Also, that men will divorce you and leave you high and dry (this can be true, thanks to no-fault divorce) so you’d better be prepared to support yourself.
This is one I struggle with. I got an education because I was raised in a family that, regardless of both parents being raised in very Catholic homes with stay at home mothers, put not only a great emphasis, but THE emphasis, on education. I think I was first told on my home from the hospital three days after birth that I *would *get excellent grades, be on the honor roll, and in the honor society, and go to college immediately after high school and graduate in four years. The expectation, of course, was also to move straight into a good job.
However, early on in my marriage, I walked from college graduation straight into being a stay at home mother because it was important. Then my husband walked out on me for nine months, leaving me with two pre-schoolers and a newborn. I have kept my foot in the job market ever since, working part-time around his hours, so that a parent is always home with the children.
The marriage was iffy after that, with him disappearing for hours on end, being critical and negative toward me, tearing me down, telling me how poorly all his family, friends, and co-workers thought of me until I was pretty deep in self-loathing; anger, yelling; threats of physical violence that kept me wary of objecting to all the things going on. Then when I was pregnant with my 9th, I discovered that even apart from all of that, he was up to all kinds of no good behind my back all those years.
I pushed for four years for marriage counseling, Retrouvaille, individual counseling. I would have gladly forgiven everything if he would have only STOPPED. I truly wanted to save the marriage, to keep my marriage vows, to give my kids a family with a father in the home.
But I was working harder and harder (ie, away from my children) to pay off bills he kept racking up with no explanation of where the money was going. I kept finding out there were
more women, including my supposed best friend, with varying levels of friendship with him, that he kept very secret.
I slowly realized that he was not going to stop any of these behaviors, probably in part because he figured with nine kids and only a part time job, there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it, anyway.
When it reached the point of the THIRD priest telling me this is no marriage and he’d petition for annulment if I filed for divorce, when I saw how my husband’s antics were putting me into such self-hatred and depression I was NOT the best possible mother for my children, when I realized I was working more and more hours anyway to keep up with his spending, and finally when I realized how bad the debt was that he was lying about and we could potentially lose the house when his house of (credit) cards collapsed…I filed.
This is my dilemma between what I want to believe and the reality I see, of too many women I know living in marriages like this. I hate the divorce rate in this country. I fully believe some of it is people living self-centered, selfish lives such that they walk out on what could have been good marriages, for selfish reasons.
But I also know way too many women just like myself, in marriages like mine, who finally refuse to tolerate the abuses any longer. I know these women in real life and online. Physical abuse, name-calling, swearing, cheating, lying, drinking, credit card debt that threatens the family, outright disrespect and unkindness that tears them down emotionally and destroys their human dignity, and much more. It is often enough these women who are saying, “Enough,” and filing. I think many marriages lasted till death in prior years because women had no choice but to accept these abuses.
I’m not divorced because of no-fault divorce or because he left me. I’m divorced because he was an unkind husband whose behavior was harming me and endangering our ability to keep a roof over our children’s heads. I wonder if the upside of women being able to support themselves will be a gradual shift in men realizing they need to treat their wives with more respect and kindness?
Just some thoughts. I don’t know all the answers or how to balance this. One of my daughters is moving on to graduate school and has plans as a research scientist. This is who she is. I don’t feel I’ve ever pushed her into it. My other daughter wants to have a large family and be home with her children, and I warn
her that she needs to have a skill, an education,
something, because there are no guarantees in life. Husband
do leave women high and dry, or they die, or they’re injured and can no longer work. Things happen.
I hope that as a society, we’ll find some balance soon of women not having to tolerate awful behavior from husbands, and yet being respected and highly regarded for what **is **the most important job of raising and loving their children.
Men have been trained to expect women to work, AND manage the children and home, so those women who keep their careers after marriage get to try and juggle two full-time jobs while the husband and father carries on with his same job. (It is well-documented that in 2-career families, it is the wife who does the greater share of housework and child care.)
I so agree. I very much think women are being pushed to be it all and do it all, and that’s also a downside for women and families.
It was worth it for that moment alone! 