Divorce is a difficult experience, as anyone who's been through it can tell you. It's deeply painful and hurtful, and difficult to recover from in any case.

But divorce is, alas, sometimes necessary. The acute pain of separation can be less damaging than the chronic pain of staying together, even in cases where both partners are honest and open, generally decent people who just can't make their relationship work. In cases where one partner is abusive, the acute pain of divorce can actually seem like a relief.

Regardless of the situation though, the pain of divorce means that it's unlikely to be undertaken rashly. Though divorces can come on slowly or all at once, there are usually reasons that the partner who leaves the marriage felt he or she needed to leave. And yet, according to this truly pathetic excuse for an article at MSN, a quarter of men divorcing had no idea it was coming. And that's the fault of their wives.

Truly, this article is a work of genius...of a sort. The article tells us about "Sudden Divorce Syndrome," a syndrome so non-existent that it doesn't even have an entry on Wikipedia, much less the DSM-IV. It does, of course, have a favorable citation from Dr. Helen, though, so you know it's going to be awesomely, awesomely misogynistic.

Our story begins as all men's rights fables do, with a rich guy.

Like every husband who suddenly turns into an ex, Martin Paul, a pleasant, unassuming 51-year-old, knows exactly where he was when it happened. He was sitting on the back porch of his pricey hilltop house in the Boston suburbs one sunny Saturday morning, relaxing over coffee.

Paul is a professional collector, primarily of coins, but of other rare objects as well: Sonny Liston's ring belt; a submarine that appeared in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. It wasn't easy to build up his collecting business, but he had finally got it humming, and he was pulling down close to seven figures a year. Plus, the oldest of his three sons had suffered a frightening brain injury, but after two years of treatment, he had finally recovered enough to go to college. For the first time in a very long while, life was good.

He was rich! Rich!!! I mean, look at all the stuff he bought! Only rich guys can afford that!

And yet...

And so, that Saturday, he wanted to tell his wife he was thinking about finally easing off a little. They'd started going on expensive vacations in Europe and Hawaii, and he figured she'd be pleased at the prospect of taking more trips together, or at least at the prospect of seeing him around the house a little more, and not buried in his basement office. He had met her in graduate school over a quarter century ago, and they'd had their ups and downs, but he was still crazy about her. And he thought that, with a little more time together, she'd be crazy about him again too.

Make a mental note of that last sentence. We'll come back to it.

But no. She scarcely listened to any talk of retirement, or of vacations, or of anything he had to say. She had plans of her own.

"I want a divorce," she said.

Paul was so stunned that he thought he must have misheard her. But her face told him otherwise. "She looked like the enemy," he says. He started to think about everything he'd built: the thriving business, the wonderful family, the nice life in the suburbs. And he thought of her, and how much he still loved her. And then, right in front of her, he started to cry.

One of the things I love about this article is the deep, deep hatred of women that bubbles up at inopportune times, despite the author's best attempts at making this even-handed. This is one of those times.

My ex-wife told me she wanted a divorce over the phone, but it was three days after it was a fait accompli. We fought, yes, and discussed things at a deep emotional level, yes, and I did, indeed, cry in front of her. But it wasn't a shock, and it wasn't a surprise, and she damn sure didn't look like "the enemy." And yet that's exactly how Paul describes his ex-wife -- as the enemy. This is his description of a woman who he was "crazy about," and yet here she was, blindsiding him with a divorce.

And yet, by his own admission, she wasn't crazy about him. Their marriage had its ups and downs. He tacitly admits he was a workaholic, and the fact that crying in front of his spouse during the dissolution of his marriage was important for him to note tells us that he wasn't a particularly emotionally open partner in marriage. And so wherefore the surprise at the divorce? If his wife didn't love him, and he didn't show her love, why the surprise at the end of the relationship? I'm not arguing that it shouldn't hurt him -- but it shouldn't have blindsided him.

Of course, Paul deals with problems in a good, solid way.

That night, he found a bottle of whiskey, and he didn't stop drinking it until he nearly passed out.

Things turned sh---- [sic] very fast. His wife took out a temporary restraining order, accusing him of attempting to kidnap their youngest son. The claim was never proved in court. Then, with the aid of some high-priced lawyers, she extracted from him a whopping $50,000 a month — a full 75 percent of his monthly income. Barred from the house, he was not allowed regular access to the office he used to generate that income. (On the few times he was permitted inside, his wife did not let him use the bathroom. She insisted that he go outside in the woods.) "My lawyer kept telling her lawyers, 'You're killing the Golden Goose,'" recalls Paul. "But they didn't care."

Crushed by the payments, and unable to work, he soon faced such a severe cash-flow crisis that he had to declare bankruptcy. His wife still did not relent. She charged that Paul had been abusive toward one of their sons. Paul says the charge is absurd, but it did its work, limiting his visitation rights.

Now, read though those three paragraphs. Alcohol abuse is evident in the first one. The second indicates that at the very least, there were custody disputes, and while it was never "proven in court," you note that there isn't a strong denial. Also, Paul works from home, and yet he can't find a way to relocate his office -- he instead tanks his business intentionally to keep his wife from getting the support her "high-priced lawyers" got for her, support which was almost certainly related to child support.

Regardless, Paul's complaint here is the standard MRA whine: his wife got too much money, and he could barely subsist on an after-support income of $17,000 a month, the equivalent of $204,000 a year. And that's assuming that he isn't fudging his numbers to make himself look better. I'm sorry, I lack sympathy.

Crushed by the payments, and unable to work, he soon faced such a severe cash-flow crisis that he had to declare bankruptcy. His wife still did not relent. She charged that Paul had been abusive toward one of their sons. Paul says the charge is absurd, but it did its work, limiting his visitation rights.

He says the charge is absurd, and yet remarkably, the court didn't think so, as his visitation rights were limited. Perhaps he's right, and he was actually unable to work. Perhaps he's full of crap, and he's an abusive, controlling cobag who responded to his wife's order for support by deliberately tanking his business and taking his anger out on his son. It's hard to say, but I'd wager on the last one.

Paul was sleepless and nerve wracked; his spirits plunged. He still missed his old life with his family. He missed the sound of it — the bustle of all the activity, the life. "I can't stand the silence," he says. "I miss hearing my wife breathe as she lay in bed beside me." In his desperation, he twice overdosed on prescription medication, but managed to call 911 each time before the drugs took full effect, and medics rushed him to the hospital in time. "I don't want to die," he says wearily. "I want to live. But I can't live with this torture." He did manage to keep a few mementos of his former life. Pictures, mostly. But also the kids' baby shoes. "I was always the emotional one," he says. "But that's all I have — the shoes, a few pictures. That's all. I used to be jovial, happy. But not now. I'm a broken man."

Now, I sympathize with him, except I keep waiting to read where Paul got therapy, and he didn't, evidently. Look, I've been open that after my divorce, I strongly contemplated suicide. And I didn't get a handle on my own depression until I actually sought out therapy. But I did, and lo and behold, I wasn't suicidal anymore. I really do hope our guy Paul finds his way into therapy, and out of depression; nobody should have to go through that. But given that I ended my marriage with significantly fewer assets than Paul did, I'm not going to weep for him; he's had every opportunity in life. It's his choice whether he stays down or gets back up.

Of course, Paul's story isn't about Paul. It's designed to make us feel sorry for the poor, put-upon husbands, those poor bastards who get kicked out of their houses by their gold-digging ex-wives. It's a hard-knock life for us, truly it is. And this article is happy to tell us just how bad things are.

Sudden Divorce Syndrome. You won't find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that bible of psychiatric illnesses, but you will find it in life. In a 2004 poll by the AARP, one in four men who were divorces in the previous year said they "never saw it coming." (Only 14 percent of divorced women said they experienced the same unexpected broadside.) And few events in a man's life can be as devastating to his physical, mental, and financial health.
"I meet men all the time who are going through breakups, and it's very common for them to say it caught them by surprise," says Los Angeles-based sex therapist Lori Buckley, PsyD, host of "On the Minds of Men," a weekly relationship podcast on iTunes.

Okay, first off, let's look at the numbers: 25 percent of men who get divorced "never saw it coming." 14 percent of women who get divorced "never saw it coming." Now, it may be me, but those numbers aren't that significantly different for me to say for sure that men just don't see things women do. Women initiate most divorce proceedings. It would stand to reason that fewer women than men would not see divorce coming, since in most cases, they're the ones filing. And yet the difference is small enough that I would suspect that we're really talking about similar emotional unawareness in both men and women.

What's more, 75 percent of men and 86 percent of women did see divorce coming. Which would seem to argue that most men and women are indeed attuned to their relationships. Which would seem to argue that the following paragraph is a load of horse manure:

The warning signs are usually there, claims Buckley, but the male mind is simply not very adept at recognizing them. "When women make up their mind that the relationship is over, they stop talking about the relationship," she says. "Men interpret a woman's lack of complaining as satisfaction. But more often, it's because she's simply given up."

Damn it to the last damn damn, but if I have to read another article about how the male mind is just too stupid to comprehend emotion, my head's going to explode. For one thing, I doubt that women "stop talking about the relationship" once they decide it's over. Usually, there's at least one more talk involved, one that ends it. Second, I doubt that most women stop talking about the relationship period, regardless of situation. Third, I'm sure some women don't talk about their relationships much when they're good, and that lack of complaining is indeed due to satisfaction. And all of that applies to men, and for that matter, all of this applies to heterosexual and homosexual relationships, and transgendered and cisgendered individuals. Humans are a variable bunch, and there is no singular pattern for how the male mind works and how the female mind works. If there was, Glenn Sacks and I would be drinkin' buddies while Jill Stanek and Amanda Marcotte discussed their adorable kids over coffee.

To understand how common this scenario is, consider figures provided by John Guidubaldi, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare. Nationwide, Guidubaldi reports, wives are the ones to file for divorce 66 percent of the time, and, in some years, that figure has soared to nearly 75 percent. "It is easier to end a marriage than it is to fire an employee," says Guidubaldi. If she wants out, it's over. "You can get a dissolution of marriage on the basis of nothing."

Well...yeah, I suppose you can, but people rarely do. As I noted up in the top, divorce is painful. And not just when your spouse initiates it. My ex readily tells me that our divorce was the most painful experience of her life. She didn't get out of the pain because she filed the papers; indeed, she got to experience the extra burden of being the one who ended it.

As for dissolving the marriage on the basis of nothing -- yes, that's called no-fault divorce, and it should be easier than terminating an employee. You see, your spouse is not your employee, he or she is your partner. Your equal. An employee deserves special rights to protect him- or herself, because the power relationship between employer and employee is not equal. But the power relationship between spouses is equal, and both partners have equal say in whether the partnership can continue. If one partner does not want to continue, even for no easily articulated reason, the partnership cannot continue. And even if one partner does want to continue the relationship, forcing someone to remain married against their will is the definition of a violation of civil rights.

Oftentimes, men have a divorce sprung on them in midlife, when their kids are more self-sufficient and they've finally started to think they were over the hump. Like Martin Paul, they could start to relax. But that's exactly the time of life when the instance of divorce begins to swell (another occurs shortly after marriage). Joe Cordell, of the law firm Cordell and Cordell, which specializes in representing men in domestic cases, attributes this to wives deciding as they approach age 40 that it's now or never for getting back into the marriage market. It's the same phenomenon as rich guys trading in their long-time partners for trophy wives. Only it's the women who are shedding men.

Or, you know, the husband was abusive. Or the wife was cheating. Or the marriage hung together for the kids, and now the kids are grown. Or any of a thousand different possible scenarios that don't involve women looking to dump their husbands for some other guy.

As for the "marriage market" -- I love that phrasing, don't you? So mercenary. So tied in with the story of Martin Paul, the rich guy whose wife had the temerity not to appreciate him for being rich. Who's she going to trade up to? The nerve.

It didn't used to be this way. While divorce has been legal for nearly two centuries, it was long a topic of such mortification that it was considered a last, desperate resort. The 1960s changed all that. The free-love decade both increased the inclination to divorce and dropped the social resistance to it. The rising financial independence of women began to free them from a need to stay in a stultifying or abusive marriage. As a result, divorce soared, doubling by most measures. But the stereotypical divorce story — man marries, starts a family, meets a younger woman, and leaves his wife — just isn't as common as we are led to believe.

Is that even the "stereotypical divorce story" anymore? I mean, maybe it was back in the fifties, but I don't really view any particular reason as "the" reason for divorces. As for the rest of the paragraph, well, basically I read it as a great victory for human rights. Women don't have to suffer in abusive relationships or loveless marriages anymore. Neither, for that matter, do men. That's not a bad thing. With a recent study showing divorced parents tend to parent just like married parents, we're moving to a point where a divorce need not cast one from society or make one a pariah. And thank the Ceiling Cat.

"Marriage changes men more pervasively and more profoundly than it changes women," explains sociologist Steven Nock, author of Marriage in Men's Lives. "The best way to put it is, marriage is for men what motherhood is for women." Marriage makes men grow up. Nock observes that many men before marriage are indifferent workers, and, after hours, are likely to be found in bars or zoned out in front of a TV. After marriage, they are solid wage earners, frequent churchgoers, maybe members of a neighborhood protection association. But divorce takes that underpinning away, leaving men strangely infantilized and unsure of their place in the world. They feel like interlopers in the stands at their children's soccer games or in the auditorium for their school plays.

What? We do? You know, I went to my daughter's white belt test for kung fu a few weeks ago, and while my parents couldn't make it, my ex-wife and her mom were there. I greeted my ex's mom politely, we sat near each other, we took pictures, and generally supported my kid. A few weeks before that, my ex, her dad, my parents, and I all attended my daughter's school program. Everyone got along, and everyone congratulated my daughter afterward.

I'm not saying there wasn't a period where it was strange being around my ex-inlaws, there was, but I got over it, precisely because I value my daughter, and know that she benefits from having as many people who love her in her life as is possible. And I know that I'm one of them, and a pretty important one to her. I'm her father. And as long as I'm treating her the way a parent should treat his or her child -- with love and affection, and an overriding concern for her best interests -- then I will never be an "interloper." Nor will her mom, nor will her grandparents or aunts. Indeed, should my ex ever remarry, if her husband is decent (and most people are), then he would be welcome to support my daughter, too. If he treats my daughter well, he will not be an interloper, either. The more support she gets, the better off she is, and the happier I am.

Compounding this pain, men find the deck is stacked against them. The divorce system tends to award wives custody of the children, substantial child support, the marital home, half the couple's assets, and, often, heavy alimony payments.

Waaaah! The bitch took my money! Waaaah!

I'm sorry. My ex-wife got half of our assets (1/2 of 0 is 0), the house (but she still makes the payments), and the better car (because she has physical custody of my daughter). I'm not complaining; it still seems equitable to me, and I'm not worried about it regardless. As for people "often" getting alimony, who knows? The federal government hasn't tracked alimony payments for 15 years. Given that alimony generally accrues in cases where one spouse works and the other doesn't, one would expect the percentage of people receiving alimony to drop over time.

This may come as startling news to a public that has been led to believe that women are the ones who suffer financially postdivorce, not men. But the data show otherwise, according to an exhaustive study of the subject by Sanford L. Braver, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University and author of Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths. "The man is in a lot poorer condition than the popular media portray," he says. "This idea of the swinging, happy-go-lucky, no-worries single guy in a bar... that's just not it at all." The misconception was fueled by Harvard professor Lenore Weitzman's widely cited book, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America.

Weitzman's 1985 tome claimed that postdivorce women and children suffer on average a 73 percent drop in their standard of living, while the divorced men's standard of living increased by 42 percent. Years later, Weitzman acknowledged a math error; the actual difference was 27 percent and 10 percent, respectively. But Braver says even that figure is based on severely flawed calculations. Weitzman and other social scientists ignored men's expenses — the tab for replacing everything from the bed to the TV to the house — as well as the routine costs of helping to raise the children, beyond child support. Even the tax code favors women: Not only is child support not tax deductible for fathers, but a custodial mother can take a $1,000 per child tax credit; the father cannot, even if he's paying. As "head of the household," the mother gets a lower tax rate and can claim the children as exemptions. If the ex-wife remarries, she is still entitled to child support, even if she marries a billionaire. Indeed, every year men are actually thrown in jail for failing to meet their child-support obligations. In the state of Michigan alone, nearly 3,000 men were locked up for that offense in 2005.

Working in reverse: first of all, good. I'm glad idiots who don't support their children get thrown in jail. They should. And that goes even if your ex does marry the proverbial billionaire. My child support money goes to support my child. I've no doubt that my ex spends everything I give her and more on my daughter, and will continue to do so, even if she wins the lottery. But even if my ex were rich and I was poor, I'd want to keep making child support payments because damn it, she's my daughter, and I want to support her financially. I have a little bit of pride in that.

Second, note that in all the complaining by Braver about how hard men have it, we ultimately get to the point where men's standard of living still increases by 10 percent, while women's drop 27 percent. Didn't see that, did you? I know, it was buried and poorly-worded, so here it is again, in slow-motion: "Weitzman's 1985 tome claimed that postdivorce women and children suffer on average a 73 percent drop in their standards of living, while the divorced men's standards of living increased by 42 percent. Years later, Weitzman acknowledged a math error; the actual difference was 27 percent [drop for women] and 10 percent [increase for men], respectively." See? Clear as mud.

Now, I'll admit that it's not a picnic buying new stuff for the apartment, and yeah, the tax code sucks if you're an NCP. I'd love to see some additional deductions added for child support, and can make a strong public-policy argument for doing so. But even if we take taxes and the purchase of new couches into account, we're still left with a situation where men's standards of living are about even with what they had before, while women and children still see a sharp drop-off. Poor men.

Finally, note the language in those paragraphs above. I try to be careful to use "NCP" and "custodial parent" when I write, because that's how the law works. Men absolutely can get a head of household tax deduction after a divorce -- if they're their children's physical custodial parent. One in six men is, you know. And as more men take an equal responsibility for caregiving, that number will rise.

But for many men, the real pain isn't financial, it's emotional: "Men depend on women for their social support and connections," says Buckley. "When marriages end, men can find themselves far more alone than they ever expected." In a large-scale Canadian survey, 19 percent of men reported a significant drop in social support postdivorce. Women are customarily the keepers of the social calendars, and all that is implied by that, providing for what University of Texas sociologist Norval D. Glenn calls the "intangibles" that can create much of a man's sense of place in the world. More often than not, wives send out the Christmas cards; they stitched that cute Halloween costume their daughter wore in second grade; they recall the names of the neighbors who used to live two houses down. The men who bear all these unexpected burdens do so alone, in a strange place, while their ex-wives and children live in the houses that used to be theirs. For an ex-husband to enter that house can feel like trespassing, even though it was paid for with his own money, or sometimes, built with his own hands.

Aw, poor men. So hard, our life is.

My ex did send out the Christmas cards, but there's nothing stopping me from doing so other than my own laziness; when we were together, I wrote the letter that went in the card and helped to address envelopes. My ex arranged for my daughter's Halloween costume this year, but I had input into it and had my daughter for part of the evening. I knew a few neighbors in my old neighborhood, and went to the National Night Out barbecue my apartment building hosted. And my friends stayed my friends after the divorce; they supported me and let me vent and welcomed me and my daughter when we came by and generally acted like friends.

Why? Because I never relied on my ex to "make the social calendar," and she never relied on me. We both had friends, we both would arrange things, and I didn't leave the heavy lifting of my personal relationships to her.

Yes, men who abandon jobs that are seen as "women's responsibility" are going to find themselves in trouble on those fronts should their relationships dissolve, but perhaps they could have avoided that by never pawning their own responsibilities off on their wives. Certainly, if I'd left it to my ex to maintain emotional connections with my friends, I'd be friendless now. But it would be my own fault.

I'm going to skip over the story of the guy whose wife cheated on him and then wrecked his life, because I'm just not buying the story in full, and frankly, it's just getting repetitive. Instead, we'll continue with the blathering from experts:

"What are five of the biggest stressors a human being can face?" asks Ned Holstein, MD, executive director of Fathers and Families, a Massachusetts-based reform group for divorced dads. "One: the death of a child. Two: the loss of a spouse. Three: the loss of a home. Four: a serious financial reversal. And five: losing a relationship with a child. All of these except the first are combined in a father's experience of divorce. People always think the man is a lone wolf and he can take care of himself. Well, he's also a human being, and people don't think through what that means for men."

Uh...no. The last four aren't combined in a father's experience in divorce, not if fathers don't want it to be. Financial impact, as we saw above, is about a wash, but not in all cases, I'll admit that. Still, point five, "losing a relationship with a child?" That's on you, dad. You don't have to lose your relationship with your child, not if you don't want to. I have a strong relationship with my daughter because I make it a priority. You can do so, too.

As hard as such deprivations are on the psyche, they can be devastating to a man's health. Recently divorced men are nearly nine times more likely to commit suicide than their female counterparts, according to a study by sociologist Augustine Kposowa. "It's not so much the loss of money," he says, "but the loss of children that propels men to suicide." Or it could be a combination. Infuriated by his obligation to pay child support for three children he rarely saw, Perry Manley snuck a hand grenade inside a federal courthouse in Seattle last year and was shot to death by security personnel after they spotted it. The death was termed "suicide by cop." Kposowa has also detected an increased incidence of motor-vehicle accidents among divorced men, either due to a lack of concentration, sleeplessness, or, more darkly, suicide "cloaked as an accident," he says.

Compared with married or single men, divorced men are nine times as likely to be admitted to the hospital, to report difficulties at work, or to suffer significant depression. According to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, they suffer the effects of divorce with the intensity that their wives experience the death of a close friend. And they suffer physical maladies. "Their blood pressure goes up, and so does their cholesterol, and that drives up hypertension, heart disease, coronary artery disease, and peripheral vascular disease," says psychiatrist Arnold Robbins, associate editor of the Journal of Men's Health & Gender. Researchers at the Texas Heart Institute have noted that emotional stress can lead to a dangerous ballooning of the left ventricle, which they term "broken heart syndrome." Says Dr. Robbins: "A lot of metabolic syndromes kick in too, like borderline and type 2 diabetes. There's cirrhosis of the liver from too much drinking. Even prostate problems. It's not a pretty picture."

Yes, divorce sucks. But it sucks for men and women alike. Women report depression after divorce too. They have maladies, too. Why? Because divorce is insanely stressful. And stress is really bad for you, physically and emotionally.

Distressed by such facts, men's groups are springing up around the country. "Think of it," says Stephen Baskerville, president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, in Washington, D.C. "A father could be sitting in his own home, not agreeing to a divorce, not unfaithful to his marriage vows, and not abusive, and the next thing he knows, the court has taken his house, his children, and a lot of his money, and then forced him to pay his wife's legal fees and even her psychologist's fees. And he can be threatened with jail time if he resists."

Yes, think of it. And that man's wife may disagree that he hasn't been unfaithful, disagree that he hasn't been abusive. You see, his is not the only perspective that matters here, and yet that's how Baskerville treats the situation.

Can the court "take his children" from him? No. They can grant their mother physical custody based on her being the primary caregiver, and that's precisely what they should do, because awarding custody is based on what's best for the children, not who's to blame for the end of the marriage. And that's as it should be. But "take his children?" If an NCP hasn't been abusive, he or she is going to have access to his or her kids. If he or she puts his or her kids at the forefront of his or her mind, he or she will have access aplenty -- because he or she will tell his or her ex, all right, I want to be very involved with the kids, I want them as much as possible, I'll pay a fair amount for support if you treat me fairly with regard to visitation.

If you are abusive, of course, that becomes tougher -- but then, if you are abusive, you shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens to you.

So, how to avoid Sudden Divorce Syndrome? One way, of course, is to avoid marriage.

Ha! That's not really funny.

Another way is by working on your marriage when it can still be salvaged. Statistically, end-stage marriage counseling is rarely effective, despite what the counselors might say. Instead, husbands might be wise to pay attention to the essential ratio that — according to John Gottman, PhD, a world-renowned researcher of marriage stability — governs marital success or failure: five to one. That means husbands (and wives) should direct at least five positive remarks or actions to their spouses for every negative one. Any less and the marriage is in trouble. Or, following the much-admired work of Howard Markman, PhD, who holds couples workshops (loveyourrelationship.com), husbands should attune themselves to their wives' "bids" — for attention, for affection, for all the things that sustain a relationship — and do their best to provide for them.

Or, maybe, spouses could treat each other like actual adult human beings, and instead of playing cutesy games, they could talk frankly and openly about their feelings without fear of dismissal by their partners. But of course, that can't happen:

In truth, husbands are not built for the demands that wives often place on them; they are less inclined to talk things out or to display emotion.

We're idiots, with boy brains that can do math but don't understand human emotion. And women are too damn demanding. Shut up, and get me a beer! Wait, why are you divorcing me?

I'll agree, men aren't built for "demands" being placed on them by a spouse, any more than women are built for "demands" being placed on them. But if you value a relationship, you agree to do the work required to keep it going smoothly. Those aren't demands placed on you by your partner -- those are demands you agreed to when you said "I do." If you don't like it, then you should welcome divorce. It will put an end to those difficult demands.

But then, marriage isn't easy for either party. When a wife wants out, it is usually not out of selfishness or senseless cruelty. Sometimes the love simply runs out. Husbands should do what they can to keep that love alive. That way, they might hang on to the many delights that marriage affords and spare themselves the countless horrors that divorce can bring.

Duh. I'll spare you the last paragraph, which continues in this platitudinous vein, talking of how perhaps out of pain comes wisdom, yadda yadda, women are whores.

Seriously, this article breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because there are husbands in failing relationships who will read this and think, not that they might have to do more work or open up emotionally, but that they'd better protect themselves from that bitch and her needs. It breaks my heart because there are divorced men who will read this garbage and think that their anger is just, is righteous, is helpful, instead of realizing that their anger is only keeping them from moving on with their lives, building relationships with their children, and creating fair and cordial relationships with their exes. It breaks my heart because like so much men's rights garbage, slavish devotion to these ideals will lead, not to empowerment for men, but further impotence and anger. And it breaks my heart because, in doing so, it will not just harm those men, but the women that they share an eternal bond with, even if that bond is not matrimony, and the children that they still parent, even if they do so from a different location.