My son’s high school graduation last week was a sea of faces filled with a mix of joy, exhaustion, sadness and uncertainty — not just the 18-year-olds but their parents as well. As I looked around me, I wondered how many married couples, a good portion about to be empty-nesters, would still be married for […]
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Posted in Divorce, Family, Men, Mothers, Parenting, Women on May 14th, 2012
I consider myself pretty lucky that when I divorced, my former spouse and I were civil enough — or maybe just too cheap! — to mediate and avoid lawyers and stay out of family court. And, we agreed that we would coparent 50-50, one week on, one week off. It hasn’t always been easy for any […]
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I enjoyed reading Barbara Risman’s take on the whole Mommy Wars thing, allegedly reignited by the Hilary Rosen-Ann Romney flap. Risman, the head of the sociology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Council on Contemporary Families’ executive officer, called it a bunch of silliness, while acknowledging a truth (emphasis mine): (T)here […]
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Because of the book project I’m working on The New I Do, I had heard from Melissa of The Long Haul Project, a young couple who, “on a journey to save our marriage,” have been meeting married couples around the globe and recording their secrets to marital happiness. So I read through their blog and […]
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Posted in Expectations, Marriage, Singles on Mar 26th, 2012
I’m back to thinking about marriage again. I know; it’s like I have a one-track mind but in doing research for The New I Do, I pretty much have to (nice excuse, right?) With all the negative things we hear about marriage — from sexless, loveless marriages to the high rate of infidelity to the […]
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Like many, I was surprised when Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins had split back in 2009. They seemed like a pretty solid couple, although they’re celebrities so who really knows. But I was more surprised by her recent statement that their parting made her “feel like a failure.” We like to believe that relationships will last […]
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When I asked a friend recently how she’s doing, she paused and answered, “I keep wondering if this is all there is.” She, like me, is 50-something and like many 50-somethings we are empty-nesters or about to be empty-nesters; we’re either 20-something years into a marriage or divorced. We’re in the so-called “midlife crisis” years, […]
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Posted in Divorce, Family, Marriage, Parenting on Mar 5th, 2012
He’s the son of an alcoholic, she’s the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — can this marriage be saved? In my case, no, but why should our familial backgrounds even matter? Because they do, a lot. Infidelity, abuse, addiction, drug abuse — those of frequently cited as issues that lead to divorce. Never mind all […]
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As you probably know if you’ve seen my writing on Huffington Post, Facebook, Twitter or this blog, Susan Pease Gadoua and I are collaborating on a book about reimaging marriage, which we’re calling, The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. So, of course, I have been researching marriage and thinking about […]
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Posted in Expectations, Family, Men, Parenting, Women on Feb 20th, 2012
I had the pleasure of interviewing Eve Ensler last week. She’s heading to town for an event this week, a conversation with Isabel Allende at Dominican University. An award-winning author and playwright (The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body) and creator of V-Day, which has raised some $70 million to fight violence against girls and women […]
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