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death,you collect the insurance money,divorce,she takes you to the cleaner,thats the difference
Always fun for the poor sad men to claim, and yes, it does happen, but often it doesn't QUITE work that way. You are ignoring the many, many women who struggle because their former spouses don't pay child support and dodge their obligations by working off the books, or as in the case of a coworker of mine, her husband carefully put all his money from his business into his mistress's name so it looked as though he was broke when he divorced his wife. She used to have to take all but $5 of her son's paper route money to get through the week because her husband refused to support his kids. Then to add insult to injury, the jerk turned around and dropped dead at 49 the same week her oldest daughter was getting married. The mistress and the money were nowhere to be seen, and the kids were next of kin, so they just called a mortuary and a cemetery in the adjoining state where he had died and said, "bury him as cheaply as possible". But still, they were stuck with that bill.
My husband maybe paid a couple of hundred bucks in child support from the time of our divorce when she was 10 until she was 16 when I got a lawyer and forced him to pay what he should be paying. Later I realized it was a wash--he paid what the lawyer cost me.
For someone who loses a spouse they loved through death, all the insurance money in the world may not cut the grief by much.
The only situation in which I could imagine that divorce would be worse is if it was like a sudden death, meaning that the spouse had NO indication that it was coming. This would be like a situation where one spouse comes home from work and just announces that s/he wants a divorce and is moving out -- and this would be so much worse if they had young kids and/or s/he was leaving because of another man or woman.
(Btw, although this has not happened to me, I personally know two women who it DID happen to, and they had both been married for about 20 years. Both had absolutely NO clue that their husbands were dissatisfied with their marriages; one had youngish kids, and in the second case, the kids were college age.)
I know a woman whose husband left her after 44 years of marriage for an OLDER woman he'd met on Facebook. She met him at 14, married him at 18 and was a stay at home wife and mother. He had built a business of some sort, and she helped him entertaining clients at home in their beautiful house. He also traveled a lot. She said that over the years, she suspected him of cheating, but when she would ask, he would say, "Oh my God, NO, I would NEVER do that to you."
I asked her how she found out, and she said, "I came across a container of Viagra, and he wasn't using it with ME."
In another case, the couple had no children by choice, lived in a beautiful home in an upscale town, and just seemed to have this great marriage until one day her husband, a vice-president at a bank, was sitting in a chair and said, "I have to get out of here." His wife, my friend, said, "To go where?" He said "I just have to get out of here." Then he packed a bag and left. She was stunned and had no idea what had just happened.
She knew a copy who did PI stuff on the side, so she hired him to find out where her husband went. He was living in this rundown city about half an hour away with a much younger woman. She started divorce proceedings, but after a few months he came back and wanted to try again. He said he'd been working late with the woman, she was into cocaine and offered him some, and he'd started doing coke and having an affair with her, but now it had ended and he wasn't using drugs anymore. She took him back, but she said she has never felt the same way toward him that she once did.
In that case, there was neither divorce nor death, but an affair permanently damaged the marriage.
It depends honestly. If you fall out of love and grow apart divorce really doesn’t seem that horrific and can actually be a relief. In my case I still cared deeply for my wife, but we just fell out of love and were living like roommates. We had an uncontested divorce (I left her like 90% of our assets) she had been a pretty loyal wife up until the very end. Lol and overall we had a pretty good life together so I felt like she deserved some security. I was off starting a whole new career anyhow.
So in my case death would’ve been much harder. I did have a child with her, basically grew up with her, and knowing she still alive and out there even though she’s not mine anymore still gives me some peace. Death is final, the person is gone and you’ll never see them. Also, I know lots of couples who have gotten divorced and then worked out their differences and got remarried. With death that option is no longer there.
Yes, I worked with a woman whose parents were divorced. She once said, "if you saw my parents together, you would not know they were divorced. They still get along very well."
Then one Friday we were hanging out and I said, "What are you doing this weekend?" She laughed and said, "Attending my parents' wedding. After 29 years of divorce, they are getting remarried. I will be my mother's maid of honor, my brother is my dad's best man, and then about 20 people are going out to dinner." They'd been living across the street from each other and seeing each other all the time. Her mother had retired and didn't have any health insurance, so her father said it was time they got married again so she could be on his health insurance. He eventually developed dementia and was in a nursing home and died of COVID last year in his 80s, but they had a second run of a few years together before the dementia set in.
I think it's an impossible comparison to make unless you've been through both. Of course it is very vivid living through something versus only imagining the alternative. In my case it was a very painful thing and due to living in a relatively small community and working for the same (but large) company meant continued contact. But I've finally been divorced for longer than I was married so that was a big corner to turn.
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One thing to consider is that divorce can often be avoided with a bit of extra effort.
I do not agree with the above at all. When a husband is intent upon leaving and dissolving the marriage, there is most often nothing that will change his decision or mind.
The above seems to be a myth and huge fallacy among a good number of people - that somehow both spouses have a say and a decision in getting a divorce and it's a choice by both spouses - NO, very often just one spouse wants OUT and dissolving of the marriage, and the other spouse has absolutely no say.
People get divorced all the time with only one of the spouses wanting the marriage to be over.
This question has no answer, because people are different, relationships between people are different, situations are different too. Why looking for an answer to this question? What is this for? I remembered my difficult divorce and came to the conclusion that if there was death, it would be hard for me too and it would also take several years to recover.
Both are pretty awful but a divorce messes up your life and finances much worse and much further into the future.
Glad you mentioned these two aspects: 1) life, and 2) finances.
Life. I warned him six times that if he didn't stop monopolizing all of my time and demanding that I give up my life and cater to his needs -- which are really wants -- I would divorce him. I was explicit about that. He ignored me. Now he's shocked and stunned because I filed. Idiot.
Finances. There's quite enough to support both of us separately. No kids, no family obligations. He's a miser, he'll be just fine. I think he's already planning his "Pity Poor Me" Divorce Tour of friends and family. They're all sick of his self-centered behavior, too.
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One thing to consider is that divorce can often be avoided with a bit of extra effort.
Only if you allow yourself to see it coming, make a conscious change and stick to it. That was never going to happen in our case.
Death. I'd rather deal with the financial windfall of a death with insurance payouts vs. the financial disaster that a divorce entails. And if my spouse was cheating, maybe I'd wish death on her anyway! Kidding, of course.
Not really getting how one can compare such things.
It's like saying, "Which is worse? Cancer or Parkinsons?"
Edited to add: I've been through both.
Agreed! I'd think it would be equally painful, however with divorce comes the sting of rejection and usually a blow to one's ego. With death, the person you love and spend a significant portion of your life is gone for good, you will never see that person again, there's a very painful finality to it. So while with death, there's no pain of rejection, there's the pain that you will never get to see that person again.
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