I love the work that I do for reasons I will most likely write about for the remainder of my life. I will hold onto hopes that my words might influence a person’s thinking and feeling and then influence the course of their day and their life. Everything strings together.
Although my work has always involved both males and females, it is predominately with men that I find myself talking and listening. The most challenging conversations over the past year have been about the topic of divorce. I’ve heard the frustration and the anger from several men about their divorce process. The stories are different but the themes run deep and so consistent in our culture.
We have become a society that demands equal rights for everyone regardless of anything. We have a blame game going on that the men who have been in charge for the history of our country should be paying a price. The problem however is that there is sufficient blame to go around and be shared by everyone.
If we as women want equal treatment, then why do women want to have their husbands support them for the rest of their lives or for years beyond the time of the marriage and the time when their shared children need their mom at home? Is it fear? Is it a punishment? What sort of equality is it?
Our cultural lingo describes that men in a divorce mysteriously drop their earning ability, suddenly have no cash, have businesses that close. Why? Frustration is one of the answers, one of several.
We enter into marriage with high hopes, if we enter with integrity. We ought to find ways to close it with that same integrity no matter what the circumstances are, no matter what, no matter what! There is no vengeance that we can ever deliver in this life that will be sufficient when we lead with the need for it. There is no amount of cash or any lifestyle bought and paid for that will mend a heart that has been broken. I see it every day.
The maneuvers we all go through in our love relationships take many forms. The tears that I have seen shed by men falsely accused of violence, slapped with protective orders, evicted from their homes, and forced into contrived legal proceedings is painful and it is wrong. As a culture, we are sympathetic to women who face abuse. Our ears go deaf and our hearts are cold however when it is the man who claims abuse at the hand of the woman.
Why is that? Where are the equal rights then? Where is the equality of the compassion? The tears from a man are every bit as wet and salty and stingingly painful as those of a woman.
