Another moving note from a male reader abandoned by his wife:

Dear Ann,

I enjoyed reading the email from the gentleman who spoke so well about the indissolubility of marriage, as did you. I also am the victim of an “unwanted and unnecessary divorce.” Despite having four children and a 28 year marriage, my wife abandoned it all with the approval and assistance of her parish priest and other parishioners. Her reason: She was never really in love and needed to find her personal fulfillment. That such an egoistic philosophy should be supported by any priest is jaw-dropping. I am now in the middle of a financially crippling and litigious court battle that has left my children utterly disillusioned with the validity of the Church. Despite a pleading letter to the Arch Bishop of Baltimore, I received no advocacy. We have fallen so far.

 By drawing an analogy between human marriage and that great act of spousal love displayed by the selfless act of Christ on the cross, you made evident the true archetype of Christian marriage. I, like your reader, have chosen to continue in my vows, knowing that they may never again be reciprocated. Christ’s marriage vow to us that “He will never leave us or forsake us” remains the only true lifeline. That these words were spoken to souls in human flesh, who fall daily, perhaps even by the minute, makes it all the more precious.

 In Christ,

B

I post this because I want the B’s of the world to know that they are not alone, and to remind the general populace that men are, in my opinion, the greater victims of the post-Christian no-fault divorce culture.  Believe me, the story Bill tells is positively endemic in the Baby Boomer generation.  We all know middle and upper-middle class women who have callously abandoned their marriage solely because they wanted to be “free” and “recapture the youth that was stolen from them”.  Many of these women are encouraged to do this by so-called “therapists”, of whom my contempt knows no bounds.  Also, these women time their divorces so that they strike while their husband is in the peak of his earning years – usually the late 40s or early 50s, thus callously scheming to maximize their alimony and property packages.  In today’s feminized, devirilized culture, men are always painted as the wrong-doers, and women are the universal victims.  This is so wrong.  There are countless men who have been and will be utterly blindsided by their larcenous wives in this way, and are helpless to stop it, both in the civil courts, and most sickeningly, also in the rotting-on-the-vine Novus Ordo wing of the Church.

The only thing I can say to these men (and also women to whom this happens) is to unite your marital sufferings to Our Lord and Divine Spouse, abandoned, denied and persecuted in His Sorrowful Passion.  God Almighty has been through exactly the same thing that you are going through, only worse, and on a far bigger scale.  There is nothing that could ever be of greater consolation than that truth, which is all a derivative function of the Incarnation, which we continue to celebrate in these 40 days of Christmas.