To all my friends and family - it is with a very heavy broken heart that I let you know that my husband of 32 years told me he no longer has feelings for me and asked for a separation. We will be separating for the time being and make a decision in the future. I can only tell you that I am in severe pain and wish for your understanding in dealing with this heart break.
I just got out of a 7 year relationship. My family and many friends have been very supportive. For over a month I was paralyzed but I'm trying to make a comeback now that she is out of my house.
E. announces that I am separating from my husband, B, effective June 1, 2010.
I heard that J was having an affair with B. Did you ever hear this?
This is over because you wanted it to be just as much as I wanted it to be.
K is now listed as "single".
With divorce rates steadily increasing, there is always the phone call, the text, or the facebook message proclaiming something like, "Did you hear about John and Mary?"
I am not shocked.
Marriage and life-long monogamy are not natural states for humans.
How do I know this? Because marriage is so damn hard.
If choosing one person and staying with them forever was natural, it would be easy. There would not be magazine articles in every grocery store check-out line telling us how to stay married if it were a natural state of being.We would not need help from Dr Phil, or John Gray, or Mort Fertel to get through it year after year.
Let's look at an example from life- Eating our young.
Eating our young is not natural. We do not look at our children and think about eating them. There is no need for seminars, self-help books or tv psychologists to tell us how to live each day not eating our young.
Amazon does not have a top ten list of books full of handy tips and tricks you can implement to keep little Susi out of the stock pot.
It's not natural, so we have an easy time not doing it. No one has to convince us to not barbecue little Bobby when he gets fat enough.
I'm not saying that because it's not natural, we shouldn't do it. Driving a car isn't natural. Indoor plumbing isn't natural. Air conditioning isn't natural. And I'll be damned if I'm giving any of them up. However, if my car, toilet, or air conditioner start acting up, become out-dated or become more trouble than they are worth, I'll happily replace them.
The car we have in our college days may not be the car we want or need when we are 30, 40, 50 years old. What if we had only once chance to decide what type of vehicle to buy, and that was it, forever? That pick-up truck may not fit all your children, and you can't haul much hay in that Porsche.
How many of us still have the same friends that we had in high school? How about college? During that first 'real' job?
How many of us changed, morphed, or out-grew those friends? Or watched as those friends changed and out-grew us? We are told that it's okay for that to happen, that people change, and you get to make more friends with interests that suit you now.
I've gone through school friends, roommate friends, vegetarian friends, hippie friends, religious friends, mainstream friends, homeschool friends, wives of Ron's co-worker's friends, homebirthing friends, breastfeeding friends, online friends, drinking friends, vampire erotica friends.... sure there's a lot of overlap, but not one of them has remained constant through my 27 years in this town. They fade in and out as I need them in my life.
But imagine if society expected us at the age of 25 to choose for ourselves a best friend, and 25 years later, that person was still required to be our best friend, our moving help, movie buddy, the person who held our hand through labor, went on vacation with us, and planned our birthday parties?
What 25 year old knows the kind of friends they will need in their lives when they are 50?
The person you need in your life when you are 25 may not be a person you even want in your life at 35.
Granted, some married couples make it look easy. They get along, laugh together, spend time doing the same hobbies and activities.
All the couples I know like that are now divorced.
Some married couples fight constantly (and loudly), while their kids (and neighbors) wish they'd get a divorce, but unfortunately, fighting seems to be the only thing they do well and so they stay together.
Some people 'hermit crab' easily into different marriages and lives, reinventing themselves each time. I have an uncle who did this. He started out with a girl from Montana, was a coal miner with seven kids, and built a large 8 BR house. When the youngest was 12, he left that relationship, moved to a different state and married a woman with a grown daughter, two teen-aged sons and a nine month old. Several years and homes later, she left him for another man; "I deserve to be happy", and he built a boat in his back yard.
He married a woman with three grown children, and put the boat in the water.
Statistics show there is something to the "7 Year Itch".
According to the US Census Bureau, the median duration of first marriages that end in divorce:
Males: 7.8 years
Females: 7.9 years
Median duration of second marriages that end in divorce:
Males: 7.3 years
Females: 6.8 years
Gone are the days where you take a job right out of school and retire from that same job at age 65. Many people live in 7-year 'chunks', buying a new house, or doing major remodeling on the existing one, getting a new partner, having another set of kids, or starting a new career.
What's the secret to a lasting marriage?
Is there one?
Elizabeth Bernstein's sister, a doctor, told her about one of her patients, a 92-year-old woman who showed up for her appointment with her husband, who is 94. They said they have been married for almost 70 years.
Her sister, highly impressed, asked the couple the secret to their union's longevity.
And they looked at each other for a long moment.
Then the wife spoke: "Eh, neither of us died."
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