[foxpaws]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

FP, nobody sounds bitter here except you. Perhaps you're bitter and upset that people are calling (some, certainly not all) women out on the fact that they can be so callous and manipulative.

And men aren't callous and manipulative - we could of course address the large number of men who divorce their wives after 20-30 years opting for the 'trophy wife,' using up one woman on childbirth and their youth and casting them aside for a newer model (although, to be fair there are a few women who I guess have trophy husbands... sort of, well, maybe, kinda). There are many reasons for divorce and there are at least 2 sides to every story... you sound extremely bitter and angry. My divorce was a smooth as possible. I actually took the time to find and marry someone who was reasonable, caring and had great attributes. Just because we didn't stay in love didn't mean I chose poorly with regards to a 'good man'. I actually had my eyes open when I entered into a very legal, and binding contract with another individual. He too married with his eyes wide open and together we have been able to be amicable for the years following our divorce. Divorce rarely makes a good person bad, usually people have attributes ingrained long before they are married. You might want to reflect on that with regards to your own failed marriage. People rarely change that dramatically, perhaps you overlooked faults that you shouldn't have, or were blinded by love. Perhaps your ex also was guilty of not looking deep enough into your personality and 'quirks' before she said yes. Again - there is another side to your particular story, one none of us have ever seen, and it could change the perception of your continuing claim of 'callous and manipulative' with regards to your ex.

There are at least two sides to every story. For every guy that gets told "if you really loved me you'd marry me" there's an equally-valid (or invalid, depending) position being taken by a guy telling his girlfriend, "if you really love me it doesn't matter". At the end of the day, do what makes you happy. I just find it to be a real shame that marriage - which has been a cornerstone of many cultures and civilizations for centuries - has finally been undone to the point of being a completely unnecessary liability by our oh-so-enlightened political class. THEY have ruined it. That's the point. If you follow some of the suggestions I made earlier it wouldn't be such a horribly one-sided liability for men and maybe we could get back to a more traditional way of memorializing committed relationships (if we even need to have such a thing - we probably don't but it'd still kind of a nice thing to have looking back on past cultures).

It appears you long for the days of male centered marriage - a myth that is often fostered by men. There were many unhappy marriages before, as you state, 'politicians wrecked marriage'. Often one, or both parties were just stuck because of the stigmata of divorce. Politicians don't ruin marriages - the people in the marriage do. Again, you seem to want to place blame all around rather than looking closer to 'home' as I stated earlier. Is a committed relationship that is unhappy something that should be memorialized - no. Yet, in the past that was often the case. It appears that along with your wife, the politicians are to be blamed for the failure of your marriage. It seems that you are willing to stretch the blame quite far, however, I would imagine that there is also some blame that could be found at your feet as well.

Final point: your assertion that somehow the blatantly mysandric (sic) family laws governing marriage, community property, divorce and separation are justifiable because "...for millennium [sic] (I do believe millennium - 1,000 years - is the correct spelling and term I wished to use) they were stacked against women..." is total garbage. Why should today's men be punished for the sins of their forefathers? It's the same devoid-of-scholarship argument that's used by some blacks claiming that they're owed compensation because somewhere in their ancestry one or more of their great-to-the-nth-grand parents were treated badly by modern standards. While I'm as abhorred by what people used to do and the fact that we used to look at slavery as acceptable, it is in no way a justification for a handout. Same goes for women in marriage situations - the laws governing these things are a knee-jerk overreaction to a sexist culture condoned abusive behavior but which has now gone away and is no longer defended by societal norms. Unfortunately the laws cannot be changed (as I stated earlier) because no politician is going to alienate the "female vote" demographic by doing the right and fair thing and shutting off the gravy train and the easy path to "free" stuff to them. The lawmakers are simply reacting (by doing nothing) to the "gimmee gimmee gimmee" attitude on the part of women who want to sit around on their asses all day in a house they didn't earn instead of working.

Women are still far more likely than men to be abused in relationship, be the ones to put careers on hold, be the ones who will care for the children. All those things add to the numbers that you see as 'skewed', but in reality basically show that marriage is not yet 'equal' between partners in many cases. And yes, pendulums do swing, and I would imagine the 'inequality' in settlements that you perceive will lessen over time. However, as recently as 1981 men were legally allowed to not tell their wives of their financial status... 35 years ago. Marriage is a partnership between many couples, and it is a male, or less often female, dominated relationship in others, there are a lot of different marriages in the world, but, with regards to equality often women still have an uphill battle, more so than a man, after a marriage has ended.

In a similar vein, I wonder if years from now people will look back on current-day attitudes towards abortion and be as equally disgusted by it as we look back on slavery and are disgusted by it. I certainly hope so. You can respond with your characteristic distorted pseudo-facts and distractions now. I won't respond to them until tomorrow at the earliest as I actually have some work to do (you know, that thing that so many women can't comprehend since they're busy sitting around in a former spouse's house all day watching "Ellen" or "Oprah" talk about what victims they all are and how they have to stick together against the big mean evil white males of the world) highlighted text mine.

Wow - well, I guess pointing out to you the the unemployment rate for men and women are exactly the same wouldn't really do much to lessen that bitterness you feel towards women.

I love men, you appear to hate women.