ROBIN writes:

Laura wrote: 

The egalitarian life the writers envision is a marriage breaker. It leads to continual domestic strife or domination of the man by the woman. 

This brings to mind a tragic story of marital dissolution in our dear friend, a man who wanted family, but sits alone today in a rented apartment in the ashes of feminist indoctrination. 

He married his young love six years ago, thinking that with her additional income, they could afford a modest home. They quickly entered into a mortgage, because “that’s what you do when you get married!” He depended upon her income, and went to work as a traveling salesman, on the road away from home five or six days per week. Little did he know that lurking in her psyche was the burning desire to create life and have children.  

He worked all week and came home early on Saturdays, just in time to clean the entire house (it wasn’t a home for them) and do six loads of laundry on his one day off. He did all of this to please her. He scrubbed and cleaned and washed and dried; he tidied cat-boxes and ordered expensive mineral make-up for her. He “loved” her the way he thought he should, but all the while, she resented him more and more, for he was gone too much to give her a child, and his housewife duties didin’t really please her as she believed they would. 

Soon, she began to hoard his money in addition to hers, and she went on spending sprees to try and salve her aching heart. When he was home, she withdrew from him even further in her burning resentment and anger at him not being a “man” in any way any longer: he didn’t provide (in her mind), he didn’t provide her a child (he was away too much) and he was not much more than a maid. 

She failed to make the house payments – a last-ditch effort to rid herself of him without taking any real responsibility for the failure of her marriage – and when he found out, he left and moved into an apartment. Not long after this, he discovered her Internet affair (which had also become a tangible, physical tryst) and blamed the entire disruption of her. 

They live separate lives now, in separate apartments, but they are still married. He thinks it “too expensive” to divorce her, and she desires to keep her car that they purchased during the marriage without going to court to fight for it. 

All of this because they lived as man-woman and woman-man, as was stated in an earlier post. 

They both wanted “it all,” and now neither of them has anything. (Save their cars). Even the house has gone to the bank. The house that was to be the pillar of outward success-measure for the world to see. What you speak is so true. This type of expectation in couples that men and women are no different is absolute trash-talk and leads to nothing but death. But doesn’t it all lead to death if it’s not Divine design? I’m sure there are thousands of stories like this. I hope to be one less, as my husband and I allow the Lord to renew our minds daily on the workings of a traditional marriage in a wicked society.

Laura writes:

Tragic story. What a waste. This will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

You say, Little did he know that lurking in her psyche was the burning desire to create life and have children.

She probably didn’t know either until this primal and irrepressible drive welled up inside her. People often say that women have choice and that we are in some third or fourth or millionth wave of feminism in which everyone is perfectly free because no one is keeping women from doing anything they want. That’s the myth. If one is never prepared for wanting children before actually wanting them, one really does have restricted choices. All along one has been making uninformed and irreversible decisions about the future.

                                                                     — Comments —

N. writes:

First of all, let me agree that this is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy caused in large part by both the man and woman living with unspoken expectations. There is an elephant in the room that you deftly note:

“She probably didn’t know either until this primal and irrepressible drive welled up inside her.”

The feminist trope that gender is a social construct has burrowed deeply into our culture, so deeply that we do not really notice it anymore. All too often, we take as “fact” the notion that because
some women can do the same job some men can do, any woman can do the same job as any man. This flies in the face of observable reality, and also the growing body of science. It also leads to
totally unrealistic expectations; expectations that too many young women have for themselves, as well as for any potential husbands, expectations that too many men have for their potential
wives, and so forth.

I can distill this error down further: too many people in Western civilization have an unspoken, feminist premise in their head that women are just men who can give birth…that there is no other
difference besides “plumbing”.  This leads to the myth you point out above, and leads exactly to uninformed and all too often irreversible decisions.

Feminism is a doctrine that is in opposition to reality, and thus when people try to live in the real world using the premises of feminism, their lives will be damaged. Women are _not_ “men who
can have babies”, and men are not “defective women”. We are made different, complimentary in nature, and must come to accept the limitations and glories of those natures. Failure to do so leads
only to sadness and even tragedy, such as we see in this failed marriage.

Karen I. writes:

While it is very easy to look at another’s marriage and decide what did or did not go wrong, it may not be the right thing to do. There were likely other factors at play in the sad “dissolution” of the marriage. For example, what was the upbringing of the wife? Are they truly staying together now over a car? Could it be deeper than that? I think it is very important for those of us who are still married to not be too smug about things. It is very easy to look around at the failures and declare ourselves a success, when only God knows what is in store for our own marriages. 

I prefer to look at those marriages that lasted decades and try to see what they did right, rather than ponder the sad failings of those that did not work out. There are so many reasons couples divorce today, and it is incredibly easy to do from a legal point of view. I think that if the couple in Robin’s post truly wanted to divorce, they would have, and perhaps a car is not the reason they are still together. If the woman wanted a child with the man, she probably did love him. Neither one seems to be doing very well without the other and neither has filed for divorce. Crazy as it sounds, maybe the two ought to see if they can work things out. It is not over until it is over, and a friend might bring this point up to the lonely man in the apartment. 

Granted, the financial disaster they have created will haunt them but they would not be the only folks in a financial bind these days, and they are going to face those repercussions whether or not they stay together. Perhaps it would be best to work themselves out of their mess together. Anyone who talks to long-married couples will often find they have gone through some terrible times together but worked through it. I am sure many would disagree, but these days, that is to be expected when anyone suggests a marriage might be saved.

Laura writes:

I agree that this couple should try to get back together. I disagree, however, that we should not judge the marriages of friends and relatives. First, whether we should judge or not, we naturally do judge. After all, the dissolution of a marriage between friends or relatives affects us. These marriages form an invisible community. We can no more keep from judging these affairs than we can keep from judging a storm that knocks down the trees in our yards or downs our power lines. A marriage is not just between the two people involved. It is a solemn contract undertaken before a community. And, however, weak and tenuous that community may be, it is still a community and it is affected by the failure of its basic unit.

Second, we should judge because it is our duty to protect standards. Sure, I don’t need to judge how my neighbor takes out his garbage or decorates his family room, but I should judge – within reason –  how he maintains his property on the outside. His maintenance of his property affects the neighborhood. We have to recognize the limits of our insight. We have to realize that we cannot know everything and sympathize with the pressures of modern life. But we should try as best we can to condemn divorce, and that means condemning the particular causes of divorce in any given situation, because divorce destroys community. The cult of non-judgmentalism has been disastrous. It’s not always kind to stand back. 

Robin writes:

In response to Karen’s post, we have strongly suggested to the man that he attempt to reconcile with his wife. As far as “keeping it real” goes, we have shared with him that in his human strength, this is beyond him: we certainly couldn’t pretend to be able to do this is our own human strength and will (especially after infedelity). This man is not a professed Christian, and has many issues with God for various reasons that bear no fruit being discussed here. So, we felt it was our duty, in a sort of righteous judgement fashion, if you will, to share the Truth with him. That Truth is that only the Lord can put this back together again, and only if they will allow Him to do so. That Truth is that divorce is atrocious and painful, causing wounds that never heal, even without children of the marriage. We agree very strongly with Laura in that judgement begins in the house of the Lord. As we judge ourselves, and see our own shortcomings, we can humbly minister out of the heart of Love. It is not Love to tell this man that it will “all get better if he just hangs in there” or that he can “start over with a new model” after this one is tossed away (or she tosses him away, whichever the case). It is Love to tell the Truth. Motivated by Love, we judge this situation and try to gently steer those in the throes of impending permenent disaster in the Way of Truth. To do anything less would be sinister.

Laura writes:

It is one of the mysteries of life how a man and woman who once loved each other can become hardened, bitter and see no good in the other. Often divorcing spouses will come to friends and relatives with bitter complaints and disappointments. One of the most important things an outsider can do is refuse to say that love was never there. “I saw it,” you can say. “I remember.”  

It is pointless, I should add, to condemn anyone who is divorcing unwillingly.

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