Darn Divorce

People who have experienced a divorce are at a higher risk of depression than those who remain with their spouse, a new study indicated.

The study revealed divorced men were six times more likely to report a episode of depression, while women who underwent marital break-ups were three times more likely to do so.

Jennifer Tipper, with the Vanier Institute of the Family, said women might have an easier time coping with divorce because they are typically more open with their feelings.

“Women tend to get together and talk about what’s going on at home and typically, men don’t have those same relationships,” she said. She added women tend to have a stronger support system with friends, family and in some cases, a therapist.

The study also found children play a big role in male depression.

Tipper said the reason for this is that in a lot of divorce cases, younger kids tend to live with their mother for the majority of the time.

However, she said divorce is difficult for both men and women, since both have to learn how to live alone again.

“(It’s) such a tremendously critical transition in their life. There’s no question that the emotional pressure on (them) is going to be huge,” she said.

Fewer and fewer married couples are getting divorced nowadays. Some reports say the U.S. is seeing the lowest number of divorces in almost 40 years. But, some people say marriages are just as unstable as ever.

On the surface of it, this is good news, right? According to the Associated Press, divorce rates are at their lowest point since 1970. Does this mean more married people are happier than before? Not every marriage therapist would agree with that.

“Business is still booming,” says marriage and family therapist Karin Krueger. She says there could be a number of reasons behind this drop in divorces. For one, Krueger says people seem to be waiting to get married.

“When people get married so young, let’s say in their late teens or early 20s, they’re still changing so much and the person they are when they’re 19 or 18 is definitely different then who they’ll become when they’re 30,” Krueger says.

Plus, Krueger says less people consider marriage counseling to be taboo. “People don’t feel so isolated; they don’t feel so ashamed of it. They feel like they can go to a marital counselor and it’s OK,” she says.

But, not every reason for the decline is good. Krueger says it’s common to see the “emotional divorce” in her line of work. This is where couples are still legally married, but they just don’t care about the marriage anymore. She says, “They’re staying legally married maybe for financial reasons, maybe for religious reasons, maybe for the children’s sake, but they really don’t have any relationship.”

Krueger says there are people who feel they’re too old to get a divorce, and they don’t see any reason to do it now. For people in Utah who do go through the actual divorce proceedings, they’re required to take a divorce education class. Then, the divorce can get really ugly, and not just for the couple.

“I do know other attorneys who absolutely will not do divorce law, as a rule,” says attorney Jeffrey Gallup. He provides many different kinds of legal services, including divorce law. “The divorce cases, they’re just so intense. At least that’s been my experience,” Gallup says.

He says he’s trying to slowly get out of divorce law, himself. He says really only wealthy people can afford to go through a contentious process. Gallup says, “Usually, divorce attorneys end up upside down in cases almost immediately because there are not that many people that have the ability to pay a large retainer to begin with.”

Gallup says not all cases are contentious, that there are some couples that make the process easier. Recent reports say divorce rates hit their all time high in 1981, but they’ve been on a steady decline since then.

SOURCE

A racy billboard recommending that couples get divorced is raising eyebrows in Chicago.

The advertisement shows close-ups of a woman’s and a man’s chests and says: “Life’s short. Get a divorce.”

It’s located in an area of the Windy City known for its singles’ hangouts that’s often referred to as the “Viagra Triangle.”

The attorney who put up the billboard said she just wants to make people think.

“The message really is that life is very, very short and you need to be honest with yourself and have some personal integrity,” said divorce attorney Corri Fetman. “And if you’re unhappy — you truly are unhappy — then take some action and do something about it.”

But other attorneys said the billboard is disrespectful to their profession.

“Lawyers have a bad name in our society to begin with,” said Karen McNulty of the Women’s Bar Association Of Illinois. “I think it really undignifies lawyers and community.”

Divorce attorney Mike Berger agreed. “This makes light of the entire situation. In fact, it promotes divorce,” he said.

By Annie Groer
The Washington Post

Of all the dislocation and pain associated with divorce, one thing is certain. The wife or the husband, or maybe both, will have to leave home. No more morning coffee and newspaper on that sunny porch. No more view from the kitchen sink of the oak tree that once was a tiny sapling. No more shrieks and giggles from the kids’ playroom, or family celebrations at a table set with the “good” china.

For the spouse who decamps, home becomes a hastily rented apartment, a friend’s spare room or an unfamiliar, empty house. Routines vanish, along with a sense of place in the world. The task of rebuilding - from picking up the emotional pieces to picking out a new sofa - looms large.

“It’s a major loss of one’s life, a loss of possessions, the death of a dream, of expectations, of objects that defined you and the life you once had,” says Judith Bernardi, a Silver Spring, Md., psychologist.

“Whether you are the leave-ee or leave-er, there is something about starting over,” says Dan Couvrette, whose own breakup 12 years ago inspired him to publish Divorce magazine, aimed at those he calls “Generation Ex.”

The first challenge often is to find a new home, says Couvrette, who lived with a friend in Toronto for three months while vainly hoping to reconcile. Then he bought a house.

“I had three chairs for the living room but needed a couch. I had a microwave but needed a TV. My mother bought me a new set of dishes and cutlery,” he recalls.

He and his ex split their art collection and he retrieved the sofa, which only reminded him of loss.

“I remembered that we moved it four times, that it was where the family gathered. It wasn’t a happy period for me, so the space didn’t make me feel any better.”

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that as many as half of the 2.2 million marriages annually could fail for first-time brides and grooms under age 45; second marriages are even riskier, with a 60 percent divorce rate. That represents a great many separate dwellings to furnish each year.

“Marriage and divorce are the two life stages that stimulate the most furniture purchases,” says New York-based marketing strategist J’Amy Owens, whose clients include home furnishings retailers. She speaks from experience, having been married and divorced twice. After her first breakup, she painted the living room vivid red and filled it with white and floral furniture; after the second, she bought and completely gutted a home.

“Women will start nesting instantly,” says Owens. “Most men on their own are like bears in a cave. They have some funky lamp they can read by, a La-Z-Boy chair. … It’s really bleak — a mattress on a frame, no headboard, no nice linens.”

Brette Sember, a former divorce lawyer outside Buffalo who has written four books on the subject, agrees. Women, she says, tend to redecorate immediately and often go girly in their homes. If men can afford to, they go high-tech, and seem able to tolerate low- to no-style interiors for a longer period than their onetime wives.

“He is wiring the house. He buys electronics, a big-screen TV, expensive stereo stuff, a computer, a laptop. Those are the toys he wants,” she says. In time, he will also acquire “a nice comfy couch and a recliner. No table. They would eat on the couch.”

Such behavior melds acquisition therapy with a frat-house ambience. “It’s like being a single bachelor again,” observes Sember. “They are starting over the way that makes them feel happy.”

There are, certainly, ex-husbands who make decisive moves to resettle: hit a store, buy the basics and get it over with, says Amy Johnson, furniture manager of the Crate & Barrel in Tysons Corner, Va. “Some are just angry that they have to start over with nothing, but some look at it as a new beginning. `I need a bed, a sofa, a table.’ They are just looking for the essentials.”

Children add an element of urgency in setting up a new home.

“Men realize the children need to be comfortable. If school-age kids are saying, `Where is the kitchen table?’ or, ‘Here’s a bed, but where do I put my clothes?’ it will hit home sooner,” Sember says.

“Often the woman remains in the home where they were together, particularly if there are kids. So she still has a sense of home,” Sember adds. If she can afford it, “she is out buying canopy beds, wicker furniture for the bedroom, really feminine things. I know a woman getting a divorce who wanted pink sheets. Such women no longer have to incorporate that masculine thing in their home.”

The bad news about splitting up is that you have to start over. For some people, that may also be the good news.

What we might think of as “divorce decor” can be liberating, an opportunity to follow an interior design muse, say some experts. Why not choose swagged and tasseled bedroom curtains, or throw out the hulking recliner, or replace that fussy Victorian parlor suite with chrome tables and low-slung leather sofas?

Decorator Darlene Mathis, who owns Collectibles Gallery in Washington, has a client who took only the artwork in her amicable parting from a beige-loving husband who couldn’t bear strong colors.

“She now has a celadon green kitchen, a cherry bathroom and one room that is sun yellow with a floral sofa — something he never wanted to see. She calls it her `coming alive room.’” says Mathis. “One of her frequent comments is she can put her beautiful bedspread on the bed and not have to worry about his shoes, his newspapers.”

Many divorces are marked by the sort of pitched battles over possessions found in novels, movies and celebrity magazines. Since post-divorce money is often tight, such fights may be purely economic.

But not always.

“It isn’t the intrinsic value, but an opportunity to torture each other,” says Edie Guidice, a family mediator in Silver Spring, Md.

“Sometimes the impetus for one party is just to get out, and furnishings are a low priority, so they agree to give it up. Sometimes they say, `It’s my Great-Aunt Tillie’s, and I don’t care if I was the partner at fault, I want that bureau or my childhood toy chest,’” she adds. “Sometimes they fight over every little scatter rug, lamp, kitchen utensil. They go down to dividing up the potato peeler.”

“The things take on meaning,” says Bernardi. “If you are civilized, you take what you brought into the marriage and divide what you bought together. If you feel you have been victimized, you will fight over the stuff.”

Interior designer Sarah Boyer Jenkins of Chevy Chase, Md., remembers a couple who fought bitterly over an antique highboy. “It came in two sections and neither wanted to give in. I said, ‘Can’t you put this together in some way so that your children will have the piece intact?’ They did not. My client had the top, which was a little difficult to use. I don’t know if the highboy ever got back together.”

Divorce is not a game, BUT a new PC game can help deal with it. Find out more.

But there’s a good lesson to be learned:

It is said that two’s company, three’s a crowd. That could be particularly true when you’re sharing one end of a small boat. But for Bruce Willis, his ex-wife Demi Moore and her young husband Ashton Kutcher, it proved no problem at all.

While Miss Moore canoodled contentedly with her beloved on one side, action man Willis was happy to concentrate on his fishing.
Miss Moore, 44, and her film actor husband, 29, had joined 52-year-old Willis at his home in the Turks and Caicos Islands for a holiday to celebrate the completion of Live Free or Die Hard, his fourth film featuring hard-bitten detective John McClane.

Also present in the Caribbean were Willis and Miss Moore’s daughters Rumer, 18, Scout, 15, and Tallulah, 13. Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz was invited along to record the break for the latest edition of Vanity Fair, which goes on sale today.

Miss Leibovitz - whose portrait of the Queen also features in the magazine - went out on the boat trip and was no doubt delighted with the shot of Willis reeling in his catch while Miss Moore cuddled her man.

Willis told the magazine he sees nothing unusual in the relationship. He said: “It’s hard to understand, but we go on holidays together. We still raise our kids together - we still have that bond.

“Demi is the mother of my children and Ashton is the stepfather of my children. I’m thrilled that Ashton turned out to be such a great guy.

“I love Demi, and I know she loves me.”

Source

Tom Cruise’s friend Jenna Elfman is shooting down reports that the actor’s five-month marriage to Katie Holmes is unstable.

“Honestly, they’re happy,” Elfman, 35, told People magazine.

“They have a great life and they love each other. For some reason, the media cannot experience that. They must put in things other than the simplicity of it.”

Several recent tabloid stories have alleged that Holmes has been living in a “prison-like” environment and that Cruise has pushed her to adopt his spiritual beliefs.

Elfman, who, like Cruise, is a fellow Scientologist and attended the couple’s lavish wedding in Italy in November, said the stories could not be further from the truth: “It’s totally irrelevant, because it’s so absolutely not that.”

I dont know… Something still smells fishy-fishy to me…

There are certain movies which are better off watched on your PC. The ones that have a message. The ones where you need to surrender to the monitor, dive deep inside the screen, into the story, into your soul. The ones you need to keep within reach.

“The Secret” is one of those movies.

The least you could do (for yourself) is watch it. The most you can do (for humanity) is pass it on.

Note: You’ll need to clear about an hour and a half from your schedule… but it’s worth it.

Courtesy of Living In My Own World.

One out of every two marriages in America is failing.

American families are crumbling and vanishing.

Most families have become dysfunctional, and it is widely becoming fashionable to come from a dysfunctional family.

Divorce is on the rise all the time.

Your self-esteem - what you think of yourself in relation to other people - is the basic secret of your success or failure in life.

Here are some marital insights to help you survive a divorce and live the rest of your life happily.

It’s really as simple as that… Think well of yourself, and you’ll do well.

Think disparagingly of yourself, and you’ll probably not do very well at all .

It is natural to have a low self-esteem after going through a divorce.

In fact, the blow dealt to one’s self-esteem by divorce is lethal and crushing enough to drive anyone to the brink of insanity.

There may be very justifiable reasons to end a marriage and get a divorce.

The way I see it, it should be preferable to end a problematic marriage than to stay and keep suffering, being abused and endangering one’s life.

This is common sense.

It makes a great sense to end the marriage , seek a divorce and find a much better partner in life.

Nobody is above making a mistake.

But when you make a mistake in the choice of your life partner, be reasonable to realize it, end the marriage, find another partner and continue with your life.

There are billions of human beings on earth, and one should be able to find a compatible partner to continue one’s life.

When a marriage ends in divorce, one should have a good attitude about it.

But this is not always easy for most spouses.

They tend to continue to remain attached to their ex-partners.

They continue to agonize over the break-up and blame each other for the failure.

They are filled with anger, self-loathing, regrets, anxiety and frustration due to the failed marriage.

They continue to let the memories about the failed marriage linger on.

After a divorce, the correct attitude will be to consider the marriage dead and let go of all feelings regarding it and move on with ones’s life.

It may take sometime for you to go through the necessary healing that has to take place before you are able to recognize and enjoy happiness again.

Even so, the most important and the very first thing you must do following the break-up of any kind of relationship, is to get started on the rebuilding of your self-esteem.

This means that you have to accept the fact that neither you or anyone else is perfect - determine that you will learn from your mistakes - and that you will become whatever it is you aspire to be.

Immediately, do something that makes you feel good - something you’ve been wanted to do for some time - or always wanted to do.

This could be getting a new hair-do, buying a new suit, enrolling in a special self-improvement course, starting a new job or business, or even taking an extended vacation.

You may also relocate and move to another city.

This is one way of leaving all memories of the failed marriage behind.

You mustn’t lock yourself in your house or apartment and keep brooding over the failed marriage.

You mustn’t be afraid to get out and associate with people.

You mustn’t stop enjoying life!

You may have to force yourself, but you must “forget” about mourning your loss and continue with your life.

You must go on with your life with a stronger determination than ever, to be the person you want to be.

Don’t “beat yourself over the head” with feelings of guilt.

Get rid of your anger as quickly as possible.

Forget about the past. Focus on the present and the future.

Get on with the rest of your life without delay!

Revitalize those ambitions that have been “hidden away” in the back of your mind, and consider this particular time in your life as an opportunity for a new start.

Do some introspection relative to what it is you want out of life; reorganize your time and efforts to attain those objectives; and go for it with all you’ve got!

The way you feel about yourself has a strong reflection on the way you feel about others.

When things are not quite right, the first thing that needs to be changed is your disposition - your attitude, feelings towards other people, and your emotional responses.

Think about your facial expressions and the tone of your voice when you’re talking with other people.

Being aware of these things with consideration towards other people, will “bring you out of your-self” and allow other people to want to know more about you.

You have to forget about and let go of, the past.

Anything and everything that happened yesterday is long gone and cannot be changed.

You have the rest of your life from this moment on, to achieve love - happiness - fame and fortune.

Whatever it is you want in life can be yours.

All that’s necessary to make any dream come true is a true understanding of what you want, and determination on your part to make it all happen according to your plan.

Think about what you want -prepare yourself to get it – focus your efforts on the fulfillment of your ambitions – and there’s nothing that can stop you from total realization!

If you’re a man, after divorce, desist from condemning all the women as devils.

Just because your marriage didn’t work out with one woman doesn’t mean that all women are evil.

If you’re a woman, after your divorce, don’t conclude that all men are evil.

Just because your marriage didn’t work out with one man doesn’t mean that all men are evil.

It is also not a good reason to become a lesbian!

There are billions of men in the world.

If it doesn’t work with one man, it may work with another, so go for it.

So, the first thing relative to rebuilding one’s self-esteem - following a divorce, or the loss of a loved one by any circumstances - is to understand why you hurt, and what is necessary in order to be happy again.

It is essential that you think of YOURSELF in terms of the kind of life you want for yourself; know that you can have it all because you’ve laid the foundation, done your homework, and you’re on a positive road towards achievement; and then get busy “making tracks” in that direction.

In simple terms - it hurts, but you’re not dead - you’re only wasting time thinking about or rehashing the past because there’s no way anything that happened yesterday or the day before can be changed - so quickly pick up the pieces, and get on with your life!

May these insights about life after divorce help you to find a new meaning in life and to move on and prosper and be happy for the rest of your life.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

Forbes just released the top ten most expensive celebrity divorces. At the top of the A-list, fat cash bust-ups is the pending divorce between millionaire baller Michael Jordan and his wife of 18 years — which could cost Mike more than $150 million. Nothin’ but net!

Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg and Mick Jagger and their respective exes also rank high on the ka-ching split list. And let’s not forget Paul McCartney and Heather Mills’ split (ranked at number 6 on the list), which could cost the former Beatle an arm and a leg … more than $60 million!