It’s a sad story although that’s not how it started off. They met, they fell in love, they married, they were ridiculously happy in that “How do we even deserve this?” kind of way. Then he got called to serve in Iraq. And he went; it’s what he signed up to do, and he was […]
Tag Archive 'Expectations'
What I learned after my second divorce
Posted in Cohabitation, Divorce, Expectations, Midlife, Singles on Oct 23rd, 2012
“Do you think you’d still be married if all the bad stuff hadn’t happened?” a friend asked me recently. “Uh, I don’t know,” I answered after a few minutes. It’s true, I don’t really know. I’d like to believe that in what would be 14 years into our marriage, we still would be. I certainly thought […]
Why is marriage ‘work,’ and why is it the wife’s responsibility?
Posted in Cohabitation, Divorce, Expectations, Marriage, Women, Work on Oct 15th, 2012
Reading Laura Doyle’s HuffPost post, “6 Reasons Marriage Counseling is BS,” I recalled my own experience with marriage counseling as my marriage imploded. It was or miss — three couples’ counselors (the first was clearly clueless, the second was good but he didn’t like her, the third came too late), and one solo therapist (I […]
Would marriages last if we stopped romanticizing them?
Posted in Divorce, Expectations, Marriage on Oct 2nd, 2012
There was Big! Marriage! News! over the weekend — actress Anne Hathaway got married (and evidently “all we’ve been able to talk about today” is her look) and the New York Times took a crack at marriage contracts (which, as you may know, is among the ideas Susan Pease Gadoua and I are presenting in our […]
Why do we see divorce as a ‘failed’ marriage?
Posted in Divorce, Expectations, Marriage, Stereotypes on Sep 24th, 2012
I was married for 14 years. The marriage produced two amazing young men. Nine years ago, it ended in divorce, and their dad and I have co-parented well. Please don’t call my marriage a failed marriage. A friend recently called me to task on why I am so resistant to calling a marriage that ends […]
With the publication of Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men, we are back to looking at things as men vs. women, a disturbing thought. (In fact. some female friends recently commented on my numerous pro-men columns; sure, I’ve written those, but being pro-men where there are injustices doesn’t mean I’m anti-women.) Whether you agree or […]
Do we really want men to stay at home?
Posted in Divorce, Expectations, Family, Fathers, Infidelity, Marriage, Men, Mothers, Parenting, Stereotypes on Sep 11th, 2012
I knew it: Anytime you talk about men and infidelity, people want to remind you that men aren’t the only ones who cheat. And they’re right. So of course my HuffPo story this week, The downside of being a stay-at-home dad?, based on my article here last week, Do stay-at-home-dads cheat more than other dads?, […]
Do stay-at-home-dads cheat more than other dads?
Posted in Divorce, Expectations, Family, Infidelity, Marriage, Men, Sex, Work on Sep 4th, 2012
When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, touted mothers as the ones who “really hold the country together,” at the convention last week, she touched a nerve for a lot of us, and not in a good way. Not only did women who are choosing to be childfree wonder where they stand in mattering […]
Can you give up too much for a marriage?
Posted in Divorce, Expectations, Infidelity, Marriage, Men, Mothers, Women, Work on Aug 28th, 2012
I have been thinking about Rupert Sanders’ wife of 10 years, Liberty Ross, which is weird because before the “scandalous” make-out session between Kristen Stewart and Sanders, I’d never heard of Sanders or Ross and (as the mom of boys, not girls) barely knew of Stewart and her — now-former — “Twilight” boyfriend, Robert Pattison. […]
Is it easier to tell the truth or lie in love?
Posted in Dating, Expectations, Infidelity, Men, Mothers, Singles, Women on Aug 21st, 2012
We all talk about how “hard” relationships are, and I’ll agree — they can be. But it’s interesting how we often make relationships hard because we don’t see how our own behaviors create dysfunction. I am observing a relatively new romance. One partner has a lot of long-time friends of the opposite sex, the other […]