Author: Curt Doolittle

MORE FASCINATING HUMAN STUFF : RATES OF GAY DIVORCE

(interesting)

Regarding UK civil marriages.

Women, whether straight or gay:

a) want to tie the knot faster than men

b) have higher _emotional_ expectations than men

c) want to end it sooner, and more frequently than men

Men, by contrast, are:

a) slower to grasp and understand emotional relations than women.

b) form lasting emotional relations mostly out of habituation.

c) stay in relationships out of habituation – ‘comfort’, (Regularity of a relationship rather than stimulation from the relationship. This is partly because of the long emotional adaptation time men require vs women.)

d) demonstrate being more sentimental than women after the end of a relationship.

Durability of Relations:

For women, children are permanent relations, but men are disposable relations. For men, all women are permanent relations. It’s just reproductive economics. It is this way. Because it has to be this way. Women build their children but men build entire tribes.

It’s not complicated. What makes it complicated is confusing equality under the law in disputes over property, with equality of productivity in the work place, with inequality of reproductive, moral and personal interests.

We are equal in economic cooperation, but not in emotional interests or reproduction.

QUOTE

“In the seven years since gay couples were able to have civil partnerships, 3.2 per cent of male unions ended in dissolution, compared to 6.1 per cent of female couples.”

(Note: there is a pretty common life cycle to breakups. It pretty much takes about 20 years to be sure you’ll stay together. But rates decline rapidly after five to seven years.)

“Sociologists believe the lower rates of ‘divorces’ among gay men may reflect a trend of women committing sooner and having higher expectations for a relationship. Women in civil partnerships tie the knot at an average age of 37.6, compared to men, for whom the average age is 40. Erzsebet Bukodim, sociologist at the University of Oxford, said: “In heterosexual marriage the divorce rate is higher if you enter marriage at a very young age. That might be one of the reasons we’re seeing this [high dissolution rate for women] in civil partnerships.”

“Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, has found in successive studies that women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are twice as likely to dissolve their civil partnerships than men. He said: “This reflects trends in a heterosexual marriage because women are more prone to say they want to marry – but they’re also more likely to initiate a divorce. Women usually have higher demands on relationship quality, that’s often been said in studies. Even if you control for age there is still a trend of more women ending partnerships than men.”

“Previous figures show British women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to file for divorce than men. Women initiated the divorce in two thirds of cases in the UK in 2011.”