Wives are pulling away from husbands in marriage now in record numbers. What’s going on?

Women currently initiate about 80% of divorces, and we are seeing a huge rise in the Walkaway Wife Syndrome. Some women call this the Neglected Wife Syndrome. The wife comes to the husband out of the blue and says, “I want a divorce.”

 Boom!

 From the woman’s side her exit has been planned for months, even years. The man is often clueless she was even unhappy. He was too focused on work and trying to build their financial future. When she abruptly demands a divorce, the husband is figuratively run over by a Mack truck. The ringing in his ear is his wife honking the horn from the driver’s seat.

Everything in his world has been upended and the man feels betrayed. The person he trusted most to guard his back just brutally stabbed him without warning. How can the woman who said she loved him now express nothing except apathy or anger? He thinks:

Was it his fault?

Is it another love interest?

Could he have prevented it?

Doesn’t marriage mean forever?

The most common scenario regarding a suddenly exiting wife does not involve mistreatment or abuse. He was loyal without infidelity. He worked hard to provide. So, what happened to trigger her breaking her marriage vows and giving up years of investment? What future did she envision worth breaking up a family with children?

The causes of the Walk Away Wife.

What causes a wife to break her vows made before friends, family, and God? To sever what she swore to hold sacred ‘till death do us part’? And why has it become so prevalent in the last 30 years in society? Here are some reasons why:

• Women enter marriages now with higher, more unrealistic expectations than ever before. They believe men will continue to provide an unwavering level of attention even when women’s material demands multiply. Women often demand the luxuries and lifestyle that force the man to focus on work, then begrudge the man doing for doing so.

• Some women get married for the status of marriage not the reality. These are two very different things. When they realize marriage is not all wedding cake and honeymoon mimosas, they jettison out of the marital contract.
• More women now come from broken homes with no good role model for healthy marriage nor how to work through issues. They want to get married, but they have no idea what a marriage is or how it needs to work.
• Media and culture actively reframe the disaster of divorce as ‘empowering for women’, and ‘freedom from neglect and abuse’. They also foster the crazy idea women can and should ‘have it all’ as seen in the new trend of woman asking for open relationships. All the Hollywood fantasy love tales have set young women up for marital failure. Even Prince Charming won’t put up with another knight poking around the castle.
• Other women actively sabotage the wife’s relationship by telling her how about the sweet post-divorce life. Or telling the wife how marriage should be and badmouthing the husband constantly. In 2023, the wife’s friends spread divorce like a mind virus. In fact, if your wife knows a divorcee your chance of divorce increases by 147%!

Psychology Today

• Culturally, the concept of ‘starter marriages’ has been inserted by feminist propaganda into women’s minds. This is the crazy idea that marriage is temporary, and divorce is okay (even celebrated).
• There are fewer consequences for women divorcing now with the legal system supporting them financially. Also, women are making higher salaries decreasing spousal dependence and the financial consequences from divorce.
• Experts and the media are telling women if they are unhappy in their marriage, it’s better for the kids for them to separate. Of course, it’s not. If your children aren’t your priority, why have children in the first place? The statistics of children’s futures in mother led homes are plain horrific and common knowledge with dramatic increases in terms of crime, suicide, substance abuse, and poor performance in school and work.

[Fatherless Single Mother Home Statistics | Fix Family Courts]

One of the most common patterns of the Walkaway Wife and divorce is the ‘emotional neglect scenario’. Upon marriage, a woman expects a man to prioritize their relationship above all else forever. But man is often forced to shift his focus to financial success for security. In his mind, he is doing it for her and the family, so he expects her to ‘hold down the fort’.

Unfortunately, women aren’t built that way anymore. They can’t hold down a homestead for weeks or months like wives did a hundred years ago. If a husband isn’t actively involved every day, she quickly becomes dissatisfied. She absolutely needs to always be his primary focus of attention.

She tries to get his attention back and shows her unhappiness through complaining and nagging. As her feeling of connection decreases, the frequency of sex drops off. Consequently, the man’s investment in her progressively declines further making the situation worse.

Her nagging intensifies, and the frequency of arguments increases. Eventually, when the woman can’t get the man’s primary attention back, she gives up and starts planning her exit strategy. This period of detachment can last for years in which she is still in the marriage physically, but not emotionally. She is biding her time to plan for her future after divorce both emotionally and financially. This is often when female infidelity occurs. It is very calculated in a fashion that typical male cheating behaviors in marriage are not.

The sequence of walking away.

Men are often unaware of their wife’s emotional detachment from the marriage. But if the husband can recognize the signs, it’s the best time, maybe the only time, for marriage recovery. Here is the common sequence of the Walkaway Wife’s progressive detachment from the marriage:

1. Frenzied pitch: Nagging and arguments intensify and reach a frenzied pitch, sometimes with threats of leaving the marriage thrown in the mix.
2. Goodbye to sex: With the decrease in emotional connection in her eyes, so goes the libido with a marked decrease in sex frequency. Excuses are frequently given, such as she is tired, has a headache etc.…but the urge has gone away. When sex does occur, it is perfunctory to meet physical needs only or get an unpleasant chore over with. Of course, with decreased sex men progressively decrease their investment in the woman making the problem worse.
3. Change of atmosphere: Things just feel different, even though she won’t talk about it. No more connecting moments. A subjective decline in a aura of togetherness, and the gut instinct something just isn’t the same as earlier in the marriage.
4. Acts of love don’t occur: The little intimacies and mini acts of love like making him coffee in the morning, or handing him the remote when he comes home, no longer occur. Minor details but big with significance.
5. The talking stops: Women stop talking, complaining, or nagging. Although men may think her mood has improved, it’s actually gotten worse. If a woman stops venting her unhappiness to you that is a problem not a blessing.
6. Stays away: The wife spends less time in the home, avoiding being around the husband. She thrusts herself into outside hobbies with other social groups.
7. No longer the go-to: The wife talks to other friends, and no longer confides in the husband for her issues, feelings, or daily events. He is no longer the person she goes to for advice, sympathy, or attention.
8. Appearance upgrade: She starts to noticeably improve her appearance with more attention given to her dress, makeup, and overall looks. She may join a gym or a weight-loss group for example.
9. No more vulnerability: She doesn’t mind if the husband says hurtful things or shows signs of disrespect, because she is detached now and just doesn’t care.
10. Vengeful behaviors: The woman does subtle and not so subtle actions to harm the husband or make his life miserable. She feels justified in extreme manipulative behaviors as she was ‘wronged’ through neglect.

Although the exact sequence of behavioral changes may vary, this is the general order of how women fall out of love with remarkable consistency. Note the signs because the probability of recovering the marriage decreases further along the sequence as the wife becomes more apathetic and bitter.

Preventative solutions?

Can a man prevent the wife from walking away? Is there any bringing her back after she walks away? Here are things to try before she becomes fully detached emotionally:

1. Stay involved and be clear she is the priority in the relationship.
2. Don’t turn over the reins of leading the relationship to the woman—she can’t handle it. Meaning keep track of goals and maintenance of the relationship like men more often do before the marriage.
3. Don’t take your focus off the relationship fully thinking she can ‘hold down the fort’—she can’t handle it.
4. Ensure your wife’s friends are good traditional or religious women and keep her away from divorced women. This IS challenging.
5. If early signs of detachment or coldness are noted in the marriage, accept your actions are likely a part of it and have a very honest talk about the problems and solutions.
6. Exhibit a significant change in behavior, like a ‘reset’ or ‘epiphany’ where you dramatically increase your attention and prioritization of the relationship. Just be aware, she won’t trust this change for quite a while, and it might be too late to make a difference.
7. Ensure there are significant consequences to divorce by structuring finances to be compartmentalized pre/post marriage, but also easy to liquidate, hard to find. This is a partial solution at best though admittedly and should have been done from the outset. It’s more preparing for the end.
8. Indirectly, point out to your woman all the stories on youtube and the internet women who left their husbands to face grim futures. There are tons of these stories once you look. Surprisingly, women LOVE to post their bad decision stories.
9. Try marriage counseling, but unless it’s very early in the detachment process much of the value of counseling is just that the man is willing to endure it to save his marriage, not the counseling itself.

The aftermath.

Walkaway wives often think life with be rosy after divorce, but after a few years the grim reality of entering the dating market in middle age becomes clear. Although women have greater support systems than men, divorced women do worse financially on average [Sciencedirect]. Women also suffer a more extreme loss in dating value in the market compared to men in their 30s.

Following first marriages, the Walkaway Wives are now seen as aging divorcees past the child-bearing years, with more emotional baggage. Negative behaviors that were once deemed ‘cute’ as a young woman, are now viewed by men as annoying. The ‘free spirit’ personality that worked as a young woman is now perceived as just plain ugly by men.

Since women usually leave marriages after the ‘The Wall’ of 30 years old they tend to be significantly less attractive with increased weight and altered body shape. Wrinkles, cracks, and sags are now common, yet women still hold on to the delusional self-image of their 20s. The steep drop in sexual relevance is one of the biggest shocks creating ‘frenzied coping behaviors.’ Social media is littered with posts of middle-aged women extolling their choice ‘not to settle’ and how they are ‘so happy’ despite no having man who will commit to them. Psychologically, the divorcee tries to reconcile her predictions of a leveled-up future with the stark reality of post-divorce scrounge-living. Or, as many women admit on social media, ‘all the good men are gone!’’ The top tier men are totally inaccessible to secure with her diminished market value. Slightly fewer women remarry so the walkway wife will need to handle the trials of life alone, juggling children and work life without help.

Post-divorce, men deal with common mental health issues through masculine phases of physical retraining and emotional recovery. Men re-enter the dating market in 6-12 months on average and are often pleasantly surprised to find that their value has increased compared to pre-marriage. Divorced men do have to deal with disillusionment. Most abandon their previously held idealization of women. Some divorced guys just decide to go their own way, rejecting relationships altogether. There is a movement called MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way). Still, many divorced men still remarry again within 5 years with very different criteria for wife selection than previously. Their marriages do tend to do better, no doubt due to their scarred wisdom from past experiences with the Walkaway Wife.

Conclusion.

This article has reviewed the Walkaway Wife Syndrome as well as its causes, signs, and solutions from a masculine perspective. The reality is men might stop their wife walking away if they see the signs early, but at a certain point, the detachment and apathy are too great. The wife is unlikely to reverse her views on the marriage and reconnect emotionally. She is unlikely to trust the man and believe that she is his number one priority. Once the wife fully detaches and reaches the stage of apathy or justified revenge against the husband, very rarely are marriages recovered. The Walkaway Wife usually doesn’t walk into the rosy future they hoped for, but the collateral damage to the husband and family remains. Such is the tragic tale of the walkaway wife.

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