(3) Journeyman

Women initiate 69% of divorces. Among the most empowered (college-educated) women, it’s 90%. Why though are women who driving so much of modern divorce?

Commenting on my article about why women always seem to go for the wrong guys, Vince C. asks

Chase, overall I certainly agree with most of what you're saying here but I think there should be a follow up article to this.

Because I'm genuinely curious, why is the divorce rate hovers close to 50% if many girls believe they are choosing the right guy for themselves, later to find out that this was in fact not the case?

A reader named Montage replies to Vince, noting that

Back in the day, a researcher looked at the divorce rate, concluding it was actually around 33-35%. The 50% figure was supposedly inflated by "serial divorcees."

I'm not sure why you're exclusively blaming women, though. What about the guys who filed for divorce? Some of them assumed they had found "Ms. Right," only to end up wrong. Other men marry their first wife for pure economics. Once a dude's career has taken off, he drops her for a trophy wife. I remember some guy did exactly that. Once his first wife had helped him graduate from schools of both law & medicine, he ditched the poor woman. He's no longer with us, and she's doing life in prison.

Another issue you're overlooking is that women's market value is mostly attractiveness/youth. For that reason, many will marry out of a fear of ending up as a spinster/weirdo, or out of a fear of life on one income, not because they feel they've found somebody special.

We know divorce happens.

We know it doesn’t always happen.

In India in 2024 the divorce rate was 1%.

In the United States in 1924, 100 years ago, the divorce rate was 14.4%, which is about a quarter what it is today. The U.S. was already the world leader in divorce at this point (and had since 1916).

Yet if you go all the way back to 1867 in the United States, the earliest date we have reliable data for, the American divorce rate was just 3%, not very much higher than India’s in 2024.

You can see how divorce rates have changed over the years in the U.S.:

U.S. marriage & divorce rates, 1867-2010

Obviously, we are looking at something highly variable over time.

Women initiate 69% of divorces overall. However, among women with the greatest amount of personal liberty – that is, college-educated women – women initiate a jaw-dropping 90% of divorces.

If women are carefully selecting men for a lifelong commitment, why are they the ones who most often break that up?

Once you’ve seen the dark side of women – how callously they can stray on men who deeply love them and lie about it – can you ever trust a girl again?

Over on X, there was a good long thread where guys shared their experiences being ‘side guys’:

Want to pick up somewhere with plenty of hot, rowdy women who’ve had a little to drink, but don’t want to stay out late? Pick up girls at daytime brunches!

This post by DoWhatWorks originally appeared on our forum here.

TLDR: Go to girly “brunches” that are hosted in big bars or small clubs and arrive as they close around 5-6 PM. Talk to girls who’ve been there since 1 PM, have sex by midnight.

I did this last weekend (didn’t bother writing it up because it was a “just don’t mess up situation” with not much game used) & guys in my circle have been doing this too.

These venues have crazy ratios with horny girls and hardly any guys there as we’re typically lazy/unorganised & don’t plan activities or events.

The hardest part is finding the right brunch event, venue & time combination but once you do, it’s easy if you have game & are willing to approach.

The average man tends to fall into over-simplistic thinking on girls. Men who are highly skilled with women, however, view girls in a far more nuanced way.

I’ve been spending a little time on X.com just to see if it is possible for us to build that out more as another channel to reach a bigger audience. I’ll probably play around with it a few more weeks at least to see if we can get traction, then reassess if it’s worth continuing to bother with (or not).

But while I’m there, one of the things they tell you to do if you want to grow on X is to interact with a bunch of other larger accounts every day. The reason is that regular users will see you posting, grow acquainted with you, check you out if they like your stuff, and follow you. Over time, you build up an audience on the platform.

As I do this ‘homework’, reading these various other accounts’ takes on women and dating, then read the replies, it reminds me once again how little nuance there is in the vast majority of men’s conceptions of women.

The nice guy ‘blue pilled’ guys think women are basically like “men with vaginas.” They expect women are as driven and capable as men are at doing all the things men like best, that women hold essentially masculine values/virtues, and that women basically think like men, albeit colored through the lens of feminine experience. A few weeks doing cold approach would completely disabuse them of these ideas.

Then on the other side the (often bitter) ‘red pilled’ and ‘black pilled’ guys also engage in gross over-simplifications about women, but in the total opposite direction. Women to these men are irrational, self-interested succubi. Women are coldly focused on getting the best-looking, or highest status, or richest, or most confident man they can get (depending on the biases of the man sharing his opinion); any man who does not measure up is basically driftwood. In these guys’ cases, a few weeks of cold approach would also disabuse them of much of this – although only once they’re getting results (and not just one-night stands with psycho chicks!).

This kind of thinking (the blue pill guys, red pill guys, and black pill guys) is fine so long as a man is content hanging around in the peanut gallery, firing off opinions for the consumption of others who are also in the peanut gallery.

But the instant he wants to be in the arena – and actually succeeding with women in a repeatable, engineerable way – he has to throw this stuff out.

He has to learn to see nuance.

The statement of intent (SOI) is a powerful tool in the seducer’s arsenal. Combined with a barrier it can be used to dramatically push a seduction forward.

A common problem guys have chatting up new girls is “stalling out.” That’s what we call it when you approach a girl, open her, she seems receptive, you flirt a little bit… and then this whole vibe of, “Okay, so… where’s this going to?” settles over the interaction.

Then it gets awkward.

Then you hear, “Well, it was nice to meet you!” and the girl ejects.

Maybe she liked you!

Maybe it could’ve gone somewhere!

But it didn’t, because she couldn’t figure out where things were headed next, and you failed to lead. How DO you lead properly and avoid having interactions with girls stall out this way?

One way to do it is by stating your intentions (a.k.a. stating your interest).

It’s a lot of fun when a cute girl’s chasing you. But when and how do you make the switch to taking the lead with a girl who is in pursuit?

On my article about what to do when girls won’t sleep with you at your place, R comments:

Some articles emphasize leading, but other articles (and the name of the site) emphasize making her chase. To me they seem mutually exclusive. Is there any rule or principle on when each is applicable?

It’s a good question.

As I responded to R in that comment section, you can think of chasing as an implicit form of leading.

Observe a woman with a man chasing after her. He pursues, pursues, pursues… and at last she relents and tells him, “All right, you may buy me a drink.” He buys her the drink.

Who is leading and who is following?

Would you say the man is leading?

Obviously not, no. It is the woman – she led him to chase her, then she told him when he was allowed to invest, then told him exactly what to do.

At any point in a real seduction, you must be able to switch between making girls chase you (implicit leadership) vs. explicitly instructing them on what to do / moving things forward directly yourself (explicit leadership).

This can be a delicate balance to maintain, though – and many guys miss one half of the equation or the other.

Lao Che takes a trip to Jeju Island, where in 3 nights he pulls 3 different girls. But it’s far from easy! Along the way his hapless wingman continually interferes…

This report by Lao Che originally appeared on our forum here.

I've been wondering about posting LRs because I'm not sure what the point is. Lately I've been thinking it seems like bragging. I've written this now so I'll post it in the hopes that maybe some guys can pick up something, or at least enjoy the read. Let me know.