Like many of you I was blindsided by my ex-wife's decision to divorce and found out about her affair. it's been a hell of 5 months dealing with this and it's hard to not feel hopeless.I just wanted you guys to know that you're not alone and I wanted you to think about some numbers that I came up with.

you might be thinking based on reading posts in this subreddit that women are toxic, you're never going to be happy again, and you should never consider marriage. but let's take a second and think about this. I've been spending a lot of time with various friends and family and I see so many marriages where things are going mostly well but obviously they have arguments and they annoy each other, but they make it work... it doesn't result in a divorce. That's been bugging me a lot recently looking at all of these people and saying to myself wow they are able to make it work and they were having similar if not worse issues then I was in my marriage maybe it really wasn't me maybe it was my ex-wife who had the problem

  1. so I think the first issue is that because we are in this subreddit we are automatically being exposed to selection bias. of course it seems like all of these marriages are ending in divorce and it seems like everyone is going through all of this pain because that's the selection bias who is in the subreddit

  2. but let's look at the numbers: so about 50% of marriages end in divorce and 70% of those are initiated by women. while I can't find exact numbers, based on my research and using chat GPT it thought that about 25% of those divorces involved men who are most likely in our situation where we were blindsided had no idea it was coming... the wife was completely avoidant maybe had an affair and didn't even try to save the marriage

  3. So if we calculate those numbers 0.5 * .7 * .25 = between 8 and 9%. Let's round it up to 10% to be safe. so while things may feel hopeless I really only think that 10% of the time you're going to find yourself in these situations. that means the other 90% of the time hopefully the marriage and or relationship is going to work flawlessly or maybe you're the one to initiate for divorce or maybe you won't be blindsided and at least will feel relieved that you tried and it just didn't work

  4. plus another thing to consider your first marriage was probably when you were really young and didn't know yourself so going forward into your next relationship you're going to have a lot more confidence in what you want you're going to do a lot of healing and growing and so I think that gives you even better odds to make things work

    good luck and hang in there this holiday season