A new study validates common sense: Men are more likely to cheat when they earn less than their wives, and women who are financially dependent on their husbands are less likely to cheat as well.
As I wrote in a prior essay, men have an inherent need to feel like providers, and they prefer that role. Women subconsciously want men who provide more status and wealth than they have. It is one reason that the Great Recession, in which more men than women have lost their jobs, is dangerous to society in more ways than financial ones:
A lot of midlife women in my acquaintance are leaving what appear to be perfectly good and loving husbands. Or thinking about it. Or cheating on them. Or wanting to. Or staying married and faithful but buying their own houses, which they either live in or keep as a bolt hole…
In a 2004 AARP survey of divorced people 40 and older, 66 percent of wives said they had requested the divorce, and 26 percent had surprised their husbands, often after planning for years. Women were especially likely to have no regrets, and 43 percent did not want to remarry. In another national study that year, ex-wives were three times more likely to say that they wanted the divorce, rather than their husbands wanting it. Fewer than 40 percent of marriages of more than 15 years were rated as successful by respondents…
One divorced mother of two sons put her complaint succinctly: “I realized my husband was of no added value.”
To get the full chill of that statement, try imagining a husband who had divorced his wife saying it, or this next one.
“My married friends seem to envy me. They think I have so much freedom,” she said. “I don’t think their husbands like them coming around me.” (emphasis added)
The reason is easy to understand. From puberty to menopause, every woman’s hormone, thought, and desire is focused to fulfilling her biological imperative to have and raise children. (Whether or when she chooses to do so is another matter.) But after menopause and the kids are grown, the task is complete. So, for the first time in decades, she is finally free to live solely for herself.
Historical attitudes towards divorce had prevent large numbers of women from divorcing, but now the social stigma has disappeared. In addition, modern culture increasingly celebrates independence and the individual — possibly the point of narcissism and selfishness. When this is combined with the post-feminist ability — helped by the current economic trends — of women to provide for themselves, it is not surprising that more middle-aged females are choosing to start “anew.” Here is an interesting line from the quoted Dallas Morning News column:
Others blame midlife female restlessness on menopause, which causes oxytocin, the bonding hormone, to go down and testosterone, the independence hormone, to go up.
In such an environment, it is obvious why more young men, already having grown up in the Divorce Generation of the 1970s and 1980s, say that they never want to get married in the first place. In this context, the following line from the column starts to make sense:
University of Virginia research shows that progressive wives are less happy than traditional wives.
“More traditional women may wear rose-colored glasses, but they also benefit from a sense of male and female roles,” said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, who conducted the research. “They don’t expect their husband to act like a woman.”
Traditional views of marriage have always been more sensible in light of evolutionary psychology, but it is becoming less and less common in the secular, Western world that celebrates the individual — whatever the societal cost:
Years ago an older woman told me, “I’m going to live my real life now.”
I asked, “What have you been living?”
She said, “I’ve been my children’s mother. My husband’s wife. Now I’m going to be myself.”
Part of the problem is that women like the one who made these comments have a exterior source of self-worth. Their self-esteem and sense of accomplishment came only from being a wife and mother rather then taking pride in themselves as well. It is perfectly possible to be a good wife and mother without being completely dependent on those roles. While the traditional marriage may be dead in the West, this might be a good start.
Prior essay: Critiques of Feminism: Arguments Against Feminism Essay. Elsewhere: Roissy gives his own thoughts.