Why are divorced men so angry?

Spoiler alert: It's because marriage is a great deal for men, and they get really angry when it's taken away. Plus, why men spend so much time pooping.

Why are so many divorced men so angry? They devote so much time and space to talking about how marriage is a trap, how it’s unfair and disadvantages men, while simultaneously despising their wives for leaving.

Could it be that divorce teaches men what women already knew? Could it be that when their wives leave, they finally learn that marriage is a fabulous deal?

Men’s rights groups want to distract you with endless prattling about how the custody system is biased against men (it’s not; it’s actually biased against women, and most men never seek custody). These men who insist they deserve nothing less than 50/50 are the same men who insist that it’s unreasonable for women to insist on 50/50 parenting during marriage. So either men should participate equally in the lives of their children or they should not. You can’t have it both ways.

For many men, divorce is the first time that their parenting choices are subject to outside judgment. They have to convince a judge that they’re good enough parents to get alone time with their kids. They don’t like it.

For others, it’s the first time they’ve had to relinquish financial control. It’s the first time someone has ever told them that, yes actually, financially contributing to the lives of their children is the bare fucking minimum, and entitles them to nothing specific.

Men feel entitled to marriage. And many are able to remain married with little or no effort, as my piece on the ways marriage harms women makes painfully clear. When their wives leave them, their true feelings about marriage come out.

So next time you meet one of these guys, don’t take his anger as a sign he has been wronged. Consider how likely it is that he put zero effort into his marriage and children, and now feels entitled to continue having unfettered access to both.

I’ll be doing a live chat/Q&A session with Bridging the Gap next Wednesday, August 10, at 8:30 British Standard Time/3:30 Eastern Standard time. You have to be a member of the fabulous and large Bridging the Gap group to participate, so consider joining. You can find the event page and learn more about the live chat here.

Feminist Advice Friday: My husband spends hours pooping every day.

A reader asks…

My husband spends a lot of time pooping. Like probably an hour each time he goes into the bathroom, and usually three hours a day. When I first noticed this, I was enraged, but then people started telling me this is a common issue and that maybe men are just wired this way. What fresh hell is this? Does having a prostate means it takes him longer to take a shit than it took me to push out our babies? Really? Are they that defective?

What is he doing in there? Is he actually pooping? I don’t want to be the pooping police, but this seems ridiculous. What should I do?

My answer:

I see this question in mother’s online groups more often than probably any other question. It’s abundantly clear that men are using time on the toilet as an excuse, since most of them seem to wait to poop until there’s a chore they don’t want to do. They never have to poop in the middle of sex.

Weirdly, though, I see women making excuses for them. This is something we have unfortunately been trained to do. We naturalize incompetence and bad behavior, blaming it on biology instead of correctly identifying the bad choices men are conditioned to make.

Having a prostate, or any other piece of male anatomy, does not make pooping harder or more difficult. Prostatitis can cause constipation, but not this severe.

I guess another possibility is that your husband, as well as millions of other men like him, is not fully potty trained. And he therefore lacks the ability to know when he needs to poop, so he just randomly guesses and then sits on the toilet until a poop finally emerges.

But no. That’s a nope. They’re not wired this way. They’re conditioned to value their time more than ours. And they’re conditioned to be shameless. Which means they don’t feel gross or weird about pretending to spend THREE HOURS A DAY SHITTING if doing so means they get more free time than their partners.

I don’t know what he’s doing in there. Porn. Masturbating. Sleeping. Posting misogynist comments on Reddit. Reading or writing a novel.

Who the fuck knows?

Who the fuck cares?

We know he’s not pooping because if it literally took him an hour to squeeze out a poop that would be a serious medical crisis.

Let’s start there.

If you try to talk to him about this, he’s going to gaslight you. He’s going to tell you that he needs this time to poop, how dare you intrude on his personal time, you’re controlling, you’re nagging, blah blah blah.

Call his bluff.

Go into the bathroom with him so you can see what is happening that is taking an hour.

If he’s truly in there delivering a poop baby, it’s time for him to see his doctor. But if, as is more likely, he is suddenly cured when you’re in there, you know he’s just in there fucking around.

Society delivers to men the constant message that they are entitled to whatever they want, and that it’s fine to do whatever is necessary to get it. This includes getting as much free time as they feel they need, no matter how little free time their partner gets. So it’s no surprise that men also get the message that women who demand better from them are the real bullies. Asking for the same amount of free time as your husband means you’re a nag because we don’t think women’s time/feelings/emotions count as much as men’s.

So don’t be surprised when your husband throws a fit because you’re policing his pooping.

So here’s what you’re going to do: You’re going to start taking exactly as much time as he does to “poop,” completely free of guilt, each and every day, until this changes. If he’s using pooping to get out of family activities, you’re going to start doing it too. He’ll be pissed. But if he accuses you of policing his pooping when you ask for him to spend less time in the bathroom, well…goose, meet gander. Pot, meet kettle. Everyone lives by the same standards from now on.

He’ll probably try to stop you. He’ll probably do anything to prevent equality. Because that is what men like this do. At its core, this is a marriage problem rooted in your husband’s sense of entitlement. That may not be something you can fix.

But you can reclaim your pooping time.