Why Women File 80% of Divorces (And How to Stop Being a Statistic)

Nearly 80% of divorces are filed by women. If she’s college-educated, that number jumps to nine out of ten. Why? It’s not usually because of money, affairs, or abuse anymore. Women are walking away because they’re working full-time, often as the breadwinner, and still carrying the weight of home, kids, and emotional labor.

In this episode of The Supported Wife Society, Lemon breaks down:

• The double burden of being both provider and homemaker

• How the mental load quietly erodes intimacy and desire

• Why women reach a breaking point and feel like “married single moms”

• The exact reset path to shift your marriage before you become another statistic

If you’ve ever felt like the default parent, the household CEO, or the one keeping everything afloat, this conversation will hit home. You are not broken. Your marriage dynamic probably is, and that’s fixable.

Take the free Roommates to Romance Quiz → lemonprice.co/quiz

Affinity Psych Article: https://affinitypsych.com/why-do-women-initiate-divorce-more-frequently-than-men/

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Enjoy the episode, everyone!

How can you be part of the movement to equip women?
1. Share the podcast!
2. Leave a 5-star review!

Thanks for listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share this in your stories and tag me!  And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.

CONNECT WITH LEMON:

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Visit the Website
• Apply for the Cohort

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, friend. Welcome back to the Supported Wife Society. I'm your host, Lemon Price, and today I'm excited. We're going to talk about divorce, which sounds crazy on a Supported Wife Society podcast. But I want to start with this stat that kind of made me sit up straighter in my chair the other day. Nearly 80% of divorces are filed by women. I want to let that sink in. Almost eight out of 10 divorces are filed by women. If we just look at women with a college degree, that number actually goes to 9 out of 10. 9 out of 10 divorces for women who are college educated, like those divorces are filed by women. Okay. No, I do not believe most women walk down the aisle dreaming about being a divorce statistic. We do not get married planning an exit strategy. So the question is like, why? Why are women the ones pulling the plug? And here's where I think it gets a little spicy. I was scrolling TikTok and I saw this divorce lawyer break it down. He said, Women today are working full-time jobs. Many of them are the breadwinners, and yet they're still expected to do traditional housewife things, cooking, cleaning, managing kids' schedules, remembering birthdays, hosting family dinners. And so then they wake up one day and they realize basically I'm a single mom who just happens to be married. And this divorce attorney was so interesting. He said, Normally, he's up until a couple of years ago, he said most of divorces that were initiated by women, it was because of money problems, an affair, addiction. It was something, abuse, it was something like that. He said, now, more often than not, it is women who are working jobs, running businesses. They are the breadwinner, they're paying the bills, but they're also still doing all they're taking care of the house, they're taking care of the kids, they're like parenting their husband. That's why they're getting divorced. And so then I found this article from Affinity Psych that confirmed it. Said women are carrying the double burden, provider and homemaker, and it's exhausting them right into divorce. So today I kind of want to dive into this double burden of being both the breadwinner and the homemaker, how the mental load erodes intimacy and desire, why women are reaching a breaking point and saying, enough, I'm done. And because you know I'm never gonna leave you without hope, the exact steps to reset your marriage before you become another statistic. So I want you to like go with me here. Our grandmothers, many of them didn't work outside the home. I know for mine, she was like a secretary and she was like pretty cool with that. Like she she left work at work. Must be nice. But for a lot of grandmother, like a lot of our grandmothers, they did not have they didn't have to work. Their role was the house. It was the kids, it was the meals. And our grandfathers, they worked, they provided, they fixed a leaky faucet, and they came home to dinner on the table. Which can we I like want my husband to do a whole episode on this? Like, why is it that men do not have men like man skills anymore? Can we please bring back men who like know how to fix drywall and know how to handle some plumbing? I don't know. Anyway, fast forward to today, right? Women have degrees, we have careers, we have businesses, we're earning, sometimes out earning our husbands. But here's the kicker the expectations at home did not adjust. So you have women who are the VP of marketing during the day, and then they're the unpaid CEO of household operations at night. That is not balance, that is burnout. And then when you add kids, the burden doubles. I remember like when Glenn and I first merged our lives, right? I went from living on my own, it was just me, my business, my little routines. I was my dog and my cat. I was at the pool by noon every day. I was coaching, cheerleading. Like it was pretty chill. Let's be honest. My life was pretty chill. I was traveling a ton. Then I married Glenn and suddenly I'm helping raise two kids, helping to run a house, trying to keep up with my business. I'm volunteering. It was like going from juggling like two balls to 10. And guess what? Nobody gave me an extra set of hands. And so you may be nodding right now. You're like, yeah, I'm literally living this right now. I actually had somebody tell me in one of the interviews I did for the Supported Wife Society that because her husband works nights, she's literally making every single decision. She's handling the doctor, she handles bedtime, she handles the school because her husband works nights. He's sleeping during the day, during those things. And then obviously, they're all asleep at nighttime. So she's handling all of it. And she's, I don't want to be strong all the time. I just have to be. And then another woman that I interviewed, this was so interesting too. She was like, My husband's just laid back, or honestly, sometimes even cynical. So she feels like she's dragging her family vision forward by herself. And she was like, I don't want to be like the alpha in my relationship. I want him to bring goals and leadership to the table, too. And these aren't women who want to dominate their husbands. Like these are women who are bone-tired of leaning at work and leaning at home. And here to me is the most dangerous part of this whole thing. When you're living like that, it doesn't feel like partnership anymore. It feels like parallel lives. Like you're roommates who are raising kids together. You are roommates who are just kind of like passing by instead of lovers building a legacy together. When I think you get to this point where you're not sharing vision, where you're in roommate mode, and we can fix roommate mode, but like when it's gone on for so long, it is so hard to bring it back to shift the dynamic. And I really don't want you to be a statistic. And so, how do we get here? To be honest, it is usually this very invisible culprit that I've done a lot of episodes on already. It's the mental load. This is not just about folding laundry or making dinner. It's about thinking about laundry while you're in a meeting. It's about meal planning in your head while you're driving the carpool. It's about remembering a dog's vet appointment, a teacher gift, the in-law anniversary, all while managing your business deadlines and your workout schedule. Because that's the other thing, too. Let's be like so clear. It is not enough now for women to, you know, have a career in their house. We're also expected to have like a four-hour morning routine and we should be journaling and doing all this like self-care work. We should be going to the gym. There are so many expectations on women. And like that part of it like just makes me want to scream. Because even when a lot of men like quote unquote help, they often have to be told what to do. And so who's doing the telling? It's us, which means we're still managing. We are still the foreman of the household construction site. That's why just ask me to help is not help. Because it puts the responsibility of remembering and delegating back on us. And I remember like there was a time I carried all this and I didn't feel like wife anymore. I felt like a manager. I'll tell you right now, managing kills desire. You cannot be the CEO, the event planner, the crisis manager, and then flip a switch and suddenly feel soft and feminine and ready for intimacy at 10 p.m. You just, you literally can't do it. And I think that, and I'm gonna do an episode on polarity because I think polarity is so important. But if you are not in your feminine, it is because your husband's not as masculine. Healthy masculinity lets you naturally be not like in your feminine. And this is not some woo concept, but it's that's just how it is. If he is not in his healthy masculine, you are not safe in your feminine, which is why you do both. It's why you're doing both, or trying to do both, and you're probably not doing both well. Because if you were, then intimacy and stuff would be flowing, but it's not because chances are you're highly in your masculine. And I find this a lot with the women I work with. Because we are VPs, director level, like CEO, those kinds of roles, or we're running our own business. Running a business is pretty masculine. And I know there's all these like feminine embodiment coaches and all those like wonderful things out there. But you have to be in your masculine to run a business. There are things you have to do that are masculine energy tasks. And so, because of that, the women that I tend to work with have a hard time shutting off the masculine part because they've been making all these decisions for so long that they're struggling. They're like, I literally don't know how to shut it off and be soft. I don't know how to micromanage. I don't know how to, I don't know how to shut that part of my brain off anymore. Let me tell you, you're not alone. If you're nodding your head, you're like, that sounds like me. You're not alone. One of the women in our community, she's I get so resentful of my husband who's just sitting on the couch while I'm scrubbing the kitchen after working a 10-hour day. Another woman told me she does bedtime with her kids every single night while her husband scrolls on his phone. He's just doom scrolling. Or another one told me her husband asks what the weekend plans are while she's in the middle of making those plans, as if she hasn't been mentally managing a calendar all day long. If that sounds familiar, like you're not alone. This is not about chores, right? It's really about identity. When you are constantly managing your partner, you start to see him as another dependent. And if you're honest, it's hard to feel attracted to someone that you're parenting. It's gross. If you have to mother your spouse, then it's gross to be then turned on by him. It just is. Our brains will not allow us. And I can get into the science of fire brains won't allow us to do that. But literally, it has to do with oxytocin and all these things. If he's not safely in his masculine and creating a safe space for you to be in your feminine, it is literally disrupting your body. Okay. It's disrupting your cortisol, it's disrupting your oxytocin. And guess what? Your brain will not allow you to be attracted to him. Again, if you want me to, I will do a full episode on this. Maybe I'll drop it on Monday. I'll do a full episode on this on just the science behind what happens when he is not in a healthy masculine state. And so I want you to like pause here for a second because I know I just talked to you about a lot of things. So I want you to pause here for a nanosecond. Do you feel like the default parent? Let me ask you: do you know your kid's shoe size, but your husband doesn't? Or do you know when the oil changes to, or when the mortgage auto-traps, or what the next doctor's appointment is? If the answer is yes, that is mental load. And if you're nodding along with me right now, you're not crazy, you're not alone, you're not failing, you're just caring more than any one person should be. And so, why are women initiating divorce more often? Because at some point, they realize I'm already doing this alone. It's not that they've stopped loving their husbands, it's that the math doesn't add up. I always say the math ain't mathing. If I'm working, earning, parenting, managing, planning, and caring, then what is the point of being married? And that is such a brutal question, but it is one thousands of women are quietly asking. You might be asking that question right now. And here's the thing women will tolerate exhaustion for a while. They will rationalize it, they'll say things like, Well, it's just for a season. But when the resentment stacks up, it flips into indifference. And indifference is the death of intimacy. This infinity article, and again, it's linked in the show notes, made super clear. Like women leave not because of one explosive fight, but because of years of micro moments where they felt alone in the partnership. And I get it. I 110% get it. Because Glenn and I, we had to do a reset. There were seasons where I thought if something doesn't change, like this is not sustainable. It's not because I'm not completely in love with my husband, but it's because I felt like I lost me in the process of holding it all together. And let's be really honest, and that could be a whole other episode. We could talk about the fact that I feel like as women, especially high-achieving women, there is a grief, a mourning that happens when you have children and you slip into this mode where you're managing and doing. There is a mourning process. I just want to say it took me a long time to get out of this mourning period of what I thought was possible, the seasonal life we were in, and just how hard it was. And I have friends again, have with small children. I think with small children, that mourning process is real. I've had friends who have small children right now, and they've gone through a full-on mourning phase of their life. And I just know that I get it. And so here's the hope that I have. Because I'm never just gonna be like, okay, this is the problem, figure it out on your own. I don't, that's not the vibe. Divorce is not the only way out. What you need is a new method. You don't need a new husband, you need a new method. And that's why I built the Supportive Wife Society and a reset path. So, what do we do? And listen, write these down because these are things you have to do. The first thing I walk through with all of these women is the mental load. We have to see it and name it. Until you write it down and we go through a very detailed process. I talk about what the mental load does to you physically, mentally, emotionally, but the science behind the mental load is very fascinating. But until you write it down, you're just gonna be like, well, this is just life. This is what we're doing. Then I teach you how to learn to let go without chaos. So we're gonna start with something small. It could be dinner one night a week, could be letting him handle car maintenance, it could be taking the trash out, whatever. We're gonna let him handle something small. Because what I see a lot of women do is they kind of get to a point and don't be offended when I say it, but like they kind of throw their hands up and they're like, fuck it. I am not going to do anything anymore. I am not doing dishes, I'm not worried about the bills, I'm not doing anything anymore. And they stick their hands up and they say F it and they walk away. Okay. Guess what happens? Their whole world falls apart. We cannot do that. If we have unintentionally trained our husbands to step back and be passive, because that is what happened, by the way. Women are initiating the divorce without realizing that they caused the problem in the first place, but that's okay. We'll save that for, we'll save that for a deep dive. I promise. You've trained your husband to be reliant on you and that you're handling everything. You did that. Because here's the thing if your husband was like that in the beginning of the relationship, if you're high achieving, which you are like the job title doesn't matter. High achieving is high achieving with whatever it is you're doing. Being ambitious is a trait that we have. So if you're an ambitious person, you would not have married a passive one. You just wouldn't have, because that is unattractive to ambitious women. And so your husband did not start this way. You trained him this way. Okay. So we're gonna learn to let go without chaos. And then we're gonna create space for him to lead. We're gonna pause before we jump in. We're gonna let him go first. That's where his confidence grows. That's where he gets to step back up. That's where you get to step back. We're gonna start to shift the dynamic. Because here's the thing if your dynamic is topsy turvy, if you're the one leading and he's not, you can't, and like I said, you cannot throw your hands up and be like you figured out all on your own. Okay, we're not gonna do that. What we have to do is you have to start lowering your temperature so he can start coming up. That we have it has to be a slow, gradual process here. Then I'm gonna teach you how to build new habits together: bedtime routines, shared meal, day dates, habits that make partnership the default. Want you guys to get back into partnership, into alignment with one another. Okay, the Bible says that when you get married, you become one flesh. You are one mind working toward a common goal. You are one mind working toward whatever vision that you have for your life. And if you are not operating like that, we have to fix it. And so that is something I'm deeply passionate about. Like we're going to build new habits that make you guys partners again. And after we do all that, I'm gonna reignite the respect and attraction. Okay, I say this all the time. Respect is foreplay, trust is foreplay, initiative is foreplay. When he handles something without you asking, that is foreplay. And you can tell me, Lemon, that's crazy. What a crazy sentence. Tell me I'm wrong. When your husband takes initiative on something, are you not so attracted to him? I know I am. When my husband does stuff without me asking, stuff that like needs to get done. I'm like, dang, I'm like, you're phenomenal. 10 out of 10. Cannot wait to go to bed tonight. I mean, it's just I don't know if that's TMI. That's what you're getting on this podcast now. I've told you we're gonna talk about marriage. But like the respect, the trust, the initiative, that's foreplay to me. And my husband, it's so funny. He grew up, I mean, with all women, sisters, his mom, you know, whatever. He is all sisters. And so he's I understand women. Like it is a it is a mental thing. Like intimacy for you is mental and emotional, more so than it's physical. And I'm like, yeah, 110%. Like a hundred and ten percent. I can absolutely is. And so he's like, I can't expect if we've been fighting all day, if I've been neglecting your needs all day, that at the end of the day you want to jump in bed with me. Correct. And so he's I have four play starts literally when we get up. Four play starts when we get up. And so that's what I want to teach you. That's what I want to teach you. And then we're gonna learn how to maintain balance because life gets busy. And so we do state of the union check-ins, we look at the red flags that we're backsliding. And when women start applying it, I see it instantly. Right? Their shoulders drop, their breathing slows, they realize they're not crazy, they've just been carrying too much. And so here's where I want to land this plane. If you feel like you're the breadwinner, if you feel like you're the homemaker, the default parent, the emotional processor, the family scheduler, I want you to hear me, you are not broken. But your marriage dynamic probably is, and that is fixable. Divorce does not have to be a reset button. You can create a new rhythm where you're not the manager, you're the wife. And here's the thing: when I talk about this too, I want you to be a woman pursued again. I want you to be a woman who feels desired and cherished and wanted. I want your husband to look at you again like he can't wait to rip your clothes off. I want you to look at your husband. My gosh, I'm so attracted to you. I said this to my husband yesterday. I looked at him, but he was he was on stage, he was playing a church. And this is such a weird thing that I don't know, maybe it's not. But when I walked into church and I saw him and I knew what he was planning on wearing, and he like wore something like slightly different than his usual style. And I we were on the boat this weekend, and so he was he had a fresh tan, he had a backward hat on. If you ladies know, you know. And like he just looked so good. And he was like in his element, he was like worshiping the Lord, like playing music and stuff. And I literally looked at him and I said, You are distracting. And he said, What do you mean? I said, I am distracted by you. I am so attracted to you right now. It is it's annoying. Please do something. And I literally could not look at him during church because I was like, I am literally too in love with you right now. I'm too in love with you. It's a distraction. And it's not a codependence or anything like that. Like, we're literally, we're just so in love with each other. We're so happy together. And I'm like, I literally cannot look at you right now. When you are not carrying everything, right? When you're being supported, intimacy feels alive again. And it's not this thing on a list that you have to do. Okay. I want you to know divorce does not have to be the option. You can reset your dynamic. I have reset our dynamic. Glenn and I absolutely have reset the dynamic because guess what? Life gets busy and old habits creep back up. And we have to check ourselves because we have been there. We absolutely have been there. There are so many times, like, I mean, we've been married now almost 10 years, and we'll look at each other and be like, oh my gosh, like we really need a date night. We need a night with no phones where we can just be intentional. And we will do that for several days to like really pour back into our little love tank here. Okay, because the gas can't run our car can't run on fumes. And so we need to pour back into our love tank so we can we can feel connected again. We can feel connected again. And part of that, making sure we're connected is in the routines we've created for each other. I mean, prime example like we very rarely watch TV anymore. We are reading in bed or in the living room together every day, and then the kids are reading in quote unquote the library. That's a whole funny thing. We do not have a library, but they refer to it as a library. It's just a nook in my house with two recliners, a lamp, and some bookshelves. But whatever. They call it a library. That's fine. So it is in intentionality. Glenn and I, you know, part of the way we feel connected right now is we are both taking French on Duolingo. And he did that for me because I wanted to learn French. He had no desire to learn French, but he was like, I will learn it with you so we can have something to do together. And we're talking about it. And I'm working through it faster than he is because I took French in high school, which was a little bit ago. I'm not going to tell you how long ago I took French in high school because that'll make me feel old. However, I took it in high school. And so it's coming to me easier than it is him. And so it's cool. We're bonding, we're learning, we're growing together. And something we're we're doing as a unit. We're watching Emily in Paris in French just to hear what it, and then I have English subtitles. So we're reading it in English and hearing it in French. So I just want to say it is in the habit that you are creating together. You can reset your dynamic. It does not, divorce does not have to be the option. It doesn't have to be the option. None of you listening got married to get divorced. You just didn't. So let's take it off the table and let's fix the dynamic because we can. And so here's the homework I have for you. I want you to take my roommates to romance quiz. It's going to show you exactly where your dynamic is stuck. And here's the crazy thing. Okay. 100% of the women who have taken it, tell me I know you guys. 100% of the results have been that you are the household CEO and you manage everything. So if whatever result you get, I will give you custom things you can do to start to flip your dynamic, like that you could do today. So go take that quiz, go see where you can fix the dynamic. Or if you're listening and you're like, okay, Lemon, like I really, like we might file for divorce. Like I'm getting to my breaking point. I need to switch my dynamic. We have to do something about this. Then I want to invite you to join me inside of the Supportive Wife Society. It's where we don't just talk about the problem, but we I literally will reset it with you. We do weekly calls. So you are constantly being supported. Just today, I think I uploaded like 35 different call times and stuff over the next three months for our members. So you are constantly being supported through the end of December. First week in January, like scheduled all of our calls. So the first week in January, there is a lot of accountability. We have accountability pods. So you're not resetting your dynamic by yourself. You don't have to do it by yourself. Just because you can carry everything does not mean you should. If these micro annoyances are creeping up, if the resentment is building, I really do want to encourage you to reach out to me about the Supportive Wife Society, connect with me on Instagram. Let's have a conversation about it because I it's preventable. Divorce is preventable. I firmly believe it is preventable. Now, unless there is a situation of like abuse and a fair, whatever it is, like those things, do not condone. Okay. So let's just be really clear. If your marriage is abusive, get out. I have resources I can help you with. If that is your situation, please reach out. I have resources for you. But what I'm gonna say is like you, you don't have to do this. You don't have to start contacting a divorce attorney. This is not the direction you have to move in. And so I want to help you fix your marriage. My goal is to save as many marriages as I can. And that includes your marriage. So I cannot wait to see the result you get on the quiz when you take it. Feel free to tag me on Instagram or message me on Instagram. Tell me what you got. And if you know this is for you, there's a link to check out this Award of Wife Society where you can damn me on Instagram, we can have the conversation. But I don't want you to be a divorce statistic, my friend. I don't, I that's not my goal for you. Obviously, it's not your goal for you, or you wouldn't be listening to this episode. I pray you have such an incredible week. Next week, I really do think we should dive into the science of what happens and the polarity issue. So I'm excited. I will get that ready for us for Monday. And I will see you all next week. Toodaloo friend.