew my world was going to fall apart in all ways and even though I still loved him. I couldn't walk on eggshells any longer and was done trying to make him happy by NOT BEING ME. It's trite but true that you find out who your true friends and family are when you get divorced. I lost my good health insurance and almost lost my house because I couldn't afford the payments on my own. I had an acquaintance, a man older than me, who was also going through a divorce and needed a place to live. He seemed very nice and on a gut level I trusted him. He'd be able to help around the house since I was never "handy" that way. I have a three bedroom so after meeting with an attorney to draw up the paperwork we became housemates.

"I'M NEVER GETTING MARRIED EVER AGAIN!" I said to him shortly after my divorce.

He sure was fun to hang around.

Do you know where this is going? We're engaged!

 

[Fading Fast]

I was married for 16 years. I initiated the divorce in 2014 even though I knew my world was going to fall apart in all ways and even though I still loved him. I couldn't walk on eggshells any longer and was done trying to make him happy by NOT BEING ME. It's trite but true that you find out who your true friends and family are when you get divorced. I lost my good health insurance and almost lost my house because I couldn't afford the payments on my own. I had an acquaintance, a man older than me, who was also going through a divorce and needed a place to live. He seemed very nice and on a gut level I trusted him. He'd be able to help around the house since I was never "handy" that way. I have a three bedroom so after meeting with an attorney to draw up the paperwork we became housemates.

"I'M NEVER GETTING MARRIED EVER AGAIN!" I said to him shortly after my divorce.

He sure was fun to hang around.

Do you know where this is going? We're engaged!

Two thoughts:

• I spent the first 16 years of my life walking on egg shells - never again, so I completely understand

• Congratulations, I'm optimistic it will work out well for you two!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Two thoughts:

• I spent the first 16 years of my life walking on egg shells - never again, so I completely understand

• Congratulations, I'm optimistic it will work out well for you two!

Thank you! I think unless someone has been through that they might not understand what it feels like to always be on guard. I'm sorry to hear that you get it! But yay, no more!

 

[Fading Fast]

Thank you! I think unless someone has been through that they might not understand what it feels like to always be on guard. I'm sorry to hear that you get it! But yay, no more!

You'll understand this: I think I could sense my father's mood through a wall (my only superpower) which I used to know if I should stay away or not before even entering.

 

[tonyb]

If you can't feel at home at home, well, you just gotta address that. That's no way to live.

 

[vallettavalentine]

Sometimes, the trauma that can be caused by remaining together can be far worse than the divorce proceedings ever could be. My mother and father were a good example. My father, after years of hand-painting signs, started developing behavioural problems. These culminated in him trying to kill my mother and I with a revolver when I was 14. They divorced, and my stepfather came into the picture (and oh am I ever grateful he did!) The catch is, we had no idea that the solvents and lead in the paint used for sign-painting was the cause of my father's issues until his autopsy upon his death at his shop about 11 years after the entire incident happened. There are reasons for everything.

 

[vallettavalentine]

Thank you! I think unless someone has been through that they might not understand what it feels like to always be on guard. I'm sorry to hear that you get it! But yay, no more!

I understand this very well. Even now, at 35, I'm on guard constantly because of what was done to me at a young age. These experiences change you forever. Thankfully, I have a husband who is understanding, loving and kind, willing to help me work through all the troubles.

 

[tonyb]

Someone has probably noted this in the thread already, but I haven't been following it closely and I'm too lazy to read through it all, so ...

Many were the women BITD who stayed in horrendous marriages that had them and their children suffering what we wouldn't hesitate to call "domestic violence" these days mostly on account of the well-founded fear of destitution should they leave.

My own mom, who was widowed with three boys when I was four months old and she was all of 22, remarried before that year was out. I know her well enough to know that she feared for her family's economic survival and for what sort of troubles her boys might get into without the stern hand of a man keeping them in check. That's been more than six decades ago now, and her thinking was very much in keeping with those times. But damn, my stepdad put her, and all of us, through some real misery.

They were just stupid kids themselves back then. If not for the extended family, it would have been even worse. So getting away from my mom's people became a priority for the stepdad. And that's what he manipulated my mom into doing, a dozen or so years later, over everyone else's objections. It really was a miserable life in many ways. Violence, poverty, instability, insecurity. And lie upon lie upon lie.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Boy, does that ring a bell. My mother remarried three years after chucking my father out, having made the mistake of getting pregnant, and the eight months to follow were genuinely horrific. I was eight years old at the time, and my memories of that year include being locked out of the house in a snowstorm without a coat or shoes because of some trivial offense, being forced to eat food out of the garbage can because I'd thoughtlessly thrown away the unfinished stub of a hot dog, and being tossed out of a car and required to walk a mile in 90 degree heat because of something my mother had done to piss Step-Dad off. Finally Ma threw him out, after he threatened to burn the house down with us in it.

Many years later I asked her what posessed her to get involved with this vicious brute. "You kids needed a father," she shrugged. Yeah, like Stalingrad needed Hitler.

 

[GHT]

Such sad stories, it makes me grateful for the stirling effort of my father in raising myself and three siblings after mother died young leaving Dad a widower in his 30's. It was an uphill struggle, but he kept us together, kept his job and kept the authorities, who wanted to put us up for adoption, at bay.
As a young adult I had something of a, poor me, chip on my shoulder, until that is, I met others of my age, whose parents were either divorced or separated. The stories that they told of family conflict made me realise that although bereavement is painful, it is a form of closure. One young lady, whose father walked out on her mother, herself and her brother, was determined to make sure that if she married her Dad would not be invited to her wedding. Adding, if that whore makes him happy, so be it.

 

[ChiTownScion]

After 30-plus years doing criminal defense work as a public defender in the largest unified circuit court system in the world, I retired and decided to hang out the shingle, essentially taking cases as they came with the hope of building a practice. My pension and my wife's salary provide us with a comfortable income, and I'd hoped that five or six good armed robberies or burglaries a year would keep me in pizza & root beer money. Alas, twas not to be: the bulk of what actually came my way were divorce and other domestic relations cases. It finally got too damned depressing, especially the cases that involved child visitation and custody battles.

My biggest disappointment was realizing that so few of the principals were actually interested in the best interests of the children. And I'm not talking about well intentioned zealots having a difference of opinion here: rather, the using of kids as pawns in a piddling contest between two warring (supposed) adults . There are, I am sad to say, too many of my professional colleagues who are all too willing to exploit the enflamed passions of their clients while racking up billable hours. Constantly telling them what a louse their ex is, what a paragon of virtue THEY are, etc., and how "we together" can make them bleed financially and emotionally.. rather than proposing a realistic game plan whereby their client can simply get on with their life.

I finally reached my breaking point, and I realized that it had a lot to do with my own personality. I personally hate drama in my cases, and prefer rational negotiation where each party gives and takes and where. hopefully, both parties emerge in a better position than they were. A colleague of mine who is in the area confessed to me that she actually lives for that drama. Neither of our respective personalities are the morally superior of the other: it's simply a matter of our individual temperaments. I realized that whatever wealth I could have gained by playing the game was simply not worth it for me, and I got out.

It was expected that in the criminal justice system that I'd see the worst that humanity had to offer, but if I am honest I'd have to say that what you see in some child custody cases makes the whole cops and robbers cast seem like a convention of saints. You'd really hope that two parents who bring a kid into this world would always do what's best for that child, and never stoop to using their child as a weapon against their ex. But while damn few are honest enough to admit it that is precisely what happens in many of these cases. And I don't think that dynamic was any different back in the era than it is now. People expect a judge to force an ex- who has never showed any decency during the course of a marriage- to suddenly play by accepted rules of human conduct, and it simply isn't going to happen- at least in many of these cases.

 

[GHT]

CTS your post makes for depressing reading, it's a well written observation though. By comparison Avery Corman's novel, Kramer vs. Kramer, is almost insipid. Unpalatable though it is, warring parents think nothing of making their offspring pawns in the fight to heap humiliation on their former lover. What a sad world.

 

[sheeplady]

My grandmother and grandfather married at 16 and 21. They were both incredibly broken people, who raised broken children.

While I don't think that them waiting 2 years to get married would have fixed issues (my own parents had been in their 30s), what I saw growing up in my family made me strongly against child marriages.

 

[tonyb]

Who first observed that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference?

Passion fades, but I can't imagine being in a marriage that didn't have at least the memory of it.

A long-term girlfriend -- we were involved on and off for 20 years -- succumbed to ovarian cancer nearly five years ago. I didn't know this until she had been gone a couple years, when her son called to tell me. She and I would get as close as either of us had ever been with anyone and then one or the other of us would pick a fight. In retrospect, I recognize that we really feared each other and what a future together would be. We wanted to have our cake and eat it too.

I shed a tear last night while watching "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," which has become something of a Thanksgiving tradition. I saw it at the Cinerama in downtown Seattle with the aforementioned girlfriend when it was in its first run, 30 years ago. I really did love her. Still do. But we would have had a miserable marriage. Except for the kissing and making up part.

 

[GHT]

My grandmother and grandfather married at 16 and 21. They were both incredibly broken people, who raised broken children.
While I don't think that them waiting 2 years to get married would have fixed issues (my own parents had been in their 30s), what I saw growing up in my family made me strongly against child marriages.

What is your interpretation of a child marriage? My wife and I married at (her) 18, me (22.) Back in the sixties, such an age was the norm.

 

[sheeplady]

What is your interpretation of a child marriage? My wife and I married at (her) 18, me (22.) Back in the sixties, such an age was the norm.

In the US, you need permission to marry in most states of at least one parent if you are under the age of 18. (Children as young as 14 can legally be married in some states.) Those who are less than 18 years of age are considered minors in the US, and do not have the legal rights of adults.

I consider a "child marriage" one that involves a person 17 years old or younger in the US context. Many of the most disturbing of these marriages involve barely teens being married to men decades older. (Other contexts are different.)

If a 21 year old adult wanted to marry my 16 year old kid (for any reason) I'd tell them to come back when my kid is 18. There is not a single reason for an adult to marry one of my children I have to sign for.

So, no, getting married at 18 is not a "child marriage." I'd encourage my kid to wait at 18, to be honest. Maybe live with one another for a year or two to make sure the couple is compatible and to see how the other person handles money, etc. while you plan a wedding. One year won't matter. But I also hope to be in a position where I'd be able to help an 18 year old out with schooling or training. If they got married at 18, while I'd encourage waiting a year, they are an adult and as such it's not (legally or personally) my business. My current benefits provide free undergraduate tuition to my kids for a single degree, while they are unmarried. If they marry, that benefit ends.

 

[GHT]

Sheeplady, thank you for your explanation. Re-reading my question, it might have come across more as a cross examination than an enquiry, I could have worded it better. On reflection we both agree that we should have waited until my wife was in her twenties, but it was our good fortune that we each found our life's soulmate. So here we still are. Just one thing though. Where did the last fifty years go?

 

[sheeplady]

Sheeplady, thank you for your explanation. Re-reading my question, it might have come across more as a cross examination than an enquiry, I could have worded it better. On reflection we both agree that we should have waited until my wife was in her twenties, but it was our good fortune that we each found our life's soulmate. So here we still are. Just one thing though. Where did the last fifty years go?

That's ok... I didn't take offense! I do realize that legal ages differ elsewhere. I hope that my husband and I can look back on 50 years! Congrats!

I knew one woman (girl, really) who married at 16 due to pregnancy when I was young. Her and his family paid for a grand wedding for her on Valentine's day when we were... juniors? In high school. With a horse drawn carriage, several course dinner, 250+ people... it was what most girls call a fairy tale wedding. It was easily 30,000 USD.

At the time, the whole idea made me uneasy and uncomfortable. (Her husband was in his mid-20s.) Looking back now the whole thing horrifies me. She dropped out of school, he turned out to be abusive, they had a nasty divorce years and several kids later.

I had a great uncle (who I have spoken about here before) who's second wife was the younger sister of his first. The first wife ran around on him while he was in Korea, and the younger sister adored him (I think she was a young teen at the time, 16 or 15) and wrote him every week. He came back and tried to do right by his first wife and they ended up divorced because, well, cheating. He refused to date the younger sister until her 18th birthday, when he took her on their first date. They didn't get married until she was in her 20s. That for me was evidence that my kids can wait.

 

[HadleyH1]

I respect everybody's opinion here

but

I personally like the way it was in the past.

I miss the past, ok? I miss the family... I miss all that.

But that's just me.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Getting back to the Era, one of the most familiar images of WWII was two people meeting at a bar, or a USO dance, or a church social, the male a serviceman about to ship out for overseas. Two hours later they're in front of a judge getting married. It's all very romantic and shows the there-is-no-tomorrow spirit of the time, but it is not the stuff of which lasting marriages are made. WWII was also the age of the "Dear John" letter. I think one reason for the loosening of the laws regarding divorce was the great frequency of the splitups of these hasty wartime marriages.