Two amazing things happened this weekend — I took part in the Women’s PowerStrategy Conference and it was my dad’s funeral. While those two events are seemingly disparate (while I celebrated my father’s life, I am still mourning my loss), I realized that something joyous happened at both events; a recognition that the stories we […]
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A few months ago, I asked, does getting married make you an adult? It’s a question that came up when my The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Cynics, Commitaphobes and Connubial DIYers coauthor, Susan Pease Gadoua, and I met with two soon-to-be-married couples separately as we gathered research for our book. “Marriage is just […]
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We’re coming up on Father’s Day, and even though I’m not a fan of Hallmark holidays the day will be nonetheless hard for me this year. My father passed away May 26, just a few weeks shy of his 89th birthday, so his death will be very fresh on the day to honor him. Although […]
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Why are so many people unhappy in their relationship? That’s a hard question to answer, although that doesn’t stop people from trying to figure it out. According to Dana Adam Shapiro’s research for his book You Can Be Right (or You Can Be Married), very few married people are happy — he says about 17 […]
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Gwyneth Paltrow — the most beautiful woman in the world, according to People — confessed to what Ben Affleck admitted a few months ago — marriage is hard and it takes work. “It’s hard being married. You go through great times, you go through terrible times. We’re the same as any couple,” Paltrow said of […]
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I didn’t know much about Marco, the guy who kindly takes me to and from my mechanic and my job when my car needs servicing. I knew he is in the States legally, I knew he worked about 70 hours a week at two jobs, I knew he had a wife and a 9-year-old son […]
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There’s an image we have about marriage, about “two becoming one.” Anyone who’s been married for length of time realizes that’s a bit of a lie. We’re still people with our own needs. In fact, many believe what we experience is a “his” and a “her” marriage. Some 50 years ago, sociologist Jessie Bernard noted […]
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Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have been in the headlines a lot in recent years, and not because of their movies. They’re either on the verge of divorce or they have an open marriage; I’m not sure which horrifies people more. I can understand why people might be concerned about them divorcing; they have […]
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I have been following the kerfuffle over Susan Patton’s letter in the Daily Princetonian, in which the former Princeton grad and mom to two Princeton-educated sons advises Princeton women to nab a hubby on campus before they graduate: “Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market … you will never again be surrounded […]
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What are we going to do with the kids? Society seems to value kids, yet we aren’t doing much to help raise them well. It’s clear the efforts to make divorce harder for those couples with minor children isn’t going to work and who knows if making marriage harder would work either. But maybe it […]
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