"I realized my husband was of no added value."

Wow, what a statement, but apparently, this is how some women feel about their husbands according to an article in the Dallas Morning News (thanks to reader who emailed the article). In the article, Christine Wicker, author of the best-selling book Lily Dale : The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead, asks why women are walking away from their marriages:

A lot of midlife women in my acquaintance are leaving what appear to be perfectly good and loving husbands. Or thinking about it. Or cheating on them. Or wanting to. Or staying married and faithful but buying their own houses, which they either live in or keep as a bolt hole.

This astonishes me. I grew up believing it was men who had midlife crises that threatened marriage.

I decided one recent morning to list women I knew who fit the profile. In 15 minutes, I came up with 30 names. Some families on my list have more than one walk-away wife. ....

University of Virginia research shows that progressive wives are less happy than traditional wives.

"More traditional women may wear rose-colored glasses, but they also benefit from a sense of male and female roles," said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, who conducted the research. "They don't expect their husband to act like a woman."

Everywhere you turn, it seems that some women's magazine, Suze Orman or some other cheerleader for the divorced (including the Atlantic magazine article mentioned in the essay) is telling women to throw in the towel and get rid of that guy. Women are told to be unhappy with everything about men. It's no wonder they are walking away from their marriages. The article says that women claim they don't regret it. Maybe they won't. But given the male shortage, especially for older men, I think the guys will be just fine.