How did you know you were ready for divorce?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He is a good dad, but he was yelling at me all the time. I couldn’t seem to do anything right and I couldn’t make him happy anymore. I was getting dressed down in public, in front of the kids, you name it. And then my kids were picking up the behavior and my sweet children were suddenly yelling and berating each other and their friends. That’s when I decided no more. We did therapy, he went to anger management classes. But even still, I was done. He blames me entirely. He says if I could only have forgiven him we would be fine.

Why do people say "he was a good dad, but" and then describe a terrible dad?

+1. Good dads are not abusive toward their wives. Men who are abusive to wives are, by definition, bad parents.

So women who cheat or deny their husbands sex are also bad parents?

Yes, women who cheat are bad parents. Lying to and manipulating your partner is abusive.

Women who deny sex are not bad parents. The man knows he is being denied sex and is free to have an open and explicit conversation about the future terms of the marriage and/or divorce.

I am so tired of the “woman who doesn’t have sex with her husband is abusive” trope. Do you have female children? Do you want your girl child to live in a world where her body is not her own and she is not allowed to say “no” to her husband?

Divorce and split custody is not per se bad. It is the lying, the manipulation, the prioritization of a fantasy world and other traits that leak our into other relationships that are bad.

There are a million legitimate reasons why married couples don’t have sex. Equating that to the abuse of cheating is offensive, IMO. We live in a post-marital rape world. Men don’t have an absolute right to sex from their wives anymore.

I love sex, and I agree that a sexless marriage is unlikely to last long term because sex is a human need. But it’s not abusive.

It is absolutely abusive if she denies you sex. Not if she does it on one particular occasion, from time to time, but if she does it for an extended period, for months or years on end. She knows it makes you miserable, it is not a secret that your spouse hates not having sex, but she doesn't care. That is abuse, period.

I am certainly going to tell my daughter that she has an obligation to have sex with her husband, which doesn't mean she has to say "yes" whenever he wants (so enough of that stupid strawman already) but it does mean that she has to say yes with some reasonable frequency.

[Anonymous]

My two-year-old would try to yell over him when he was yelling at me - and I was crying. She remembers him being “mad at mommy” two years later. So glad I left.