That's what we used to call it, and it had both a serious/angry, humorous/affectionate tone to it, plus plenty in the middle that was pointed. Hearing about a radio celebrity publicly criticising his soon-to-be ex it occurred to me that he would have a ready audience of guys prepared to take his side and believe his version automatically. His wife could also fin such an immediate audience as well should she choose to. I sighed. Well, that's the way of the world. It was ever thus...no, wait a minute a lot of this is new! I am embarrassed that this never occurred to me until I was today-years-old, as the new saying is.
The increase in divorce since about 1965 has created a stable percentage of adults who are divorced. 15+%. It would be higher, but people remarry. Add to that the people who have had longterm cohabitations that ended, many unhappily. Counterbalancing this are the previous relationships that were deeply unhappy but they did not divorce. This can hardly have been good for the general opinions men and women had of each other. Still, it seems to have been more contained than now. There are also those who remarry more happily the second time. How the reduced frequency of marrying at all fits into this seems multisided in terms of everyone getting along. However, I note that a smaller percentage of recent generations have to keep at least one person of the opposite sex happy. It would seem that at least one fence of the pasture is down.
I'm not much concerned with the actual measurements of this at the moment, not until I have some idea of the balancing. Yet I note that this is new, and likely contributes to our national er, discussions more than I had thought to credit before. One more pool of disaffected people.
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