In 2023, the reality TV series The Bachelor tried a new twist on the two-decade-old franchise: Gerry Turner, a dashing 72-year-old widower, was looking for a second chance at love after losing the wife he’d been with since high school. On the show, he dated more than 20 dazzling mature women but finally proposed…
Divorce is a messy business. Sadness, complication, conflict, disruption, and worry are present even in the most amicable splits—and that’s for the adults. When a divorcing couple has children, things become even more complex and painful. You love your kid unconditionally, and this isn’t about them. Your child did nothing to cause your marital…
Maybe you know the famous Carole King song or the version performed by James Taylor—a classic ballad of being there for your friend in tough times, “You’ve Got A Friend.” It’s hard to watch a friend suffer and know you can’t fix it. The end of a marriage is one of the most challenging…
You’ve made the agonizing decision to end your marriage. You’ve worked to salvage the relationship, but now you feel certain it’s time to move on. You’re ready to take the next step. You’re probably feeling anxious, emotional, fragile, overwhelmed—and lost about how to proceed. Although you can get divorced in California without an attorney,…
Dr. Mark Banschick, psychiatrist and the author of The Intelligent Divorce book series, compares the divorce process—especially the long, arduous middle stage—to the old TV show Fantasy Island, where “strange things happen to regular people” and the “normal rules of life no longer apply.” Divorce, Banschick explains in Psychology Today, has three main stages: a beginning,…
One of the world’s foremost philanthropists, Melinda French Gates has announced that she’s stepping down as co-chair of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. French Gates has helped lead the $75 billion organization since its founding nearly 25 years ago. “I am immensely proud of the foundation Bill and I built together and the…
On the hit TV show Modern Family, Gloria is a thirty-something woman married to Jay, a significantly older man. Gloria brought her young child into the marriage and then had another baby with Jay, who already had grown children with spouses and kids of their own. On the show, the couple—Jay especially—often seemed hilariously…
People get married with the best intentions—believing in the strength of their bond and the durability of their relationship. They enter into marriage with hope, love, and excitement. They want and expect it to last forever. Naturally, the wedding industry wants couples to believe that a wedding, and everything that surrounds it, symbolizes their…
Every marriage is unique and there are multifaceted factors that lead to divorce. “There’s usually more than one reason a couple gets divorced,” says DivorceNet, “and those reasons are often intertwined. For example, people are more likely to have extramarital affairs when they’re experiencing other problems in their marriage, and communication problems exacerbate issues…
The ending of a marriage is painful, stressful, volatile, and fraught. It is almost always in everyone’s best interest to work through your dissolution in the most amicable way possible to reach a mutually beneficial settlement agreement. But the reality is, being in a crumbling relationship headed irretrievably for divorce doesn’t always bring out…
