For years, I wore exhaustion like a badge of honor.
I breastfed babies at home inspections.
Attended virtual closings while in labor.
Had my kids running flyers through neighborhoods for open houses while I chased the next deal.
And honestly?
At the time, I thought that’s what ambition was supposed to look like.
Now I’m not so sure.
My newest Substack piece is probably one of the most honest things I’ve written in a long time.
I Still Want Massive Success — I Just Refuse to Build It Destructively https://t.co/QAiHdZKEwm
I have laid out exactly zero private specifics here. I was discussing no-fault divorce and the history behind it. You made it personal.
You are the one who keeps bringing up in public a divorce that was supposedly “against your will,” as though saying that somehow settles the matter or tells the full story.
It is a very convenient phrase because it lets you stand in the role of the passive victim without ever having to look at the years that led there.
Not wanting a divorce and being without responsibility for why it happened are not the same thing.
Someone can say they did not want the marriage to end while still refusing to look honestly at the conditions that made its ending inevitable.
Remaining married in name is not the same thing as protecting or sustaining a marriage.
Divorce is not always abandonment. Sometimes it is the final boundary after years of trying to preserve something that was already being lived outside of.
“Against my will” may describe how it feels. It does not explain the whole story.
And “I took all the blame to protect you” is a dramatic line, but protect me from what exactly? From the fact that I asked for a divorce? From the reality that I finally drew a boundary? From refusing to keep carrying what was never mine alone to carry?
That kind of vague martyrdom creates suspicion without ever requiring honesty.
If there is something specific to say, then say it plainly. If not, vague moral posturing is just theater.
And as for “gaslit,” disagreeing with your version of events is not gaslighting.
Being asked to take responsibility for your part in a broken marriage is not gaslighting.
Someone finally refusing to carry the weight of dysfunction alone is not gaslighting.
That word gets thrown around far too easily when what is really being challenged is pride, accountability, and the discomfort of consequences.
Sometimes what feels like betrayal is simply someone else reaching the limit of what they were willing to endure.
People are quick to offer advice on how someone should have “saved” a marriage when they were never the ones living inside it.
Private realities are usually far more complicated than public victim narratives.
At this point, I have no interest in turning private pain into public theater.
We are well past the original debate, and people can read the thread and draw their own conclusions.
I have no issue admitting I use tools to help research and refine rough edges—most people do, whether they call it Google, books, lawyers, or something else.
That does not change the argument.
If the history is wrong, challenge the history. If the facts are wrong, challenge the facts. Critiquing sentence structure instead of substance usually suggests the substance is harder to dispute.
As for the letter, I chose not to write one because you are a grown man, not a child in need of every conclusion carefully narrated for him. The state of our relationship was not a mystery, nor were the issues within it. They were discussed for years, repeatedly and plainly.
At some point, understanding ceases to be my responsibility and becomes yours.
My responsibility was to protect myself and the children, particularly when the consequences of that dysfunction were already evident in their lives and well-being.
And, for clarity, none of that has anything to do with divorce law or the point being discussed here.
We can discuss history, law, and the realities of marriage, or we can make it personal. These are two very different conversations.
There is a difference between explaining history and assigning personal blame.
Not every uncomfortable truth is an accusation, and not every disagreement is an attack. Something you still seem to find challenging.
One of the more difficult lessons in life is learning that pain does not exempt us from responsibility, nor does hurt automatically make someone else the villain.
At some point, adults have to stop looking for a single person to blame for every fracture and start honestly examining their own part in it.
That applies to marriages, history, and most things in between.
I’m good at research too, Steve.
Dismissing an argument by calling it “ChatGPT” is easier than actually addressing the history.
Most searches are done with GPTs now—even when people think they’re just Googling.
If the facts are wrong, challenge the facts. If not, “thanks ChatGPT” is not much of an argument.
I get you’re hurt and need something to blame. I’m not a feminist and I don’t agree with most feminist ideas. But no-fault divorce came into existence because many women desperately needed legal protection. There was a clear imbalance of power and the governments even saw it fit not force people to perform blame theater just to leave a broken marriage.
Again—there are two separate arguments here: how many women filed, and who actually held the power. Those are not the same thing, and they have to be separated.
You’re using “women filed more divorces” as if that proves women had the power. It doesn’t.
Before no-fault divorce, men and women were not playing by the same rules.
A husband often only had to prove adultery. A wife frequently had to prove adultery plus cruelty, abandonment, or other serious fault. He controlled the money, usually had stronger custody rights, and could often leave informally—a mistress, a separate household, financial abandonment—without ever needing court.
She needed the court because she needed permission, protection, custody, and survival.
That is why “women filed more” is a weak argument. Filing does not equal power. Sometimes it means the opposite—the person with less leverage is the one forced to formally ask to leave.
Even today, women initiate about 69% of divorces. That does not prove women are the problem. It proves “who files” and “who holds power” are two completely different statistics.
So no—women filing more is not evidence feminism ruined marriage. It often means men had the luxury of leaving without needing permission.
Historical abuses matter because they explain why no-fault divorce happened in the first place.
You don’t get to point at modern divorce rates and pretend the old system was healthy. A system where women needed proof, permission, and public humiliation just to leave was not preserving families—it was trapping people inside them.
From 1867–1886, 44.1% of U.S. divorces were based on desertion or abandonment. Historians note desertion was often the most common way marriages ended because men could effectively “self-divorce” by simply leaving—without court, support, or consequences.
By 1940, 1.5 million married couples were already living apart, and during the Depression divorce rates fell while desertions soared.
That is not family stability. That is abandonment without paperwork.
No-fault divorce did not destroy marriage. It exposed how broken many marriages already were.
Shattered families did not begin in 1970. Before that, many women and children were being abandoned, financially ruined, stripped of custody, or trapped in marriages they had no realistic power to leave.
And yes… let’s not forget Henry VIII, who solved marital disputes by having wives beheaded.
But sure—tell me more about how divorce laws were unfair to men.
@threemandajtl@SteveSkojec@JohnJSSoriano Agreed. Men were often expected to sacrifice desire for duty, legacy, and structure.
But women were often the collateral damage of that same structure—especially when marriage failed.
Both can be true at once.
You realize that no fault divorce was put in place in 1969 right? And before that it was very difficult for women to file for divorce. There had to be "fault". Proof that one of the parties was in the wrong. Women would need witnesses, letters, private investigators, or public scandal-level evidence. They didn't often have the means to obtain this.
In the 1800's and prior women didn't - couldn't file. By the 1900's women could then file as property rights got better, states loosened divorce laws and women obtained more financial independence.
In the 60 years before no fault divorce, while women could file they didn't - women just endured because men controlled everything. The divorce rate was only at 26%. Women were scared to leave as they were typically worried they wouldn't be able to feed children, find adequate housing. They worried about being shut out by Church and family or being able to prove fault.
Not to mention men didn't need to file for divorce only their word would send women away or have them locked away. Men kept mistresses openly or on the side and did as they pleased. Society already gave men freedom. So they could just live separately without formal divorce or abandon the wife financially. Many men just simply moved away and start over elsewhere or pressure the wife into separation without legal protection.
Correct. Charles Dickens is a notable figure who took the 10 children from Catherine while she was pushed out of family life then publicly scorned with her reputation damaged.
It was very much common place for the men to completely destroy women especially because men often had affairs and were in control of property and money. Men would just claim their wives had hysteria, instability or be accused of impropriety. So men kept there mistresses openly and abandoned their wives financially. The laws were very much in the men’s favor and children were legally the man’s by default.
Dickens humiliated Catherine, and kept control of their children, Scott Fitzgerald had his wife repeatedly institutionalized. As well as many aristocrats who sent their wives away on “rest cures” or to asylums and no one would ever bat an eye.
Men left their wives with their reputation in tact, finances untouched and with their freedom. Where the women were sullied in every way and no rights to get back their feet.
They drank the kool-aide and believed the only way to make "it" was an ivy league degree in corporate to gain money and prestige.
So many end up dropping the corporate life and come to real estate.
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