Fantasy destroys marriages

"...As of 2024, the refined divorce rate is approximately 2.4 divorces per 1,000 married women per year.."    -according to "Search Assistant"

Apparently the standard metric for measuring "divorce rates" in the United States is "number of divorced WOMEN" per 1000. 

That makes sense from one perspective. Every divorce produces two newly divorced people. So, if you are only counting the number of unions that dissolved, then you need to divide the total number of newly divorced people by two.

The focus on women is probably driven by the fact that divorced women are much more likely to demand "services" from the state than divorced men. Money makes the world turn and it is important to anticipate future demand for financial resources.

Hypothesis testing

Suppose it were possible to test the hypothesis that divorces almost always due to men oppressing women. That is, women are always the passive victims and men are always the active oppressor. That seems to be the foundational assumption by the judges and social workers who guide the divorce process in most states*.

If that is the case then the only way to "fix" the divorce rate is to improve men. 

It also suggests that marriages between two victims would have much better success rates marriages between victims and oppressors.

If only it were possible for two women to get married to each other...Hmmm...

Hey, wait a minute...they can.

Does anybody want to hazard a guess for the divorce rate for lesbian marriages? Answer below the fold....

According to my handy-dandy Search Assistant, the refined divorce rate for lesbian-marriages is 18 per thousand per year. That is 7.5 times higher than the 2.4 reported for all marriages (which includes gay, lesbian and interspecies marriages).

"But Joe, if they count divorces by counting the number of divorced women that are generated, and since every lesbian-marriage dissolution creates two divorced women...doesn't that mean it should "only" be HALF 7.5 if we are counting failed unions?"

Great question. The literature is evasive. If you deep-dive, you can find hundreds of academic papers explaining WHY society is to blame for the higher rate of failed lesbian-marriages but no clarity on how they actually count them. In fact, they kind of hint that the numbers might be under-represented because many states don't track nontraditional marriages in separate categories. 

Even if the question raised above is true, then lesbian-marriages have a failure rate that is more than 3 times higher than for the aggregate rate which is dominated by heterosexual-marriages.

Editorializing

The deeply embedded cultural myth that marriages fail because men are always the oppressor is profoundly wrong. Some marriages fail because some men are oppressors, but that should never be the default assumption.

In the broadest possible terms, the vast majority of marriages fail because women have expectations that are not met by the reality of two (or more) finite and fallible and needy people living together.

That is, women file for divorce because they are deeply dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction is caused by the gap between expectation and reality. 

The death of society by click-bait

It is my personal opinion that the feminist movement grossly oversold the idea that "you can have it all", that "you deserve it all" and if you aren't getting it all it is because "somebody is holding you back". Virtual content still flogs those ideas to today's social-justice conscious young-people and that content is avidly consumed by women.

Additionally, it feels virtuous to trumpet "I have high standards" and "I don't settle for less than the best" on social media. The virtual echo-chamber becomes an endless contest of one-upmanship and having the last-word. That is, establishing dominance.

But what if "the best" is a fantasy? What if "have it all**" was never more than smoke-and-mirrors? The family, the foundational unit of society, is being burned down by people (women) who are swimming in a sea of fantasy.

If I were allowed to offer one word of advice to women who want to save their marriages it would be to turn off social media and video-streaming and to avoid "friends" who spew toxic views of men. Yes, maybe you will have to avoid happy-hour and deal with butt-hurt acquaintances who you unfriended. But what is your priory? Your husband or your posse/peeps?

*86% of the degrees granted in Social Work in 2025 in the United States were women.

**Anecdotally, the long-term consequence of being a ball-busting, boss-girl feminist is needing to call Uber to get rides home from random strangers after surgical procedures. By then, your posse is busy sucking up to other ball-busters and don't have time for you.