Women, especially College-educated ones, usually start the Divorce First. Divorce Law Attorney Marina Shepelsky of Brooklyn, NY explains why.

Michael Levitis  00:00

Good day, everybody. It’s Michael Levitis with JurisQ.com, and we’re back with our repeat attorney Attorney we see very often, very wise, gives us a lot of good information, especially regarding divorce or family law. Marina Shepelsky. Marina. Thank you. Welcome back.

Marina Shepelsky  00:18

Hi, everyone, happy to be here.

Michael Levitis  00:20

And I like calling you back. Not because you’re just an attorney, but you’re also sort of a family therapis  because you’ve seen so much. You heard so much in your career, your practice with all your clients, both men and women, that you have a lot of advice to give, not just in the law, but also in, you know, marital issues. And we want to ask you a few questions. Some advice for men and women. Okay. So let’s start off with the first question. Marina, in your practice, why do you see that women initiate divorce more often than men, and particularly college educated women start divorce more often than others?

Marina Shepelsky  01:18

You know, it’s really funny. When I talk about divorces, I really like to talk about the more wide issues of relationships, right? And divorce is kind of like the end, right? But there’s always a story to what happened before the couple got there, right. And people often are surprised about these statistics that you mentioned. I watched one of these like Good Morning America, or one of those shows like a year ago, and there was a whole study done. And it turns out so many people surprised that women are if they’re not college educated, they’re like 67% of the time, the initiators, the ones who make the final cut and say, Okay, we’re getting divorced. And if they have a college education or college degree, then they it goes to 90% is like a huge overwhelming statistic. That means only 10% of the time, and man would leave a college educated woman on his own right? What does that mean? And why does it happen? First of all, I think it proves the theory that a college educated woman and I have three daughters, and I’m always saying this to them is a huge asset. So she’s the one who gets to pick, okay, if she’s gonna stay, or she’s gonna go, and that is the underlining like, kind of a trend here, right? That a college educated woman who does everything that she always did, cooking and cleaning, having kids raising kids, or now being like in charge of it, right, being the manager of that kind of, you know, that part of marital life. Now, that woman also has a job and makes as much money as demand. So why would anybody leave that? Right? 90% is the woman who leaves so why why does it happen? Yeah, there’s like many reasons. But the main one is, first of all, the fact that a woman now can have a college education can have a mortgage in her name, because this wasn’t the case as early as like 1980s. Or as late as 1980s. Women still needed a man to cosign to be a second signer for a mortgage, even if the money was all hers. So the fact that women reached the point, yeah, the fact that women reached the point of complete financial independence means that she’s now able to get her own house and support herself and her kids being single beings. Because she doesn’t need to have a breadwinner anymore. She is the breadwinner. And yes, of course, it takes sacrifice. Obviously, when you go from two incomes to one, it’s always hard. But if you’re really miserable and unhappy, a college education now gives you a different perspective, right? I know, if you have a college education, that means you’re a well rounded person and now you’re thinking about things like, you know, your mental and  spiritual development, learning more growing as a human being and if you’re not in that place, you have the financial ability to just leave and start over. You can just get your own place. You get your own apartment and start over. So that’s number one financial independence. Okay, number two women that you know I just mentioned this women are still doing the lion’s share of household work, of cooking of taking care of the kids. Now nowadays, a lot of people are working from home so it’s always the mom winds up managing the Kids working from home on their computers. I have a friend, she has four kids. She runs a huge roofing company, like they do a lot of home renovation stuff. And now she can’t even work until 2:30pm. Because she has all the four kids. Well, now COVID is over that stopped for seven, for a year and a half when the kids were working on their computers. And she had one as young as like, I think seven or six in the school system. Up until high school, she was in charge of taking care of all of them being in school at home. While she were doing like her books and her invoices and stuff. As soon as school would be over, she would put them in the car and they would go to work with her. Okay, that’s happening right now women who are CEOs and executives are still taking care of their kids and managing school, you know, fundraisers? And does he need a different outfit for the gym class today, and sneakers, and medical business and all of that the men are still using the old mindset that he is just like the breadwinner, and he can just call

Michael Levitis  06:08

These women are overwhelmed.

Marina Shepelsky  06:11

That’s exactly Reason number two women are overwhelmed. that’s reason number two, women are overwhelmed. And when you’re balancing so many different things, you’re gonna drop the one thing that’s annoying you the most, and that’s the husband, okay? Because in those situations, the husband annoys you the most. He’s like a grown child kinda. And I’m not saying this is all men, I love them. I’m not like trying to make men bad or wrong. But um, you know, and I have a husband. So it’s not like I hate men. I’m just saying that in that situation, a woman is going to drop the man because he’s annoying her.

Michael Levitis  06:47

And not dropping career or her man, she is  going  to pick the man.

Marina Shepelsky  06:55

What’s causing the most stress and the least happiness, the husband, because he’s, you know, not helping his not pulling his his share of the work. And I don’t blame men who were raised in a different time, these are different kinds of things are changing so quickly. But these are things that should be worked on. number three reason is the communication breakdown. Women are not taught to say how we feel what we want, and what we don’t want, and what we need. We’re used to like suppressing it from when we were little kids, men are used to just express their fields, it’s good for a man to be angry and to punch somebody, for a woman we can hit where girls were taught to be passive aggressive, and that should build up my language. Right? So and that stuff really build up. So when you will know how to communicate, this is where I’m putting a little bit blame on the woman, and you express it to the man as much and he doesn’t understand that every fight every disagreement when she’s needing that support or whatever. That’s another brick in the wall to the divorce. You know. So women don’t know what to ask for. And men don’t know what to give it. I mean, like emotional, right? So that’s a huge one. And then of course, things change. When you have kids, your relationship changes. It goes from having, you know, sexy time together as a couple to now being parents of screaming flesh and blood that poops and pees all the time. That puts so much pressure on you, right? It changes everything. And then they grow up and they go to college, and then you look at him and you’re like, you don’t even know why he’s here anymore. You know, thanks. Yeah, like think people just don’t communicate, they become strangers. They no longer feel like this is their partner they don’t feel connected and then why even stay together? Right? A lot of people are held to by children and finances right? But like you said, As children get older, there’s even a song about this, right? It’s called landslide and, and Joni Mitchell she thinks, you know, times times roll I’m getting older children get older I’m times grow colder, children get older. I’m getting older too. You know, like you get older, you get wiser the kids are growing up. You don’t care so much that they’re worried now about your divorce. You’re not going to traumatize them. Maybe they’re already college students. Their finances have worked themselves out already. So you just leave that’s another major reason you know, communication breakdown and like change over time. And also I spoke to another psychologist, friend of mine, and he said to me, Look, Marina people’s longevity now is much longer so if you’re alive declination used to be 5560 years now it’s like 95 Our kids will probably leave live to 95.

Michael Levitis  09:55

Before was like this – I would be with a guy until 50-60? I’m fine. Now, – wow, he could be alive until 80-90. And more.

Marina Shepelsky  10:06

Right. So that thought really depresses some women.

Michael Levitis  10:11

You probably see more and more older people getting divorced.

Marina Shepelsky  10:14

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We’re seeing people getting divorced after 20 or 30 years, okay? And listen, people now change careers three times, in their lifetime before they retire. Some people like I don’t even plan to really retire. Maybe I’ll just work less. But I’m not going to fully retire why?

Michael Levitis  10:33

I do not see you retiring, absolouteky not! 

Marina Shepelsky  10:37

Right? You just look down, you take more trips, whatever. But when, when you’re when you have the same spouse through all of that, people start thinking, okay, you know, I deserve somebody younger men and women, right? I deserve to have a new sexual adventure. I deserve to start over, you know. So those are like the major reasons we can go on and on about this. But that pretty much summarizes I think, like, everything. And the final and most important point, yeah, more important than anything I just mentioned. Women are so much more flexible and easily adaptable than men who change, men are so afraid of change. Men will always pick stability and being unhappy over potentially being happy, but something changes and being unstable, right. And a divorce is definitely unstable for them. Okay, so like, I see this, actually, in my immigration practice, interestingly enough, because women and men come here husband and a wife, the wife, like, okay, she was a doctor in Pakistan, for example, right? She was a doctor, she comes here, she has to be a cleaning lady babysit, or maybe cook for somebody while going to school while taking care of the kids and women are like, they’re not super happy. But they’re like, okay with this, they make friends. They learn about the school system, they have kids, they adapt, and quickly, and they learn the language and they don’t complain. They don’t venture mold. They just do. Man, they fall apart. A man the husband comes from Pakistan, and he went from being a doctor, a respected physician, to driving an Uber. Oh my God, that’s it. This is gonna be a divorce situation.

Michael Levitis  12:33

This is fragile ego, is that what you’re saying?

Marina Shepelsky  12:35

Yes, men are more fragile. Mentally, generally speaking. Now, men are strong, they’ll go and fight a war, right. But when they come back, they’re gonna have the post traumatic stress disorder and just fall apart and they won’t be able to function. We will enact the kind of people who will go and fight in the war. But if the work harms, they will stand up and do their stuff and do their thing. And when the war is over, they’ll still be taking care of the kids and the men and the grandkids. You see what I’m saying? Women are like, we’re taught and programmed almost on the DNA level to be caretakers our whole life, we almost can’t afford to fall apart. You know what I mean? Like I don’t even know how to the men are allowed to fall apart. And when they’re being brought up. They’re allowed to have fits of anger and punching in society and expressing themselves so they do that’s, that’s good. Actually, that’s a good thing. Women repressed so we will have different problems. But bottom line is men are less adaptable, less flexible, so they will not get a divorce.

Michael Levitis  13:39

In your practice, you accept both men and women. So we work with both your phone number on the bottom of the screen. If anybody has any questions on divorce, what’s required? How should you prepare what to expect? Call Marina Shepelsky and the will be in a in the screen below.  If you have more questions for us, please post in the comments below. On our website, just gonna come on our Facebook page on Twitter on our Instagram. We’re all over social media. Marina, thanks again, this was quite an insight into the psyche of college educated women. Thank you, and we’ll see you next time with another great topic. Have a good day.