Oh, So You Had Walkaway Wife Syndrome

red flags from bad therapy

The first time I encountered the term ‘Walkaway Wife Syndrome’, as it was being ascribed to me, was only a few months ago. Upon hearing her description of it, I was shocked I’d never heard the term before.

The way it was described to me:

What happens when the relationship with your partner becomes so toxic you (the wife) come to the conclusion there is no salvaging this relationship. In fact, this relationship has degraded to the point that you’ve lost all faith in the idea of long-term romantic relationships. The kind where you try to meld two lives into a conjoined one. The kind we’re told constantly is the only way to live in this world.

You don’t know of a societally accepted way to live as an unattached female in this world. But the internet exists so surely you can find a model for it somewhere. Hell, you can draft a blueprint yourself if one doesn’t exist. Anything to never, ever be forced to live like this again.

Because you’re going to be living like this for a while. You’ve decided this relationship is terminal. You’ve secretly signed its DNR. Now it’s time to plot your escape. You’re so entangled you need a coordinated effort if you expect any kind of clean break.

The perception of the husband is of the end barreling in out of nowhere. He’s living his best life, has a relationship he’s happy about, until one day she just leaves. No warning (in his mind), unsatisfactory explanation, and she just won’t listen to reason. She won’t listen to anything. He’s flabbergasted. What happened to his life?

How could I have never heard of this before?

Psychology is one of my passions and, at one point, I was taking extra psych courses for a master’s degree I was hoping to get on the subject. I’d honestly still like to one day. But how could I have not heard this term? It’s right in my wheelhouse and apparently adheres to my personal experience as well.

I didn’t exactly trust the initial source of this information. To be fair, it’s rare that I do so. Though, if I’m being honest, with me it’s more a question of accuracy. People are generally not very good at explaining concepts to me in a way that’s naturally understood. Maybe some of them are just not very good at storing factual information in a way that can then be retrieved and assembled for expository purposes.

So naturally, I looked it up. I had no idea the quagmire of bullsh*t misogyny wrapped in so-called professional expertise I would be wading into. The majority of the bullsh*t peddling was designed and executed by Michele Weiner-Davis, LCSW, and the journalist who coined her catch phrase, Paul Akers. If the BS would just stay in the mid-90’s where it was born, that would be one thing. But google the term and you get more than 1.7 million results.

It’s followed us into the new millennium, so let’s take a look where this monster was hatched…

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Wednesday November 29, 1995 by Paul Akers, Editorial Writer for the Scripts Howard News Service:

The “Walkaway Wife” Syndrome

While the ‘Deadbeat Dad’ is a cad, what about the many women who bail out of marriage for ultimately selfish reasons?

“selfish reasons” — The comparison within the tag line lets us know from the outset how we should feel about the women leaving their marriages.

Picture the contemporary American family as a silent movie. Is there any doubt who would play the villain, instantly invoking boos and hisses from the audience, and perhaps a fusillade of popcorn? The answer is as plain as a waxy mustache, sinisterly twirled: The Man.

What I see here is a man angry at the changing societal perception of a group to which he belongs. Yet that shift was entirely justified. Don’t believe me?

Just one example: at the beginning of the 20th century, the very concept of pedophilia being committed wasn’t considered credible. Freud had patients who’d been sexually abused and the majority of the hypothesis he developed involved blaming the patients who’d suffered these violations as children. At one point, he theorized that it was all in their heads — that children were having explicit sexual fantasies about the adult men around them that were so vivid the children couldn’t distinguish them from reality.

This bit of magical thinking was eventually debunked, and the latter half of the 20th century opened our cultural eyes to the depravity supposedly normal men were entertaining right under our noses.

It continues…

Like the devil, the man takes many guises. In the inner city, especially, he is an incubus, impregnating poor women and leaving them to their fate as he seeks his next conquest. Among the monied class, he shifts shapes to hunter, dumping his loyal partner of many years for a Playmate-class trophy wife. And whether ragpicker or Rockefeller, he is apt to materialize as the Deadbeat Dad, refusing to give his kids the financial support to which they are legally and morally entitled.

Nice start, comparing “the man” to the devil. Unusual for an article that is the origin of a psychological term. But then, one must remember, he’s not a trained psychologist; he’s an editorial writer in the mid-90’s writing a piece for a Pennsylvania paper.

Surely this fiend has a lot for which to answer.

Don’t worry, I’ve read ahead, the male “fiend” won’t have to hold onto his responsibility for his own actions very long. As a man, Akers is apparently very well-versed in blame shifting as well as victim blaming. But I don’t expect you to take my word for it. He just needs to cover one more of his bases first…

The scoundrel’s son may well become violent felons: A 1987 study found that 72 percent of young killers grew up fatherless. His daughters are at risk for early pregnancy and venereal diseases. If Betty Crocker wrote a recipe for a miserable life, this would be it.

Ah yes! Reframing the victimhood so that only the children are in the frame, and we can see how incredibly high the stakes are that they continue to have this one man in exactly the spot he feels entitled to. He’s also heavily relying on his inflamed rhetoric to keep you from noticing a critical detail: these stakes he’s setting are for children who grow up fatherless — not children whose parents get divorced. And he’s counting on you not to notice, or the next bit falls right through the chasm of his logic.

But in our zeal to pelt the screen with snack food when the wicked man appears, we are overlooking a remarkable fact: Whatever holds true in the ghetto and among country-clubbers, in the middle class it is the female who most often initiates family breakup, and indirectly performs “father-ectomies”, by the simple mechanism of filling for divorce.

Not only has he just shoved the villainy of “the fiend” on the wife, he’s given her darker role a little added shade in the form of coldness (“father-ectomies” — really?), which is only villainous for females who must always exude warmth, especially when they’re mothers.

Paradoxically, he says, most modern wives say they are getting a better deal from their husband than their mother got from their father. There is more gender flexibility, more shared custody care. “But a lot of them also are saying, `I’m just not getting what I need.’ ”

So, Akers has roped in an “expert” (a white man who’s written down his opinions on this topic and whose opinion’s the publishing gatekeepers agree on and distributed) to allow him to explore, from a position of supposed authority on the mindset of the women leaving their husbands. This enables him to basically declare that her desire to leave the relationship isn’t grounded in anything logical or valid. Because their dissatisfaction with their own life cannot be a valid reason. After all, she’s a woman and there are others in this equation: a man and children. How dare she think she’s entitled to act in her own best interest when there are others she should be putting above herself?

Lovely message. Nothing dehumanizing about that at all. Can’t imagine why the next generation will look at this and decide in greater numbers than ever before to not get married at all.

Weiner-Davis claims an 85 percent salvage rate for sinking marriages. But wives who deliberately decide to call it quits are almost counseling-proof.

He moves from using another man without psychological qualifications to interpret the minds of women he’s never met to a marital therapist who’s equally willing to attack the wife for leaving, nevermind why.

Certainly in a country that leads the world in marital failures, there are plenty of these divorce “coaches,” who may seek to assuage their own breakup guilt by adding to their ranks.

Oh, of course! Here I was thinking that when an entire society leads the pack in something it’s probably indicative of a cultural explanation. But it makes so much more sense that a small segment of the population that holds very little power or wealth and, in fact, lacks even status because their position is stigmatized…they must be the secret force driving this change. And their motive is guilt for ending their own marriage because they must feel guilt about that.

But greater social acceptance isn’t the only reason divorce is enticing so many women. State Laws and judicial customs buffer women from of the pain of a split.

I know I base all of my relationship choices off of incentives within the legal system. They’re like credit card welcome offers, always good with no exclusionary caveats or surprise decisions!

Divorcing mothers stand roughly a 90-percent chance of winning real custody of the children, thus child support.

Don’t worry, he 100% gives a citation for this “statistic”. Oh wait, can’t seem to find that…it’s okay, he uses the phrase “real custody” so that must mean it’s true, right? Cause that sounds like a genuine legal phrase.

Many get spousal support. No one suggests that mothers be forced to trudge out into the snow, babes in arms. But if we judge family collapse to be a societal crisis, our laws should not sweeten the divorce pot too much for either gender.

You know on those awful Fox news clips how the fanatic host will go on about what “no one wants” when, in reality, it’s a Christmas wish list for their fascist aspirations? I think we’ve found one of the earlier examples of this shift, circa 1995. Look at the phrase in the middle and you’ll understand what he’d actually like to see happen.

Follow the “no one wants” with something to drive your non-argument home — either anger or fear, both if you can get them, which he has. Fear of change, that our society is collapsing, and money is going to be unfairly taken away. Anger that the ‘walkaway wife’ is getting “sweet” rewards she doesn’t deserve.

“A lot of women get bored in their marriages,” say Guidubaldi, “If they can forecast all these benefits, why stay married?”

There’s no real reason for this divorce, clearly. He’s blameless; she’s just been lured by those other glamourous divorcee women driving around childless in their sports cars talking about all the benefits these women could be enjoying if only they were willing to gut their family for financial gain.

I know when I was making my plans to become a “walkaway wife” this was a primary motivator. Because not having full access to my husband’s much higher salary and exchanging that for an undefined number, likely to be the tiniest of fractions of the salary itself, seemed like a step up for me. It definitely wasn’t actually a deterrent. Or a reason why I had to wait, find a different job, then get two in order for leaving to even be feasible.

No, I must’ve just been bored and saw that I could take advantage of him financially.

Divorce upends the worlds of perhaps a million U.S. children each year.

Another one of his stellar statistics, sans reference.

Before granting divorces, states should mandate pro-family counseling that teaches men and women how to talk to each other. Also, the concept of “fault” should be introduced into divorce law. Then any spouse who unilaterally abrogated the marital contract without just cause — ennui and a yen to self-actualize wouldn’t count — could expect little favor from the court.

Ah look, more misogynistic bullsh*t! He doesn’t even qualify that the divorce must include children before mandating pro-family counseling. Is there anti-family counseling? What does he think he’s doing here apart from creating administrative burdens to deter women from seeking…oh wait, I’ve just answered my own question, haven’t I?

“Introducing the concept of fault” so that she has to meet a burden of judicial proof before she’s allowed to leave the relationship. Except, he’s intentionally misleading his audience again. This wouldn’t truly be an introduction at all. It would be a reversal of societal progress towards equality.

The concept of a “no fault” divorce was introduced to Americans in 1970 when then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

Prior to this and the similar laws that followed, if one wanted to divorce there were only a few viable avenues. One had to prove in civil court that they were the innocent party who had been irreparably betrayed by their spouse. Acceptable causes had to be proven and had to meet the severity requirements of the state in which one was seeking the divorce. Acceptable causes varied according to state law but were generally restricted to adultery, abandonment, incurable metal illness, and cruelty.

So, what this journalist is actually saying is that, as a society, we made an error when we started giving women more autonomy over their own lives. He preferred when they were considered legally subordinate to the men who were given near absolute authority to exploit them in any way they wanted.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll be exploring the companion piece to this one, the Walkaway Wife article written by the counselor quoted in Akers’ article, Michele Weiner-Davis, in another article. If you’d like to follow me down the rabbit hole of patriarchal bullsh*t being used to traumatize women seeking therapy and keep them trapped in toxic relationships, click the follow button.

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