No longer can women, as a rule, count on their husbands for a lifetime of support, and therefore many worry about having to cope when their husbands depart. But, in other instances, it is the wives who leave their husbands. Some even leave behind small children.

Are the divorced really happy? Three U.S. professors, who made a study of such persons, report in Psychology Today of April 1977: “We didn’t find a single victimless divorce among the families we studied. At least one member of each family reported distress or showed a negative change in behavior.”

The article noted that free-living divorced men did not realize lasting satisfaction, and added: “The stereotyped image of the carefree, swinging single life did not hold up for the women, either. For them, casual sex brought on feelings of desperation, depression, and low self-esteem.” No wonder that suicide is at least three times as frequent among the divorced as among the married, and that alcoholism shows similar patterns.