The Bill and Melinda Gates divorce — just another in the flood of divorce initiated by women.
They say that up to 90% of divorce is initiated by women. I don’t think there is actually any study that backs that up, but it is just one of those things that seems true. Think about all of the divorces you have personally heard of. Of those, which ones were initiated by the women? For me, that would be close to 100% women initiated divorce. In most of those stories, the man doesn’t want to get divorced and feels blind-sighted but the women is hell bent on destroying the marriage. If you are a celebrity like Bill and Melinda Gates, the chances that the women files for divorce rises to near certainty. Just look at Angelina Jolie, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Aniston and the list goes on of women who initiated the divorce. Hardly a week goes by in People magazine where some lady has filed divorce on their lying, cheating, no good for nothing husband.
Even if it isn’t 90%, women definitely initiate divorce far more frequently than men and there are studies to back that up.
“https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_Who_wants_the_Breakup.pdf”
It mainly shows that women are far more likely to breakup the relationship if they are married. If just cohabitating, then there isn’t a statistically significant difference between men or women initiating the breakup. This study looked at several factors including education and concluded that none of these factors made any significant difference. From pg. 18:
“power differentials in education, or income between partners do not appear to explain the women’s role in wanting divorce”
From pg. 20:
“Neither women’s supposedly greater sensitivity to relationship problems, nor income gaps, nor education gaps, nor conservative religious identity, nor woman’s age, nor the presence of children explain why women are so much more likely than men to desire exit from heterosexual marriage”
So, it is quite the mystery why women are initiating divorces in such large numbers. Even though women appear to want marriage more, it turns out that if they get married, the women are most likely to just toss them back in the sea.
Bill Gates is just the next guy caught up in this wave of women initiated divorce. So what’s happening here?
I think the answer is simple. The women just aren’t ‘happy’. They say that if momma ain’t happy then ain’t nobody happy — couldn’t be more of a truism. If they were happy, then they obviously wouldn’t go through all the trouble of hiring an expensive lawyer and filing for the divorce papers (which is a lot of trouble) and dragging her poor husband and children through the process. Remember that either party could have filed the divorce as the petitioner, but women are especially motivated to do so.
This begs the question of why women are especially not happy. People may not realize or want to admit this, but ‘happy’ is a ‘state of mind’ and it is actually one of the few things that we fully have control over. Yes, you heard me, you have control over whether you are happy or not. It is, in fact, entirely in your head.
If you don’t believe me then, imagine for a moment that you have been transported back to world war one and you are sitting a muddy stinking trench, starving with dead bodies all around. You have been there for a month and will likely die tomorrow. You are then magically transported to your current life where you have food, housing, a computer to read this by and nobody trying to kill you. Would you not be gloriously ‘happy’ that you have been whisked away from that genuine misery? What do you really have to complain about compared to that?
But yet, you still might not be happy. I think because as humans, we tend to tune out all the constants in our lives. If Bill Gates lives in a $127 million dollar mansion, he will soon tune that out and feel the same way as the guy who has the modest home in the suburbs. I think it has to do more with our ‘expectations’. If our lives go according to our expectations, whether we live in a mansion or condo, then we tend to be ‘happy’. If our lives do not go according to our expectations, then we are not happy.
So, this ‘women unhappy’ thing is more about unmet expectations. And what are expectations? These are merely things that we ‘expect’. And this is definitely something that we can consciously consider and control. So the question then becomes what are women expecting in a marriage that they aren’t getting that makes them so unhappy that they want to initiate a divorce? This is something they wouldn’t expect if they were just cohabitating where the initiation of a breakup falls to a more reasonable 50/50 ratio.
It is just a matter of speculation as to why women initiate divorce much more than men, but it definitely has something to do with actually being ‘married’ compared with cohabitating. This just might be another reason for a guy to not get married if their partner will become unhappier if they do get married.
It could be any number of things that make women unhappy in a marriage. For example, women often have to do double duty in a marriage by both working full time and still taking care of the majority of the house work. Perhaps women have higher expectations that their partner will pick up the house work if they are married compared to cohabitation. Since they are ‘married’ and their partner is not going to run away any time soon, they may feel more able to confront their partner about this and when things do not change, this leads to increased conflict and unhappiness.
Women might also expect more love and romance in a marriage. After a while, things naturally get more boring and it is like living with a roommate rather than a lover. I think men may not be as sensitive to this as women and are perfectly happy as long as things are going OK. The one narrative that I hear a lot is that the guy thinks things are going OK — not great, but the woman wants out — like a trapped animal. These couples would seem to have it all — a nice house, car, some kids, maybe a couple of billion dollars - the perfect couple — but the wife is terribly unhappy.
Whatever the cause, unhappiness leads to a death spiral of more unhappiness, more arguments because of unhappiness, more unmet expectations, less love, more fear until the wife looks like a big angry bear who wants a divorce. You may have thought it was silly that I said the reason for wanting a divorce is because women just aren’t happy — as if that were some oversimplification. But it isn’t. Unhappiness begets more unhappiness. The cautionary tale is to keep your happiness/unhappiness in check and if you see it spiraling out of control, you need to try to do something about it. Much of this has to do with your own expectations, some realistic, and a lot which is not realistic in this crazy mixed up world. Remember, you are in charge of your expectations — so you are in charge of your happiness. Who knows why Melinda initiated a divorce against Bill, but one thing is for sure, she was not happy.