I have a hard time trusting any mere humans to think straight on the decision theory of divorce; the stakes are so high that emotions come to the fore.
There must be conditions, even conditions short of abuse, where unilateral exit is allowed regardless of whether the other thinks that is a mistake. The conditions are a safety valve for motivated thinking. They can be things like “if you’re miserable, having more fights than intimacy, have tried couples therapy for at least 6 months, stayed apart for a month and felt better alone, then you can divorce if you want”.
Obviously that would be clunky in the vows, so there may be a lower-entropy way of saying that this marriage has some unlikely conditions for exit as well as voice.
(If you don’t have this, you risk “one spouse trying to convince the other, unwilling, spouse to accept a divorce”, which is pretty damn bad.)
I had an extremely painful and emotional divorce myself, so I am aware. Although, I tend to reject the idea that emotions prevent you from thinking straight. I think that’s a form of strategic self-deception.
Strictly speaking, the vows don’t say all decisions must be unanimous (although if they aren’t it becomes kinda tricky to define the bargaining solution). However, arguably, if both of us follow the vows and we have common knowledge about this, we should arrive at unanimous decisions[1]. This is the desirable state. On the other hand, it’s also possible that one of us breaks the vows, or erroneously beliefs that the other broke the vows[2], in which case unilateral action might be consistent with the vows. So, there’s no implication that unilateral divorce is completely forbidden.
By Aumann agreement, but even if we have different priors so Aumann agreement doesn’t apply, we should still be able to state those priors and compute the bargaining solution on that basis.
Further levels of recursion are ruled out if we assume that one is not allowed to dismiss the vows on account of an unconscionable violation by the other party without declaring this to the other party, which is probably a good clause to add.
I have a hard time trusting any mere humans to think straight on the decision theory of divorce; the stakes are so high that emotions come to the fore.
There must be conditions, even conditions short of abuse, where unilateral exit is allowed regardless of whether the other thinks that is a mistake. The conditions are a safety valve for motivated thinking. They can be things like “if you’re miserable, having more fights than intimacy, have tried couples therapy for at least 6 months, stayed apart for a month and felt better alone, then you can divorce if you want”.
Obviously that would be clunky in the vows, so there may be a lower-entropy way of saying that this marriage has some unlikely conditions for exit as well as voice.
(If you don’t have this, you risk “one spouse trying to convince the other, unwilling, spouse to accept a divorce”, which is pretty damn bad.)
I had an extremely painful and emotional divorce myself, so I am aware. Although, I tend to reject the idea that emotions prevent you from thinking straight. I think that’s a form of strategic self-deception.
Strictly speaking, the vows don’t say all decisions must be unanimous (although if they aren’t it becomes kinda tricky to define the bargaining solution). However, arguably, if both of us follow the vows and we have common knowledge about this, we should arrive at unanimous decisions[1]. This is the desirable state. On the other hand, it’s also possible that one of us breaks the vows, or erroneously beliefs that the other broke the vows[2], in which case unilateral action might be consistent with the vows. So, there’s no implication that unilateral divorce is completely forbidden.
By Aumann agreement, but even if we have different priors so Aumann agreement doesn’t apply, we should still be able to state those priors and compute the bargaining solution on that basis.
Further levels of recursion are ruled out if we assume that one is not allowed to dismiss the vows on account of an unconscionable violation by the other party without declaring this to the other party, which is probably a good clause to add.