The Real Causes of Divorce -- America Has to Stop Blaming It on Women [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/visions/real-causes-divorce-america-has-stop-blaming-it-women?akid=9900.277129.FBrVD-&rd=1&src=newsletter771866&t=3




A recent poll revealed a clear tendency to blame women for not keeping their husbands happy and a habit of viewing divorced women as unwanted and pitiable.

That was in the United Arab Emirates. But what about the United States of America? You’d think a more enlightened view of women and marriage might prevail.

Think again. The Huffington Post ran a front-page piece just this week with a headline that would make any old-school patriarch proud: “Women: Five Reasons Your Divorce Is Your Fault.” The author, self-appointed intimacy expert Laura Doyle, spent several paragraphs hectoring women for sins including “Taking the same approach at home as you do at work” and “Rejecting his efforts to make you happy.” She reserves special scorn for present-day Lysistratas who are cruelly “withholding sex” from their partners, as if they were using sex as a punishment rather than simply too tired or not aroused enough to want it. Doyle’s “remedy” for this transgression? “Consider making yourself available for sex at least once a week in support of your mutual goal of connecting.” Problem solved!

Yes, it appears that right here in 2013, somebody is paying Ms. Doyle to expound on the following fantastically stupid credo: “I teach intimacy skills, but not to couples and not to men. I only teach them to women because we are the ones who have the power to make our relationships intimate.”

Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, teach intimacy, evidently.