Once again, Lori is not the author of this blog; rather, it was written by Michael Davis, one of the men who lurks around her Facebook page. This is just a copy and paste of a comment he wrote on her page. It's a fairly short blog, but there is a lot to say. And, as always, even though they're not Lori's words directly, it certainly is fair to say she is endorsing the words and is in agreement with them.
One question I would ask a woman who’s thinking about divorcing a man simply because they’ve “grown apart” is, “In what way is your life going to be improved by divorce? This is presumably the man who knows you better than any other person on the planet, has accepted you as you are, has raised children with you, has provided for you, has been faithful to you, and has given you a home. So what situation do you think you’re going into that will be better than what you have now?”
Before I say anything negative, I want to point out that I am in agreement with the basic point of this blog, as long as we accept all of the assumptions uncritically. In other words, if the point is nothing more than that remaining married is the ideal, I have no problem with that. Certainly no one gets married planning to divorce. And as a Christian, I do believe marriage is a major promise and should be taken seriously. The Bible does allow for divorce in certain cases, such as infidelity, and I can't imagine a reasonable person condemning the choice to divorce in a case of abuse. But, according to the assumptions in the paragraph above, if it's simply the case that one spouse "fell out of love" with the other or grew bored, divorce would be a tragic end and I hope every effort would be made to avoid it. To be clear, I don't feel I have any right to tell anyone in that situation what they should do; that's between them, their spouse, and God. But, speaking very generally and basically, there's nothing wrong with supposing the ideal to be avoiding divorce.
The problem with what Michael Davis wrote is his bullying tone and his shallow assumptions, both of which will become much worse as we go along. Already, in the paragraph above, he is assuming the woman initiates the divorce, and that she did so because she was bored. Undoubtedly, these cases exist. In fact, I quickly googled "reasons for divorce" and found an article stating the top reason is "lack of commitment" (75%). But the important thing about a statistic is that it has no relevance to an individual case; it only makes a statement about an entire sample or population. You cannot take the statistic above and apply it to every individual case to discourage divorce universally. The article also included many other reasons that had fairly high percentages as well: domestic violence (23.5%), getting married too young (45.1%, and ironic considering Lori's advice to do exactly that), and infidelity or extramarital affairs (59.6%). Davis acts like all these reasons don't exist or are unimportant, and assumes the man is a complete angel in his paragraph above. If he were only addressing those situations, and discouraging divorcing due to boredom, that would be fine. But, as will be come more clear, he is painting a picture of the results of any divorce, no matter the reasons, and trying his best to frighten women out of it by convincing them that no matter how bad things are now, they'll be worse if they're divorced. (here's a link to the article of anyone is interested...it only used a sample size of 52, so I'm not sure we can assume those percentages hold universally, but certainly they are all real factors, and the conclusions are not unreasonable: https://www.insider.com/why-people-get-divorced-2019-1).
Let’s do away with the pretense and the divorce porn peddled by the feminists. Women who seek divorce because they’ve “grown apart” are presumably over 40. Well, I hope you have some job skills, because when you’ve taken that faithful man to the cleaners, you’re going to be trying to finance two households on the income that used to comfortably finance only one. Get ready to take a serious downgrade to your standard of living.
Davis gives no justification for targeting women over 40, except that it happens to be convenient for the next points he wants to make. And the assumptions only multiply from here. He assumes the woman does not have a job or any job skills, which is ironic considering the fact that according to Lori's teachings, there is no reason for the woman to have job skills. Lori criticizes women for planning for "what-ifs" if their husband were to pass away or leave them. So Davis is criticizing women for doing the very thing Lori teaches them to do! That's only half true, of course...it's not so much that he's criticizing women for not having job skills, but rather, telling them that because they have no job skills, they would be stupid to divorce their husbands.
This is nothing more than trying to scare people into remaining married because their "standard of living" will diminish. Is that a reason to remain married? To maintain your standard of living? I think a lot of women don't think it's worth it to endure an unfaithful or abusive spouse just so they can have a boat and nice clothing and jewelry. And there's another instance of irony...aren't Lori and her followers constantly pushing families to lower their standard of living as far as necessary to enable the wife to stay at home? So what kind of sense does it make to use the possibility of a more affluent lifestyle to entice women to remain married?
Also, your youth, fertility, and looks have diminished. The men your age who are single have probably been burned already by divorce and don’t have money, and if they’ve never married and DO have money, they’ve probably been playing the field this whole time and are only interested in dating much younger women.
Speak for yourself, dude. My wife isn't yet 40, but based on how she's aged so far I have no doubt her looks will not have "diminished." But that's beside the point. I shouldn't even have to say that women have value beyond their youth, fertility, and looks. This is yet another weird point coming from a source that supposedly holds older women in such high regard. The rest of the paragraph just has more convenient assumptions and sure makes it seem like this is just another of those bitter MGTOW men.
Let’s face the real issue. Your kids are out of the house and you’re bored. Or worse, you probably buried yourself in the role of “mother” so hard for so long that you can’t relate to your husband any more. You treated that man like an ATM in order to buy the right house and the right car so that you could impress the other women in the right neighborhood. He probably stayed with you for the sake of the children, and then he resigned himself that his prime was past and he was willing to “make it work.” But you’re motivated by some dream of greener pastures now that you’ve drained his wallet.
The more he goes on, the more confused I am about why Lori would ever post such a thing. Why did he put "mother" in quotes, as if to express contempt for the role? He actually could have made one good point there, that parents have to be careful not to neglect each other because the kids take up so much time and energy. But he ruined it by showing disdain towards mothers.
I cracked up when I read the part about treating a man like an ATM. First, Lori teaches that any wife should be happy if her husband provides an income and should not expect anything else from him. This is, quite literally, treating him like an ATM. And second, Davis himself is treating men like ATMs when the only reason he can offer for women to stay married is to maintain their standard of living! Davis is telling women to treat their husband like an ATM, and then yelling at them for doing so. In the end, I think he's just confused.
And bitter. "He probably stayed with you for the sake of the children." What is the point of such an acidic tone? Again, this is a hypothetical woman he is speaking to (unless he has a specific one in mind, which certainly could explain his clear resentment), so there's literally no reason to say such a thing unless he just wants to hurt people.
By the last paragraph, Davis abandons all restraint and leaves us with one last emotional outburst:
Good luck. You’re probably going to wind up cashiering at Walmart and in a crappy apartment collecting cats until you get too old for that. Hopefully at that point, one of your kids will take you in. Your husband, on the other hand, will keep working and continue to put up with his situation just like he’s been doing for a few of decades now. Maybe, he’ll actually get some fishing or chess or poker in with some buddies. At least, it’ll be quiet after you’ve left.
I hardly have an idea of what to say to that. It's just....ugly. It's pure bullying, meant to terrify women about what might happen if they get a divorce, no matter the reason. Like I said before, if you have to scare someone into remaining married, there's probably some problems with the marriage that need to be addressed. I certainly don't want my wife staying with me just because she likes my income. In fact, rather than being a deterrent to divorce, this blog is more like an argument for why women should be educated and have job skills in case they do end up either divorced or widows!
Again, if we're strictly talking about a divorce occurring just because one spouse got bored of the other, I am on the same page that this is not a good thing. But if that's the message Lori wants to communicate, any way of doing it has to be better than this. Talk about how it's natural after time (and especially kids) for it to become harder and harder to find time to work on your relationship with your spouse. Suggest going to counseling, or being deliberate about regular date nights. Point out that generally, you get out of a marriage what you put into it. Be encouraging about it, share some good advice, talk about how tragic it would be for your marriage to end (especially if you have kids). But this is just a bunch of fear-based, bullying vitriol. And in the last paragraph, Davis gets so worked up he drops the pretense and shows that he's not even talking encouraging women to say in a good marriage. Instead, he just tells them that their husbands will be happier without them. This is a very sick individual. Does Lori actually think any woman would read this and come away inspired not to get a divorce after all?
Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/something-to-ponder-before-you-divorce/
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