Divorcing "is like pulling thread from a seam...everything falls out"

May 25, 2021 8:10 AM

The divorce announcement of Bill and Melinda Gates several weeks ago has spurred a flurry of internet news and analysis, with journalists covering Bill's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda's newfound status as billionaire in her own right, the problematic nature of philanthropy, and the Gates' ownership of large tracts of farmland as private investments. Others are zooming out, looking at the sociological trend of gray divorce as a solution to empty shell marriages.
posted by rcraniac (63 comments total)

Women got a lot of major protections during the 1970's and 1980's, and because of the way news media worked at the time (and a number of men keeping useful information out of their wives' hands), plenty of women might have been completely in the dark about these new rights. (Being able to have a credit card, discrimination protections, better access to bank accounts, etc)

The increase in "gray divorce" makes sense to me simply because times have changed, and a lot of these older women are rightfully realizing that the fears they had about being single 40 years ago have actually changed drastically.

Melinda Gates was born in 1964, and so she still lived in this brutally sexist world for most of her adult life. It can take a lot of time to break those chains, especially when those chains are tied to how you thought the world worked for so long. It can take a decade or two of realizing that maybe things really have changed, and it is safe to go it alone.

My personal anecdotes fit that as well: A bunch of women, including my mother, realizing they had more rights and power than they thought they did, and maybe it wasn't so scary to be on your own as they thought it would be. My father, like many men, had gone out of his way for a long time to create the false idea that she couldn't do it on her own, to essentially trap her in the marriage through fear. Suddenly freed to truly live their lives, they begin to find value in themselves they previously did not.

Boomer divorces is honestly just feminism and women's empowerment finally making an impact on a generation that mostly rejected it. Gonna be a lot of sad, angry, lonely rich white men.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:28 AM on May 25, 2021 [67 favorites]

The increase in "gray divorce" makes sense to me simply because times have changed, and a lot of these older women are rightfully realizing that the fears they had about being single 40 years ago have actually changed drastically.

This is my initial thought process, too. Younger people aren't divorcing as much because we're not being pressured and forced into marriage. Many are waiting, many just aren't marrying. The ability to choose like that wasn't available to women in older generations, like for my mom, who split from my dad in her 50s. I'm not saying it's easy for women now, it very much isn't, but it's different. My sister is 9 years older than me, a Gen X, and it's even different between the two of us. That may be in part thought because I'm a lesbian and she is straight.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2021 [16 favorites]

First the Queen becomes single, and a week later Bill Gates announces his divorce? Don't you see what's going on here?
posted by acb at 9:09 AM on May 25, 2021 [36 favorites]

Boomer divorces is honestly just feminism and women's empowerment finally making an impact on a generation that mostly rejected it. Gonna be a lot of sad, angry, lonely rich white men.

Nice try but I think this Gray Divorce thing affects more than just people who are rich and white. Probably women from all walks of life who didn't think they could get out of a bad marriage.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:17 AM on May 25, 2021 [23 favorites]

It would not surprise me if "gray divorce" rates will climb among younger generations once they age up into it. A fair number of gen-x-ish couples I know are transitioning into kids-grown-and-flown empty nest years, and their marriage-stability sure seems to be moving to more precarious parts of the actuarial tables. (Data versus anecdotes, of course! And it's hardly universal; others are trucking along solid as ever!)
posted by Drastic at 9:28 AM on May 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

I just wish we could cancel those news outlets who want to report that ugly male-whining narrative how much Bill Gates' (or any of the upper crust) divorce "cost" him.
posted by lon_star at 9:28 AM on May 25, 2021 [41 favorites]

It's freaking hard to stay married for 40+ years. Just sayin'.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:28 AM on May 25, 2021 [35 favorites]

This whole divorce really has me torn up inside. For most of my life, since I started writing this bit, I've kind of viewed them as the ideal relationship. Hard to imagine a couple with more money to sprinkle around while vacuuming up glory for philanthropy and I think, objectively, inarguably, without exception-- every single human being on Earth looked up to their relationship, one day dreaming becoming their own version of Mr and Mrs Windows, unfurling banners outside their windows declaring "oh I wish I could be as more good at relationship like as the Mr. Melinda Microsoft and Mrs. are -- wow and charity too." At the time we laughed about the odd grammar and phrasing of the banners, wondering who exactly was making them, how could everyone have afforded these expensive banners to unfurl just to express one opinion, and while we were too busy dissecting minutiae of our own pointless jokes that we forgot where we were going with, they go and get divorced behind our backs! If these two couldn't hold together a formal legal agreement artificially constraining and elevating components of their inter-personal relationship for their entire lives, how am I supposed to!? I've never even met them, let alone started courting either.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:32 AM on May 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

A friend of mine — just about fifty — last year saw his parents not only get divorced but have their marriage annulled. He remarks that after years as an amateur, he is now officially a bastard.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:46 AM on May 25, 2021 [82 favorites]

On the one hand, men with power are much more likely to be skeezy than not. On the other hand, I admit that Bill didn't seem quite like the sort to continue to pick up women at work while obviously married, carry on at least one known affair, and then there's uh, whatever goes on with the ex he went on vacation with. But damn, FRIENDS WITH EPSTEIN?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:47 AM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]

...that ugly male-whining narrative how much Bill Gates' (or any of the upper crust) divorce "cost" him.


I want to see the ugly-taxpayer-whining narrative about how much Gates' fortune has cost us. The taxpayers.
As for his marriage status I care more about the ... pffff. Kelp. I care more about kelp. Some fugus in a forest outside of an insignificant rural area known for not really anything.

Lastly, if you have to divorce/split then you have to. It's mete and good that women are able to do so if they need to.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:55 AM on May 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

The trope of "wait until the kids are grown and out of the house" was alive and thriving by my GenX/70s-80s childhood, where the scandal was a failure to hold out until that acceptable life stage, thus inventing (in the media narrative) the Single Working Mother. As my peers with kids (most not quite grown-and-gone, since we all waited into our 30s and sometimes early 40s to have them) all divorce, there's still a sense of (entirely unnecessary) shame that they didn't make it across that specific finish line.

I don't know that most of my cohort is discovering any unknown power or feminism or whatever though - in many of these cases, the women were the breadwinner and the only adult with a consistent employment history and the default parent and the one who managed the finances, so these divorces are mostly the final death knell of the hope that things would be a little bit better than that. (A lot of men of our generation seem to have taken a whole different set of messaging out of that whole "women can have it ALL!" thing we were all indoctrinated into alongside power suits with shoulder pads.)

But yeah, marriage is hard. Even in engineered marriages between rich people where one of them was supposed to provide good PR cover for the other one to continue on living his life as he pleased with other partners and pedophile human traffickers and rapists and other important rich white men, there comes a point where continuing to do that work simply doesn't feel feasible anymore. I wish that anyone who reached that point and needed to exit their marriage, especially if their life may be in danger because of what they know or the company their ex-partner kept, could go hide on a private island with a heavy security presence until it was safe.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:20 AM on May 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

I wish that anyone who reached that point and needed to exit their marriage, especially if their life may be in danger because of what they know or the company their ex-partner kept, could go hide on a private island with a heavy security presence until it was safe.

This is really important. As much as I griped about Mackenzie Scott's philanthropy when the news was covering it after her divorce from Bezos, this is one way in which I am actually sympathetic to figures like Mackenzie and Melinda. It is to be noted in situations like theirs, they were still considered second-banana to men who are literally billionaires and could, I don't know, hire someone to kill you or something. Like, who needs these supervillain looking motherfuckers as exes? Who would trust them to not be trying to destroy your life for leaving them or for saying the wrong thing about them? I tend to think these women are not that much better than their husbands if only because they aren't out there advocating for a more equal world, but insofar as their husbands might be bitter, crazy, abusive asshats, it's important for me to remember they are still human and they don't deserve that kind of abuse, no matter how rich they continue to be due to the divorce settlements.

Honestly, the mere thought of having an ex-partner with that much power is chilling. I do hope that all women in such situations (or well anyone, really, I guess, not just women), no matter the wealth, could truly, permanently escape from an ex they want nothing to do with anymore. A private island with a heavy security presence certainly sounds like a valid choice.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:33 AM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]

This surprises me not one whit. I always assumed Bill is the same sort of controlling, hyper competive asshole in person as he is in business.
posted by Mitheral at 10:34 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

the 5g people were right!!!!!!!!

(sorrynotsorry)
posted by lalochezia at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

There are a lot of interesting things here to digest, but the 1% rate of divorce for couples aged over 50 is extremely low and it's worth noting that among that 1% the rate is 2.5 times higher for remarriages than first marriages. All of which is to say that very few people who are 50+ years old and in their first marriage end up getting divorced (about 0.29%).
posted by slkinsey at 10:38 AM on May 25, 2021 [12 favorites]

Women got a lot of major protections during the 1970's and 1980's ... Melinda Gates was born in 1964, and so she still lived in this brutally sexist world for most of her adult life.

Not that I'm arguing against your point; but Melinda Gates would have just turned 20 in the mid-80's, so "most of her adult life" doesn't really fit in her case.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:39 AM on May 25, 2021 [10 favorites]

That 1% rate is per year, though, not over the life of the marriage.
posted by jedicus at 10:40 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

That 1% rate is per year, though, not over the life of the marriage.

It's divorce probability.
posted by slkinsey at 10:50 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Throughout their whole lives Boomers have gotten divorced more than the generations before and after them, and now in old age they are continuing their high-divorce lifestyles. I don't think this is a story about aging really -- it's secretly a story of the Boomer generation, as the article hints towards the end:

Part of this greater acceptance of divorce is because many older adults have been divorced before. The baby-boom generation is at the forefront of gray divorce. Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, as Bill and Melinda Gates both were, came of age during the divorce revolution of the 1970s. Many have married, divorced, and then got remarried.

posted by crazy with stars at 10:52 AM on May 25, 2021 [10 favorites]

I am wary of drawing generalizations from the experiences of the 1 percent, much less the 0.00000001 percent (and I have no idea if that's the right number of zeros).
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:59 AM on May 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

but Melinda Gates would have just turned 20 in the mid-80's, so "most of her adult life" doesn't really fit

It takes a long time for real life people to start believing in the possibilities offered by legislative changes. One experience that's common to my generation of women & older (I'm an elder millennial born in 1981, so folks like me and Gen X most especially) is that we have been told since we were very young that "girls are equal to boys!!!" and "feminism has liberated us and now everything is awesome for women!" and "rah rah equal rights!" .... but it has not been our lived experience. And worse, we weren't allowed to talk about the difference between our lived reality and the propaganda, because that meant we were bad feminists? Or maybe just lazy? Or had a victim complex? Or something?

It's taken me most of my adult life, up until just a few years ago, to reconcile the "rah rah" voice in my head with my actual lived experience, to identify the "rah rah" voice as a gaslighty self-sabotaging, shaming voice that holds me back from recognizing when things aren't actually working the way they are supposed to.

For example, the "rah rah" voice kept me from noticing that my ex husband was a raging misogynist. He made all the right mouth-noises after all. He called himself a feminist. He always acted very offended when I said he was being sexist, not to mention hurt and betrayed that I would imagine such a thing about *him*. He even did many of the "right" kinds of actions, like "letting" me keep my own name after we got married without no fuss. Surely, said the "rah rah" voice in my head, surely *he* isn't actually sexist? There must be some other explanation for his sexist-adjacent words and actions? I was stuck for years thinking that way.

So fwiw I think it fits perfectly that it took Melinda this long to find her voice. The older you are, the stronger the hold this compulsory doublethink has on you.

In my personal experience the grip of the doublethink has loosened quite drastically in the last five years - but no more than that. Suddenly it seems we have reached a turning point in history, perhaps as a result of the rise of T*@&$ in American politics putting naked misogyny in undeniable display, perhaps the TikTok generation's affinity for unvarnished truth-telling as a form of entertainment, perhaps from #MeToo actually taking off, perhaps due to BLM and their initiatives like #SayHerName, perhaps from trans people suddenly becoming visible in mainstream politics - to their cost, sadly, but their visibility does lift us all up. And I'm holding my breath and hoping, hoping, hoping that childcare & eldercare and the politics of maternal carework also explodes onto the arena like so many other women's issues have. It does look quite poised to, due to the pandemic.

But it's only NOW that I feel I'm heard when I speak some of my truths, it's only NOW that women all around me are beginning to understand that we, too, can aspire to authenticity rather than resign ourselves to playing out these made-for-TV stories in our lives.
posted by MiraK at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2021 [51 favorites]

It's divorce probability.

Looking at that chart, it looks like the actual trend is that the divorce probability for people under 44 has been going down, while the rate for 55+ has stayed about the same.
posted by zixyer at 11:03 AM on May 25, 2021

Bill went from being one of the most hated people in America (rapacious, monopolistic businessman) to one of the most admired (smart philanthropist addressing the world's most difficult problems). I guess it's only natural that the pendulum will begin to swing the other way. It's not like that first person ever really went away.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:06 AM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

It's divorce probability.

From the article gray divorce article in the FPP: "This phenomenon, which refers to divorce among people 50 and older, doubled between 1990 and 2010, with the rate rising from .5 percent to 1 percent per year, and has since plateaued at this new high." (emphasis added)
posted by jedicus at 11:06 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

Divorce is just hard in general, especially if you have been married a while.

I mean my grandfather and grandmother were one of those kinds of "not sure why they're staying together" couples but they were very much the Mad Men-style couple where he was The Man who did The Work and she was The Wife who took care of the house. Like if he was keeping an eye on the kids or grandkids, they wouldn't starve or die, but it'd be a lot of sandwiches and soup and microwave stuff because he didn't know how to cook in the very traditional sense. Like, at all.

When she died he was basically helpless and one of the kids had to take care of him because he literally couldn't feed or dress himself because she'd always done the cooking and washed the clothes etc. Etc.

On the other hand if he had died first, she would've been lost on finances and bills and money and whatnot because to her that stuff had always just sort of appeared and handled itself.

Of course it's easy to say "lol you gonna learn" but when you're in your 80s, that's a big ask.

Obviously we're a much different generation but when my first wife and I split up, we could both fend for ourselves, but we'd been together 14 years and that is a LOT to pick back up even if you know how to cook or do bills or whatever and that's before we even get into the legal hassle of basicallynsetting yourself up as a new person, figuring out who you are after all that time married, etc. Etc., and that was a fairly amicable divorce without kids or a lot of stuff to split up.

I can easily see going "yeah you know what they're not that bad it's not worth the hassle of doing all that" forever.

Though I will put my tongue in my cheek and note like most men he started driving his wife crazy once he retired.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:16 AM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

For a very long time it was rare to get to adulthood with both your parents alive, which means that when a lot of people married even if the marriage was for life, you were rarely talking about 30+ years of a relationship. So it's not surprising to me when longer relationships fail.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:20 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

OTOH, didn't most people marry in their late teens, rather than late 20s/early 30s as now?
posted by acb at 11:24 AM on May 25, 2021

didn't most people marry in their late teens

It varied greatly by region and period. In Western Europe, there were many periods in which marriage typically occurred in the mid to late 20s. For instance, by the late 1500s, "the age at marriage had climbed to averages of 25 for women and 27 for men in England and the Low Countries as more people married later or remained unmarried due to lack of money or resources and a decline in living standards."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 11:43 AM on May 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

I wonder if she had blinders on and married her very powerful and wealthy husband despite his skeeviness towards women, which has always been present. I suspect he wants to be a better person than he is, he kind of keeps trying, but wealth and power are awfully seductive. Acceptance of Jeffrey Epstein would end it for me, too. Raping teens who may be captive is horrible, and a person who does that as a lifestyle has to be a deeply sexist and vicious asshole. You can't rape girls and be decent the rest of the time; that doesn't work. Whether Gates participated or not, he tolerated and presumably accepted, to some extent, Epstein and his cohort.

Gray divorce? It's one thing to get along with someone part-time, you're working and have a lot going on. Then retirement, and spending all your time with that person, and maybe you realize they're not nice to you, they're kind of a (huge) jerk, or just, you inhabit different worlds that don't intersect. My ex (of 25+ years) and I have both gotten more political, in opposite directions, and his behavior has made it obvious why we should not be married. There are many things about him that work, but he's a genuine narcissist, and the marriage became incredibly toxic, which, of course, I project on Bill & Melinda.

Will be interesting to see who they marry next, tho.
posted by theora55 at 11:49 AM on May 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Bill Gates hoped his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein would help him win the Nobel Peace Prize, report says

Gates is ultracompetitive, getting a Peace Prize is his boss-level good-boy token. Not at all surprised he'd be prepared to do whatever he thought it took in private to get a public accolade. Probably saw the marriage as a worthwhile trade for that. It's cynical, but Gates is a cynical character.
posted by bonehead at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]

Bill Gates hoped his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein would help him win the Nobel Peace Prize, report says

The....what, now?!?!
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:06 PM on May 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

Because, when you think of Jeffery Epstein, you think of Nobel Prizes. Sounds like Trump level obfuscation.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:10 PM on May 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

divorce among people 50 and older […] 1 percent per year

.99^30 = .74, yes? Which would say that married couples at 50 have a pretty good chance of still being married if they both live to 80. Especially since some people account for multiple divorces after fifty, as the article points out.
posted by clew at 12:24 PM on May 25, 2021

In Western Europe, there were many periods in which marriage typically occurred in the mid to late 20s. For instance, by the late 1500s, "the age at marriage had climbed to averages of 25 for women and 27 for men in England and the Low Countries as more people married later or remained unmarried due to lack of money or resources and a decline in living standards."

Yes. However, top-line life expectancy rates from this time period tell a misleading story: child mortality under 1 was so high it just used to be excluded from calculations altogether (it's been a while, no idea if that's still the case), and child mortality altogether was so high it drags the averages down. If you made it to adulthood at all (i.e., reached likely childbearing age), you had a pretty good chance of making it into your fifties or even later. A number of other factors (especially in the Americas) plus mortality rates that are still shockingly high from our POV meant that "marriage for life" didn't ordinarily entail 50+ years, but 30+ would be an attainable goal for many.
posted by praemunire at 12:43 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was working at Microsoft while Melinda French was, though far from her, and have two subjective bits to add. First that when they got married it was widely thought that her job was to be a civilizing force on Gates’ unrestrained competitive instincts. (I can’t remember if this was wide among all employees or just the women.) This is not an unusual model, historically! But the obvious conflicts it leads to used to be solved by the wife being legally and socially subordinate.

Second, women of our ages knew we needed our own money and now could have it. We’d all watched the calamities of the 1970s. It’s true that the emotional beliefs lag, as a lot of people point out above, but don’t collapse entire multi-decades of change into "old time all one thing bad".
posted by clew at 12:57 PM on May 25, 2021 [21 favorites]

I read the Business Insider piece, then the Daily Beast piece, which says Gates liked hanging out with well-connected people at Epstein's. Still have trouble seeing how that could lead to the Peace Prize, which would be utterly discredited if Gates were awarded it. But money buys a lotta stuff, so, who knows.

Extreme wealth is so fucking toxic.
posted by theora55 at 1:28 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

I don't get the Jeffrey-Epstein-leading-to-Nobel-prize bit. He thought that Epstein had connections that could help? Gates has connections and if he doesn't have them he can make them. The list of people who wouldn't return his phone call must be very, very short.

Unless Gates was hypnotized by Epstein's charisma or something and believed the dude could work magic, but Gates isn't stupid and you'd have to be really stupid to believe that.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:39 PM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]

My mom told me lots of stories about lots of her friends in her semi retirement condo who became widows at 50-70 years of age and they just blossomed. Even the ones who loved their late husbands!
posted by srboisvert at 1:44 PM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was working at Microsoft while Melinda French was

Her office was down the hall from where I was huddled with my fellow "permatemps" for awhile.
posted by maxwelton at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

Do you remember how the marriage was talked about at the time?
posted by clew at 2:18 PM on May 25, 2021

Looking at that chart, it looks like the actual trend is that the divorce probability for people under 44 has been going down, while the rate for 55+ has stayed about the same.

The divorce rate for over 50 has gone up, but it is still considerably lower than for those under 39.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:33 PM on May 25, 2021

I don't get the Jeffrey-Epstein-leading-to-Nobel-prize bit. He thought that Epstein had connections that could help? --It's Never Lurgi

That's a possibility. The article mentions:
Epstein had accompanied Gates to the home of then-Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland in Strasbourg, France.
posted by eye of newt at 2:49 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think part of the demographic bump is when the kids are grown. I have one friend who has occasionally expressed that once their kids are launched she's not sure she's staying in her marriage. But things seem on the surface to be improving, so who knows.

I also think, being 50, that you sometimes come to a point in your life where you're aware that you only have so many more great years ahead, even in a best-case scenario. My husband and I married the same year as the Gates did, and he is definitely a part of my best-case scenario, so I'm an unlikely candidate for divorce, but there are other areas of my life where I just cannot, any more, put up with mediocre hours and hours and hours.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:58 PM on May 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

Article lists some social problems arising from situation where single individual is too wealthy. We already have number of laws revolving around topics like land ownership, taxation and securities trading. And I know methods for tax evasion are an art form, they'll be presented in dedicated museums in the future. What we could rather easily add is maximum allowed wealth for an individual. Entrepreneur would no more seek infinite wealth but max wealth. Consumers would maybe see no single giant microsoft but number of microsofts (plural form??) with varying offering or giant single microsoft having more people than just B Gates making the important decision about companys doings. In most cultures ownership is a holy thing, including ownership of money, shares, land or reindeers. Attempts to re-distribute wealth will be answered with violence. Ownership also means Josif Stalin-like capacity to make orders affecting citizens of the land owned, human working in organizations presented by shares or the reindeers in herd, dead or still alive. Not to mention the cash at all, that makes one The King. If we included the max wealth clause into laws regulating inheritance the problems emerging as giant microsoft or banana republics would at least change appearance during small number of generations.
posted by costello at 3:10 PM on May 25, 2021

The big farmland investments are striking; I have a feeling Gates is more interested in the water rights that go along with the land than farming.
posted by jamjam at 3:30 PM on May 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yes. However, top-line life expectancy rates from this time period tell a misleading story: child mortality under 1 was so high it just used to be excluded from calculations altogether (it's been a while, no idea if that's still the case), and child mortality altogether was so high it drags the averages down. If you made it to adulthood at all (i.e., reached likely childbearing age), you had a pretty good chance of making it into your fifties or even later

That's true to a certain degree, but women died a lot in childbirth (the rates of maternal mortality for the Romans have been calculated as high as 30%), so for women you have to factor that in as a significant adult risk, For men death rates in war and in occupations peaked in the late teens to late 20s. The chance, for example, of you reaching your 30s in Rome and still having both parents alive was low. In other premodern cultures you have lucky children - children with both parents still together - open certain religious ceremonies, so we also know it's quite rare, even if you can't track deaths ages that neatly.

I still stick by my belief that it's now that is unusual, in expecting people to remain in the same relationship with each other for 40 years. I don't say that it's a bad thing to stay in such a relationship, it's just that I don't think as societies we've had to deal with it for that long.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 3:40 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was actually just thinking that a lot of relationship issues are like issues with physical health where life expectancy is so far advanced and basic medical care is, to a degree, competent and kind of accessible, that now people die of weird things that we don't know much about precisely because you didn't die in childbirth or die from smallpox or die from the yearly flu pandemic.

To me its a bit like cars where the baseline of quality has gotten so good you run into weird problems because for many, 100,000 miles is really just getting started, but not all the mechanical components have caught up to that. So you're less ikely to just plain run out of oil and die but some weird part has never been engineered to go 200,000 miles and just dies.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 5:00 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

In other premodern cultures you have lucky children - children with both parents still together - open certain religious ceremonies, so we also know it's quite rare, even if you can't track deaths ages that neatly.

Not to get too tangential, but early modern is not premodern, and we actually have fairly decent data on English populations starting in the sixteenth century thanks to the church registration system Thomas Cromwell set up (and its later developments).
posted by praemunire at 7:04 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Not mentioned; most divorces are initiated by women.

I mean, once you live up to the Enjoli ad, you realize that not only do you bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, you have to wash the goddamn pan, and also the dude leaves his dirty socks everywhere and eats more than his share of bacon.

You start to think "what do I need this guy for exactly?" and it's all downhill from there.
posted by emjaybee at 7:48 PM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]

Wow, the idea that they are getting divorced now because it just took Melinda a few decades to figure out she could survive alone is the most condescending nonsense I've seen. Really absolutely astonishing, just bizarrely dismissing the agency of a woman who is both incredibly accomplished and very much aware of the legal and social changes in women's rights over her lifetime.
posted by bashing rocks together at 7:49 PM on May 25, 2021 [32 favorites]

Bashing rocks: I love this sentiment or perspective and I'm happy you stated it. Broad perspective, regardless of notoriety, prestige, or esteem, destructive relationships are not exclusive and include anyone. I suspect the state of reality for M Gates (a woman few on the forum may be likely to know (but you never know) is a dash of each side - in the same spectrum, B Gates is perhaps a difficult or very specific human being, but he probably shared some very human parts of himself with her.
posted by firstdaffodils at 8:33 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

For all anyone knows, Melinda may have had a date on her calendar for departure for years. Relationships are such a many layered process.
posted by firstdaffodils at 8:40 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Brings to mind an old joke:

A couple aged 103 and 101 who have have been married 78 years go to their lawyer and ask her to begin divorce proceedings. She asks them why they want to get divorced so late in life and after after so many years. Their answer: "We were just waiting for the children to die."
posted by fairmettle at 8:44 PM on May 25, 2021 [13 favorites]

>> Wow, the idea that they are getting divorced now because it just took Melinda a few decades to figure out she could survive alone is the most condescending nonsense I've seen

Is it really *condescending* to speculate that what's lived reality for millions of women of my generation & older might be true for Melinda Gates? Inasmuch as anyone other than Melinda can possibly know what went on in her mind, this is a guess that arises from empathy and from projecting our own difficult lived realities onto her as a possibility. I mean, being accomplished doesn't necessarily inoculate her from the same cultural brainwashing as the rest of us. I think it's needlessly dehumanizing towards her to consider her some separate species from other women of her generation.

Ironically, this is the exact "rah rah feminism" gaslighty, self-defeating crap I was talking about before, this idea that it's CONDESCENDING to think that a strong, confident, badass, rich, powerful woman might have been a victim of misogynistic cultural brainwashing... As if to think of someone as possibly being a victim of it is insulting to them. What does that say about what you think about the rest of us who DID fall victim to it? Do you really think we aren't accomplished? Your implication seems to be that we are all losers to whom agency is a foreign concept.
posted by MiraK at 9:28 PM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

"Your implication seems to be that we are all losers to whom agency is a foreign concept."

The general read I took from Bashing Rocks had been empowering toward Melinda Gates, and not dismissive of others experiences but centered on a woman whose emotions and psychology we may not be able to perceive because we don't know her. We know a speculative character susceptible to all human traits, some of those traits happen to be notoriety.


I think if you've been in a vulnerable place with difficulty in the consideration of oppression gender roles, it can make it more difficult to read intention clearly.

I believe the important takeaway is the person/woman in conversation had a space of agency, and at the very basic level, she at least held this and acted on it.

Additionally, to add clarity or just be fair, most of these "celeb" (whatever that phrase means to ya) threads often contain radical speculation. If you were in a difficult relationship with a difficult person, would you wish for people to say you were brainwashed or independent?
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:23 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

She is quite literally a billionaire who has publicly spent years working and speaking on the exact topic of female economic empowerment and agency. Perhaps you were unaware of her area of expertise when you suggested she might not have understood it.
posted by bashing rocks together at 10:28 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

I feel as if things like this are overdetermined with the reasons adding up over many years. And it sounds plausible that the thing with Epstein was a real deal-breaker. She is not going to want something like that associated with the philanthropic work and it was a stupendous lack of judgment on his part.

Maybe this is me coming from a family of attorneys, but I think also the fact that she has trust and estate lawyers involved suggests that she does not agree with his plans in that regard. She may want to leave more money to the children and/or put some kind of succession plan in place. She may be thinking ahead to when he wants to leave her and marry someone else and then she is not going to want the estate to look like it does now with maybe huge chunks of it going to children by a second wife. Speculation of course, but something like that.
posted by BibiRose at 4:23 AM on May 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. It's fine to talk about your own experience, not fine to use that to attack and insult others. Please refer to the guidelines.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:19 AM on May 26, 2021

Wow, the idea that they are getting divorced now because it just took Melinda a few decades to figure out she could survive alone . . .
posted by bashing rocks together at 10:49 PM on May 25 [18 favorites +] [!]

Most of the people in this thread are talking about gray divorce in general, not this specific case. And we're talking about it as a contributing factor to the rise of the phenomenon. Your outrage seems a little heavy-handed
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:30 AM on May 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

Slightly voiced earlier, I think if seen from an observers perspective, each statement has significant validity.

I'm absolutely certain there are women throughout history whose personal lives felt held hostage while they appeared as beacons of egalitarian nature from an outside perspective.

Expressed, someone mentioning a person in question was audacious or clear thinking enough to simply call bullshit, will possibly enable other men or women to call bullshit. I would not stop or censor the person's suggestion, we need both views.

In honesty, we need the empathy of the first, but we really* need the direct action of the second.
posted by firstdaffodils at 11:53 AM on May 26, 2021

make matt gaetz and bill gates fight to the death then put the survivor in a zoo (gratuitous twitter comment)
posted by sammyo at 3:46 PM on May 26, 2021

Kelp. I care more about kelp.

Kelp is objectively and empirically more important and worthier of attention, and actually simply more interesting and compelling, than the banal melodramas of some fucking doddering hyperbillionaires.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:58 PM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]