Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider.
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What is taking place here should be made very clear: Citizens who are completely innocent of any legal wrongdoing and simply minding their own business--not seeking any litigation and neither convicted nor accused of any legal infraction, criminal or civil--are ordered into court and told to write checks to officials of the court or they will be summarily arrested and jailed, Judges also order citizens to sell their houses and other property and turn the proceeds over to lawyers and other cronies they never hired. Summoning legally unimpeachable citizens to court and forcing them to empty their bank accounts to people they have not hired for services they have neither requested nor received on threat of physical punishment is what most people would call a protection racket. . . Yet family court judges do this as a matter of routine. This is by far the clearest example of what we political scientists term a "kleptocracy," or government by theives.
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A formal period in life where there isn’t the worry of another person’s dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.“Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one’s suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.“Once we’re at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we’ve made peace with our past, where we’ve accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship.
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I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.Beth went a little nuts.I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed. May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day" at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness.
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But she knew it would never happen. She had no intention of visiting him there. Even if she were open to the idea, as Mom and Dad both hoped she would be, the mathematics of it seemed utterly impossible to her. What was she supposed to do, spend Christmas there and Easter here? See her dad every other holiday and one week during the summer, just enough to glimpse his new life in fragments, tiny slivers of a world she had no part in? And all the while missing out on those moments of her mom’s life—her mom, who’d done nothing to deserve to spend Christmas alone?That, it seemed to Hadley, was no way to live. Perhaps if there were more time, or if time were more malleable; if she could be both places at once, live parallel lives; or, simpler yet, if Dad would just come home. Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside of her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.
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We have been together for 40 years, married for 36. There have been three times in our relationship when we were unable to resolve an issue on our own. We used all the skill that we have and yet it was still unresolved. In those three times we sought professional help because there was a blind spot for each of us. The therapist was able to listen to both of us and help us come to a place of resolution that we both felt good about. I feel very grateful for that help. Most times we have been able to work things through on our own. Sometimes we can clear the issue in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes an hour and sometimes it can take several days. But we still keep working on it until we both say that we feel complete, we understand our own part and responsibility in the issue rather than simply blaming each other, are willing to go on, and there is an even deeper connection and sometimes even humor to the situation. In working each issue through to completion we have been able to retain a beautiful lightness in our relationship that we both cherish.
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You Chose You chose.You chose.You chose.You chose to give away your love.You chose to have a broken heart. You chose to give up. You chose to hang on.You chose to react.You chose to feel insecure.You chose to feel anger.You chose to fight back.You chose to have hope.You chose to be naïve. You chose to ignore your intuition.You chose to ignore advice.You chose to look the other way. You chose to not listen. You chose to be stuck in the past. You chose your perspective. You chose to blame. You chose to be right.You chose your pride. You chose your games.You chose your ego.You chose your paranoia. You chose to compete.You chose your enemies.You chose your consequences.You chose.You chose.You chose.You chose.However, you are not alone. Generations of women in your family have chosen. Women around the world have chosen. We all have chosen at one time in our lives. We stand behind you now screaming: Choose to let go.Choose dignity. Choose to forgive yourself.Choose to forgive others.Choose to see your value.Choose to show the world you’re not a victim.Choose to make us proud.
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He went on for some time while I sat listening in silence because I knew he was right, and like two people who have loved each other however imperfectly, who have tried to make a life together, however imperfectly, who have lived side by side and watched the wrinkles slowly form at the corner of the other's eyes, and watched a little drop of gray, as if poured from a jug, drop into the other's skin and spread itself evenly, listening to the other's coughs and sneezes and little collected mumblings, like two people who'd had one idea together and slowly allowed that idea to be replaced with two separate, less hopeful, less ambitious ideas, we spoke deep into the night, and the next day, and the next night. For forty days and forty nights, I want to say, but the fact of the matter is it only took three. One of us had loved the other more perfectly, had watched the other more closely, and one of us listened and the other hadn't, and one of us held on to the ambition of the one idea far longer than was reasonable, whereas the other, passing a garbage can one night, had casually thrown it away.
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How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of.Eventually N produces three answers, in this order:1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead.2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..."I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do."Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response:3. "I don´t know."This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever.I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know."I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged."What did you feel?"After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing."And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth.Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too.
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Because the truth was, and we both knew it, he'd gone long, long ago. I'd just made him stick around when he really wanted to be somewhere else. In his own weird way, he was another victim of the shooting, One of the ones who couldn't get away. "Are you mad?" he asked, which I thought was a really strange question. "Yes," I said. And I was. It's just that I wasn't so sure I was mad at him. But I don't think he needed to hear that part. I don't think he wanted to hear that part. I think it was important to him to hear that I cared enough to be angry."Will you ever forgive me?" he asked."Will you ever forgive me?" I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes.He stared into them for a few moments then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it. "No," he said without facing me. "Maybe that makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You might not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy."He opened the door."I'm sorry. I really am." He stepped out into the hallway. "I'll leave my new address and phone number with your mother," he said before walking slowly out of my sight.
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dear samanthai’m sorrywe have to get a divorcei know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:it’s not youit sure as hell isn’t meit’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects doi love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our speciesi saw the way you looked at the waiter last nighti know you would never DO anything, you never do but..i saw the way you looked at the waiter last nightdid you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought togetherlike if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go awaythis is not trueafter two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut downwhile he still has control over his motor functionshe flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a giftshe then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubesspooning every morsel into her mouthshe wastes nothingeven the exoskeleton goesshe does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed themnow that.. is selflessnessi could never do that for youso i have a new plani’m gonna leave you nowi’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injusticesi hope you do the samei will jay walk at every opportunity i will steal things i could easily affordi will be rude to strangersi hope you do the samei hope reincarnation is reali hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures i hope we are reborn as fliesso that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
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While many experts insisted that children seldom lie about sexual abuse, others claimed that young children often failed to distinguish between fact and fiction and might be susceptible to suggestion and pressure on the part of investigators. As more of these allegations arose in custody and divorce cases in which one parent was being accused, the issue of deliberate malice and vindictiveness on the part of the accusing parent became a matter for consideration. Were these parents intentionally coaching their children to lie in order to punish a hated ex-spouse or to gain advantage in a divorce settlement? There were many professionals—lawyers, judges, clinicians, psychiatrists—who became convinced that this was the case. Articles in respectable publications like Time and Newsweek cited statistics indicating that fictitious allegations made by divorcing parents were on the rise, and lawyers were quoted describing sex abuse allegations as the ‘atom bomb of custody disputes.’ There were also parents—predominantly mothers—who found evidence suggesting a good possibility that their children had been sexually molested by ex-spouses. Sometimes a child’s disclosures or physical or psychological symptoms led a mother to seek medical or psychological advice. Often the suggestion that abuse had occurred came not from the mother but from a doctor or a psychologist. Initial shock and disbelief on the part of these mothers was followed with the hope and expectation that the proper authorities, to whom suspicion of abuse was reported, would conduct appropriate investigations and take the steps necessary to protect their children. Rapidly they found that the systems response was very different from what they had expected. As protective mothers in cases against fathers, these women were automatically labeled vindictive, malicious, and paranoid, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Suddenly they found themselves in a Kafkaesque labyrinth of courts and state-run systems, among lawyers, judges, social workers, and experts, where the end result was almost always the same—returning or delivering the child to the alleged molester. Could this really be happening in America? Coverage of high-profile cases in the respected print media tends to reflect the attitudes of a handful of very vocal, self-styled ‘experts.” They have fueled the widespread public perception that false allegations of child sexual abuse are appearing with increased frequency in custody cases. Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, this belief has been adopted by many in the legal profession and by a sizeable segment of the mental health community. The purpose of this book is to challenge these misconceptions. Sex abuse allegations that occur during custody disputes are frequently presumed to be false because they have arisen during or just before a custody case, regardless of the evidence. Because of this presumption on the part of private professionals and public officials, when children who suffer incest become the subjects of custody disputes, often their outcries are not believed and they are not protected. Custody of such children is likely to be given to the very adults accused of molesting them. (page x)
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Муравлеев поспешил перевести разговор: – А еще я вчера разводил. Как они слушали! Во все уши, будто впервые знакомились. Вот же он, весь тут, вслушаться б раньше – и сто лет назад все бы выяснилось. Но на свадьбы меня почему-то никто не зовет, только когда уже надо платить алименты. Целоваться, обедать, спешить поскорее в роддом, чего-то хотеть друг от друга – все это можно и по контексту. А тут им впервые понадобился переводчик. Как тот немой мальчик из анекдота, у которого раньше все было в порядке, за всю совместную жизнь единственным делом, в котором желательно поточнее, оказался раздел имущества. Здесь они слушают так, что мне, как лингвисту, приятно: вот человек впервые за жизнь задумался над феноменом речи и его ролью в общении…
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