I don’t have any problems with her answer. Anybody who believes the stupid CT won’t believe melinda even if she stared straight at the camera and gave an unequivocal “no!”. Her answer was a flippant response for the rest of us.
How about “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard an adult say. Of course not!”
That’s only if the division of assets is contested and it goes to court. It appears that they have already agreed a separation contract, and they have asked the court that the marital assets be divided up as per the terms of that contract.
We’re coming up to our 31st anniversary this August and still going strong, I’m glad to say, but not every marriage is built to last. Hope the Gateses will part amicably and continue their good (and extraordinarily generous) works, one way or another.
I call divorce the grand social experiment of our age.
If it gladdens your heart to have marriages end easily and amicably, these times are for you. There are fewer and fewer marriages each and every year, fewer people cohabiting as well, fewer relationships of all sorts.
To me, a spouse should be like family. I have obligations to my family, things I effectively have to do or be a bad person. Easy exit marriages, it’s all FWB to me. That’s how I look at it now.
Bill and Melinda are rich, they are not going to lack for company, they can each be king and queen of their domains. Many others are going to spend most of the back halves of their lives alone, since they don’t have the draw (money) to pull in potential partners at that age.
You mean she didn’t have to click on the Terms of Service when she upgraded?
I don’t consider my first marriage a failure. It lasted 7 years and we were happy for most of it. We parted amicably, we have a great kid together, I am not sure you’d call us “friends” (that seems weird for an ex-spouse) but we are on good enough terms that we can send each other info on stuff that we think we’d like. And we sometimes still reminisce about old things when we talk. There were no hard feelings aside from the pain of separation (at least on my end). We didn’t argue that much while married and very rarely had any fights (I think maybe only twice did we have anything you’d call a “fight”) and even the divorce itself went as well as you can imagine. I don’t regret either getting married or divorced. I think I’m a better person for the experience and I’d do it all again if I went back in time, even knowing that it wouldn’t last forever.
That strikes me as the obvious answer to the question. Or perhaps a softer variant:
Huh, no, what a ridiculous idea. Of course not!
Did I learn things from my divorce? I suppose. I would not have gotten divorced under my circumstances. Had no choice, was filed on me.
Overall it is and was more bad than good. This is the norm. Look at the surveys. Divorced people are collectively an unhappy lot. Remarrieds are happier than divorced, but not as happy as people in their first marriages.
In my experience, the second marriages that have the most chance of success is where it’s a second marriage for only one of the partners, and a first marriage for the other. Less baggage.
Baggage matters, pasts matter. Bonding matters. I got left for someone the ex knew before we ever met. My ex married me for transactional reasons, I was a means to an end for her. My choices are being with people who were hurt by someone else, or people who will leave me on a whim. I am not going to be looked at the same, or treated the same, by any woman who’s had prior LTR experience, as compared to her prior partners. And all of us will, God willing, be in our 50s, 60s, 70s someday and maybe not so good looking, or sexy, or capable.
But the grand experiment and continued curiosity about divorce is going to continued unchecked. I have no doubts about that. Bill and Melinda both will find people willing to play second fiddle to them. I’m not worried about them at all. Will it be the same kind of relationship? No, but maybe they don’t want that. Maybe they both want people who will tell them their shit don’t stink. They have the money to pay for that.
By your logic it seems like saying people who have had chemotherapy are less healthy than people who haven’t. Don’t have chemotherapy, it will make you sick.
Divorce is a solution for a bad marriage. It’s not a perfect solution.
I know any number of people, mostly women, who are unhappy divorcees. But they were even more unhappy married. I know a few men who are unhappy divorced, even more unhappy than when they were married. Cheaters, drunkards, abusers. Hell, even outside of these “extremes” some marriages are just toxic, but one party seems to enjoy the toxicity. The other person staying in the marriage is just martyrdom.
Withering contempt is the only appropriate response to an insane question.
The fact our country currently has a lot of public insanity does not mean we should normalize it. It needs to be called out and clearly labeled insanity unworthy of a civilized human being at every opportunity.
My brother and his partner are both divorced, and seem reasonably happy. My brother is still on good terms with his ex, They still love each other, I think, but decided they couldn’t live with each other. (They are both somewhat tiring people to be around, I honestly can’t imagine how they put up with each other as long as they did.) They were going to couples therapy, and decided they didn’t want to stay married, but they continued going to the therapist, who helped them negotiate all the terms of the break-up. As they lived in NY, they both ended up hiring lawyers, but they told their lawyers, “this is what we agreed to do”, and it was all rather smooth.
He and his currently partner seem much better suited to each other. Their relationship is now older than either of their marriages.
I think his current partner is on decent terms with her ex, too.
One of my bros & his ex-wife are pretty much the same story. They’re best friends, live 10 miles apart, share dogs, & most Sunday dinners. But living together proved impossible after about 5 years. That was 25-ish years ago.
Both are much happier as they are than as they were. And co-raised a darn fine now 30yo while divorced but friends.
I’m having trouble understanding your point. Are you suggesting that the divorced people would have been happier had they stayed in unhappy marriages? Or that had they been happy in their marriages, the whole world would have been happier?
In addition to the surveys of happiness, second marriages have higher divorce rates than first marriages. So, collectively, people are not thriving in these second marriages. Perhaps we should just step back and acknowledge that overall result before going forward.
Why is the marriage unhappy, or why did it become unhappy? Since people have provided the anecdotes, I am willing to believe that “incompatability divorces” do exist. In my experience, the vast majority of divorces are due to infidelity. Someone cheats, or wants someone outside the marriage. Or doesn’t want to put the effort into the marriage anymore.
Now even with infidelity, sometimes people choose to reconcile. Reconciliation can be a tough slog and opinion is widely split within the betrayed community on whether it’s a good idea or not. Regardless, many people will attempt it.
I did not have the opportunity to work on my marriage or reconcile, because I wasn’t offered it. Because the ex unilaterally blew up the marriage to be with someone she liked more all along. Everything between us was tainted and a lie, and I no longer have any positive memories of being with her. The ex could have remedied this by not marrying me in the first place, or by putting in a good faith effort to make the marriage work in the second place. She did neither, because she’s selfish and wanted it all. Honestly, she got it all and seems happy beyond the guilt.
I don’t have closure with the ex. The situation is cordial. I do everything to make that work for the kids. I am still friendly with my former in-laws. The ex never contacts my family, and I would shut that down if she did. But there really isn’t closure, just cease and desist.
I do not want to remarry right now. I do not want to insert my children into some blended family scenario. I have a girlfriend, who is also a victim of infidelity. We don’t really talk about it. Things are still pretty light, years later. Too much PTSD.
I am appreciative of the moments I have with her, and of my kids. But it’s not better than what my parents had, and they had a modest life. It’s worse.
Divorce works for rich people with resources, like the Gates. Not everyone has those resources. Many slip into oblivion. They are unseen by our present day society.
You, @Jay_Z, are definitely collateral damage in the marriage wars. The fact you chose (or were cynically misled) into marrying a ghastly person clouds your perspective a bit.
I’ll take your various stats at face value. But what is not addressed in those stats is which people are in which group. We know their status, but not why they’re in that status. You may be an innocent victim, but the vast majority of married, formerly married, and re-married people were/are full partners in both the good and the bad they produced / are producing.
The people in happy first marriages are happy not because they’re married. But because they’re married to the right person for them. The people in unhappy first marriages are unhappy for many reasons. But a big one is because they’re married to the wrong person for them. Or because they’re such flamers that there is no sane right person for them, and their sane but embattled spouse is finally waking up to the fact they’re married to a flamer.
You’re right that bad marriages produce PTSD, cynicism and misogyny / misandry. But so does a lifetime of dating & cohabiting. Or a lifetime of being married to the wrong person.
Being stuck married to the wrong person is exactly what millions upon millions of people did in generations prior to our now elderly parents. They seethed, they stewed, they drank, and they hated. Or they lived resignedly while cursing their fate and their gods. All for the sake of a piece of paper or (mostly for women) the utter lack of any alternative that would put food on their plate & a roof over their head. Screw that noise. Sounds more like prison than an environment for thriving.
My bottom line: The fix is not to preclude or obstruct married people from fixing their mistakes by divorcing. It’s to help them avoid making the mistake of marrying the wrong person.
My cousin married five times. The family story goes, when two of his college classmates were discussing his upcoming last nuptials, one of them said, “I won’t be going. I only attend the even-numbered weddings.”
Was it his last nuptials? Or just the latest at the time?
I’ve heard that the happiest people in ascending order of happiness were: married women, single men, married men, single women.
That’s from years ago, so I don’t know if it’s changed at all over the years.
Bill spent an annual three-day weekend with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad. Now, it’s not cheating if his wife knew about it, and apparently she did and agreed. But one still can’t help wondering why the two couples couldn’t get together instead of it being always just Ann and Bill. Again, nobody’s business as long as everyone was informed and consented.
I don’t have any trouble imagining marriage to him being emotionally unfulfilling. He strikes me as a purely intellectual guy.
Or the generation of my parents. A lot of my friends grew up in unhappy households in which the parents stayed together for the children, or just because of the social stigma of divorce. Many of their parents finally divorced in the 80s. And it was an enormous relief to their children. Or so say something like a dozen of my friends.
Crappy marriages are not a healthy environment.