Man Explains Why 70% Of Divorces Are Started By Women — 'Men And Women Do Not Have The Same Options'
We're not saying there's a noticeable trend but...
Prostock-studio / Shutterstock A man named Matty has recently gone viral on TikTok after posting a video about why so many divorces are started by women versus men.
According to a comment from someone else’s TikTok, 70% of all divorces are initiated by the wives, and the women who replied to that comment with TikToks of their own have blamed the men for it.
However, Matty believes that there’s another reason why men aren’t initiating the majority.
Matty believes that men stand to lose more when getting a divorce than women.
Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University, analyzed data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey from 2009 to 2015, and found that women initiated 69% of all divorces — that much is true. But what the original research doesn’t include is why these divorces were initiated, aside from some hypotheses from Rosenfeld.
Matty has a hypothesis of his own, and in order to make the woman’s claim sound invalid, he includes some additional statistics. “I'm not going to point out that lesbians have the highest divorce rate of all marriages. I'm not going to point out that gay men have the lowest divorce rate out of all marriages,” he explains.
His data comes from the 2020 UK study done by the Office for National Statistics. The study showed that 72% of divorces among same-sex marriages came from female couples.
However, the point Matty is trying to make is that this statistic tells them nothing about why, even if he’s insinuating that women are the problem. Instead, what he argues is that men stand more to lose in a divorce than a woman.
“Hey, guy, your marriage isn't working. Would you like to try and fight to fix your marriage? Or would you want a divorce where you will lose half of your assets and possibly spend years fighting just to see your children?” he asks hypothetically to another hypothetical man.
“Hey, lady, your marriage isn't working. Would you rather fight to make your marriage work, or do you want to take half of his stuff, take the children with you, live happy, and then complain about him because everyone will believe you?” he asks hypothetically to a hypothetical woman.
Matty believes that men and women do not have the same options when it comes to divorce and that the options you are presented when trying to make a decision matter. He believes that women stand to gain more from divorcing their husbands, which is why they will choose to go through with a divorce more than men.
There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows why women get divorced.
The bottom line is that women are tired of doing it all in marriages and around the house. A divorce lawyer named Dennis R. Vetrano, Jr. posted a TikTok in May 2023 explaining the major theme he saw in the divorce industry.
“I am seeing working moms doing it all,” he explained. “She's got the kids, she's got the groceries, she's got the laundry, she's got the meals, she's got the work — and by the way, she's making all the money and she's paying for the house and doing everything else.”
Funny enough (in a dystopian way), several studies suggest that the greater the gap by which a wife’s income outpaces her husband’s, the less he does around the house. That’s right — the more money a woman makes than her husband, the more work she does around the house. Talk about an unequal division of labor.
But that’s not all. According to Divorce.com, the majority of divorces are initiated by women who have unmet needs — specifically, emotional needs. Unmet emotional needs lead to marital dissatisfaction and eventual divorce in 64% of cases.
Women are carrying the bulk of the emotional labor when it comes to relationships and marriages. Emotional labor commonly refers to the mental tax that comes with taking care of all the household chores or being the primary parent to your children. According to a Gallup survey from January 2020, women are still far more likely to do the laundry (58%), clean the house (51%) and prepare meals (51%).
All of these statistics show how mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically taxing being married to a man can be. There are even studies that show how women stand to lose more after a divorce than a man, despite Matty’s idea that women are just searching for the quick buck from a divorce.
Perhaps he should follow his own advice from his caption and consider “Stats don't mean anything... until you understand them.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.