 How to Be The Almost Perfect Wife 3 Communication Pitfalls to Avoid Every Day I Love You More What is Romantic Love Anyway? |  |
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| Divorce Busting Divorce Creates New Problems Michele Weiner-Davis When people divorce they have visions of better lives. Old problems will vanish, they hope, as new dreams take their place. These dreams usually include meeting candidates for more intimate relationships, more compatible sexual partners, improved financial status, more freedom to pursue personal goals and new opportunities to make independent choices. As explained above, these dreams frequently do not materialize, creating a whole new set of problems. Even when desired changes do occur, they are not without unintended or unexpected consequences. Let us take a look at some frequent but unexpected consequences of divorce. Money Matters If you are a woman, the statistics are bleak. Lenore Weitzman, a sociologist who conducted an extensive study of divorced families, wrote in her book The Divorce Revolution that one year after divorce, women's standard of living decreases by 73 percent while men's increases by 42 percent. Furthermore, alimony is a thing of the past. Women seldom are awarded it. Weitzman writes: These apparently simple statistics have far-reaching social and economic consequences. For most women and children, divorce means precipitous downward mobility - both economically and socially. The reduction in income brings residential moves and inferior housing, drastically diminished or nonexistent funds for recreation and leisure, and intense pressures due to inadequate time and money. (Quoted in Berman, 1991, p. 57.) Unfortunately, all too often, effects of changing financial status are overlooked, minimized or denied. Where Is Mr. Right? There are other disadvantages to being a newly divorced woman. According to the Census Bureau, divorced women are far less likely to remarry than divorced men. Forty percent of the women who divorce after age thirty do not remarry. A portion of those who do not remarry may do so by choice, but many say that the pool of marriage-minded men available to these women has been shrinking. It seems that many men in similar age brackets are marrying younger women. Imagine how shocking it is to the woman who leaves a marriage hoping to find intimacy and romance in the perfect new mate and finds herself alone instead. Loneliness is a frequent complaint in my therapy practice. "How do I meet someone if I can't stand the bar scene?" is the $64,000 question.
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