Divorce is one of the most crucial and life-altering decisions and many people make this decision as a solution to a stagnant or declining relationship. Divorce never comes easy and it often takes lots of energy, money, and peace from individuals and unstable their lives.
Beyond courtroom battles, many emotional, financial, and social battles go through an individual’s life, and only very few people actually care. But many people have a common question who loses most in the divorce?
In this article let’s try to find the answer from different perspectives such as from the husband, wife, children, and other family member’s side. However, there are no straightforward answers available to the question but from analyzing different views, we will try to conclude an opinion later.
Who Loses Most of the Divorce?
Everyone loses in a divorce, some lose a lot and some lose a little less. Unfortunately, to fix things through divorce, people often complicate the situations that trouble them their entire lives.
Husbands:
Divorce can be extremely challenging for men, especially in those countries, where the laws are more in favor of women. Divorce can push a man into financial, emotional, and mental struggles and create social stigma among individuals.
Financial Struggle:
In most countries, men have to pay spousal alimony to their wives, which is often huge. According to studies, men often have to pay 30-50% of their income to their wives as alimony and child support after divorce.
The division of assets after divorce also hurts men to a large extent as a lion’s share of the assets belongs to their ex-partners. Additionally, in many cases, men lose their homes due to court orders and are also obliged to maintain the financial demands of their exes and children.
Restricted Custodial Rights:
As divorce laws are most in favor of females, males are often deprived of the custodial rights of children after divorce. After 90% of divorces around the world, the child usually lives with his mother, and the father’s involvement in the child’s day-to-day life and decision-making becomes narrower.
Every father wants to live with his child forever but after divorce, his rights cut down on his children significantly. Many fathers want equal parenting but the judicial system only allows them to pay child support and indirectly prohibits them from decision-making for their child.
Emotional Support:
Men usually have less post-divorce support from friends, family, and others compared to women. This is due to the introverted nature of males, which prohibits them from expressing their opinions, views, and feelings to others compared to females.
The lack of support and understanding often pushes men toward depression, anxiety, and frustration. Such issues allow society to downplay men and discourage them from seeking help.
Due to the stereotypical nature of society, men always become victims of judgments and wrong speculations. Thus, post-divorce, men lose all mutual contacts and friendships and struggle to rebuild their social identities.
Career Setbacks:
Struggle in social life is often reflected in professional life and lack of support gives men a setback in their career as well. Financial struggles, legal battles, and increasing stress over the future are some of the reasons why men cannot focus on their professional lives as before.
Men who spend a lion’s share of their salaries on spousal and child support, often face financial obstacles that hamper their mental, spiritual, and professional growth. Such mental pressure cannot allow those men to learn, focus, or persuade creative ideas to enrich their careers.
Wife:
Divorce may have very far-reaching consequences for women, that may push them to vulnerability, especially in rural areas. From financial instability to emotional distress and social judgments, a woman may face tons of difficulties after a divorce.
Financial Instability:
Almost 47% of females in the USA are employed but on low salaries. According to many surveys, women’s household income drops by 44% globally compared to 23% of men’s household income. Hence, women around the world face more post-divorce poverty compared to men.
However, women receive spousal and child support from ex-husbands but in many cases, they are not enough due to the increasing rate of inflation and increasing amount of expenses. Many instances were recorded where women after divorces are deprived of their spousal alimony due to various reasons.
Career Sacrifices:
Many women quit their jobs after marriage to maintain their families and children. But after divorce, these women don’t avail the facilities of employment and earnings. After a long gap, women either can’t return to their jobs or are employed at lower salaries.
Additionally, older and rural women usually face unique difficulties as they usually cannot adjust to the technologies, skills, and qualifications. Hence, neither are they eligible for hard physical work or technological-related work. It becomes very difficult for females to join a new job after divorce.
Emotional and Social Challenges:
Divorce hits women more compared to men, especially those women who have faced domestic violence and emotional torture in their marriage lives. Women are more prone to suffer from anxiety and depression post-divorce compared to men.
Also, a divorced woman faces more societal challenges than a divorced man. In many societies, a divorced woman is stigmatized as a failed woman and it hurts her self-esteem, confidence, and personality.
Such stigmatization not only closes her opportunity to find a new job to feed her family but also makes them vulnerable to the evil eye of society.
Parenting Challange:
In most cases, the children live with their mother after a divorce and the father pays child support to their mother. However, the father pays the decided amount for the upbringing of the children but all responsibilities of that upbringing lie with the mother.
For a single mother, it becomes challenging to raise children alone without the help of their father. She needs to play and fulfill the roles of mother and father simultaneously and she has little time for herself after this.
Despite receiving child support from husbands, women feel it is not enough to raise the children and often struggle financially and emotionally. Hence, women feel too much pressure and anxiety post-divorce because they have to play multiple roles at the same time.
Children:
A divorce not only hamper the lifestyle and emotions of couples but also the children. During this difficult time, children often experience trauma due to social, emotional, and mental pressure and feel anxiety about their future.
Emotional Struggle:
It is no secret that divorce is extremely traumatizing for the children as they understand their parents are separating away and they have no idea what is going to happen to them next. Even before the divorce, children experience a lot of conflicts and struggles in their home, impact negatively their young minds.
Young children can’t understand the situation and matter and they often view the topic based on who convinces them more. This creates a wrong image of another partner in children’s minds and children often dream of taking revenge on that person.
Educational Difficulties:
Children often face educational and academic difficulties during and post-divorce periods. The stress of family conflicts, changing homes and schools, and separation from friends and loved ones divert their concentration, ultimately resulting in academic failure most of the time.
It has been found that a student whose parents are divorced is less likely to get good grades compared to someone whose parents are happily married. One of the most important reasons behind the poor grades is the loss of parental control over their studies due to family issues.
Financial Problems:
As previously discussed, divorce results in dropping in overall family income, and it directly hampers the financial condition of the children. However, most of the time, children get child support after divorce but that is not enough to maintain the quality of lives they lived before.
At a young age, due to financial issues, many children suffer from an inferiority complex as their friends maintain a rich lifestyle but they can’t. This creates a sense of insecurity and inequality in their mind which affects their self-confidence in the future.
Impact On Relationship:
Children often experience toxic relationships and conflicts that often have negative impacts on their future relationships. Such experiences often alienate these children in the future and trust issues often prevail among them.
Children also cannot express their feelings and anxiety to their friends as they are unsure what their peers and teachers will think about them. A divorced parent is always overprotective due to his/her previous experience and often interferes in a child’s friendships and relationships.
Such interferences are not always welcomed by the children and a sense of dominance is felt. Also, in many cases, the children loudly go against their parents for their relationships and a toxic parent-child relationship develops.
Divorce is a very complicated and transformative process where everyone involved gets affected in some way. Everyone faces unique challenges during the process and the journey of each is also different. Hence, comparing who has gained or lost more in the divorce is practically impossible.
However, in a divorce, children stand out as the most vulnerable as they are not mature enough to cope with the situation and uncertainty about their futures. Additionally, compared to adults, children are less skilled in handling pressure, emotions, and setbacks.
Husbands and wife also have their respective challenges but they are often mature enough to deal with the situation. Hence, if someone has to lose a lot in a divorce, it is mostly the children.
Also Read: 14 Tips To Make Your Ex-Girlfriend Chase You After Your Breakup
