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The 10 Things Divorced Women Wish They Had Known Before Filing

Channel: John Griffin (Life 2.0)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2LpRYOjrrg

Addressed to women, the speaker lists ways he says wives drive their husbands to divorce, framed as a warning that divorce wrecks women financially and emotionally far more than men.

Key points

  • Sets the stakes: nearly 50% of US women are single/divorced/widowed; women's standard of living drops far harder after divorce than men's, and women over 50 have little time to recover. He claims 65-70% of divorces are initiated by women (lesbian couples even higher), arguing something in female nature resists long-term monogamy.
  • Communication. Women expect men to read their minds and keep a mental scorecard of chores. Men need to be told needs directly and repeatedly (he compares it to training his dogs); saying something once is not enough.
  • Respect. The "linchpin" - nagging, name-calling, or questioning his masculinity ends the relationship; "when you disrespect your husband you have basically divorced him."
  • Solutions vs listening. A man's instinct is to fix a problem; women usually want to be heard. Tell him which one you need.
  • Emotions. Men compartmentalize and stay task-focused in crisis (he invokes the amygdala / fight-or-flight); a man not emoting is not uncaring.
  • Sex / intimacy. Withdrawing sex as punishment or treating it as a chore ("cold dead fish") ends the marriage; women should initiate sex regularly.
  • Children. Diverting all attention to kids and cutting off the husband breeds resentment; he feels used and abandoned.
  • Control. Trying to control every decision and treating him like a child is disrespect; decisions (houses, cars, trips) should be joint.
  • Closes with his own case: says his wife left during a low point (career change), repeatedly asked to come back, and now deeply regrets it. Claims men are loyal "to the end" and want to be the hero, but once a woman makes him the villain the damage is "like firing a gun" - hard to undo.

(Title frames this as advice divorced women learned too late; the body is the speaker's list of behaviors he says women should change to keep a husband. Cites no studies for its divorce-initiation or standard-of-living figures.)

Reception

  • Strongly approving, cynical-male room; many "stay single" and no-regrets-after-divorce anecdotes, with several men saying they refused their ex's pleas to reconcile.
  • Top comment pushes harder than the video: "your wife doesn't regret leaving you. She regrets how it has affected her" (951 likes); others echo that women blame the man rather than feel real regret.
  • Heavy agreement on the respect and communication points - "just because a woman can babble for hours doesn't mean she is a great communicator"; the "great communicators" reframed as "great manipulators."
  • Recurring "Operation: Drag Feet" / divorce-was-the-best-day-of-my-life stories: men recount coming out financially ahead while exes declined, reinforcing the video's standard-of-living claim with anecdote.
  • A few women comment positively that they watch to understand the male perspective; a noted theme is wives being egged on by friends ("too good for your spouse, you can do better").