Category Archives: Marriage & Divorce
My husband's support for Trump is poisoning our marriage. Should I get a divorce?
The question
I’ve been with my husband for eight years. We have no kids. For the past three, he has become increasingly alt-right and quite the Trump supporter. I’m very moderate in politics, but slightly left of centre. I like to follow the truth where it falls. But he will not allow for any kind of discourse or debate. He’s right, and I’m wrong. According to him, I’ve been brainwashed. It’s gotten to the point where I have left the house and am considering divorce. It has filtered into our relationship in too many ways. I’m not sure what to do.
The answer
Well, politics has always been famously fraught as a topic of discussion, which can quickly devolve into two disputants – at a dinner party, say – who might normally get along, gesticulating wildly, impugning one another’s intelligence, knowledge, insightfulness and so on.
I’ve certainly seen that happen more than once.
And the current climate in U.S. politics – well, a word the punditocracy like to throw around is “divisive,” and that sure seems true to me. On a recent car trip to the United States, I had a real sense of a country divided.
What’s less reported on is that it can be also be divisive for families, friends – and even, as in your case, couples.
I have a lot of relatives in the United States and when a couple disagree on the merits of the current White House administration, watch out! It can lead to hammer-and-tongs type arguments, hauteur-filled froideurs, sleeping on the couch, “the silent treatment” (what I call “marital omerta”) and all the other tools in the arsenal of spousal warfare.
Yours, though, is the first I’ve heard of a case of it leading to de-cohabitation and possibly divorce.
But let’s step back for a second: It sounds to me like the real problem is not that you and your husband argue, or what about, but how you go about it.
There comes an important point, I think, in a marriage – in any relationship, really – when one says to oneself, “I care more about this person’s company than I care about being right.”
And ideally around that same time one asks oneself: “And what makes me so sure I’m right, anyway?”
To me, these are important twin pillars of the maturing process. When you’re young, you think you know it all. As a teen, I used to “debate” my poor mother all the time, sometimes ticking off points on my fingers, always convinced I was right.
Then as you get older you (should) say to yourself: “Maybe I could be wrong.”
Your husband sounds like he needs to grow up in the above ways. You, too, maybe a bit. Your statement “I like to follow the truth where it falls” is a hint for me he may not be the only one with a touch of hubris.
Now, generally speaking, I’m a big proponent of working things out rather than splitting up. Because divorce doesn’t look like a lot of fun to me. Lawyers bleed you white, you can wind up lonely, your friends choose sides, you have to get out and date again, which can feel like a series of job interviews – the list of downsides goes on and on.
But in this case, if you really were willing to move out over all this and he hasn’t come after you in any way, well, obviously there are larger issues afoot. So maybe you should pull the trigger on divorce proceedings.
If you do decide you want to work it out, there are a lot of elements about your situation I don’t know (e.g. all the ways your Trumpian arguments have “filtered into your relationship”) or, frankly, understand.
So sorry, normally, I hate to do this but I’m going to fall back on that hoary advice columnist staple and suggest you seek couples counselling.
A good couples therapist will (ideally) tease out the good things in your relationship, help you learn to communicate better, maybe figure out a way repair some of the damage all of this has done, even get you back on track.
You did reach out to me, so that tells me you haven’t given up.
And I don’t mean to be rude but I do feel the need to be blunt: While you’re at it, maybe get a couple of regular therapists as well, because there’s something about the whole situation that’s a little “out there.”
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Married Women Cheat, Too… but Why? One Expert Tells Us the Two Main Reasons
The usual cheating story we hear goes like this: wife is amazing, husband cheats, breaks up marriage and family, ruins everything. Exhibit A: Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Garner (where both Gavin Rossdale and Ben Affleck cheated with the nanny).
But women can be cheaters too — we just don’t hear about it as much. It happens all the time. (Exhibit B: Some sources are claiming that Khloe Kardashian “retaliation cheated” on Tristan Thompson with her ex French Montana.) In fact, one relationship expert in New York, Rori Sassoon, co-founder of upscale match making agency Platinum Poire, said she’s seen it happen throughout her career. She said while there are “a million reasons” women cheat, there are two main things that often drive a woman to seek another guy.
“From my experience, it’s either women who are a little bored — they have a great husband, a great life — but they’re bored. They’re usually the women whose life looks perfect from outside, like on Instagram. They are looking for sex, or emotional affection, or some kind of attention, basically they are not getting what they need.”
It’s easy for those women to cheat, Sassoon added, because they are often not getting what they need at home, the husband is usually neglecting them, and so they find someone to make them feel good who fits easily into their schedule. “It’s the classic story of cheating with the physical trainer,” she said. “It’s very easy two or three times a week for an hour.”
There is also one major clue a woman is cheating on her partner. (It’s not texts, sexts, or physical evidence.) Before all that, Sassoon said, the woman will become totally indifferent at home. “If a woman becomes very indifferent to her husband, like doesn’t care anymore, something may be going on. Think about it, he’s carrying on, and you just don’t care, and that could be because you have someone else in your life. It eases the guilt if the husband is off doing his thing.”
Another reason many women stray is because things in the marriage have changed. “Sometimes men can’t perform and that’s not just in the bedroom,” Sassoon noted. “Maybe emotionally they’re not there, maybe work isn’t going their way, they’re not making the money they used to and there’s a lot of pressure. Sometimes people just need that adrenaline rush of a love that’s exciting and new.”
Sassoon added that women are often the more emotional one in relationships, so if her husband neglects her, she feels she can “revenge cheat.” “That also happens after he cheats… she’ll cheat for revenge,” Sassoon said. “At that stage, it’s over.”
The good news? A couple can recover from cheating. Sassoon has seen it happen with therapy and communication. “Often they can get past a one-night stand, but everybody’s level of cheating is different.”
According to U.K.’s The Telegraph, men and women “tend to two-time for different reasons.”
“Research suggests that the majority of men stray in search of get-the-job-done sex, whereas women want their sizzle with a side of emotional connection,” said the report. “A study by anthropologist Helen Fisher concluded that women tend to cheat when they are dissatisfied with their relationship as a whole and seek what is missing elsewhere. But when it came to male cheaters, Fisher found that 56 percent claimed to be ‘happily married.'”
Modern technology and women having careers are also huge contributors to the gender cheating more, reported The Toronto Sun.
“According to Dr. Ashley Thompson, director of the Sexuality and Relationship Science Lab at the University of Minnesota Duluth, there are several factors at work…Technology is making it easier for women — for everybody — to find extra-dyadic partners, whether it’s on Ashley Madison or Tinder… Women also have more opportunity now than they did in the past … If, traditionally, women were homemakers and men were going off to work, men had more opportunities to cheat. But now you’re seeing increased gender equality, and women are out in the work force, gaining more autonomy. Women are engaging as much as men because now that opportunity is there.”
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Marriage Advice You Must Ignore Until You Find The Right Person
Marriage is a concept that is cherished across cultures. Marriage means many things to many people. It, therefore, does not come as a surprise that despite countless issues arising from marriage, more and more people seek to experience it.
However, Nigerian musician Banky Wellington known as Banky W for short believes individuals must decide for themselves when they deem right to settle down with a lifelong partner.
In his submission in an Instagram post, he touched on three salient concerns in connection with marriage – Pressure from society, inadequate without a partner or even being tagged incomplete.
He believes that primarily, pressure from society must not be the reason to marry an individual especially when either of the two parties is unsure of embarking on a lifelong journey with the other. Succumbing to pressure to marriage without any key desire to ‘leave and cleave’ will only spell doom for the couple.
Inadequate as an unmarried person: Maturity is relative, according to the musician. That is why Banky W believes that marriage does not guarantee that one will become mature.
The ability for a person to adequately contribute to society stems from maturity and unmarried folks could be even more mature than some married folks. If an immature person marries it doesn’t automatically make them mature.
Completeness: It is true that a home feels very complete when it’s hosting married couples and by extension children.
However, if one hastens to marry when s/he hasn’t found the right person. There is a high possibility of breakup which will, in turn, render one “incomplete” again.
So why rush to complete only to become incomplete in the long run.
Banky W has thus encouraged as many as are ready and has found the right person to go ahead and marry as it is a good thing.
But he also advises individuals against falling for pressure to marry when they are not ready.
“By far the best decision I have made in my adult life was to wait until I found my wife. People will pressure you and try to make you feel inadequate or incomplete.. all because you’re not living according to their own mental timetable. Ignore them.
“Focus on your journey, your happiness, and on making yourself a better person. My prayer is that you will discover like I did, that the right person is worth waiting for.
Mrs Wellington, I’m still amazed that I get to call you mine. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for building with me. Thank you for believing in me and for inspiring me to be a better man. My purpose partner, my rock, my destiny, my Shug, my wife, my life… Happy tradiversary Skuu. Love you SCATTER,” his post read.
