In sickness and in health: Study suggests divorce is more common when WIVES fall ill

Toucan_Pecan

What are your thoughts about this study?

A new study has revealed that serious illness raises the risk of divorce in older married couples, but far more so if it's the wife who falls ill, not the husband.
The research, which looked at over 2,700 older married couples during the course of almost 20 years, reflects many other similar studies in finding that roughly a third of all the marriages ended in divorce.

Although the study didn't delve into why this might be the case, Dr Karraker suggests that it could have something to do with a woman's tendency to be instinctively better caregivers.
'Gender norms and social expectations about caregiving may make it more difficult for men to provide care to ill spouses,' she stated in a press release.


Dr Lawrence Balter, a Psychoanalyst and media consultant, offered a related explanation when he spoke to MailOnline.
He agreed that men can often have more trouble dealing with the trauma related to their spouse's illness.
'Perhaps men are less able to tolerate vulnerability in themselves and, consequently, in others,' he theorizes. 'Being ill can evoke feelings of weakness and insecurity. That sort of disavowal leads some men flee rather than rise to the occasion.'
But while Dr Karraker concedes that her work 'suggests that men are jerks', her final comments on the study offer some interesting food for thought.
She observes that while her team doesn't have solid figures on who initiated the divorces in the marriages they looked at, 'in most cases', it was the women who did so.

'So it could be that when women become ill and their husbands are not doing a very good job caring for them, they would rather that he just go,' she says. 'And they rely on friends and family who will take care of them.'

I wonder if these women are getting ill in part because they are in miserable marriages?


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2617923/In-sickness-health-youre-husband-Study-suggests-divorce-common-WIVES-fall-ill.html

Kabazzzz

This is actually quite interesting.


I'm 34, have two children and I was married for 12 years (with my ExH for 17 years). I was diagnosed with a muscle wasting condition in Oct 2011, he started an affair with a barmaid at the club that he is a doorman at a few months later, we split in July 2012.


We split up 9 months after my diagnosis.


In all honesty, I'd rather face my condition on my own than rely on someone who was such an emotional retard. Perhaps he couldn't cope? It's possible. I do know that he lacked any empathy to the situation (before we split).


Maybe women are inherently nurturing as we have that "mothering instinct" (to a degree) which enables us to cope better when it comes to caring for a partner...

JIL

I was very poorly for ten months.
My husband was really good. He worked, looked after the house and me, took me to all my hospital appointments, it can't have been easy for him, if people spoke to him they always wanted to ask about me. It took a while once I was on the mend for us to resume us being a couple. But I do know I would not have wanted anyone else other than him looking after me. I would do the same for him.

ciderwithrosie_2

Some men are very selfish and consider themselves and their needs above everyone else's in a family. For example, if a wife has done the majority of the housework, bill paying and childcare, then it will be a shock for the husband to have to take that on as well as being a carer to the wife and some just wouldn't want to do it as their needs/wants would be relegated.

In my experience, women are more used to juggling it all and putting others first, it would not be so much of a lifestyle change.

Tygermoth

After working in the care sector for years my personal observation concurs with this study.

some men just don't seem to have the ability to make the sacrifices to handle very ill or unwell partners. they lack the mental framework to take on the huge emotional and time challenges.

This is a sweeping statement i will admit but i believe it to be true in a large part of the male population.

Women are using to making compromises or sacrificing their bodies, time and energy. We are more used to being flexible in our thinking and able to make hard choices in most cases without becoming a martyr. Men rarely have to deal with these challenges therefore don't have the mental framework. In most cases they will become so mean, emotionally distant and 'just get over it' or choose to look outside the marriage for distraction causing great distress and in most cases the breakdown of the marriage.

I personally found partners that had been more 'hands on' with child care and got up to their elbows in nappy changes and school runs were better at being supportive. The families where the father worked and mum carried the household weight more on her own were more likely to see the wife as not staying in their role as the carer for the family and reacted poorly to the change in the household dynamics.

This being said i would like to reiterate, no single man or marriage is a stereotype each is diffrent. so no offence meant.

SailorSam

It's not as exactually what the survey is talking about or some of the previous posters but, my Mum had a brain haemorrage when i was in my 20s and they told her she was lucky to live. After that she had to pack-up work and take things a lot easier. She was already divorced so on her own. I don't think until then we'd been particularly close but while my Sisters went off and did thier own things i did lots around the house and carried my Mum financially.

DKLS

I looked after my ill ex for over 10yrs, whilst she sought a diagnosis for her consultant confusing symptoms.
I didn't leave her because of her illnesses, but simply I fell out of love with her.

growler834

It's not been the case in my family. I have had cancer twice - at age 39 & age 51 - and my hubby has been great looking after me. OK we have no children of our own (his from a previous marriage are adults with their own families now) and hubby has always been the main cook as he is brilliant at it but he had to learn to use the washing machine, iron, do the shopping & cleaning & help me with my personal needs & mobility after my ops. I don't know what I would do without him.

My brother has helped my sister-in-law with the housework & personal needs etc for years as her MS gets worse (their kids are now adult & have moved away) and they are still happy together. My dad is currently caring for my poor mum at home as she loses her life to cancer. Perhaps our family are more loving, caring & determined to stick to our wedding vows of 'in sickness....' ??

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

One of the defining moments for knowing a relationship is over is what happens when you are unwell or injured.

For example, in hospital with a broken neck (accident entirely his fault). 'I've phoned my mum and dad and they've come to take me home. Get someone to leave a message because they're taking me out for dinner'. That one was binned.

When confirmed that RA was back. 'It's all in your mind. You just need to think positively and exercise. You don't know what pain and tiredness is, you don't work a tenth as hard as I do. You're just mental and lazy' (Followed by finding somebody new on the grounds that, at 29, I had turned into an old lady)

'How can you be so mean to me, can't you understand how hard it is for me to be under all this stress, you've put me under so much pressure, it's not fair, I'm suffering here....' Yup. So mean of me. I'd pointed out that, since I'd found a lump, put through an emergency suspected cancer referral and had two scans which thankfully confirmed all was ok, it would have been really nice if I could have a hug. He got binned.




Now I'm with somebody who took time off work to look after me when I had flu. I didn't ask, I didn't even expect to see him at all. But he spent the week with me, just making sure I was alright - admittedly, the last time I felt that ill, I had pneumonia, but it's the first time anybody's ever seen being ill as not being a direct insult to their manhood, never mind actually caring enough to want to be there.



I'm not saying men are crap at all - what I'm saying is that, if somebody can't handle illness or injury in a partner, whatever gender, the relationship hasn't got a future IMO.


After all, if when you might actually need them, they're selfish, disinterested or whining about themselves, they're showing you that they really don't care. Why waste more time waiting for them to let you down again?

Morglin

I think it perhaps depends on what the illness or disability is.

Short or end term illnesses do not seem to bust up many marriages, but a sudden, permanent, disabling condition often can.

I think it can be underestimated how much a marriage has to change when one of you suddenly becomes 'a patient' and the other becomes a 'carer' (I am talking serious disabilities here), it alters the whole dynamics. It's hard to be lovers (in the emotional sense) when you have had to change the whole ethos of things.

Some marriages survive, others don't.

Mine didn't, so though that was, to be fair, for a variety of reason, not just disability, although that did bring the existing problems into sharper focus.

It's not just the physical stuff (which can be grim lol), but anyone suddenly becoming disabled will generally have huge mental shifts in mood, which does not make them easy to deal with.

The spouse also, maybe, has to deal with the fact that HIS life will now not pan out as he had planned.

Adjustments and stress all round.

But, there is light at the end of the tunnel - I called time on the 30 year marriage myself, got a divorce, remarried a man who I love to bits, and because we are both disabled, it all muddles along with a mix of black humour, pragmatism and a few glasses of wine.....;)

Lin

want_to_save

i met my oh 1 1/2 months before i was diagnosed with crohns and he has been with me (and been my rock) through many ups and downs in the last 17 years. i would not be without him and he has never moaned about looking after me when i need it.