Most people who’ve gotten divorced don’t regret it, after the fact – notwithstanding the unpleasantness of going through a divorce. Because the alternative is usually worse. That being spending the rest of your life chained to someone you no longer love or who no longer loves you.
Possibly, someone who hates your guts – and is out to make your life as miserable as they possibly can.
Continue reading “The Happy Divorce, Just Maybe . . .”
The Republic of Ireland legally grants a divorce for the first time following a 1995 referendum. The first divorce in Ireland, granted to a terminally ill man who wished to marry his new partner, was a harbinger of the decline of the Catholic Church’s power over the Republic.
The Irish Constitution of 1937 specifically forbade divorce. Though the constitution prohibits the state from adopting an official religion, Ireland is an overwhelmingly Catholic country, and the original document contained many elements of Catholic doctrine. The Church played an outsized role in Irish public life, even by the standards of other heavily Catholic countries. Italy, for example, had legalized divorce by 1970. In 1986, the Irish government put the issue up to a nationwide referendum, but 63.5 percent voted against amending the constitution. A law allowing legal separation passed in 1989. After coming to power in 1994, a “Rainbow Coalition” government composed of center-left parties one again propagated a referendum on amending the constitution to allow divorce.
Guest Post by Gayle
Don’t do it. Don’t divorce. Don’t shred your family and break your children’s hearts. Those hearts, although eventually appearing healed, will reassert themselves farther up the road and will seek recompense in some malignant way.
As Louis C.K. says, “No good marriage has ever ended in divorce.” You made a go of it, but for whatever reason it didn’t work out. The solution is simple: end it. Life is too short to keep wasting your time with something that isn’t working, so grow a pair of balls and rip the Band-Aid off.
It’s actually perfectly logical that things didn’t work out. We are all in a constant state of flux. Remember the idiotic things you believed when you were 17? The idea of having to sleep in a bed with that person for the rest of your life is just unthinkable. That’s what your marriage has become, a long and torturous chain to the past.
When ‘until death do us part’ sounds like agony
Courtesy Everett CollectionLooking ahead to the next phase of life can seem pretty dreadful if you can’t stand the person who you’ll be spending it with.
That may be what some boomers are facing. Among U.S. adults ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has roughly doubled since the 1990s, according to a recent Pew Research Center report.
Statistically speaking we’re healthier and probably going to be living a lot longer — possibly 30 years longer — than average retirees once did. The surge in late-in-life — or “gray” — divorce is one possibly unintended consequence of this so-called longevity bonus.
Continue reading “This is why baby boomers are divorcing at a stunning rate”
Who knew that folksy ex-Veep Joe Biden was sitting on a dirty made-for-TV drama?
The news recently splashed across the New York tabloids that Hunter Biden, the surviving son of the ex-VP, is having an affair with Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden, who died last year of brain cancer. She appropriately appears in all the family funeral pictures mourning alongside other family families.
Two months later, Hunter’s now estranged wife, Kathleen, was out. And now, Hallie is in.
The chart below captures much of what has gone wrong in this country since 1970. Households in 1970 looked entirely different than households today. In 1970, almost 71% of all households consisted of married couples. Today, only 50% of all households are occupied by married couples. The divorce rate prior to 1970 ranged between 9 and 11 per 1,000 married women. After 1970 the divorce rate skyrocketed by 100% to between 20 and 23 per 1,000 married women.
In 1970 46% of two parent households had a stay at home mom. Only 33% of mothers worked full-time in 1970. That was true because a family could live a decent middle class life on one salary. In 1970 31% of all the jobs in the country were higher paying goods production jobs. Today, only 10% of jobs are goods producing jobs. The shift from a country based upon saving and production to a services oriented nation based on debt based consumption is reflected in the chart.
The primary reason the percentage of mom’s working full time has risen from 33% to 52% is the fateful decision by Richard Nixon to close the gold window in 1971, allowing central bankers to print money, create relentless inflation (83% loss in purchasing power of USD), promoting the financialization of America by Wall Street, and encouraged politicians to promise voters goodies they can never deliver without the ability to run up the national debt without a seeming consequence.