A new study on "partner abandonment" has found that a woman is six times more likely to be separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient. Link
Study suggests women's illness leads to partner abandonment more often than men's
Leave a comment
More items
DC sniper to die today
John Allan Muhammad, best known for killing 10 people in the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, will be executed at 9PM today in Virginia. ... More.
Oil running out faster than the International Energy Agency admits, says whistleblower
Guardian: "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying."... More.
Hurting Google
TechCrunch agrees with Cory's (and Jason Calacanis') predictions from last week: Murdoch is about to sign an exclusivity deal with an also-ran search engine. (There was more at the Graun.) Mike Arrington, however, suggests this will succeed in hurting Google. ... More.
URL shorteners suck less, thanks to the Internet Archive and 301Works
URL shorteners like bit.ly present some profound problems for the health of the web: for one thing, they might vanish if they company that provides them goes bust (for some other things: it exposes your internet browsing to surveillance by random URL-shortening companies; it exposes you to malware a... More.
In Fort Hood story, are reporters rushing to press too fast?
Two stories on "fast news," and how the rush to press in the Fort Hood story may have led to major inaccuracies. ProPublica: "Remember the hero female cop who shot Hasan? Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn't." And, NYT: "Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said (...) he fired the shots ... More.
RSS Feed
Although I'm sure there have been more precedents set, what comes to mind is Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Wow. That makes me feel crappy about my gender...
Note: commenter above is spamming BB.
"Stand by your man."
Wow, I would have hoped for better from my species and sex. Crap.
Newt Gingrich knows a little something about that.
Xopher, I would hope for better too, but I can't say that I'm really surprised, just (once again) disappointed. We really are an unpleasant lot much of the time.
That just plain sucks.
But! I read through the article and they seem to make a fallacious jump from "woman patient = higher separation rate" to "woman patient = man leaves." Isn't it possible that a sick woman would re-evaluate her choice of partners and decide that, for example, it's not worth putting up with the bum after all?
Unless I missed something, or they're not reporting it, there's no direction of causation mentioned and so it's silly to jump to blaming the man and fruitless to try to figure out why the man leaves.
I'm willing to accept that it is the case, but it smacks of folk wisdom rather than science as it reads.
Upon my grandfather's death, my grandmother revealed she had been planing on leaving him- until he got diagnosed with terminal cancer. She stuck around to the end.... so yeah, I'd say that the way men and women react to the diagnoses is pretty polar.
@dculberson: Without even reading the study yet, I'm going to second your thoughts. I happen to know two people in a "woman patient -> now divorcing situation" and he stood by her until she told him there was someone else standing by.
It is easy to take a few key phrases and make either gender look bad.
MarkRCampbell's anecdote happened to me, once upon a time. I'm still quite bitter about it, but that doesn't mean I'm a fan of Lance Armstrong's or Newt Gingrich's counterexamples.
Factor in which is the main monetary provider in the differing T-squares and you might have something meaningful (and less "The Sun" sensationalistic)...
who requests the divorce though? Is it a man abandoning his dying wife, or a woman realizing that life is too short to waste with someone she doesn't love?
i also have a friend of a friend anecdote of a woman diagnosed with a terminal illness deciding not to live out her life in an unhappy relationship.
are we at n=4 now?
The examples with which I'm personally familiar are split down the middle: guy diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his wife bolted (she came back to him 1 month before he died, FWIW), and a woman diagnosed with highly-treatable breast cancer whose husband left her because he was disgusted by her bald head and mastectomy, nevermind that she was going to have reconstructive surgery once her treatments ended. She wound up in a better situation, though, because her doctor fell in love with her, told her he couldn't treat her anymore because of conflict of interest, and they're married now.
Generally, though - from my own experience as a female cancer patient - men seem to want to be able to "fix" what's wrong, including the emotional trauma that comes with it, which isn't always possible. When it can't be fixed easily or quickly, the guys get upset, and tend not to understand that difficult treatments for health issues are going to require some form of grieving/emotional adjustment that isn't always quick and easy.
Well..this is right depressing. Guess I shouldn't ever get sick. T_T
Doesn't that figure into the whole woman-as-nurturer theme? Women are often mothers and caregivers. It makes sense to see them as more compassionate and considerate of a loved one who is sick. Men are not often portrayed in this light. This study makes perfect sense. It's outrageous and horrible to accept, but it makes sense.
"This study makes perfect sense."
Makes sense to a grrl, perhaps...
Hmm... I'm always skeptical of those kinds of studies. Yeah, it doesn't really go into abandonment vs. separation. While I see lots of guys being jerks because there's always unsick women and one's as good as any other, I also have my little anecdote to add. My mom left my abusive dad only after a major illness. I have no doubt she would have put up with that for the rest of her life if she hadn't gotten sick and lived.
I'm not reading your comment very clearly.
Do you mean that because of existing perceptions of men and women's gender roles, the study's possible bias (as pointed out by dculberson @6) makes "perfect sense"? Or that the study's conclusions make perfect sense?
Anyway, I'd venture to say perhaps because of these social perceptions -- rather than any real innate quality -- many women feel more compelled to act out these roles as mothers and caregivers, and suppress their own instincts and desires.
Anyway, I'd venture to say perhaps because of these social perceptions -- rather than any real innate quality -- many women feel more compelled to act out these roles as mothers and caregivers, and suppress their own instincts and desires
I'd agree with that. Social stigma is nasty.
Don't forget that often here in America, the spouse of a terminally ill person is sometimes forced to divorce or risk living in financial ruin and/or losing their own health insurance.
Maybe that could account for some of this as well?
When mine got her terminal diagnosis, she left for some legitimate reasons. I was her only love.
She didn't want me "to be in love with a dead woman", were her words. To ease the pain and help me get on while she could still help.
She had the rest of everything she wanted to do with the rest of her dramatically shortened live. Travel was one.
Essentially taking care of loose ends and living up to obligations couldn't be done attached, seeing as she was leaving anyways.
The report didn't really help explain reasoning and it seems like it could be 'men are bastards' fodder.
It's rather sad that MS is in there - it's not really what I'd call a "terminal disease," and there are pretty effective (if expensive) treatments available to prevent relapses (MS flareups). There are also studies on what may end up being either a) cheaper treatments or b) similarly expensive treatments but with homeopathic alternatives if you can stomach them (look up helminthic therapy for people talking about the virtues of intestinal parasites).
When my wife was diagnosed a couple of years ago I pointed out to her that MS is an annoyance, not a life-ending thing. Her doctor was initially concerned that she'd had a stroke since she was having balance & gait problems, and in my opinion that would've been significantly worse - I suspect that strokes starting in your mid-30s without triggering events are more likely to be recurring and harder to treat.
I'd probably feel very differently if we didn't have health insurance, though. Single-payer would make me much more comfortable.
I know of 3 people (2 female, 1 male) that left their long term partners shortly before being diagnosed with cancer. I'd say hormones would have played a huge part in these decisions. In none of the cases did the partner choose to return once they were diagnosed.
I also knew one case of a man being diagnosed with terminal cancer (absolutely no possibility of living more than about a year) he left his partner for about 6 months and then returned. He lived for about 4 more months. She maintains she is extremely grateful he returned, even if it was the most horrible 4 months of her life.
I'm not sure if this adds anything to the debate but questions, but I guess that was the point of my statements.
i speak to MS patients daily in my line of work. over 1/3 of my patients are women who got divorced within a few years of diagnosis. sometimes by their own choice but even then usually because of feeling neglected and having their abilities and health needs misunderstood by their partners.
as someone who sees the devastation it brings, a wholehearted thanks for being supportive to your wife
Hm interesting, but what about gay and lesbian couples?, that could shed a different light on this.
I wonder which matters more: the gender of the diagnosed, or the gender of the diagnosed's partner. How would this play out among homosexual couples? Are men more likely to separate from a critically ill woman than a critically ill man?
Interesting. At least the anecdotal evidence makes me nod at these results: I know my ex-spouse gave my chronic illness as one of the reasons he left me after many years of mostly happy marriage. I think the poster who said that men want to solve problems and can't handle not being able to solve a problem such as a serious illness had a good point.
Plus, women are more expected to abnegate themselves in favor of their spouse's needs. Just thinking of a woman leaving her cancer-diagnosed male partner gives me a much more negative attitude than thinking of a man leaving his cancer-diagnosed female partner. In the first case, it's something like, "How could she?" while in the second, it's more like, "Well, what do you expect?"
The moral of the story is, A) don't be a woman and B) if you have to be a woman, don't get a serious long-term illness if you want to have a partner.
In all seriousness, really good points all around, though. I would like to know if this was always "abandonment," as the title states or if sometimes it was the women breaking it off as has happened to several posters here...