A statistical reality check, and a brutal personal case study on the transactional nature of marriage.
The Statistical Reality
There is a brutally cruel statistic online: when a man is unemployed for over a year, the probability of his wife initiating a divorce exceeds 80%.
Conversely, when a woman is unemployed, the probability of the husband initiating a divorce is only 4%.
People always ask: is unemployment really that devastating a blow to marriage?
Why can modern marriages only share the good times but not endure the hardships together?
To understand this, you must take off the “romantic love” filter and start viewing marriage as a “dynamic game of power and resources.”
The reason I understand this underlying algorithm so clearly is that I watched it operate with my own eyes in my family of origin.
Personal experience
My dad was unemployed for a year or two during the pandemic.
He got over $1,500 a month in unemployment benefits, and I gave him another $2,500 every month, making it $4,000 in total.
This $4,000 covered my younger sister’s living expenses, the utilities and property taxes for three houses, the elderly’s medical bills, $600 for my mom’s health insurance, and his own pocket money.
Occasionally, if he had social events, I would also subsidize the money for him to treat people to meals.
At the same time, I was also the one leading all the major household expenses and the handling of matters big and small.
This kind of life continued until he found a new job.
For a 70s generation guy like him, who had lived his entire life in a stable environment, sudden late-age unemployment was equivalent to the sky falling down; he completely lost his backbone.
After that, I became his backbone.
Since then, my dad has been overwhelmingly grateful to me.
Our father-daughter identities almost completely reversed.
If I say one, he doesn’t say two; wherever I point, he strikes.
He listens to me on all matters, big or small.
He often tells outsiders that the person he is most grateful for in his entire life is me, and even if I spat in his face, he wouldn’t have a single complaint.
Without me, he would have collapsed long ago.
I still don’t feel like I did anything massive, but he is moved to tears of gratitude.
What was my mom doing during this period?
My mom was also working hard, but she hoarded all her money for herself.
She lacks a sense of security; to her, that money is her own safeguard.
She had almost no expenses.
Her health insurance and all household expenses were paid by me, so she saved up quite a lot of money for herself.
Logically speaking, she was also a beneficiary.
But completely opposite to my dad, my mom never felt that I had contributed anything to her or the family, because my money was spent on my dad and my sister, and wasn’t given to her.
She even harbored a lot of resentment toward me because of this, feeling that I wasn’t good enough to her and didn’t repay her.
In reality, my whole family took better care of my mom.
She never had to pay a dime out of her pocket for red envelopes and gifts during holidays, or for daily family trips.
I myself never celebrate my birthday, nor have I ever celebrated any Father’s Day for my dad, or remembered his birthday, and my dad doesn’t care either.
But when it comes to holidays related to women, my dad would get extremely nervous and constantly remind me to send my mom a red envelope and blessings.
Even so, my mom still claimed she never received any care or love.
If you actually put the evidence right in front of her, her response to anything would just be: “You call that little bit of stuff treating me well?”
My brain is slow to realize things.
It wasn’t until now, a few years later, that I realized my mom, in her subconscious, actually hated me for being a busybody.
She wanted my dad to beg her, to bow his head.
Then she would stand on the moral high ground, the high ground of family status, reluctantly offer a little charity, and use that to manipulate and control my dad for the rest of his life.
After my dad lost his job, his heart grew colder and colder toward my mom.
He suddenly realized he didn’t have to kneel down and beg anyone.
Normal people provide a safety net for their family members, rather than constantly bossing them around, belittling, and suppressing them.
He didn’t have any savings because his severance pay and savings all went into paying off the mortgage, paying high tuition fees for the kids, and covering various family expenses.
Every single bill is traceable.
But my mom would selectively ignore everything and attack him: Why didn’t he have savings?
Why didn’t he live frugally?
Why was he spending money when he was unemployed?
At that critical juncture — when my dad was unemployed, I had just graduated and started working, and my sister was advancing to higher education — my mom completely stayed out of it.
Of course, she didn’t think so.
She thought she hadn’t even reached out to ask us for money; she was working hard to earn and save money, and later, as long as we begged her when we couldn’t survive anymore, she would give us money too.
But to me, this is utter bullshit.
Because giving money or not is voluntary.
I absolutely do not want money that has to be obtained through begging.
After my dad started working again, my mom caused a scene many times, demanding my dad make his income public and hand over his savings.
My dad refused.
My dad said he could put all his money with me for me to hold onto, but he would absolutely never give it to my mom.
Although I am a female, I exist more in the ecological niche of an eldest son in the family.
My dad tells me everything and has been discussing things with me since I was in high school.
My mom, on the other hand — I truly don’t know how to get along with her.
She has so many twisted, convoluted thoughts that even she herself doesn’t realize, just like how she subconsciously hated me for giving my dad money.
From my personal experience, men are really easy to please.
Interacting with men is truly simple: if it benefits him and you can exchange interests, the relationship is very stable and harmonious.
If there’s an issue, you collaborate to tackle it together; if not, you just eat, drink, and have fun together.
If, on top of that, you can provide some emotional and spiritual support, they are practically overwhelmed by the unexpected favor.
But dealing with women like my mom leaves me completely baffled.
I cannot understand their brain circuits.
It’s as if I naturally owe them something.
I’m gradually getting the taste of it now: I feel like my mom just wants to be a little princess.
Even though she verbally claims to be so strong-willed, to be such an “alpha female”, and even though she has a terrible temper and will arbitrarily beat and scold others, deep in her bones, she just wants to be pampered, cared for, and dominated.
And when all of this cannot be satisfied, she turns into a resentful woman.
At this point, her need shifts to wanting someone to deeply empathize with her painful encounters and stand unwaveringly by her side, fighting against her evil mother-in-law and bad husband together, both mentally and physically.
And what if she is wrong?
No, she is always right.
Even if she genuinely has a problem, you are not allowed to think she is wrong.
So if you want to talk reason, talk rules, talk cooperation, or talk collaboration, it’s incredibly hard to coax my mom.
Oh, right, I forgot to mention the aftermath.
The aftermath was that after my dad went back to work, my mom had huge grievances and insisted he hand over his salary.
She caused a ruckus for two years.
Later, due to some family matters, a massive conflict erupted, and my dad filed for divorce.
His attitude was extremely resolute.
He directly refused any communication and had the lawyer talk to my mom the entire time.
My mom started crying and throwing tantrums, desperately refusing to divorce.
This corresponds perfectly with the top-voted answers too.
Actually, middle-aged men don’t really need marriage that much; instead, it’s some traditional women who fundamentally cannot leave it in their bones, yet still insist on acting out and stirring up drama.
I remember I had been hoping they would divorce ever since I was in elementary school, because my mom would genuinely beat us kids to death.
My dad is actually someone who remembers others’ goodness well, which you can see from his attitude toward me.
But my mom believes that the debt of her giving birth and raising children is something my dad has to kneel and pay back for the rest of his life.
He has to endure her beatings and scoldings until he dies.
These were my mom’s exact words.
It’s too terrifying.
Men, whatever you do, do not be a doormat.
If you become one, you will be bullied by your wife along with your own children.
— —
Stop liking this, I’m just venting, I don’t want it to blow up.
Do not urge others to be kind without having suffered their hardships.
The things I mentioned in my answer aren’t even considered excessive in our family’s experiences.
After all, that was just about money.
Domestic violence and mental bullying are the main bulk of it.
I found an image online that roughly looks like how badly we were beaten when we were kids.
Beaten with clothes hangers.
My mom’s favorite thing was using clothes hangers to beat people.
I still have scars on my body to this day.
I only stopped taking my depression medication this year.
My dad wasn’t all that innocent either.
He is kind and gentle, but cowardly and incompetent.
When my sister and I were little, we begged him to divorce, but he didn’t dare to face the unknown.
It was precisely his twenty-plus years of indulging, playing the peacemaker, and putting my mom on a pedestal that created this deformed family relationship.
I’m not taking the man’s side or the woman’s side; I am just purely talking about my personal experience.
