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Marriage has a retention problem

The phenomenon of women leaving marriage is increasingly visible and public, though the exact historical forces that brought us here remain under-discussed

ByCatherine Baab

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Published 16 hours ago

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When a heterosexual couple breaks up, who wants the split? That depends. Among the unmarried, rates break down almost evenly between women and men. But when the couple is married, it’s overwhelmingly likely to be the woman who wants the divorce. A 2017 study found that while women initiate about 70% of divorces overall, the figure climbs to roughly 90% among college-educated women.

That’s even more striking because college-educated couples have lower divorce rates overall (meaning they're less likely to divorce). But when they do divorce, it's a woman initiating the split almost 100% of the time. Within shouting distance, anyway.

And while the statistics may not be new, the conversation about them is. An entire media subculture has sprung up around women leaving marriage. All portray divorce as a wise and liberating, if not costless, choice — a rational response to an institution that’s failing women.

There are the podcasts, like How Not to Suck at Divorce. The Instagram accounts, like Hillary Livingston and Bethany Page’s Sincerely, Divorced and Taylor Winds’ mom.lawyer.divorced. The books, including Miranda July’s All Fours, Leslie Jamison’s Splinters, and Scaachi Koul's Sucker Punch.

Perhaps most popular and visible are the Reels and TikToks, many of which play separation and divorce for laughs. One recent Facebook $META -1.31% video depicted the content creator Tara Cannistraci, clad in widow’s garments, pretending to weep over her stove. “This is where he never cooked me a meal,” she wails. A few shots later, she’s in her bathroom, staring mournfully at the toilet, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex: “This is the handle he never even used!” Sometimes men are in on the joke, too.

Together, all this amounts to something like a collective accounting of why women, particularly those with the financial and social power to leave, are opting out of marriage in such disproportionate numbers. Some “quiet quit,” staying in a marriage because the switching costs are high, but knowing their hearts are no longer in it. And some pull the trigger, whether in anger, sheer fatigue, or something like joy.

Women's stories as missing exit data

“So many women are married to ‘good men’ where the marriage only works as long as they remain the default babysitter,” Lyz Lenz, a widely followed author and journalist, said in an interview with Quartz. “The moment that stops, the marriage blows up.”

Understanding this fact about their marriages, Lenz said, “is almost more exhausting and terrifying for women than just continuing to do labor.” Yet women are leaving marriage anyway — and she would know. The memoir she wrote........

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