No one hates marriage. Women are just demanding better men. | Opinion

We eloped in the golden light of a New Hampshire summer afternoon, and I could not have predicted how horrifically it would end less than two years later.

My then-husband’s predilection for infidelity, the overwhelming burden of domestic labor I undertook while completing medical school, the daily fear for my safety I felt living with him – all of which emerged only afterwe wed – compelled me to file for divorce.

I thought about the children I wanted to have and knew, after our final confrontation – one that left me fearing for my life – that I could not have children with him. I wanted my children’s father to model healthy emotional regulation, selflessness and fidelity, and that certainly wasn’t going to happen with my husband.

"I’m the one who demanded a divorce," I told my closest supporters, “but he was the one to walk out on the marriage.”

My lawyer initially encouraged me to file for a no-fault divorce on "irreconcilable differences" as the fastest way to escape him legally. He leaned back in his chair with a look of resignation. Most judges are pretty jaded over marital infidelity, he told me. But my then-husband was the most egregious case he'd seen in his years of practice.

I declined the no-fault divorce and filed on fault grounds of adultery. I was tired of letting him evade responsibility, and that first step toward freedom reclaimed months of my lost self-worth. 

Judges are jaded, I pondered afterward, meaning they must see this all too frequently. Meaning that the “sacred” institution of marriage is more of a farce than we acknowledge openly. This is the failing of the institution, not of women who eschew it for lives of freedom, self-respect and fulfillment. 

Do we really want more marriages, or better ones?

We should be paying attention to the quality of American marriages, not marriage itself as an end point and a marker of societal stability. Almost daily, I see female patients in my office who cry over their husbands’ selfishness and weaponized incompetence, which has consequences for the wives’ mental health: “I want a partner who respects and loves me, not an extra child!”

As many as half of marriages end in divorce, and women initiate 70% of divorce filings. Superficially, the complaint that women are the problem with marriage in America today seems valid, but an exploration of the reasons behind women’s divorce filings paints a different picture.

Poor relationship quality, grossly uneven distribution of household labor and caregiving responsibilities, and spousal betrayal are key contributing factors. The evidence shows that marriage benefits men health-wise. The same benefits do not hold for women if marital satisfaction is low. 

My grandmother’s generation – and indeed, my grandmother herself – had to tolerate low-quality, demeaning, faithless marriages to men who did not love them without the financial freedom and agency afforded women of my generation.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to, and many women like me are realizing that we don’t have to endure disrespect, abuse, infidelity and irresponsibility for the sake of the diamond ring and the flimsy veneer of the happy family.

Statements like Isabel Brown’s brazen Conservative Political Action Conference announcement encouraging rapid commitment and procreation ignore the realities of women like me in today’s America by focusing on marriage, and not relationship health, as the end point: "If you’re not encouraging your children to grow up and have the courage to get married and have kids, more kids than they can afford before they think they're ready, it is high time to start."

Brown played the victim after backlash for her comments, and her defenders claimed she was being attacked for her traditional views and for "rejecting the prevailing norms of her generation."

The left isn't anti-family. No one hates marriage.

Bluntly, Brown offered a profoundly stupid approach to parenthood – having children is a responsibility that should be honored with thoughtful planning, and pushing people to do so before they’re financially stable is a huge disservice to America’s children, not a radical “pro-family” stance.

I’d like to invite her to come with me to the psychiatric emergency department and see the outcomes of procreation without thought. I’ve treated too many abused and neglected children whose parents definitely did not treat child-rearing as the duty it is.

Furthermore, marriage is a promise, and I’ve given multiple reasons, including population-level evidence, demonstrating that many people – including married people like our president, Defense secretary, Health and Human Services secretary and multiple other politicians on both political sides – simply are not prepared for the commitment.

If marriage involves my partner making hush-money payments to sex workers or lying about wearing giant boobs, then count me out. This unpreparedness, and not women’s logical responses to it, should be the pro-family contingent’s focus – not demonizing “the left” as anti-family.

I say this as a physician who supports creating healthy families and was raised Christian and conservative: Stop manufacturing victimhood and making this a left-versus-right problem. 

No one hates marriage. Women are responding to the reality that too many marriages are emotionally unfulfilling, deeply unequal, often dehumanizing and a chore, not a pleasure. To paraphrase professor Scott Galloway, the answer to the declining creation of stable families is not to strip women of their agency but to increase the pool of viable partners. We can do so by fostering equality in marriage, financial stability, healthy emotional development and selflessness.

Gentlemen across the political spectrum, the free market has spoken. Fix yourselves, and quit playing party politics.

Chloe Nazra Lee is a New York physician whose writing has been published in Ms. magazine, MedPage Today, Women's Media Center and The Baltimore Sun. Her professional interests include trauma and stressor-related disorders and women's mental health.