The main thing I worry about

is my kids. A friend of mine comes from a divorced family. Nearly all his brothers and sisters are inactive and most are outright hostile to the church. He has one sister that's active, and my friend goes back and forth from atheist to active. They almost all blame the church for his parents divorce - she was counseled by her bishop to divorce her husband because she caught him reading a certain type of magazine (trying to avoid spam bots here). His mother now says divorce was the biggest mistake she ever made. One thing his mom said to me the other day chilled me to the bone: "The parents eventually move on, but the kids never do."

Some advice

for those going through or about to go through divorce (or even if you think you never will, you might want to keep this in mind).

This is going to sound awful and unchristlike, but once your wife declares she is going to divorce you, it's in almost all likelihood too late. So - here's the advice, something I've learned from hard experience:

Once she is divorcing you - don't apologize for anything. All it can do is hurt you. Two things happen: 1.) Your apologies just remind her of the terrible things you did to cause her to want a divorce in the first place. 2). It will be used against you court. I was surprised to find e-mails with my sincere apologies used as evidence that I was evil. "He even admits he has these problems" as the lawyer said.

Apologies need to come before she declares divorce. Unfortunately, since studies show somewhere north of three-fourths of left behind husbands have no clue their wife is unhappy, that's hard.

So, guys - just be careful. And make sure you really are sure where your marriage stands. Make the apologies when they can save your marriage.

This is another example

of our rhetoric in church.

Leaving aside the main point (I have a comment somewhere in there), the Stake President bothers me a little, even if it's typical and too be expected.

The main idea - men stink, need to shape up, and their wives don't.

How does this help save marriages? It seems to me the self-righteousness and entitlement in creates in the women and the guilt it forces on the men is an unhealthy brew that will help women justify leaving their loser husbands. Yes, it might cause a few borderline men to stick it out, but since women do the leaving more often than the men, this strategy by the SP does nothing to help solve that issue.

No fault divorce is anything but

No fault divorce is suppossed to mean "it's no one's fault, it's just over." Or at least, that was how it was sold.

But that's not what it is. It just means "one spouse can unilaterally end the marriage."

It also encourages each spouse to accuse each other of nasty things, in order to try to get the best "deal" re: child support, etc. I've honestly avoided dragging out our metaphorical dirty laundry, but my ex dragged out every argument we ever had, everything I ever did she didn't approve of, and then accused me of mental cruelty and the like. It's terrible, because while I was never perfect, I never, never was as bad as she painted me in court. But every argument we had suddenly became me yelling at her to shut up and do it my way, wench. I can protest this is not true, and that she was more (or at least as) likely to yell as I was, but they were disagreements, not fights. But since she wants me to pay her more money than I earn, and she wants to keep the children all to herself, it was to her advantage to try and "prove" that I was a terrible, terrible man.

I'm lucky in that she had no proof, but since it's a no fault divorce, she "wins the war" no matter how many little battles I may win. The other problem is that the courts tend to take the wife's word for it, since apparently the default position is that all men are potential abusers. This seems to be the default position in the discussions online as well.

So, no fault divorce doesn't mean "it's no one's fault, it's just over" - it means "one spouse can accuse the other of abuse, and even with no proof and no abuse, it gets taken as reality anyway."

Or something. The feminists, for the most part, won't believe me, and smugly smirk to themselves that "finally, another woman removing herself from the dominant patriarchal hegemony of the church culture" or something equally vapid but smart sounding.

Our rhetoric in church

Far be it from me to second guess our church leaders, but there's one reason I see (among the many, many reasons) for my wife's decision I wasn't worth anything except as a source of funds.

Our Mother's Day at church was filled with many talks praising women. Phrases I heard more than once (from both men and women - in sacrament meeting, Sunday school, and priesthood):
1. "Women have a special spiritual sensitivity that men lack"
2. "Women are inherently more righteous than men are"
3. "Women are more important than men in the eternal scheme of things"
4. "Men need to follow their wives more and listen to them and do what they say."
5. "Really, when it comes down to it, women are necessary in every aspect of life."

Isolated, none of these is terrible (though the first three smack of pandering), but all together - is it any wonder some women decide they don't need their husbands, and it's okay to just walk away? Coupled with a broken family law system that favors the female and turns the father into either an absentee money man (after all, fathers are supposed to provide for their families) or a deadbeat dad (due to, as my lawyer said, "the state doesn't care if you go bankrupt or starve to death, as long as you pay the child support and alimony"), we do not have a culture that encourages families to tough it out during tough times.

As I said in previous posts, it actually makes sense for my wife to walk away. The state ensures she has income for life, regardless of what I say or do or make, she no longer has to work on maintaining a relationship with me (maintaining relationships are hard work), and the church leaders and culture tells her that no matter what, she's inherently more righteous than her loser male of a husband.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

So, I read this article at the NYTimes, and wonder if it applies at all to my situation. It may apply to me, or the ex. Most especially, these lines stood out for me:

He was about to turn our first meeting into yet another encounter in which he was mistreated. It seemed he rarely missed an opportunity to feel wronged.

Of all human psychology, self-defeating behavior is among the most puzzling and hard to change. After all, everyone assumes that people hanker after happiness and pleasure. Have you ever heard of a self-help book on being miserable?

So what explains those men and women who repeatedly pursue a path that leads to pain and disappointment? Perhaps there is a hidden psychological reward.

I got a glimpse of it once from another patient, a woman in her early 60s who complained about her ungrateful children and neglectful friends. As she spoke, it was clear she felt that all the major figures in her life had done her wrong.In fact, her status as an injured party afforded her a psychological advantage: she felt morally superior to everyone she felt had mistreated her. This was a role she had no intention of giving up.

I know that my ex gets a self-righteous kick out of constantly discussing how evil I was, and how long suffering and self-sacraficing she was. In fact, her entire side of the family is like this. At family gatherings, the talk was always about how someone in the family had been wronged by someone else, causing them to fail at something, and how it was never their fault. It was always the other person's fault. In fact, there was a lot of divorce among her cousins, and in every case, it was never the cousin's fault (even the one that decided he was gay and left his wife. It was his wife's fault for being such a shrew, of course).

But then again, I wonder if perhaps I didn't somehow self-sabotage the relationship as well, all for a similar psychological reward. I may be blind to my own mind - most of us are. I know my ex and her family would read that article and not recognize themselves in it, and may in fact feel it applies to me.

But at the same time, I know I don't get a self-righteous kick out of failing. Failing depresses me.

Paranoia runs rampant.

This is related to the last post, somewhat.

The process of divorce encourages paranoia, and it's not healthy for the emotions or psyche. Suddenly, you start second and third guessing everything the other spouse does, accusing them of "playing games" or trying to trip you up. My ex has cut off phone conversations with the kids because I was asking "leading questions" and sent me e-mails accusing me of stalking her (even though we're on opposite sides of the continent) because I called her bishop to discuss my son's baptism.

I'm hardly innocent of this. Once, my son was punished for something or another, and I was sure she was doing it to get back at me for the latest court hearing (which she basically "lost" - although no-fault divorce makes it so she automatically won the war, regardless of any in between "battles"). But I have to admit, maybe he just misbehaved and needed some discipline.

There have been other incidents on both sides. I wish I was a better man, and I wish I could take her actions with more charity, and I wish she would give me the benefit of the doubt occasionally as well. It's a struggle. I've made a commitment to never send off an angry e-mail or phone message, and to look for the most charitable interpretation of her actions.

But when she constantly sends me nasty messages attacking me for things I never intended as hurtful or mean, it only encourages me to reciprocate.

As I said before, divorce is terrible and distorts reality.