Why is that such a common thing? While there are certainly people in other generations who have bad marriages and go through bitter divorces, spouse hatred seems so much less common among other generations...
Why is that such a common thing? While there are certainly people in other generations who have bad marriages and go through bitter divorces, spouse hatred seems so much less common among other generations...
Hating your spouse has been a stock joke for centuries, probably because marriage was something you entered into only semi-willingly and couldn't just leave. The Boomers were the first generation to have no-fault divorce. And even with easy divorce, marriage can be hard, and living with someone else for decades means grievances creep in, and you can fall into patterns of mutual resentment. So it's a old comedy trope that reflects reality to a certain extent, and there's nothing that unusual about Boomers using it.
My purely anecdotal impression is that divorce didn't become an viable option (culturally) until the Silent generation, and even then it was still fairly scandalous. In some backwaters, divorce was probably scandalous into the 80s, I'd guess? Certainly the 70s. So the Boomers were soaked in this attitude of "I hate my spouse" for much of their lives. In my opinion, the "hate my spouse" schtick peaked with the G.I. Generation, which was basically one big untreated ball of PTSD.