 Today's video is sponsored by Skillshare, more on that later. Well, hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. I have a serious subject today, which is why I brought out the foot mic, because nothing screams you should really listen to my opinion, please hear me out on this, louder than talking into a disembodied foot. So the video that you are about to watch is a deviation from my normal content. Usually, I'm a creator who talks about my life as an amputee, hence why I have so many feet in my house, weird sentence out of context, topics around disability, mental health, things like that. But there is one specific topic that has been rattling around the internet for a few months now that is deeply concerning to me. And as someone who has gotten divorced, this is something I wanted to spend a few minutes shedding some light on. I got divorced a year and a half ago. I was in a very committed relationship with one person for a decade. We were married for seven, and I had to make the decision after a long chain of events and doing everything in my power to salvage things. I made the decision to leave. I've cut my leg off twice, and that decision was more difficult. And I always shudder to talk about this stuff publicly, like I tried to keep it real quiet when I was going through that because the amount of judgment and hatred that there is, towards I would say specifically women when they are ending marriages, when people have no context, is intense. The reason that I was able to get divorced is because in the state of Colorado, you can state that this relationship is unsalvageable. You go in front of a judge, you make sure assets are split up correctly, you deal with all the legal bullshit, and then you can leave and make a choice for yourself on what is best for you in a situation that you are the only person who actually knows what is occurring in. This is the case I believe in all 50 states. It's still not an easy process, but you have a way to leave. This wasn't always the case. Back in, I believe it was the 70s. No fault divorce was like instituted, but prior to that, you had to prove something was really, really messed up, like abuse, abuse or infidelity to be able to exit a marriage. And recently, there has been a growing conversation for bringing this back. Hi, it's Joan, a different sweater. I'll be popping up to adding details I forgot to mention because I was kind of nervous when I filmed this video. Republicans in particular across the country are reconsidering no fault divorce. For instance, last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform calling for an end to no fault divorce saying we urge the legislature to rescind unilateral no fault divorce laws to support covenant merit. It's not just Texas, there's discussion of this in Louisiana and Nebraska. This was also discussed in 2016 at the National Republican Convention. Like this is an actual thing that is occurring in our country. This is a movement that is being made and it is deeply concerning to me for a lot of reasons. There's this one quote from a Rolling Stone article I'd like to read to you. Despite its embarrassing premise, the only way to retain a partner is to literally trap them in the relationship but the sentence continues on from then but that's literally it. You wanna cage people up, figuratively speaking so they can't leave you. There's therapy for that, my friend. Before we continue with this topic, I would like to take a few moments to thank the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare. I'm actually really excited to work with them again. If you followed my channel for a while, you know that they've sponsored videos before but this is a service that I actively use. Skillshare is an online learning platform that has classes on all different kinds of subjects from illustration to photography, music production, film and video, productivity, AI and more. So I saw this Skillshare course name pop up and I had to take it so I started taking this class this week. It's called How to Use AI to Organize Your Life. Now, I am not a big AI nerd but I am kind of fascinated by it and learning what tools are accessible to you through AI to kind of work on organization is amazing. I'm looking at moving here pretty soon and so I've been trying to get a little bit more organized. And this class taught by senior reporters, absolutely fantastic and really interesting to learn about. So whether you wanna learn the basics of watercolor like I have before through Skillshare or wanna learn how to start your own creative business, Skillshare is classes that will take you from beginner to pro alongside a very supportive community. If you want to unlock your creativity and try something new, you can get a one month free trial of Skillshare by clicking the link in my description. The first 1,000 people to use that link will receive that free trial. Thank you so much to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Check out that link down below to claim your free trial and let's dive back into it. This first came to my attention when a man by the name of Stephen Crowder, you might know him, made this announcement that he is getting divorced, that it's not his choice, that his wife is leaving him. And no, this was not my choice. My then wife decided that she didn't want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted. It's been- It's allowed as crazy as it is. You're just allowed to say, I don't want to be married anymore. And I can't control that. And in this big announcement, made references to the fact that like in the state of Texas, she can just do that, right? Like legally she can just leave, even though I don't want it. Very clearly insinuating in my opinion that he does not think this should exist. He talks about how much he doesn't believe in divorce, doesn't believe it's a good thing for families, for children, for anything. His beliefs haven't changed. Then says in today's legal system, my beliefs don't matter as if he is the only party involved in making that decision. After releasing this video on, you know, him not wanting to get divorced, but this being something he was forced into, video evidence came out that he was doing some pretty damn atrocious things to his then very pregnant with twins wife. He and many of his contemporaries have said things that either allude to this or directly stated. Basically what these voices are saying and pushing for is that you should not be able to get out. I think I can just like end the sentence there. That's like, that's really the point is that you shouldn't be able to get out. Once you're locked in, you belong to that person, baby. You ain't going nowhere. Unless of course you can prove abuse or infidelity. Now I can spend more than a couple seconds talking about this because I think it's a larger issue. But when you're talking about having to prove abuse to leave relationships, like I said, it is really difficult to prove abuse is occurring in a court of law. It sounds great to be like, well yeah, you know if abuse is occurring you can totally get out. But do you have any idea what it looks like to actually make that happen? Do you have any clue how difficult it is to exit abusive relationships or prove that someone is an abuser beyond a reasonable doubt? Taking away no fault divorce would make it exponentially more difficult for victims of domestic violence and abuse to be able to escape. And that is something that we should all be very concerned about regardless of your stance on the topic of divorce. It is so bizarre to me that a portion of our society is advocating for this kind of control because that is what it is. All this is doing is making it easier to control someone. Oftentimes this is women, but guess what? It's men too. Regardless of your gender, you can find yourself in a bad situation or a toxic relationship or discover that you have an abuse of partner. So let me like take this back a few now, just let's say that abuse is not occurring. Hopefully it's not, right? But this relationship is not good for you for whatever reason. You've done what you can to remedy it, to try to address it. It's not working. You have one life to live and you decide that being partnered with this person is actively detrimental to you, to your mental health, to the rest of your family, to whatever it is. The idea is that you should not be able to leave because you stood in front of people and God and made a promise years ago. You signed a piece of paper and you gotta be a person of your word. You gotta work it out. People just give up so easily nowadays. Figure it out, figure it out. But it's not reputable at this point. It's absolutely the marriage is just beyond repair. No, it isn't, just work through it. But there is something greater than your individual desires. But the marriage itself isn't institution. And I don't care if you don't feel happy at this particular moment. You're not gonna feel happy at every single moment of your life. There are more important things than your individual pleasure at any given moment. So often the tone is people who just aren't willing to put in the work. You know, life isn't just about your pleasure every single second of every day. Have some endurance. Have some perseverance. Just work through it, right? It's just what people do. Don't be a pansy and give up. And I don't know what kind of divorces these people have witnessed or experienced. Maybe that's the case for some people. But I can certainly tell you at least in my own experience and that of the people that I know that this is not a decision you make lightly. Even if it might come as a surprise to other people. The effect that divorce has on every single aspect of your life financially, emotionally, socially to such a deep, deep level. I find it difficult to believe that people make this kind of decision and follow through on a whim. Again, I am certain it happens but you'd have to really work to convince me that that is the norm because it's not easy. In fact, it's much simpler to stay married. Also, let's just say that someone is a lazy bum, doesn't wanna put in the work, has never considered the fact that relationships might be difficult sometimes and just once out wants to leave. You might disagree with a reasoning for that but who the hell should be able to tell that person that they are forced to stick it out, they are forced to stay in a situation they don't wanna be in. It genuinely feels like treating people like children, like they're there, you're not old enough, you're not wise enough to understand what we're doing. So we're just gonna keep you stuck here because we know what's best for you. We who have absolutely no idea what occurs behind closed doors. When it comes to your romantic personal intimate life. This is kind of unrelated but marriages are so easy to get. If we're gonna talk about staying in a marriage is being so important and you can't leave it and divorce being made inaccessible to people, why can I just walk down to the courthouse and literally get a marriage license and get married in like three days? Like in the state of Colorado you don't even need witnesses or a judge, I can just like find someone, we can sign a paper in the woods, we are now married. And we're totally fine with giving people that kind of responsibility to make decisions for themselves, do they wanna spend the rest of their lives with? But beyond that, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't have the autonomy to make decisions for yourself once you've made that decision already for yourself. If you wanna make divorce a lot more difficult to get, why aren't we also talking about making marriages way more difficult to access? I'm not advocating for that just so we're clear but it kind of seems hypocritical and weird to me if the tone is that we don't trust you to make decisions. Another thing that is perplexing to me is that those advocating for this type of thing often talk about like needing to keep people together to lower the divorce rate. And what doesn't make sense to me is that that is not indicative of a healthy relationship, of a good situation for two people or even for kids involved. There's such an emphasis on staying together, on not getting divorced because that's bad, but is it? Like I've already talked about my experience with divorce. It is life-changing and agonizing but the idea that we see divorce as a whole as this bad thing, as failure and that the goal should be lowering the divorce rate instead of focusing on what actually makes a healthy, long-term, successful relationship, what do people need to thrive? How do we best serve each other? As opposed to making it harder to get out of a relationship that isn't working is just confusing to me. Like in Colorado, the waiting period from filing to actually being able to get divorced is 90 days but we had to wait longer because the judge wanted to talk to us even though internally there was no dispute, meaning that I had to wait on someone I do not know who does not know me or my relationship or anything about us to grant me the ability to leave. Now, because it was just like financial matters, I totally understand that splitting up of assets and all of that. It's important that that is handled well and fairly but that felt like such an invasion because I suddenly realized that some man again who didn't know me, my story or anything that had actually occurred in my marriage held the power to be able to tell me if I could leave it or not and that is in no fault divorce. The idea of that being abolished and having strangers who have no idea what is occurring, having the power to be like, nope, you can't go anywhere, you're stuck, is horrifying. To anyone who is an advocate for this idea of no fault divorce being abolished, I genuinely want to ask why do you, like why do you want to control people because at its core, that is what it is. Why would you want someone to be forced to stay with you who does not want to be there? What level of unhealthy or insecure or just messed up is that? You don't get to own other people. You don't, you shouldn't be able to and suggesting these kinds of laws. That is the end goal. Like I said, this isn't a topic I normally address on my channel but I kind of like talking about some of these larger issues. Let me know if you're interested in hearing more of this kind of stuff. I look forward to reading your comments. Also, a big thank you again to Skillshare for sponsoring today's video. Check out that link and code down below. It helps to support the channel and is also a service that I genuinely have used. I really like them. I'm guessing you've probably heard of them before if you've been on YouTube for a second. My amazing and generous patrons over on Patreon, thank you for supporting this channel and to you, lovely viewer, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.