Light On Dark Water

Are Women More Loyal Than Men?

A somewhat idle question, but: yesterday my wife and I were discussing the phenomenon of men who marry again fairly soon after their wives die, and that this seems to happen more often than widows remarrying. The context was of people well up in years, no longer raising families, which is a rather different circumstance. I said this seemed a bit surprising to me, because I think of women as having a greater need for companionship. My wife said it was not surprising to her, because women are more loyal. Thinking about it, I believe she's more in the right, though of course no more than a broad generalization is possible about things like this. 

On the other hand, the men can't remarry unless there are also women who want to do so. And the difference may be only due to the fact that women generally live longer and so there are more widowed women than men. And there is that phenomenon of the widowed seventy-year-old man being pursued by a dozen seventy-year-old women.

Like I said, an idle question…. 

Maclin Horton

14 responses to “Are Women More Loyal Than Men?”

  1. Janet

    I don’t think that a man who remarries shortly after his wife dies is necessarily being disloyal to his wife. Sometimes I think it’s because the marriage was so good and so necessary to the man that he just can’t take being alone. The people I know that have done this have all had seemingly very good marriages. In fact, the wives in the two best marriages I’ve ever known both died. The husbands didn’t remarry immediately, but one did remarry after a few years and I’ve lost touch with the other one, but he was dating within a year.
    I’m also not sure that many men don’t have a greater need for companionship. They may not need it so much when they are working but once they retire it’s different story. I can’t tell you how often I have heard my older women friends complaining when their husbands retired and wanted to be with them all time. The women had a pattern to their lives and their husbands wanted them to drop their other activities and keep them company. I don’t see you as being in this category. 🙂
    AMDG

    Reply
  2. Art Deco

    Some years ago I had to riffle through a mess of data and sociological study on the subject of divorce and discovered that about 60% of divorce proceedings are initiated by wives, 30% by husbands, and about 10% in some sort of joint filing. The skew was more pronounced among couples with children. I think your wife’s fancy that women are ‘more loyal’ will come as a surprise to many who have been defendants in divorce suits.
    (I think Chesterton would take exception to the notion that women had more of a taste for companionship as well).
    You all might also find this educational:
    http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Age_distribution

    Reply
  3. Mac

    Janet, I don’t think she meant “disloyal” so much as “less persistently loyal.” I think if this is true, it would be limited to women who were pretty happily married. I have heard of that phenomenon of women being unhappy to have their retired husbands hanging about all the time but haven’t encountered it “on the hoof,” so to speak. So it really is true. No, I don’t think I’ll be like that. Actually, since my wife is younger than me and has a job, if I retire on schedule it will put me in the position of house-husband for a while, which I’m not sure I will relish.
    I think men are perhaps less likely to realize that they need or want companionship. It seems to me that men are sometimes more dependent on their wives than they realize, and don’t know what hit them if they outlive their wives.

    Reply
  4. Mac

    Art, see previous comment–I’m pretty sure my wife was thinking of women who are reasonably happily married in the first place. Also perhaps of an older generation, more likely to have started with the presumption that marriage was for life. I was aware that the number of wife-initiated divorces had shot up in the past 20 years or so but didn’t realize the disproportion was that high.
    Interesting chart. One would think that few marriages would occur in the 80+ group, where women most greatly outnumber men.

    Reply
  5. Daniel Nichols

    Yes, I think that in general widowers are worse off than widows, though I also think- based on very little but real anecdotal evidence- that the children are more generous to widowed men than women. Maybe because they sense the inherent loneliness of solitary men?
    I think it is this neediness, rather than some flaw in maleness, that accounts for this disparity.
    And as AD notes, this disparity is not reflected in the divorce statistics.

    Reply
  6. Louise

    I know, you were inspired into this discussion by the “senior dating” ad on my FB page, yes?

    Reply
  7. Louise

    I think men are perhaps less likely to realize that they need or want companionship.
    I am really beginning to wonder if either men or women really know what they need at all.
    Suppose one said to the average Joe “What will make you happy?” what would he say? Would he say, “prayer and meditation might help make me a bit happier, yeah, I’ll do that.”
    This is just one thing but it seems to me that a lot of people only have a sense they’re missing out on an indefinable “something” (applies to religious and non-religious people as far as I can tell) but are totally clueless as to what that thing really is. Running around like headless chooks doesn’t seem to help much either.

    Reply
  8. Mac

    I think it’s pretty clear that most of the time most of us don’t know what we need.
    What’s a chook?
    My previous comment crossed with Daniel’s.

    Reply
  9. Art Deco

    I was aware that the number of wife-initiated divorces had shot up in the past 20 years or so but didn’t realize the disproportion was that high.
    IIRC (it has been some time), that proportion was characteristic of divorces initiated ca. 1966 as well. The rapid change in social ecology during the years running from 1967 to 1979 did not change that.

    Reply
  10. Janet

    One thing is that we are talking about men and women who, for the most part, lived most of their married lives in a time when the wives stayed at home and took care of things and the men worked. We are in the transitional generation and our children, when they get older will probably have had a completely different history. The women will probably work and the men will probably have had to take care of themselves more, so they might not feel that they need someone to take of them (wash their clothes, clean house, etc.) and they might not remarry. Who knows? I don’t think we will be around to see it. 😉
    AMDG

    Reply
  11. Mac

    Yes, that image of the widowed man totally helpless in regard to food, laundry, etc. is going to start fading away now. Probably also that of the woman who has no clue about the family finances. If anything it may be more likely to be the other way around.
    Re the statistics about who initiates divorce: I suppose on paper 1966 might not look that different, but I’m willing to be that the story underneath is very different. I’ve seen several cases where the woman did indeed take the legal initiative, but only in response to abandonment or near-abandonment or some other behavior on the part of the man which she couldn’t accept and couldn’t otherwise escape. And I’d be willing to bet that a great percentage of those wife-initiated divorces in 1966 were of that sort. Whereas what we’ve seen in recent years–really ramping up in the ’70s–is an increase in the number of women who decide with far lesser grounds that they just want out and initiate divorce proceedings that take the husband completely by surprise. Anecdotal, but like I say I’d be willing to bet. Something like that was the great feminist narrative of the 1970s and was probably not without consequences.

    Reply
  12. Louise

    chook = chicken
    I suppose on paper 1966 might not look that different, but I’m willing to be that the story underneath is very different.
    I’m almost certain that’s the case. Now, women will ditch their husbands b/c “the spark has gone” or some other garbage. I can’t believe people ditch their spouses at such a great rate. The people I know who were abandoned/kicked out are clearly good, decent people who cannot possibly have been a very bad spouse – even allowing for the fact that we cannot know all that goes on behind closed doors. It makes me really mad and I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is one case where politics (ie “no-fault” divorce) really, really had a big impact on society. And it’s one of the reasons I took an interest in politics, although I’m much less interested in it these days.

    Reply
  13. Mac

    I’ve seen several things over the years by pro-marriage families with statistics that claimed no-fault divorce has been a huge factor. It makes sense. Another case of unintended consequences. Unfortunately it is the case with human beings that if we have more freedom a certain number of us will abuse it.

    Reply
  14. Thomas

    Men are more loyal than women, without a doubt.
    It’s true that wives initiate a vast majority of all divorces, but this is only because men neglect them. It’s not because of some loyalty thing.

    Reply

Leave a reply to Louise Cancel reply

Instagram / TikTok / X

Designed with WordPress