Every part of that piece SCREAMED "different people have different expectations". She talks about divorced dads being "forced" to take care of their children and themselves, but like virtually 100% of men have periods of their life where they take care of themselves and survive? The tone of this entire piece was just "well he did the laundry, but he didn't do the laundry the way I want him to do the laundry". Also weird how the kid's feelings are entirely absent from this. She doesn't even try and claim anyone other than her is happier - she says that everyone likes her more and everyone notices how happy SHE is, but the feelings of 2/3rds of the people in the story are just completely absent from the story?
OH so she realized that relationships are work and parenting can be drudgery and sometimes partners are not satisfactory in their roommate duties? I wonder if her ex was like “womp womp divorce is such a drag!” or if he’s, like, heartbroken and confused by this act of anticisheteronormative patriarchy? I hope not the latter.
This NYT piece was badly edited. In parts it was moving toward an argument like "I learned that parenting is quite nice if you only have to do half the work; maybe you still-marrieds should look into that for more fulfilling life." But that was interspersed with "I can't stand marriage or my ex , and I could never set good boundaries while married with kids." These two lines of argument are just interspersed haphazardly, giving the piece no momentum, and no ultimate point. I would have given a C+ in my freshman writing class.
And why is it always the husband's socks! I understand it's a stand in for having to clean up after your husband, but how many dirty socks can even a flagrant sock tosser leave sitting around the house? It makes it sound like she broke up a marriage and displaced her kids for at most thirty seconds of extra work each day. And it's always the socks! Can't these screeds at least be original on what mess their sloppy husband requires them to clean up!
I guess the simplest lens to view this all through.....that being divorced truly is optimal......is if all this freedom amounting to any sort of en mass human flourishing? Maybe on some individual level it feeds some very selfish, narcissistic instincts but society wise we are a disaster. Sex is about is liberated as it can possibly be - apart from a small handful of taboos that also seem to be morphing into some sort of horrific acceptance (MAP anyone) - everything goes and we have never had less satisfying intimate connections in the course of modern history. Turns out that having no guardrails, social mores and standards isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. When you come to the end of it all and look back on your legacy, what example you have left for your children, it’s columns that tout how amazing divorce is that should be judged the most severely. I hope your sock free weekends full of red wine and pottery were worth the person you became.
I’m struck by the off-handed cruelty of this type of article. The NYT previously gave her a Modern Love column to write about her dissatisfactions in marriage and a guy she was crushing on while still married (it’s nice to have connections in publishing, I guess), and it sounds like she divorced her husband just because she was kinda bored with him. Fine, it happens, though it’s not something we usually applaud people for. But now her ex has to read an article where she goes on about just how AWESOME it is to no longer be married to him. It’s such a dick move, like Nona Willis Aronowitz spending a book and press tour talking about how happy she is to no longer be having sex with her husband.
Some ultra-competitive people can't admit any failure. So their divorce had to be a win. They will twist it in their mind until it is. I have friends on Facebook who follow this template. They are the ones who need this article.
I, on the contrary, freely admit to failure in many things. Luckily, my marriage is not one. I love raising our teenager together, and I'm happy I will be growing old with my partner.
Wowsers just the blurbs from that article induced cringes so intense I’ve developed another wrinkle. There’s always been a portion of the population unwilling to take any sort of responsibility for their own lives or their own behavior, preferring instead to wait for the next fad that will explain away the toxic blob they’ve turned into, but dang if it doesn’t feel like the former adults in the room eyerolling until their heads fall off are now whispering “yes, girlboss” and asking if she’s self healing from the pain of *gasp* not communicating her own needs but expecting them to be fulfilled.
I've noticed that people - women included - have this bad habit of engaging in an Orwellian re-writing of their personal histories post divorce. What was once upon a time a mad love affair has 15-20 years later become a load of trash. How many times has a divorced woman said, "he's changed!" Instead, they should admit the truth, a la BB King: "The thrill is gone."
I’m a couple of chapters into that Richard V Reeves book and whatever else it is it’s not a culture war-y “men are the real victims” book. It’s more a economics heavy investigation on the effects of the school system not being able to properly manage the deficit in non cognitive skills in boys in comparison to girls of the same age and it’s large downstream effects. He goes to great lengths to say his positions are compatible with feminism. There’s some “liberals can’t talk about this even though it disproportionately harms their constituencies for fear of angering feminists” but it’s a small part of it.
Every podcast known to man deciding to have Reeves as a guest this month really does feel like backlash to this sort of stuff, though. It’s as if Reeves book is a vessel for all the pent up, inexpressible rage some (NYT reading, chai tea drinking) men feel when seeing stuff like this on their op Ed page while still remaining measured and sober enough not to feel like ranting from the manophere.
Every part of that piece SCREAMED "different people have different expectations". She talks about divorced dads being "forced" to take care of their children and themselves, but like virtually 100% of men have periods of their life where they take care of themselves and survive? The tone of this entire piece was just "well he did the laundry, but he didn't do the laundry the way I want him to do the laundry". Also weird how the kid's feelings are entirely absent from this. She doesn't even try and claim anyone other than her is happier - she says that everyone likes her more and everyone notices how happy SHE is, but the feelings of 2/3rds of the people in the story are just completely absent from the story?
OH so she realized that relationships are work and parenting can be drudgery and sometimes partners are not satisfactory in their roommate duties? I wonder if her ex was like “womp womp divorce is such a drag!” or if he’s, like, heartbroken and confused by this act of anticisheteronormative patriarchy? I hope not the latter.
This NYT piece was badly edited. In parts it was moving toward an argument like "I learned that parenting is quite nice if you only have to do half the work; maybe you still-marrieds should look into that for more fulfilling life." But that was interspersed with "I can't stand marriage or my ex , and I could never set good boundaries while married with kids." These two lines of argument are just interspersed haphazardly, giving the piece no momentum, and no ultimate point. I would have given a C+ in my freshman writing class.
And why is it always the husband's socks! I understand it's a stand in for having to clean up after your husband, but how many dirty socks can even a flagrant sock tosser leave sitting around the house? It makes it sound like she broke up a marriage and displaced her kids for at most thirty seconds of extra work each day. And it's always the socks! Can't these screeds at least be original on what mess their sloppy husband requires them to clean up!
I guess the simplest lens to view this all through.....that being divorced truly is optimal......is if all this freedom amounting to any sort of en mass human flourishing? Maybe on some individual level it feeds some very selfish, narcissistic instincts but society wise we are a disaster. Sex is about is liberated as it can possibly be - apart from a small handful of taboos that also seem to be morphing into some sort of horrific acceptance (MAP anyone) - everything goes and we have never had less satisfying intimate connections in the course of modern history. Turns out that having no guardrails, social mores and standards isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. When you come to the end of it all and look back on your legacy, what example you have left for your children, it’s columns that tout how amazing divorce is that should be judged the most severely. I hope your sock free weekends full of red wine and pottery were worth the person you became.
I’m struck by the off-handed cruelty of this type of article. The NYT previously gave her a Modern Love column to write about her dissatisfactions in marriage and a guy she was crushing on while still married (it’s nice to have connections in publishing, I guess), and it sounds like she divorced her husband just because she was kinda bored with him. Fine, it happens, though it’s not something we usually applaud people for. But now her ex has to read an article where she goes on about just how AWESOME it is to no longer be married to him. It’s such a dick move, like Nona Willis Aronowitz spending a book and press tour talking about how happy she is to no longer be having sex with her husband.
Some ultra-competitive people can't admit any failure. So their divorce had to be a win. They will twist it in their mind until it is. I have friends on Facebook who follow this template. They are the ones who need this article.
I, on the contrary, freely admit to failure in many things. Luckily, my marriage is not one. I love raising our teenager together, and I'm happy I will be growing old with my partner.
Wowsers just the blurbs from that article induced cringes so intense I’ve developed another wrinkle. There’s always been a portion of the population unwilling to take any sort of responsibility for their own lives or their own behavior, preferring instead to wait for the next fad that will explain away the toxic blob they’ve turned into, but dang if it doesn’t feel like the former adults in the room eyerolling until their heads fall off are now whispering “yes, girlboss” and asking if she’s self healing from the pain of *gasp* not communicating her own needs but expecting them to be fulfilled.
I've noticed that people - women included - have this bad habit of engaging in an Orwellian re-writing of their personal histories post divorce. What was once upon a time a mad love affair has 15-20 years later become a load of trash. How many times has a divorced woman said, "he's changed!" Instead, they should admit the truth, a la BB King: "The thrill is gone."
I’m a couple of chapters into that Richard V Reeves book and whatever else it is it’s not a culture war-y “men are the real victims” book. It’s more a economics heavy investigation on the effects of the school system not being able to properly manage the deficit in non cognitive skills in boys in comparison to girls of the same age and it’s large downstream effects. He goes to great lengths to say his positions are compatible with feminism. There’s some “liberals can’t talk about this even though it disproportionately harms their constituencies for fear of angering feminists” but it’s a small part of it.
Every podcast known to man deciding to have Reeves as a guest this month really does feel like backlash to this sort of stuff, though. It’s as if Reeves book is a vessel for all the pent up, inexpressible rage some (NYT reading, chai tea drinking) men feel when seeing stuff like this on their op Ed page while still remaining measured and sober enough not to feel like ranting from the manophere.