In Defense of Love: Believing in Marriage in Divorce Culture

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By: Grace Carpenter, University of Virginia 

I went to New York City for a few pre-Christmas escapades last week and what I saw shocked me. Not because it was horrifyingly crowded with stiletto-clad fur coats stalking through the streets. Not because the entire city was mobbed with pushy window-shoppers who will literally shove you into a bus just to get to Macy's before the stalking stilettos behind them. Not because the electric bill for Times Square at Christmas could feed an entire third-world country for a month. No, I was shocked because I saw, for one of the first times, real love.

One day this semester, my professor asked us to describe what love is. After a few fairly vague answers, someone raised a hand and voiced an opinion that struck me: "Am I the only one here who thinks that love and marriage don't have anything to do with each other?"

I was floored, and then I realized that I'd been unknowingly nurturing the same opinion since the seventh grade.

I realized that the state of marriage in this country is looking more and more like the New York Yankees -- overly commercialized, drenched in scandal, mostly unsuccessful, and hated by everyone who's not obligated to pretend to like it. And I'm not talking about homosexual/heterosexual marriages separately. I'm talking about marriage as a whole, as an ideal that has been corrupted and contaminated until sometimes it resembles a floppy mockery devoid of meaning, as opposed to a noble tradition in which two people weld their lives because they love each other. In a world in which most marriages dissolve into a series of legal battles and emotionally wounded children, love and marriage really don't seem to have anything to do with one another.

But in the midst of New York City -- the city that never sleeps, the city of romance and riots, beauty and bars, carriages and clubs alike -- from among the throngs of street vendors and stilettos, I saw visible love.

It was in a tea shop on Seventh and 26th, where my companion and I were grabbing a drink just before our bus home. As we sat down, we looked over to our right to see an aged couple, the sight of which almost brought me to tears: the husband, who was in a wheelchair, was physically unable to properly eat his food so his wife, sitting close at his side, was alternately feeding him, and gently wiping his mouth, chin and fingers with a napkin as he ate. The sight itself was pleasant enough, but this was not what struck me. Even as she fed her aged ailing husband, she was smiling quietly the entire time.

I looked closer, and saw the tiny details I will never forget -- the way she looked at him, as adoringly as if he were a strong, young man; the way her hand never left his shoulder, patting his arm comfortingly and massaging his back; the way she dutifully steered his wheelchair clear of danger and smiled at the passerby who adjusted accordingly. She still loved him! Even in his age, infirmity and disability, she loved him and nursed him with a smile on her lips and her hand on his shoulder. It was one of the single most beautiful, most inspiring things I have ever seen.

After the couple departed, I started wondering: Why did they have such a powerful effect? After all, people should be used to seeing couples in love, right? We should be used to seeing married couples support one another, right?

But we're not. Somehow, we rarely see even aging couples who look happy with each other. Instead, we hear heartbreaking divorce stories from our closest friends, and watch divorce reality television, and hear more about wedding costs than success rates. Somehow, the state of marriage has devolved from a loving institution to a series of rhinestone-smothered weddings and a collections tin benefiting whom? No one except law firms and, I guess, dating sites for divorcees. And we're supposed to believe that love and marriage are at all related?

I remember recently asking the question, "Is it possible to be happy and married?"

I suppose I'd heard too many ugly complaints about nagging wives and neglectful husbands. And sometimes, I still wonder if those complaints really do characterize marriage as it currently exists. But sometimes, we find a gem to counter-balance the publicized horror stories. Sometimes, we find something in defense of love -- the sort of love that lasts a lifetime, that makes a woman smile as she nurses her struggling husband -- and we can remember that even though hook-up culture is enticing, it's not everything.

Though the childhood fairytales might have been beaten out of us, and we are no longer naive enough to believe in perfect relationships, we can still hope for a love that will take care of us when we can no longer take care of ourselves. Because it does exist -- you just have to know what it looks like, and be able to see it when it does.

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Article resource: huffingtonpost.com

A Man Reportedly Ordered To Suppot Ex-Wife's Ice Cream Habit

One of the craziest divorce stories I've heard in a while! 

According to India Today, a Mumbai man -- who, according to his ex, is worth millions of dollars -- complained in divorce proceedings that his ex had wasted all of his money on ice cream.

So what did the Mumbai family court do? The presiding judge reportedly ordered the husband to pay his ex-wife an extra 150 rupees (or US$2.50) per month to buy ice cream. This is in addition to the 85,000 rupees per month (or US$1,396.89) that he was asked to pay in spousal support. It's only fair, right?

It's not the first time a divorce court has handed down an unusual ruling. In February 2012, a judge ordered a man to apologize on Facebook for a negative status he posted about his ex-wife.

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Article source: Huffington Post

Four Things You Should Never Say After Divorce

Check out this great article from The Huffington Post about four things you should never say to yourself after a divorce!

______________________

Most days, our inner critics tend to fill our heads with all the ways in which we are failing and falling short. Add the ending of a relationship, and it's like your inner critic just got carte blanche access to an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord full of misery inducing opinions about you, your life and your former relationship.

If you don't catch this nasty voice in time, it can keep you reeling for days -- filling your head with stories that may feel true, but really are just a figment of your mind. While you may not be in control of your former significant other, you are in control of the stories that you let run through your mind. Fill your mind with misery-creating stories -- the kind your inner critic loves to feed on -- and you will begin to feel more miserable. Or, trade in the self-sabotage for self-empowerment, and you'll feel peace instead of distress. And let's face it, during and after a divorce, you need all the peace you can get.

So do yourself the favor and banish the following misery-creating statements and stories from your mind. Promise never to say these things to yourself again. A good friend would never say these things to you, and right now, you need to be a best friend to yourself.

Never say:
1. "He loves her more than me."
2. "OMG, he has changed! Why couldn't he be different for me?"
3. "I am going to be alone for the rest of my life."
4. "The best part of my life is over."

Say instead:
1. "His life today has nothing to do with 'how much' he loved me." Love cannot be measured. There is no more or less when it comes to love -- love is love. Love comes in different forms, so if your former partner is in a new relationship, their love is different than yours, but would you want it to be the same? When you compare you always lose. Comparison is a toxic habit. Don't take it up. Focus on yourself and what you are creating for your life today.

2. "We weren't the right fit anymore, and that's okay." Sure he may have changed some since you ended it -- let's hope going through something as major as a divorce woke him up a little. But here's what you need to remember: At the core, he still is who he was with you, and that wasn't what you really wanted or needed. If he was, the relationship would have been enough for you, and it wasn't. It's okay that you weren't the right fit anymore. Better to stop trying to put a round peg in a square hole and get on with finding the best relationship for the great life you want to create for yourself. This is your life, and you are the only one who can make sure it's great.

3. "I am never really alone. There's lots of love in the world if I open my heart to receive it." There is nothing lonelier than being in a relationship that is void of affection, intimacy and deep connection. If that describes your past relationship, you've already experienced loneliness at a level that you never have to again. Understand that the most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself and you'll never feel lonely again. If you aren't having a loving, awesome relationship with yourself, now is a great time to start. Not to mention there are all kinds of healthy sources of love in the world just waiting for you -- pets, children, friends, flowers, kind strangers, dancing and spiritual centers, to name a few.

4. "One chapter of my life is complete and I have the power to write the next chapter however I want." You have the power to control your own life, and no man can tell you how to live it. This is exciting, but you must be willing to step into your own self-empowerment. Sure, grieve the end of a chapter. Then get on to writing the next one. Spend the afternoon at a café or in your home or out in nature writing about what this next storyline will entail. Dream big.


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*Article source: Huffington Post

Is Divorce Too Expensive?

Divorce Too Expensive For Poorest Americans, New Study Says

For one-percenters like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, it's easy to get the world's fastest divorce. Their legal split only took two weeks. But for the poorest of Americans, divorce is still a luxury item.
Long-term separations are an alternative for poor couples who cannot afford to legally end their marriages, new research suggests. The research was presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting on Monday.

The longitudinal study looked at 7,272 people who were surveyed on a regular basis between 1979 and 2008. Most people in the study who separated from a spouse reported getting a divorce within three years of the break up.

But 15 percent of people who separated did not get a divorce within the first 10 years and researchers said there was an economic reason for it: They simply could not afford to get divorced, especially when there were children involved. The study found that the married-but-indefinitely-separated group generally had only a high school education, were black or Hispanic and had young children.
"Those with young children may find it difficult to support themselves and their children if they divorce," Zhenchao Qian, study co-author and professor of sociology at Ohio State University, said in a statement. "Divorce may not protect them because their spouse may be unwilling or unable to provide financial support."

In the past, separations were usually linked to strict divorce laws that required one spouse to prove the other did something wrong -- they could have cheated or abandoned their partner. But today, as laws around "no-fault" divorces have become more lenient, researchers from the study suggested long-term separations are mostly done to avoid the financial stress of going through a divorce.
There is no definitive cost to getting a divorce -- the cheapest ones can cost as little as several hundred dollars. Hiring a lawyer, who might charge anywhere between $200 and $400 per hour, to sort out child support payments can add up to thousands of dollars. But the financial costs and benefits of divorce extend beyond the lawyers and the paperwork. Married couples, especially those with children, get substantial benefits from filing joint tax returns or sharing health care coverage.
But estranged marriages may not be limited just to low-income couples as the study indicated. A 2010 article in The New York Times suggested a new trend toward long-term separations among older professional-class couples who appear less inclined to get a legal divorce -- though perhaps more by choice rather than by necessity.

Financial reasons such as shared real estate, retirement savings and health care coverage appeared to be the primary motivation for staying married by living apart.

"People split up and have these God-awful joint custody agreements, so you would think that they stay separated for the kids' sake, but I am not seeing that," couples therapist Toni Coleman told The New York Times. "It usually comes down to the money."

While there are some financial benefits to long-term separation, there are also risks in remaining legally married, such as being liable for a spouse's debt or having to share earnings (even windfalls like a lottery win) that are considered community property in some states.

But for couples who think that a separation only makes the heart grow fonder, the Ohio State study also revealed some disappointing news: 5 percent of couples who separated attempted to get back together -- but half of those ended up getting a divorce anyway.

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*article from Huffiington Post 

Marriage Rates: Divorce Fears To Blame For Low Rates?

Recently, social demographer Dr. Sharon Sassler, a Cornell University professor, set out to learn more about how couples decide to live together, and why. In interviews conducted with 122 people, Sassler saw a surprising trend: Though her questions were primarily focused on cohabitation, respondents consistently raised the subject of divorce, even though she and her team had not solicited information on the subject. Indeed, a full two-thirds of her subjects revealed fears about their own future marriages falling apart.

Her findings, published last month in the NovemberJournal of Family Relations, seem to correspond with a recent Pew Research Institute report, which found that men and women are getting married later and later, and the number of people who do actually make it down the aisle recently hit an all time low.

So is one finding related to the other? HuffPost Divorce spoke with Dr. Sassler to find out more about how fears of divorce might be affecting national marriage trends.

What was the most surprising finding of the study?

We actually didn't have a specific question about divorce. We were asking about what the benefits of cohabitating are relative to marriage. The fact that divorce spontaneously arose in such a large proportion of the responses was what was surprising, because we weren't looking for it, and it kind of slapped us in the face. Also surprising was that, regardless of whether the cohabitators had personally experienced their parents' divorce, they expressed concerns about divorce themselves.

Is there evidence to substantiate a claim that these fears of divorce contribute to low marriage rates?

There are a lot of factors at play that contribute to low marriage rates. Most of our couples still planned to get married, so I'd prefer to say that our findings might help explain the delay of marriage...One of the factors my respondents gave in being reluctant to take that next step was being cautious about marriage or even jaded about marriage. Since the majority of young adults live together prior to marriage, I do think it tells us something about how anxious young people are today about their ability to maintain intimate relationships. They're being more cautious and they might want to take more time.

We did find that the majority of those who do mention fears of divorce do intend to eventually get married because they think it might have some benefits. They think it would make their family happy, or that it would improve their relationship or that it's one way of showing love.

Where do these fears of divorce come from? How did they differ by gender and class?

The fears differ by social class and they differ by gender. For less-educated women, there are these strong concerns about being financially trapped in a bad relationship, and not having the means to exit it. And there were fears of what divorce would do to the children. There's also this concern that if they get married that they'd be expected to do more domestic work, and they're working women, so they viewed it as a double burden. Many of them thought, "why take on these extra responsibilities?"

The middle class group mentioned hearing the statistics all the time: they hear one out of two marriages is destined to fail, but it's incorrect. Divorce rates have been going down for the last few decades. Data indicates that the marriages are lasting longer in the early 2000s than they did in the 1990s, but they don't hear that. What they hear are the scare stories -- the Kim Kardashians who are on their second divorces. They don't realize that things have changed. Across the board, it was just a lot of this free-floating anxiety about divorce. A lot of them said they only wanted to marry once. That was the most common refrain: "I want to do it right. I only want to marry once."

For those who were children of divorce themselves, how did that affect their views on marriage?

They often referenced their families and their parents' marriages as cautionary tales, but that doesn't stop them from being in relationships, it's just an added layer of anxiety. The working classes are more likely to have experienced their parents' divorce, and they move in together more quickly, but there is an economic element to this -- they're more likely to move in more rapidly because of the financial need.

For the middle class respondents, they're much more likely to have dated for over a year or longer and that's not often the case with the working class. The college-educated respondents had held on to their apartments longer before moving in together, even though they might have been spending as much time together as the cohabiters. They still had that escape hatch. If you're working two minimum-wage jobs, it's harder to maintain that second apartment.

Slightly over a third of the sample made no mention of divorce at all. Who were they and why do you suspect divorce didn't come up in interviews with them?

We did not specifically ask about divorce, so it just might not have been on their mental map. We don't have indicators of relationship quality, but maybe they're in better relationships. Respondents who are engaged might not want to jinx themselves by thinking about divorce.

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*Article from Huffington Post