“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Edward Bernays, Master Propagandist

When it comes to human evolution in terms of gender relations in the twenty-first century, it seems we are witnessing an unprecedented backslide into the dark ages. There are no winners in the battle between the sexes, only losers. Violence against women is actually on the rise. As empowered women have slowly gained progress in women’s rights, insecure men around the globe have increasingly felt threatened and, as a consequence, have acted out more violently against women. But then on the other hand, the frequency of violence against men committed by women has also grown. Studies for some time have suggested and more are now confirming that women seem just as likely to be violent and controlling toward their intimate partners as men.

That said, up to 70% of women on this earth experience physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Over 600 million women are currently living in nations where no law protects them from domestic violence, the most common form of violence against women. According to the World Economic Forum, not one country on this planet has eliminated its gender gap.

This presentation will examine the current abysmal state of male-female relations worldwide, analyzing possible reasons for this disturbing trend as well as potential solutions for ameliorating this global pandemic that threatens to tear apart the very fabric that for eons has held the basic family unit together… the same institution that deep state and the ruling elite have vowed and are determined to destroy.

The various criteria by which to assess the worsening relations between men and women can be categorized into recent measures of sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic violence, murder and divorce rates, gender inequality, the inhumane practice of female circumcision, increasing globally applied female stigmatization and rigidly oppressive double standards. Within the last couple years I’ve written a half dozen articles on these critical issues exposing the recent surge of sexual violence within the US military (2012 Pentagon report admitting 26,000 sexual assault cases were committed the year before) and across America’s college campuses, growing sexual abuse by US law enforcement, human trafficking and sexual slavery, and the pervasively destructive effects by elitist design that social engineering, mind control programming and the tyranny of political correctness have had on blurring, gender bending and otherwise undermining sex roles and sexual relations between men and women. Thus this article can be viewed as a global overview assessing current male-female relations.

Based on the recent headlines, perhaps women are no more abused on this planet than in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and world’s largest democracy India. High profile cases of recent gang rape and murder in public places in India and the traditional stoning to death of rape victims and female adulterers as legal corporal punishment in Saudi Arabia have shocked the world with global headlines. But the House of Saud is not the only house of ill repute where this barbaric savagery against innocent women continues. Under the radar it’s also quietly taking place in over a dozen other countries. Even if it’s not practiced, aside from Saudi Arabia it’s currently on the books as sanctified laws in these 15 nations: Mauritania, Mali, 3 states in northern Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia in Africa and in the Middle East in Yemen, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Iran and in South Asia in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In parts of Malaysia and Indonesia it’s sanctioned regionally but banned nationally. So stoning remains a global problem.

Last November in Saudi Arabia a woman convicted of adultery was sentenced to being stoned to death as capital punishment while her male sexual partner received a punishment of 100 lashes. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from even driving cars and without her husband’s permission a woman cannot even open a bank account. If she leaves home she must be accompanied by a male chaperone at all times. After a Saudi wife using her iPhone camera to catch her husband cheating on her with the maid posted the video on a social network, she was charged with defamation and is now subject to a yearlong imprisonment.

US Empire’s biggest Muslim Sharia law-abiding ally in the Middle East – the Saudi Arabian government – held 157 public executions, many beheadings among them in 2015, the most in two decades. The ultimate in sheer hypocrisy and an insult to the entire world is the fact that the planet’s most over-the-top human rights violator is actually the current sitting chair for the United Nations Human Rights Council. Though these extreme examples of oppression and violence against women highlight just how far we still have to go to irradiate gender abuse, gross injustice and across-the-boards inequality, in this twenty-first century they also represent just the tip of the global iceberg underscoring the disturbing lack of progress in basic human rights extended to half our human population at the macro-level.

With the world’s second largest population approaching 1.3 billion people now, India’s high incidence of rape ranks as the fourth most common crime against women which have in turn more than doubled in the past ten years, amounting to two and a quarter million crimes against Indian women reported in this last decade alone. Accepting the sad fact that the vast majority of criminal acts like rape against women in this world largely go unreported with an estimated 84 to over 90% of all rape cases continuing to be unreported, millions of women around the globe suffer in silence.

With another crime in India against woman actually getting reported every two minutes, perhaps every 10 seconds an Indian man is raping another Indian woman. If reported cases are occurring every two minutes, the bulk of male perpetrators continue getting away with their vicious crimes. Researchers estimate that over the last three decades 50 million cases of female infanticide and feticide have also taken place in India. The nation’s continued practices of violence against women also include acid attacks, hanging women, child marriage, girls forced into prostitution or trafficked as sex slaves making the world’s largest democracy among the most dangerous places to live on earth for females.

A recent study found that just one out of 100 rapes in the UK results in the rapist seeing any prison time at all and that only one in 38 major sex crime cases leads to conviction in the UK. The rates of prosecution for rape are horrifically low everywhere. In the US only 2% of the time does a rapist ever go to prison. This gross unaccountability and worldwide impunity obviously contribute to more rapists continuing to rape. And more often than not, a first time rape offender will become a serial rapist until caught. The average number of sexual assaults and rapes by perpetrators in one study was 5.8. Thus, the recidivism rate for rapists amongst violent crimes is extremely high.

During this century crimes of mental cruelty, physical assault and sexual rape have alarmingly gone up each and every year in India. Perhaps on the one hand more women being courageous enough to report the crimes today than ever before marks a modest degree of progress. Or it can also simply be evidence that more rapes are being committed all the time. Most probably it’s a combination of both co-occurring factors. But these horrific statistics from India that contains over 17% of the world’s total population are a mere micro-reflection representing a larger global trend.

Moreover, the tracking mechanisms to even collect crime data against women in many Third World nations doesn’t even exist. The annual Amnesty International report on sexual assault doesn’t even include statistics from 63 countries, South Africa among them. Yet a survey of South African males showed that 25% of the men admitted to raping women. Rampant underreporting is also apparent as Hong Kong and Mongolia listed zero incidents of sexual assaults. And in many cases it’s an obvious lack of political will to bother keeping track since where existing rape laws remaining on the books are not being enforced. Additionally, husbands raping wives is still legal in Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China.

Nations with the worst track records for women’s rights in Latin America include Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil where attacks on women are notoriously high and domestic violence is tolerated. Every year the World Economic Forum releases a Global Gender Gap listing by rank equality changes between men and women in national economies, health, education and politics. According to the latest findings gender inequality is most pronounced in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran and Jordan) and North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Somalia and Ethiopia). Other African nations lagging behind in gender equality are Chad, Mali and Republic of Congo. In Asia again India, Pakistan and Afghanistan all have atrociously poor records on women’s rights.

Even nations considered more egalitarian from the so called developed world like Denmark and Finland report incredibly high rates of crimes against women. According to a 2014 survey compiled by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, in Denmark 52% and in Finland 47% of the female population are reported victims of physical and/or sexual violence. Out of all EU countries Finland has the dubious distinction of being the last nation to criminalize marital rape in 1994. In the largest ever sampled research on violence towards women, 42,000 European females of all ages from all 28 EU member countries were interviewed and one third reported being victims of physical and/or sexual violence. Per capita population South Africa and Sweden have the most rapes in the world. Not only are one in four Swedish women raped, but the number of reported cases skyrocketed from just 421 in 1975 to 6,620 in 2014, an astounding jump of 1472% and that was prior to the current migration crisis which has brought a recent rash of high profile sexual assaults. Every year the US also ranks high among the worst rape offending nations in the world moving from the worst to most recently third worst.

The massive European survey results are consistent with the World Health Organization’s similar finding that 35% of women worldwide experience some form of physical and/or sexual violence from their intimate partner. WHO also estimates that 38% of all murdered women globally are killed by their intimate partners. In Canada, Australia and Israel 40-70% of female homicides are perpetrated by murdering boyfriends and husbands. What is clearly emerging is a global sexual assault epidemic of the most heinous crimes against women being committed throughout the world. About half the women living in countries like Zambia, Ethiopia and Peru are being beaten by their current or past intimate male partner. Yet mainstream media hardly pays attention as it’s simply out of sight, out of mind for them.

Another widespread form of sexual violence is forcing underage girls into early marriage, 60 million in all, mostly in South Asia (31.1 million) and Sub-Saharan Africa (13.1 million). A Canadian study found that most girls (54%) between 15-19 years old were sexually coerced by unwanted advances in dating situations. In the US 83% of 12-16 year old girls experienced sexual harassment in public schools. About half of women in the EU report unwanted sexual advances and harassment at their workplace. In Asian Pacific countries the workplace harassment frequency is nearly as high at up to 40% reporting.

Yet another atrocity are the mostly girls and women being systematically raped in war torn nations like the Congo and Sudan as well as ISIS raping victims in Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of rapes are occurring daily around the world in various conflict zones. Then there’s the 130-140 million womenand girls in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries who have had their female genitalia mutilated and cut. Then there are also the South Asian dowry murders as revenge for unpaid dowries and the so called “honor killings” against female rape victims or those suspected of premarital sex or adultery most often in the Middle East and South Asia.

80% of the estimated 2.5 million victims annually from human trafficking are women. Though the annual 2005 Forced Labor Report specified that 98% of humans internationally trafficked as sex slaves were female, just three years later a report sponsored by the US Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice found that underage boys comprise half of those who are sexually exploited commercially in the United States.

The bottom line reality here is that woman and children everywhere on this planet are not safe from grave physical and emotional harm resulting from violent male offenders. It’s important to include rape of both men by other men as well as children are also on the rise. 9% of all rape and sexual assault victims from 1995-2010 in the US were male. 15% of all US rape victims are under the age of 12 and 44% are minors under the age of 18. It’s also worth noting that Native Americans are twice as likely to be raped as the rest of Americans and Native American women and children in both the US but especially Canada have for a long time now been disappearing, murdered, trafficked and raped way more than other North American women. But because indigenous women and children on this earth are amongst the most destitute, impoverished and defenseless, they’ve long been regarded as a throwaway population.

In the United States more than a quarter of college-age women (18-24) report that they were raped or experienced an attempted rape at least once since age 14. One in four girlsand one in six boys are sexually assaulted in America by age 18. The non-college peer group are 1.2 times more likely to be raped than females enrolled at college. Of those women participating in the survey who reported they had been raped, only 16% reported the crime to the police or campus authorities. Again, because the legal system worldwide is so stacked against female victims, making them feel they are the ones on trial and rarely resulting in guilty rapists ending up behind bars, the many months of stress, humiliation and re-trauma of having to testify in court compel the vast majority of women not to bother reporting rape at all or dropping the initial case shortly after filing.

Another grossly underreported phenomenon is America’s so called “cream of the crop” cadets attending the elite military service academies. Per student population they rank amongst the highest in campus sexual assaults. In fact the US Air Force Academy houses more rapists than any other institution of higher learning in this nation. What does that say when rapists are among America’s future leaders? As a West Point graduate, I’ll tell you what it says. They go from raping women as cadets at the prestigious academies to raping and pillaging entire nations and continents as US Empire generals.

It’s easy to extrapolate the sorry current status of male-female relations to the inability or more apt unwillingness of nations at the macrocosm level to peaceably resolve international conflicts without resorting to violence and war. In fact governments historically use war as political camouflage to whip up jingoistic, sabre rattling nationalism to intentionally divert public attention away from failed policies that produced a depressed economy. Just as elite puppet masters behind the politicians are pulling their Hegelian strings to manipulate at will economic downturns and global war crises in order to implement oppressive draconian measures as deceptive solutions, they are also engaging in massive PSYOPS to socially engineer and program human populations utilizing their divide and rule methodology to artificially create conflict between males and females (among many other exploited divisions).

Through Edward Bernays inspired propaganda machine, the ever-powerful mass media effects of news and entertainment industries regularly shape public opinion, conditioning and brainwashing the masses into mind-controlled blind obedience. In recent years the Pentagon and CIA liaisons busily working out in Hollywood systematically censor and control virtually all American filmmaking so that TV and films today are pure propaganda tools brainwashing young men to identify with glorified violence as an inherently honorable and masculine behavior to emulate. With a full century to hone their propaganda skills, television and movies today are nothing short of recruitment tools for enticing misguided young men and women into fighting and dying on foreign soil not for their nation, democracy or freedom but for war profiteers on Wall Street, central bank gangstersand the military industrial complex. The music industry is no better, pumping out misogynistic messages that again glorify violence and disrespect toward women.

From the one-dimensional macho asshole that still reigns supreme as the all-American male superhero to the emasculated, effeminate male wimp, these two cartoonish extremes are about all we see in the mass media these days. Saturated particularly in TV sitcoms and television advertising is the current stereotypical male nearly always depicted as the inept bungler, the impotent fool constantly needing to be rescued or bailed out of trouble by the smarter, stronger female. No healthy, integrated male role models equally comfortable expressing elements of both his feminine side as well as his masculine side are found, and of course like virtually everything nowadays, it’s also by sinister grand design.

Compound this meticulously designed social engineering disaster with thought police Nazis militantly enforcing Political Correctness, and the Obama regime is ramrodding his perversely distorted LGBT-second wave feminist agenda down our throats. Mandating penises into the little girls’ bathroom is just the beginning. After using bribery threats to cut off federal school funding to states refusing to accept his Common Core’s K-12 brainwash-into-oblivion, now that he’s finagled 45 out of 50 states stuck with our kids being sexualized into mass confusion years ahead of their developmental schedule, the Manchurian take-down-America president’s plan is to inflict untold psychological damage deep into the future. Meanwhile, the rigid mob-ruled PC fanaticism gripping our nation now casts eerily dark shadows as the new McCarthyism superseding the US Constitution by prohibiting free speech under the phony pretense of not offending a single person or group on this entire planet. Obama’s Trojan horse policies in this election year have thoroughly polarized, dumbed down, weakened, and cluelessly confused Americans reeling from an upside down criminal underworld coup now unfolding in the US. All of these diabolical machinations are geared to ensure that a handful of Satanic worshipping, pedophiliac elitists wield absolute NWO control over us.

An example of this go-to Hegelian formula of a manufactured crisis resulting from US Empire’s imperialistic wars in the Middle East at the pressured behest of the Greater Israel Project currently being played out is the mass migration disaster now devouring, bankrupting and destroying Europe. The patriarchal Muslim societies from the Middle East and North Africa with their Sharia laws culturally colliding with the liberal morays and norms of Western Europe is long past a recipe for continental disaster. Fair or not, this manufactured clash of civilizations has Western males accused of being too weak and effeminate to adequately protect and defend their own woman and children. Already documented rising rates of sexual harassment and rape abounded on the continent a full year ahead of the migration flood, but now added to this polarizing mix are over a million Muslim males some of whom are harassing and raping European women, in turn creating an Islamophobic and xenophobic-driven, violent backlash. First the globalist created migration crisis, then throw in the incendiary Paris and Brussels false flag terrorist attacks, and Europe’s a powder keg ready to explode. Mounting racial, religious and class tensions are only fueling the ever-widening gender divide. But that may pale to what soon could break out as race rioting civil wars across Europe, co-timed with the NATO force buildup lining up at the Russian border for an inevitable West vs. East showdown that could easily ignite World War III.

In the world’s most populous nation China where the three plus decade old one-child per family edict as of 2012 produced 18 more million males than females under age 15, women who have not married by age 28 at the latest are now being stigmatized as “sheng nu” otherwise known as “leftover women,” tantamount to being labeled as damaged goods. This growing segment of unwed females only in their late twenties and older are often highly educated career women yet they are suffering socially from increasing loneliness, alienation and rejection. Parents of these society-shunned women have desperately taken to trying to sell them off at Beijing parks where they gather daily at the “marriage market” with photos and bios in hand hoping to find a marital match for their daughters.

The working comrade female taking her place standing proudly alongside Mao’s Communist Revolutionary male of the 1960’s has given way to a traditional culture where the woman’s identity is linked exclusively to marriage by age 25, family and home… gender equality in reverse. China’s surplus of men who also happened to be economically disadvantaged are also suffering as well because without access to owning property and a high paying job, they’re deemed and doomed as unworthy of a wife losers in life. Lots of surplus unhappy people as a harsh and unfair consequence for living in a country notorious for its longtime practice of gendercide.

Because rape in China is considered taboo, as in many cultures rape victims are ostracized especially for daring to report the crime. Marital rape is still legal and only last November was same sex rape finally outlawed. A loophole that allowed pedophiles and rapists of young girls light sentences was changed only a couple years ago. Moreover, since domestic violence in China has always been viewed a private family matter, its incidence has remained historically high but swept under the rug. Physical abuse was not deemed justification for divorce until 2001. The country finally passed its first domestic violence law that went into effect on March 1st this year. The All-China Women’s Federation estimates that about 25% of women in China have been domestic violence victims but in all likelihood it’s higher than that. So women’s rights have progressed very slowly in China.

Since the 1970’s in the West divorce laws facilitated easier, quicker divorces and women’s rights and equality became forefront issues, North American and European women especially have been joining the workforce in droves, pursuing higher education and careers first prior to settling down to marriage and family. As women’s economic power and independence grew, so did the divorce rate that in the West has been hovering near and moving above the 50% mark ever since. Though widespread claims have been insisting that the divorce rate was gradually falling to near 40% since the 1980’s, after faulty methodology was exposed accounting for age group standardized rates, recent studies have actually shown that the divorce rate simply leveled off somewhat in the 1980’s but has been slowly rising ever since. Thanks to the influx of baby boomers on the marriage scene since the 1970’s and their propensity for divorce that’s still apparently going strong, US divorce rates are still increasing as of the latest 2010 compiled data.

The fact is, divorce rates around the globe have been steadily rising since the 1970’s. Obviously many sociological, cultural and economic factors contribute to why divorce has been so persistently prevalent in modern times particularly in the West. The US and Eastern Europe (Belarus, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Hungary), along with Russia, Portugal, Sweden and Belgium comprise the most divorce-prone nations in the world. Reasons vary somewhat, some offer economic advantage to women and singles (Belgium) while others suffer economic disadvantages that create chronic stress and high alcoholism rates; many are secular nations where religion holds marginal influence on the population but all have easy and quick divorce laws and are free from societal stigmatization that in earlier times deterred divorce (and still does in many Asian and Latin cultures). In fact 70% of Americans believe that divorce is a morally acceptable choice. The more people believe that, the more apt they will be to opt out of marriage.

Since neither America’s public education system nor even higher education (unless one’s academic major is in communication or psychology) teach young people communication skills, couples enter into marriage lacking sufficient skills and experience to weather the unforeseen storms of married life over the long haul. Most or all of the following are crucial life skills and talents essential in virtually every successful long term intimate relationship – the capacity to express oneself honestly, assertively, tactfully and respectfully in order to effectively communicate needs, feelings, thoughts and perceptions, learning to negotiate and compromise in order to satisfactorily meet both one’s own expressed needs and the partner’s, while gaining greater understanding of both oneself and one’s partner through introspection and reflection, in committed partnership applying the necessary coping skills in order to meet and overcome life’s formidable challenges and acute stressors while drawing upon an inner reserve of strength, resiliency and spiritual faith and guidance.

Yet rarely are any of these marital assets formally or informally ever taught by our role models, be they parents, teachers, religious leaders or mentors. Living historically in a culture that values individualism as an embedded trademark especially prior to the 1950’s onset of consumerism, Americans tend to be challenged in their ability to understand others’ point of view. As a result we can be oblivious to the plight or issues of others, and are largely in adult life on our own to learn and develop skills we may inherently lack only through the ups and down school of hard knocks from our own “live and learn” adulthood experience. Lack of a solid social support system that is most often an embedded structure in cultures with extended families and strong community ties (again largely absent in the US) also offer valuable assistance and needed resources helping couples navigate through adversity and crises to stay together. Too often in the United States that safety net is missing.

Another enduring reason contributing to poor communication that plays a major factor in the divorce rates today is that the male gender has been traditionally conditioned and severely handicapped by the one-dimensional macho man image and upbringing, never feeling comfortable expressing any other emotion but anger for fear of being ridiculed or labeled a sissy, a crybaby, effeminate or weak. Since men bear the conditioned burden of always having to appear strong and independent, males tend to be limited in expressing other diverse parts of self that too often are repressed or dormant. Articulating love, demonstrating nurturance, gentleness, kindness, showing sensitivity, vulnerability and the full range of softer, more tender emotions that include the capacity to shed tears, these have all been strictly taboo behaviors for the male species for a very, very long time. Only in recent decades have they been even partially accepted as a healthier, fuller expression of manhood. Certainly the male superstar role models over the last century coming out of Hollywood – the violent, macho, action figure-types haven’t helped us at all. Nor for that matter the other extreme offered as today’s alternative, the bumbling, emasculated, idiotic buffoon.

A younger, coming-of-age spouse starting with generation X raised by the divorce-prone baby boomer generation are products of family divorce which only begets more divorce at twice the higher rate with each passing generation raised by second and third generation of divorced parents. If both spouses come from broken parental marriages, the risk of divorce for them is tripled.

Thus the death of the nuclear family a few years back as the longtime American family majority and norm was replaced by the rising flood of generations of children that have become the new majority raised primarily by single parent mothers. In a culture of broken homes caused by failed parental marriages, you can see why the divorce rate over time has been skyrocketing. Residents from Western nations are also embracing non-traditional lifestyles that often don’t include marriage at all. Also with the economy stuck in recession mode, many adult children have been forced to move back into their parents’ home and this would obviously also curtail marriage. Enormous college loan debts as indentured servants for life might inhibit marriage.

Males aren’t catching on, learning how to sustain an intimate relationship, still hampered by their conspicuous communication skill deficits. This situation in this century has only been made worse by the digital age that has humans so addicted to their electronic toys that they’re losing their capacity to relate to others, possess empathy and conversational skills in actual face-to-face settings with other real human beings, overtaken by day and night preoccupation with their gadgets. While hamstrung by their emotional straightjacket yet driven by biological urges, males today appear as ill-equipped as ever to handle the rigors of navigating through the minefields to a life of marital longevity. Many have given up on women and forming relationships altogether, resigned to a celibate lifestyle releasing pent up sexual pressure with habitual internet visits to porn sites, confused by the plethora of mixed messages bombarding them from both females and mass media culture, and frequently terrified of both perceived and/or real risk of being accused of sexual harassment or worse yet rape.

What do all these depressing numbers, statistical facts and unhealthy emerging lifestyle patterns suggest about the dismal state of the male-female union today? At the very least they indicate that men and women are unable to understand, communicate or get along very well, that men’s paucity of verbal communication and coping skills are falling drastically short of being capable of resolving interpersonal conflicts when they arise in a civilized, humane way. Men either pretend they don’t have a clue or really don’t when relationship issues come up and the female partner wants to openly talk about them. Due to repression, anxiety and fear of intimacy, guys typically will deny there’s even a problem and avoid dealing with deeper dynamics, interpersonal issues and problems. A growing number have become so blocked and bottled up, they’re ticking time bombs (particularly PTSD traumatized combat vets), and they either act out abusively against women as angry aggressives, passive-aggressives or disempowered, female-avoidant, passively withdrawn escapists.

Marital stress is often caused or further exacerbated by such external factors as financial hardship increasingly brought on in recent years by the stagnantly bankrupted global economy. When you’re chronically unable to work because you don’t have a job or are unable to feed or adequately provide for your family, having internalized the traditional masculine obligatory role as family provider yet unable to cope with mounting pressures of survival, couples invariably will fight over money, Many men (and women) will turn to self-medicating their stress and upset with alcohol and drugs (street, OTC and prescription). Ultimately they reach their breaking point and too often take it out on their spouse and children, engaging in domestic violence in the form of spousal and child abuse. Over the last decade people have been hit hard financially amidst the shrinking value of the dollar accompanied by shrinking wages and fewer available jobs. This chronic level of stress and despair is currently driving an increasing number of marriages worldwide to divorce court. With all too real stressors bearing down and a lack of coping skills and adequate support system available, marriages are not able to withstand these kind of pressures indefinitely.

Certainly another important social phenomenon throughout this increasing divorce rate process has been the now long accepted norm for couples to cohabitate without marriage. If you choose this lifestyle in serial relationship form, you avoid ever becoming a marriage or divorce statistic, so plenty of people have opted for this illusionary “safer,” more fancy-free choice. Yet couples who live together prior to marriage also stand a greater chance of ending up in divorce, especially if they have cohabitated more than once. Having a child out of wedlock prior to marriage also increases the risk of divorce. Marrying too young while still in adolescence dramatically spikes the divorce rate. And individuals married a second time are at a 60% chance of divorce and only 1 in 4 people who marry a third time is the lucky charm. This reality does not bode well for supporting the notion that people actually learn from their past marital mistakes. Finally polls show that five of the most common reasons why people end up divorced are through aforementioned “failures to communicate,” financial stress, psychological, physical and/or sexual abuse, infidelity and simply no longer being attracted to their husband or wife.

But when asked why their marriage failed, the number one answer 73% of the time is lack of commitment. US society has gotten so used to the quick fix, a convenient pill or consumer product away from instant relief, that they’re ready to bail at the first sign of trouble. When the going gets tough, the soft American populace get going, too quickly calling it quits and simply walking away. If all they see and know around them are unsuccessful marriages starting with their own parents, extending to friends, other family members and their peer group, desensitized and numb, it becomes “no big deal” even if on the inside it’s emotionally devastating. Or it finally literally hits home once they’re home alone. People emerging from lesser committed marriages in divorce are prone to entertaining the illusion that relief may simply be the next rebound relationship away. Obviously an amicable parting with your significant other is a preferred way to go if possible, but too often so much emotional pain, anger, regret, sadness, even grief and loss make remaining friends with your ex very difficult. Alone time after a major breakup is part of the healing process, though again having social support is important too.

Love is the way out of the darkness and despair. It starts with loving yourself, being comfortable in your own skin with who you are. Acceptance and tolerance of both yourself and other’s differences, be they interpersonal, intercultural or international are virtues that go far in relationships. As far as I’m concerned, women are the better half of the human species because they are generally more loving, caring, supportive, understanding, gentle, kind, considerate and emotionally far more intelligent and skilled verbally endowed with the capacity to communicate meaningfully and in depth about what most matters. If men learned from woman to develop these positive attributes, virtues and skills, they too would become more loving and caring toward other humans. Because regardless of gender, we all have both the masculine as well as the feminine sides to our personality, it’s more of a matter of integrating and nurturing the best of both qualities within us. Supporting women unequivocally in gender equality, women’s human rights, and finding peaceful ways to resolve conflict to refrain from violence is the key. Playing the hostile blame game or competing and feeling threatened out of insecurities, these are unhealthy, reactive behaviors that serve neither person’s needs nor best interests. This world is currently in a very dangerous place with the overwhelming threat of world war and a collapsed global economy breaking at any time. For us to survive individually or collectively, love with God’s help is our only salvation.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/