If you’re reading this blog at all, you’re probably aware of my feelings that feminism has caused major problems for American families, most especially when it comes to broken homes. You’re probably aware that women initiate about two thirds of all divorces (perhaps more if you count men who file because they believe their marriage is already dead). You’re probably aware of how modern divorce laws drastically favor women and penalize men, that “deadbeat dads” who can’t pay their child support now spend time in, essentially, the only form of debtors prisons still left in the western world, and that all of the “domestic” violence laws are in fact stacking the deck further against men.

On occasion, though, the man is completely and totally to blame.

The story of my wife’s parents’ divorce is a long and dramatic one, so for today I’m only going to tell the short version. Essentially, my father in law went batshit insane, became convinced that my mother in law was an alcoholic (she’s got issues, no doubt, but she’s not an alcoholic), dragged the family through nearly three years of divorce court hell, specifically and intentionally attempted to sabotage the lives of his two daughters just to score points in the divorce proceedings, went crazy paranoid (including making use of hidden cameras, hidden microphones, computer monitoring devices, and more – on his own family), and basically did everything he could to destroy the family. On top of all that, he is generally just a giant douchebag. He cleans up well and puts on a good appearance in public, but underneath it he is one of the weakest, most cowardly, most petty, most selfish, and most mean-spirited men I’ve ever known.

Let’s put it this way: my wife’s councilor, a 20 year veteran of the field, called it one of the worst divorces she’d ever seen – specifically, she told me that only two other cases she’d ever dealt with really were in the same league.

The truly pathetic part is how little he gained out of all of it. In our state, divorces are generally pretty simple, all things considered. No matter how much time or money you spend in court, about 95% of cases end up with a 50/50 split of the property, the mother gets the children and the father gets visitation rights (usually two nights a week plus every other weekend).

After nearly three years of hell, my in-laws’ divorce ended up with – wait for it – a 50/50 split of the assets, the mother got the one still-minor child (my sister-in-law), the father got visitation rights. So essentially nothing was accomplished except that this guy (I hesitate to use the word man) put his daughters through a few years of sheer hell for nothing. Despite the fact that all of his friends (except one, but that’s a story of its own) kept telling him over and over again that, you guessed it, he’d end up with a 50/50 split, mom gets the kids, he gets visitation rights.

The story of just how crazy this guy got is so messed up that if I tried publishing it as fiction, I don’t think most people would buy it. They wouldn’t be able to suspend their disbelief that anybody would actually do that. I have trouble believing it, and I was there. As a side note, in this case he also was the one who filed, and my mother in law would’ve been happy to call the whole divorce off up until about the end of the second year.

So… there are at least some cases where fathers are the ones destroying families, and that deserves to be pointed out. Even so, this story doesn’t let feminism off the hook. Indeed, there are many lessons of this story that still feed directly into some of the arguments of the MRA community.

  1. Our culture of easy divorce, made possible by feminists, is what allowed this story to happen. In a culture where divorce was actually hard (ie, required proof of infidelity or the like), he’d never have been able to leave her as there was never even any hint of infidelity on her side (I’m unsure on his side; we have suspicions but no direct evidence). Indeed, his asshole behavior during the entire event had an observable Game effect on my mother-in-law – she never would’ve even dreamed of cheating on him.
  2. As many in the MRA community point out, in many ways he’s adjusted to the divorced life far better than she has. Our state requires a 90 day waiting period after a divorce before you can get remarried. He married his new wife almost to the day on the 90 day mark after the divorce was finalized. He was engaged to this new, 10 year younger woman before the divorce was even finalized. This shows a good example of both the preselection effect and the fact that men, on average, have a much easier time in the dating market after a divorce.

Unsurprisingly given the attempts he made to essentially destroy her life, my wife and I have very little to do with the man anymore. He walked my wife down the aisle on our wedding day and then we didn’t see him again until my wife was pregnant with our son nearly 2 years later. Since our son was born, we’ve seen him a bit more often – about 3 times a year or so on average so far. We are very careful to be sure he doesn’t totally fuck up our son… but we don’t want to keep him away from his grandfather. At least, not until he’s old enough to see how messed up grandpa is and decide on his own that he doesn’t want to spend time around him, either.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife’s birthday was recently. Her father e-mailed her asking to take us out to dinner around then so that he could see. We put on the mental armor and went out to eat with him and his new family. He was on good behavior (he generally is in public, which is why we make anything we do with him as public as we can) and we got a free meal out of him (he owes us a lot more if you ask me, but at least we got that).

And I had one major advantage in dealing with him that my wife, unfortunately, doesn’t have. Those who know me know that this is not exactly the kind of thing I would generally think or even condone thinking about most people. But really, he deserved it and you really do have to be in the proper mental frame to deal with him. Anyway, I had a major boost just because I was able to honestly look him in the eye, smile, and think to myself, “You may be a douche, and you’ve caused us a lot of trouble… but I fucked your daughter this morning.”

It’s all in the reframe, even if it’s only mental.