I am sitting in a bar in Sheridan, Wyoming. I can’t help but overhear a conversation about a local suicide that the bartender said was precipitated by a man’s wife leaving him. I am acutely attuned to this because an acquaintance, and now friend, whom I met in a bar in Red Lodge, Montana, told me about the suicide epidemic among men in Montana. It’s not the first time I have heard these kinds of stories. They often involve men going through divorce or separation and sometimes losing not only a marriage but also their daily connection to their children, their friends, and the life they thought they had built.
It’s no secret that mothers are far more likely than fathers to be the primary custodial parent. It’s also no secret that women these days also initiate the majority of divorces, especially among college-educated couples. Taken together, these facts raise a question that no one seems to be asking, or even cares about asking: what happens to a man when he loses his marriage, his home, and the ordinary privilege of seeing his children grow up? What happens to a man when the courts tell him that he can no longer play a role in the upbringing of his children—something that every good man dreams about—because his wife no longer wants to be with him and a family court judge wants to move quickly to get this case off of her docket?
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