Women Walk Out More Often than Men?

A recent Huffington Post article attempts to answer an age-old question about marriage: Why Women Walk Out More Than Men.

The primary reason, according to columnist Vicki Larson, is that while men do the cheating, women do the leaving.  She uses the current, public divorce of Sean Penn and Robin Wright, and her own divorce, as examples.  During both marriages the husband cheated, and when it became known, “didn’t have the decency to leave.”

Larson doesn’t mention whether she has children with her former husband, but Wright and Penn do.  The infamous “on-again, off-again divorce” may very well have been a result of the the money and assets involved in celebrity divorce, as Larson predicts, but also because children make divorce more emotionally challenging and complex.

Larson’s generalized summation breaks down into the following steps: husband cheats; wife tries her best to salvage the marriage; marriage is doomed; wife asks for a divorce.  The subtleties and variation in divorce are so great that, while this particular formula elicits a nostalgic response, it certainly doesn’t give credit to the delicate issues brought about by divorce involving children, let alone cheating.