Getting Divorced After 60

By Ruth Alexander BBC News

The number of people divorcing in later life has been increasing at a time when divorce rates overall have been falling. What's behind the phenomenon of the "silver splitters"?

"When I proposed to her, I almost straight away regretted having done that."

But the engagement was announced on the front page of his local paper and Peter felt he couldn't back out. "I was weak-willed at the time," he says.

Peter married in 1967. Thirty-six years later, at the age of 64, he did back out.

"I just bundled what I could into the car and went. I do remember her standing on the doorstep. And I did feel sorry - even guilty - then that I was hurting her, really."

It's the kind of private moment of pain that's part of a national trend.

Divorce among people aged 60 and over in England and Wales has risen since the 1990s, according to the Office of National Statistics - while among the rest of the population, it has fallen (with a slight rise in 2012).

In 2011, nearly 9,500 men in this age group divorced - an increase of almost three-quarters compared with 20 years earlier. The trend for women is similar. And it's not just because there are more older people now.

The catalyst for Peter was a relationship he started with his piano partner, Anne. Practising duets for the church choir, they fell in love.

"We are good friends, and that's something I didn't have with my first husband," says Anne, who ended her first marriage when she was in her 50s. "And we can laugh when things go wrong."

Research suggests a big driver of the increase in "silver splitters" is increasing life expectancy.

And people want more from their retirement, according to solicitor Karin Walker, of law firm KGW Family Law in Woking and the family law association, Resolution.

"People are looking very much at the latter third of their life and what they want to do with it," she says.

"Certainly clients I've had say they want to take up a pastime they've not done before - perhaps cycling or travelling. And very often their spouse isn't keen to participate in that, and that can cause friction and a parting of ways."

Age gaps can put marriages under strain in later life, according to Barbara Bloomfield, a counsellor for Relate in Bristol and the counselling supervisor at Relate Cymru.

"Let's say there's a 10-year age gap. Ten years is nothing, it's flattering, when you're 20 and 30. When you're 70 and 80 it's a totally different thing," she says.

"And I think often where there's an age gap the younger party can think: 'Oh my goodness, the rest of my life is going to be spent looking after him or her.'

Another factor is wealth. The baby boomers tend to have good pensions. Their property's worth a lot. They can more afford to divorce in retirement than people used to be able to.

"From the point of view of wives as well, where hitherto the wife really couldn't find herself in a position to leave home - those first 24 hours where she didn't know where to stay, didn't have any money to pay for a hotel - it all became rather daunting," says Walker, "whereas now women are much more financially independent and are much better able to take control of their lives."

David, not his real name, was 70 when his wife of the same age packed a bag and left.

"You go through phases - anger, you go through regret, you feel discarded as a husband, you feel you perhaps should have done a bit more and talked, but it takes two to talk and that didn't happen."

He believes the suicide of their son, a number of years earlier, and episodes of ill health may have taken their toll on the relationship.

"She'd been unhappy for years and I hadn't noticed, and therefore she wanted to have financial independence - a clean break, and go and live on her own."

Walker says divorcing in your 60s or 70s can create more discord in families than if it had happened earlier in the marriage. She thinks children can take it worse when they're adults.

"I worry about loneliness," says Dame Esther Rantzen, the founder of Silver Line, the helpline for older people.

She suspects this is an issue causing more pain to older divorcees than may be apparent.

"When they're taking this big step, they may be losing more than they realise. They may also be losing contact with their children, because divorce often means people side with one parent or another.

"And in all this, I think there is certain amount of stigma. They feel ashamed that that sacred pledge they made those years ago they haven't fulfilled. They're not staying together 'til death us do part' and this may mean they're ashamed to ask for help. Let's discuss it, and say this is one of the things that happen when you get older."

Peter is happy with his new life with Anne, whom he married in 2011, when he was 72. But his divorce came at a cost. Relations with some of his family are now tricky.

"If somebody came to me now, before they'd left their wife, asking what they should do I think my answer would be see if you can make it work, in other words don't do what I did."

Why?

"Because of the hurt."

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6 Ways Your Divorce Is Harder Than It Needs to Be

Divorce is generally unpleasant. Oh sure, we all have that friend who sails through it with a smile on their face and a spring in their step, never exhibiting an outward moment of hesitation as they move through the divorce with an almost unicorn-like dignity and grace. Then there are the other 99.999 percent of us. I have been in the ugly tear-stained trenches of it all as my little one was ripped from my arms screaming for his Mommy. I have made some stupid mistakes, more than once. Sometimes I wonder if all the difficulties I have been through are the reason I am effective in this line of work. I promise I will not ask you to do something I haven't done before, and I really understand how you feel when you sit down in my office overwhelmed and in pain. Real, excruciating, pain that feels as if you have been punched in the gut. Not sleeping. Not eating. Feeling as if you are in a daze and as if all this is happening "to you" without any input, without any control. Your spouse may get your house, your children and steal your financial security, but the process may be more difficult than necessary. I am aware that I am not always easy on my clients. It is my job to tell you what you sometimes do not want to hear. There is no reason to pay someone thousands of dollars to just agree it's not your fault, unless, of course, that someone is your therapist. There are many different ways to get through this time, some more effective and healthy than others. After 21 years of practicing law, I would like to say I have seen it all, but just about every week we see new forms of additional self-imposed misery. So here are a few tips and what to avoid doing to make this divorce process a little shorter, less traumatic and maybe a little less expensive too.

1. You want what she/he is having.
In divorce, as in life, if you spend the days lamenting over what is going on with your ex, or anyone else for that matter, this will not lead you to your happy place. There will always be someone richer, younger, thinner, smarter, more accomplished along the way. No good comes from worrying about the things others have, material or otherwise. Your ex has a new significant other, a new house, a new car. Your ex is traveling the world (and they never did this with you). Your ex is spending your child support payment on their nails or golf. They are now father or mother of the year, and they never even changed a diaper! You cannot control someone or their actions, but you can control your reactions.

You can choose instead to be happy they stepped up to the plate with the children like they never did before, or that they have a nice house or car for your children to enjoy. You can just be happy they are not your problem anymore. These worries are serious "time wasters" that take the focus away from our own lives and happiness. They also make really crappy conversation starters with a new friend or love interest. Bitter and jealous are simply not fun to be around. As a big believer in Karma, wish them well and then move on to more important issues like your own happiness. Make sure your own glass is half-full or even better overflowing with new love, new friends and a happy home, even if it is a town home.

2. You believe you are not accountable for the failure of your marriage.
You were the kindest, most loving, nurturing spouse that ever was there -- I believe you, I really do. Are you at fault? Yes, you married someone who did not believe in your fabulousness. Most of the time, if we are really honest with ourselves, (not always easy or pretty, I know) we might admit, albeit reluctantly, we knew the very thing about our soon to be ex that now leads us running to the divorce lawyer. Of course, there are exceptions to this observation but so very often the signs are right there, the pink elephant we chose to ignore. They were mean to other people, you had wildly different views of the world and life goals, they were financially irresponsible while you saved every penny, and the list goes on. You thought you could "fix them" or perhaps maybe just give up an essential piece of your soul and what matters, to make them happy. Then one day we wake up and realize the marriage is over, or perhaps they decided enough is enough, but we all play a part. When there is no singular fault and when we all accept our piece of where and how it all ends, we move on faster, we fight less, we spend less on lawyers and most importantly, we are less likely to make the same mistake again.

3. You can't forgive.
Well of course you can, but you just don't want to. I am NOT going to tell you that you have to forgive -- you don't. It is certainly your prerogative to hold on to that anger and hatred with all the passion and love once directed at your former beloved. You want to hold on to it tightly because it was a really awful horrible thing that was done to you. It is, after all, the reason you are in this mess in the first place, right? Someone else did this to you (see number two above). There are some things that are unforgivable after all, are there not? Someone slept with your best friend, beat you, left you or lied to you. So don't forgive, but be prepared to pull out your checkbook for your lawyer and the therapist for you and maybe your kids too.

Anger and hatred have a direct correlation to a longer, messier divorce and higher attorneys fees while we punish the wrongdoer. Maybe you can change the dynamic with a little change in perspective. People who hurt us are often broken themselves with complicated stories and reasons that may have little to do with us. Maybe we should feel sorry for them instead of angry? Maybe we should realize how sad it is they will never know how they were loved, or be capable of giving love the way it was intended. The truth is forgiveness is not a favor to others; it is a favor to you. It frees up a space inside you for significantly better things. Think about the words "angry" and "bitter" and think of an image. Do they make you happy, do they look light and beautiful? Sometimes I wonder about the moments of our life. Would our moments be different if a clock was running down the moments left in this life on our new Apple watch? Would we choose to waste them rehashing the harms done to us, or choose moving forward towards more moments of joy? There is huge power in not allowing someone to steal more minutes of your life with anger or regret. So go ahead and stay mad or take back your power, forgive and lower those attorney's fees, after all.

4. You believe you are entitled to the same life.
I often work against expectations so huge that Cinderella's fairy Godmother could not deliver them (and don't get me started on her; that girl has lead more people down the path to divorce, but I digress...). If you come to me or any lawyer believing you can have the same life you had before you divorced, you will be sadly disappointed and will spend unnecessary time and unnecessary fees. The math of divorce is simple division. Divide by two, your income and assets, and multiply by two, the amount of bills. Sounds great, right? I don't care if your lawyer wrote the book on divorce, the story always has the same ending, everyone will have less. Even in the biggest cases it applies. I call it "park the plane," everyone will tighten their belt or maybe just give up a house or two, but nobody gets to have it all. You simply can't believe, you might have to give up your custom decorated 10,000-square-foot apartment in Tribeca, and will pay any amount of money to avoid this travesty of justice. Your righteous indignation is blood in the water and the sharks are circling. Have a low-calorie alcoholic beverage and save those attorney's fees to put a down payment on a nice new penthouse on 5th Avenue.

Feelings of entitlement are costly and set us up to be disappointed in this life. You are both entitled to a life at the end of this mess but it will be a different life for you both. Maybe I am a cynic, (after all these years, who could blame me?) but there is no way to ensure your happiness other than to make sure no one else is responsible for it. Work hard, own your own destiny and be grateful for what you have, even if it is 50 percent less that you used to have; it is so much more than many others.

5. You surround yourself with "yes" men.
They might be your best friend from summer camp who you have known since you were 10, your parents, your sister, your brother, and all too often, your lawyer. Your "yes men" are the ones that support whatever you do no matter what. They nod in agreement whenever you call your ex a complete jerk, they agree you deserve to "get it all" for what the other party has done to you. They encourage you to fight for things you are not entitled to, they encourage you to use your children, hide your assets, fight for unreasonable positions and generally condone your bad behavior. They never see the other side, never hold you accountable for your actions, sometimes just because they love you unconditionally. Some of my dearest friends and family however, have been those who have held me accountable for my own piece of some fairly tragic "life detours" (people seem to really dislike the term mistake). Sometimes we need the people around us to tell us to get our shit together, to toughen up or lighten up. We say "no" to our children everyday because they need to know there are limits and expectations. No is not a bad thing. Be aware of those who agree with everything we do or say. Listen to those who show the real mirror to the not-so-pretty behavior. We all need to be reminded that this is not the end of the world, that no one is guaranteed a particular life unless we create it for ourselves and that who we are at the end of this crazy ride is what really matters.

6. You think too much about you.
There is nothing that makes people feel worse about themselves than being singularly focused on what is wrong with their day, their life, their kids, their job, their appearance. Perspective is the greatest gift we can allow ourselves to move toward being happy. I can focus today on my broken faucet, ice maker jamming up, piled up laundry, my daughters four cavities (no, that is not a typo, and yes, I brush her teeth). This which will now require us to fly back from vacation for the procedure because her Reactive Airway Disease makes sedation too risky now with her recent Bronchitis. In the alternative, I can focus on a friend who just lost her young husband with two young daughters and think about her. Today her pain is bigger than any pain I can imagine, her strength and courage fills my heart with awe that life is hard and people are so very resilient. These people and stories are a gift to remind us this too shall pass and there is more life to be lived. Look outside your pain and your struggles. Your house is not big enough or nice enough? You have a home. You have family that loves you but are driving you crazy? There is someone alone tonight. So try to focus on doing something that is not about you at all. Stop for a whole day and try not to complain about anything. Say out loud "someone has it worse, I should be grateful." You will be better prepared for this little bump in the road we call divorce.

I know divorce sucks, it is not supposed to end like this no matter how it ends. Someday you will be through it, hopefully sooner rather than later. Don't torture yourself or your spouse unnecessarily, you will make the lawyers rich, the judges annoyed and your children cranky. This divorce is a gift, a new life, different but better than ever, if you let it be. Get there as fast as you can, that clock is ticking.

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A Question Every Person Going Through a Divorce Asks

It's a question that every person going through divorce asks: How Do I Get Over this Hurt? They ask their friends, their family, their therapist, even themselves. They also ask me. And here is how I answer.

In most cases, when two people get divorced, one person wants it and the other doesn't. I always have a hard time deciding whose shoes I'd rather be in because both breaking up with someone and being the one broken up with are gut-wrenching.

Here's a benefit of being the one broken up with: Unlike the person who ended the relationship, the person who was broken up with will never have doubt that they did the right thing, or that things might have been different had they tried harder, or even that they miss the person and realize later they made a huge mistake.

The person who was broken up with didn't have a choice. Their ex wanted the divorce. So, there is no self-doubt, guilt, or indecision. It was done to them.

Now, is that easy to deal with? Absolutely not. It is brutal. But, here is one thing that might help you get over the hurt. Pretend I am a psychic who is able to see into your future. And, let's say you are a woman, and this is what I predict for you:

It is five years from now. You are sitting at a kitchen table having dinner with an attractive man, who seems really happy being there. On your left ring finger is a diamond and a wedding band. The two of you are laughing. You look very very happy.

Here's the thing. No one knows (including me) that this will be your scenario, and I don't even know if being remarried is what you want. My point of painting this beautiful picture of your possible future is that you WILL have a beautiful future, and you WILL get a life that is happy and that works for you. It just takes time, and you have to go through the misery of your divorce to get to the other side (the happiness side.)

Remember that movie, The Shawshank Redemption, where Tim Robbins escapes from prison by crawling through a sewer pipe? It's kind of like that. He had to spend 20 years digging a hole in his cell, and then he had to crawl through crap (literally) to get to deserved freedom and ultimate happiness. You are in that hole right now. I was there. So was every person who has ever gone through a divorce. But you will come out of it and have a future. It might be the future I just described, or it might be something else, perhaps a career you are passionate about, or a new hobby that changes your life. The beauty of it is that your future is your choice!

Thinking this way is how you get over the hurt. Grieve the loss, feel sorry for yourself for a little while, (not too long) and then get tough and start to rebuild. Focus on figuring out what you want -- career, hobbies, friends, etc. and then go get it! As for future romantic relationships, it's natural to feel scared that if you put your heart out there again, someone could do to you what your husband or wife did. But, try to overcome that fear because if you put your heart out there again, some guy (maybe the guy at your kitchen table) might love and cherish you forever. Ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
You WILL get over this hurt. You just will. Changing the way you think about it helps.

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Divorce Rates Are Falling - But Marriage Is Still on the Rocks

Divorce Rates Are Falling—But Marriage Is Still on the Rocks

Antonio M. Rosario—Getty Images

Kay S. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is the author of four books, including Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age and Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Is Turning Men Into Boys.

Hand-wringing is an appropriate response to the state of marriage today.

Tuesday’s New York Times’s Upshot section featured an article by Claire Cain Miller entitled “The Divorce Surge is Over, but the Myth Lives On.” The piece got a good deal of attention, but Miller manages to reinforce some myths of her own.

That’s not to say the piece is wrong in its basic facts. The divorce surge is over. (Or most people believe it is: this paper offers an alternate take.) In truth, the rise in divorce has been over for 20 years. Divorce rates peaked in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president and the Internet was only a mite in the eye of wierdos hanging out in California garages. In fact, this “news” may well be older than many of its readers who were probably not even been born when divorce rates were already on the downswing.

It’s also the case that people remain strangely attached to the idea that half of all marriages end in divorce despite numerous stories over the years showing otherwise. Miller links to one of those stories—from 2005, that is, nine years ago. I myself published a book that took stock of the trends in 2006. Family scholars have talked about the turn-around in divorce rates repeatedly. Yet the myth lives on. If you want proof of that, check out the media reaction to the Times piece: a “fascinating story” in the words of the Clarion Ledger; “surprisingly optimistic numbers,” marveled the Huffintgton Post.

So why has this particular myth been so difficult to extract from the hive mind? Why are people so (ahem) wedded to an idea that is not only untrue but has been for almost a generation? Two reasons. The first will no doubt sound clichéd: Hollywood. In la-la land divorce is about as common as Botox. When beautiful, famous people split up, fan magazines, entertainment networks, and social media sites spring into action, making sure we see albums of photos of crying, stoic, rehabbed, and then newly partnered, actors and actresses claiming they’ve never been happier. Social psychologists refer to a cognitive bias they call the “availability heuristic.” Striking events—plane crashes, Ebola cases, the Kardashians—make the weird seem more commonplace than it is precisely because the brain is so impressed by it. Of course, the availability heuristic gets some help from the television shows and movies these same famous people write, star in, and produce about marital crackups that often bear a striking resemblance to their own.

The second reason the myth lives on is not only more troubling but exemplified by the Times article that seeks to dismantle it. The younger generation, whether they know divorce is declining or not, believes that marriage is on the rocks. From their vantage point, they’re right. While fewer American adults have been divorcing over the past decades, a growing number of people in their own cohort have grown up apart from one parent, almost always their fathers.

How can divorce be declining but at the same time more children growing up with single parents? Because—and this is the story that Miller underplays—so many parents never marry in the first place. A little history is in order here: When divorce rates skyrocketed in the 1970s, American were not simply suddenly looking at their spouses and deciding en masse that they couldn’t take it anymore. They were reacting to a changing understanding about what marriage meant. Instead of an arrangement largely centered around providing for and rearing the next generation, it was becoming an adult-centric union based on love and shared happiness, which as an upper middle class grew in size, became closely linked to granite countered kitchens, European and spa vacations, and weddings with 200 guests.

One big reason that divorce rates began to fall after 1980 was that people, almost always those with less education and less income for the required accouterments of marriage, took the logic of the divorce revolution and ran with it. If marriage and childbearing were no longer tightly linked but rather discreet—even unrelated—life events, and if they were not earning enough to enjoy the middle class status objects enjoyed by their more educated peers, then why marry at all? Why not just have kids without getting married? While college educated women continued to demand a ring before they became mothers, the percentage of poor women having kids outside of marriage was already on the rise; now working class women, many of them temporarily cohabiting with their child’s father, also bypassed the chapel on the way to the maternity ward. In his forthcoming book Labor’s Loves Lost, Andrew Cherlin quotes one young unmarried father this way: “You need way better reasons than having a kid to get married.”

By missing this larger picture, Miller ends up adding single parents—who after all have a null chance of divorce—to good news numbers about marital stability. Sheela Kennedy and Steven Ruggles from the Population Center at the University of Minnesota try to take into account the new reality in a recent paper. Their findings are sobering: “because cohabitation makes up a rapidly growing percentage of all unions,” they write, it has “an increasing impact on overall union instability.” And by accepting that marriage and children are unrelated, she can ignore the biggest problem with this rising instability. Experts have shown us in a virtual library of research papers that the children of single parents are at greater risk of everything from poverty to school failure to imprisonment. Their large numbers will almost surely help perpetuate inequality, poverty, and immobility.

“Despite hand-wringing about the institution of marriage, marriages in this country are stronger today than they have been in a long time,” Miller writes. As it happens, hand-wringing is an appropriate response to the state of marriage today.

That is, for anyone concerned about inequality and America’s lower income children.

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The 50% Divorce Rate Stat is a Myth, so Why Won't it Die?

We don't actually have a good handle on marriage and divorce rates. (AP Photo)

Danielle TellerPhysician and researcherAstro TellerHead of Google X

The divorce rate in America is rising. Do you think that statement is true? If you do, you’re not alone. As Claire Cain Miller recently pointed out in an article for The New York Times, we hear about the rising divorce rate in the news all of the time. This is curious, because as it happens, the divorce rate isn’t rising.

By most measures, the divorce rate in America has been declining since around 1980. You’d think that something as simple as counting the number of American marriages that end in divorce would not require the qualifier “by most measures,” but it turns out that there is no universally accepted method for doing the counting. For instance, the widely quoted 50% divorce rate in the US probably came from a best-guess prediction that has yet to come true, or from a shortcut method of comparing the number of divorces and marriages in the same year. This is not considered to be an accurate method for assessing the divorce rate because it does not compare equivalent groups. In 1980, for example, older couples may have been divorcing at a high rate because of the introduction of no-fault divorce laws, while younger couples might have been putting off marriage because more women were pursuing careers. Even if the number of marriages that year were twice the number of divorces, that is not the same thing as saying that half of all marriages end in divorce. As for the prediction model, Dr. Rose M. Kreider, a demographer in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau, told the New York Times in 2005, “At this point, unless there’s some kind of turnaround, I wouldn’t expect any cohort to reach fifty percent, since none already has.”

Even if everyone could agree on the best way to calculate the divorce rate, complete demographic data about marriage and divorce are unfortunately no longer available for analysis. In 1996, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) stopped collecting yearly statistics on marriage and divorce due to budgetary considerations, and some states, such as California, do not report divorce rates. The Census Bureau can provide estimates based on questionnaire data, but this relies on self-report, and people are reluctant to provide information about marital status. The quality of data available for analysis is therefore weaker now than it has been in past years.

Despite the paucity of good data and arguments over statistical calculations, most social scientists and demographers would agree that divorce rates are declining or stable, that a 50% divorce rate has not yet come to pass, and that young couples today are so far on a course to have fewer divorces than their parents’ generation. Why, then, do we keep hearing about rising divorce rates in America?

One of the reasons is that a rising divorce rate fits the world view and agenda of some segments of our society, whereas a falling divorce rate doesn’t fit as neatly into anyone’s agenda. If you self-identify as conservative, you may have had a negative reaction to this article so far, because it seems to be saying, “High divorce rates are no big deal, and reports of the marriage crisis in America are overblown.” On the other hand, if you consider yourself to be liberal, you may be thinking, “Some couples need to get divorced. Should that be half the number of couples who are divorcing now or twice that number? I don’t know.” In other words, people who see divorce as a social scourge want to emphasize how dire the situation has become in America, and people who see divorce as a necessary evil don’t worry too much about the divorce rate.

1

This dynamic plays out in the popular press, where much of the news about marriage and divorce is derived from the National Marriage Project, founded at Rutgers University in 1997 and now based at the University of Virginia. A core mission of this organization is to “identify strategies to increase marital quality and stability.” In support of its mission, the National Marriage Project creates a sense of crisis around marriage and divorce rates and promotes marriage as a solution to a range of social problems (pdf).

According to Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, the media have become hooked on publications from the National Marriage Project as a quick and cheap sources of easily digested print. This would not be a problem if media outlets disclosed the biases of their source, but as noted in our book Sacred Cows, that doesn’t usually happen. For instance, between 2009 and 2012, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, USA Today and the New York Times all published articles originating from a report by the National Marriage Project claiming that the economic recession was saving marriages.

The evidence provided was that divorce rates fell between 2007 and 2008 after rising from 2005 levels. We have graphed the crude national divorce rate, or the number of divorces per 1000 members of the US population, for those years. Note that this measure of the divorce rate, like all measures, is flawed. Because it uses the total population as the base, it includes children and unmarried adults, which confuses interpretation; a lower divorce rate could result from a baby boom, or more pertinent to the current situation in the US, a lower marriage rate. The other problem is that several states have discontinued reporting divorces, and missing state numbers could distort the overall national profile.

Bearing in mind these limitations, our chart does indeed demonstrate that the divorce rate declined after the great recession began in 2007. However, when taken in context of overall trends and year-to-year variability, this change in divorce rate does not seem significant enough to warrant multiple stories in major national newspapers

(California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota and Oregon have data missing from some of the years in the chart.)

Based upon rather odd logic, the director of the National Marriage Project, W. Bradford Wilcox, stated that thrift and meals at home were the cause of recession-strengthened marriages. It may well be that fewer people divorce during economic recessions; the data on that subject are murky and conflicting. However, a one-year blip in the divorce rate should not be used as evidence that the divorce rate is rising any more than a subsequent blip should be used as evidence that economic hardship makes marriages stronger.

Promoting marriage is not a bad goal. Most people would like to be happily married. It is also completely reasonable to worry about so many American marriages ending in divorce. No matter what the circumstances, divorce is painful for families and communities. The problem is that social and political agendas have muddied the water so much that we can’t have reasonable discussions based on rational facts. We are all being misled, not just about the trajectory of divorce rates in America, but about every aspect of our lives that powerful special interest groups care to manipulate. In the words of sportscaster Vin Scully, statistics get used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

In an ideal world, we could rely on a free press to present unbiased information in a thoughtful and measured fashion. We don’t live in that ideal world, but perhaps we can start by requesting improved transparency and disclosure by popular media about the biases of its sources. To that end, here is our disclosure: This article represents the opinions of two left-leaning egghead authors of a book about society’s attitudes surrounding marriage and divorce. Our goal is to promote rational discussion about marriage and family life in our country. Unfortunately, we can’t provide a single definitive statistical analysis of divorce, because none exists. But hopefully we have helped to clear up a small, persistent misapprehension: The divorce rate in America isn’t as high as 50%, and at least for the moment, it isn’t rising.

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In Defense of Love: Believing in Marriage in Divorce Culture

Hi Everyone!  Thank you for reading my blog!  Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books?  For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

Great article worth sharing 

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

How to Succeed At Divorce (Yes, It's Possible!)

There is no question that going through a divorce is rough. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, up is down, right is left, and you don't know how long the drop is, let alone how you will survive the landing... but you do. The people who succeed most at divorce are those that are resilient in the face of change and embrace the opportunity to transform their lives. Personal growth can only be achieved through challenge, and divorce is one of the biggest challenges you will ever encounter.

Initially, success feels like a far-fetched goal for most people going through a divorce. Sheer survival seems more realistic. Faced with the loss of your most important relationship, you are vulnerable and alone in analyzing what went wrong and grieving for the loss of what you thought you had. You question everything. How did I get here? What will happen to me? What will my life look like moving forward? To make things worse, you have to struggle with the endless, uncontrollable legal process that provides little, if any, emotional support. And the enormous scale of change that comes with divorce is overwhelming and opens the doors to your worst fears and insecurities.

Those voices are your inner critics who create fear, uncertainty, rage, resentment, jealousy, and panic. They fuel the fire of your most negative emotions to keep you in a place of reaction and doubt. They rob you of your strength and self-esteem. They keep you stuck in a story about your past. They distract you from focusing on yourself by keeping you absorbed in the anger, fear and pain from your ex. They create such a fearful vision of the future that some people choose not to move forward at all, rather than face their fear of the unknown. These inner critics will not serve you. Ultimately, they will sabotage you at every turn in the divorce process, if you let them. So, how do you succeed at divorce?

1. Silence Your Saboteurs
Acknowledge them. Notice what they say most often. Notice how they make you feel. You know these are saboteur voices when they only instill fear and doubt. You know these are saboteur voices when the only future they paint for you is terrifying and bleak. What do they know? You might actually win the lottery someday. They don't know you and what you've accomplished in your life. So, why are you listening? Once you know your saboteurs, you don't have to react mindlessly to everything they say. You have a choice. Once you recognize your saboteurs, you can see how silly and ridiculous they really are.

2. Identify What You Want
You can't get what you want until you know what it is. And in a divorce, not knowing what you want leaves you in a completely disempowered position. While the legal process is pretty much out of your control, you can maximize the probability of getting what you want if you have clarity and purpose. A clear vision of what is most important to you, now and in the future, will guide you in your decision-making. It will help you negotiate for a better result. It will put your best interests front and center, while you leave your disempowering past behind. It will make your saboteurs weak. It will help you move forward to transform your life into what you want it to be.

3. Honor Your Values
Separation and divorce can leave you untethered and rudderless as you adjust to being alone. Your individual identity was so subsumed by who you were as a married couple that it takes some self-exploration to identify who you are now and who you want to be in the future. It is important, early in this process, to identify your core values: integrity, family, achievement, and contribution, since it is these values that drive how you think and act. It is also important to recognize that your core values are unique to you. Often we make big assumptions that others share our values, when in fact they don't. They are living life by a whole different rule book. Knowing your core values is essential since it gives you insight into yourself and what is most important to you.

And it is important to know that when your core values aren't being honored, by you or someone else, you will feel miserable. You can't control your ex's actions. You can't control the legal process. You can't control the repercussions of divorce on your life. But you can control yourself. By honoring your core values every day, and throughout this process, you will have assurance that you are making the decisions that are right for you. You will have confidence knowing that you are always true to yourself in your behavior and actions. You will know that you did your best. You will have conviction that your situation doesn't define you. And you will have faith and hope that your life will be better than it ever was before.

Divorce challenges you to have the courage to step forward, to face your fears and move forward anyway. You have one life on this earth and it is your responsibility to live it as best you can. No excuses. And this is your opportunity to take the reins and create a new life for yourself -- one that is far more empowering and fulfilling than the one you are leaving behind.

To order my book Divorce Hell, please click HERE
For more information about Divorce Hell, please click HERE
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