"[H]er husband forgot her 50th birthday.... said Ruchi, who asked to use only her first name because she is in the process of negotiating her divorce."

"'You’ve put all these things aside because you’re a mom and you’re taking care of a family,' she said.... 'Then you think: Is that all I am good for? When did I stop being a person?' Menopause lent a kind of fury to Ruchi’s midlife turmoil. 'I actually thought I was crazy, because I was irritated at everything,' she said.... 'There was a time when I was like, "Oh my gosh. How are we going to do this? How is this going to work? What is my family going to say?"... I am a strong person. I am a capable person. My family is very, very, very important to me, but I am more than my kids and my husband. I think I kind of forgot that.'"

From "Older Adults Are No Longer Staying in ‘Empty Shell’ Marriages/Rates of gray divorce have risen sharply over the past few decades — and experts have a few theories as to why" (NYT). That's a gift link because there are so many interesting comments over there.

1. When her husband forgot her birthday, the wife remembered that she had forgotten that she was a person.

2. Do you get much anonymity by limiting the NYT to using only your first name when your first name is as unusual as Ruchi? (I did look it up, and I can see that in India, it is a very common name.)

3. From the anecdotes in the article, I get the impression that when these long-term marriages dissolve, the man finds another woman (to take care of him?) and the woman embraces independence. 

4. From the comments over there: "This article contains the second reference I’ve seen recently to menopause as the cause of women becoming intolerant. I feel like that’s a slippery slope. I offer for consideration the fact that many, many women in our society are expected to carry loads that are unreasonable. I think that might contribute to 'intolerance' more than any hormonal shifts. And I believe such intolerance is valid."

"Former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife inside of their home and then shot and killed himself."

So say local police, quoted in "Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax kills wife, self amid divorce proceedings, police say/Fairfax served as lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022 and previously ran for governor of Virginia" (NBC News).

The former lieutenant governor, who was 47, served in the role from 2018 to 2022 under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. In 2019, two women accused Fairfax of sexual assault years earlier, prompting Virginia Democrats to call for his resignation.... 

When he ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 2021, Fairfax, who was Black, said during the gubernatorial debate he was treated like George Floyd and Emmett Till when Democrats immediately called for his resignation after the women made the allegations.

Just what we need: an oiled-up, glowering comedian.

From the link:

Baron Cohen says his workout regime with the celebrity trainer Alfonso Moretti stops his mind spinning. “Instead of lying in bed overthinking and staring at my phone, I get up, jump on FaceTime and train with Alfonso. It sets a positive tone for the whole day.”... 

We all confront mortality, invisibility, loss of sexual appeal and having to use reading glasses in dark restaurants: the task is to work out the most constructive way to deal with all that....

He's "positive" and "constructive" and looking at us angrily. I'm sad to see he got divorced!

"Joe Rogan Reveals Oliver Anthony’s Own Nasty Divorce Inspired New Single, 'Scornful Woman' – 'She Wants EVERYTHING.'"

Headline at Whiskey Riff, which I found after I heard Joe Rogan do the revealing and I listened to the song. You can find video of both the Joe Rogan segment and the song at that link.

... Joe shares some rather intimate details about Anthony’s seemingly pending divorce, and how it sparked this song. The “Scornful Woman” is Oliver’s wife, Tiffany, and from the side of the story we’re given, it sounds like she’s trying to take as much money as she can off him.

“He starts making millions of dollars, playing arenas. The wife divorces him. She wants everything. She wants EVERYTHING. She wants more than half. She wants all the money he’s going to be making in the future because she was with him when he was broke. It’s f***** crazy...."

It's not crazy for her to want more than half. If you are married and sharing equally, and you've gone through the poor times together — maybe you scrimped together while one of you went to medical school — then you're owed a share of the earnings that only arrive later. 

When Anthony's song “Rich Men North of Richmond" made him an overnight sensation in 2023, he and Tiffany and their 2 children were presented as the definition of happiness.

The new song says "She'll turn a warm afternoon/Into a cold, cold one."

"The idea that your marriage is your own (secular, individual) business is the kind of thing that bedevils religious conservatives."

"One imagines [JD] Vance gasping in horror at Mlotek’s account of the 'airiness' with which she makes her wedding vows, recalling 'how easy it was to swear I would want what I had'—as if marriage might be a commitment to one’s desires rather than a commitment to another person, or a role in a community. Reactionary and revolutionary views of marriage alike offer narrative satisfactions that the liberal view seems to lack. Eulogizing a marriage undertaken in this spirit presents a storytelling challenge: it requires inventing the stakes yourself. Mlotek—like many brides and grooms writing custom vows—doesn’t quite pull it off. But she does make privacy and its place in love feel idealistic and almost subversive. Her book is subtitled 'A Memoir of Romance and Divorce,' and her reticence is perhaps the most romantic thing about it, testifying to an abiding intimacy that transcends any legal relationship. After she and her husband decide to separate, she manages to avoid telling most of her family and friends for nearly a year...."

Writes Molly Fischer, in "Who Gets to Define Divorce/The battle for custody of a contested institution" (The New Yorker).

Mlotek = Haley Mlotek, author of "No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce" (commission earned).

Idealistic and subversive privacy in love... but you can still write a memoir about it... when the love dissipates beyond mere airiness and into utter nonexistence.

The aforementioned JD Vance is also a memoirist, as the New Yorker article pauses to say: "In 'Hillbilly Elegy,' his parents’ separation is the wellspring of childhood suffering; his grandparents’ home is the one source of stability, and he idealizes their volatile union." For the record, Mlotek and her erstwhile husband had no children, or even pets.

"On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself...."

"I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth."

Wrote Penelope Hegseth, quoted in "Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years/Penelope Hegseth made the accusation in an email to her son in 2018, amid his contentious divorce. She said on Friday that she regretted the email and had apologized to him" (NYT)(free-access link).

"Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was too young to know [Elizabeth] Taylor as the violet-eyed phenom who first dazzled in 'National Velvet' and went on..."

"... to be perhaps the most famous, the most glamorous movie star in the world. I was, however, just the right age to experience her as a pop culture mainstay and occasional punchline. This was Ms. Taylor’s frosted-tips-and-caftans era, when she appeared in front of a camera only to make soft-focus perfume ads, parodied by 'Saturday Night Live.' It was the time of her union with Mr. Fortensky, a construction worker she’d met in rehab, and whom she married at her friend Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch."

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Jennifer Lopez Is Becoming an Elizabeth Taylor for a New Generation" (NYT)(free-access link).

I'm not interested enough in Jennifer Lopez to care about her multiple marriages and divorces, and Elizabeth Taylor began a bit before my time, but I remember the Elizabeth Taylor of the 1960s, and that sets me apart from Weiner, who arrived after Taylor's prime. I'm still quite interested in Taylor, even more so after watching this new HBO documentary:

Taylor critiques fame. I thought this review from Chris Cassingham was apt: "At a time when the public’s access to celebrities’ personal lives is simultaneously at its greatest and most calculated, the raw vulnerability of Taylor’s recollections is necessarily tempered when transposed onto something so pedestrian as Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes often is. If the material at [director Nanette] Burstein’s disposal holds within it deep insights about the toxic nature of hypervisible celebrity, about an industry’s exploitations, her film deploys them hesitantly...."

At long last: marriage for Tim Scott.

Tonight, we promised to cherish and nourish each other and our marriage for the rest of our lives.

Mindy, you've made me the happiest man alive. I love you.

"So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

Matthew 19:6 pic.twitter.com/tRjlffL0EE

— Tim Scott (@votetimscott) August 4, 2024

 

Watch Republicans pounce on whatever meanness or dubiousness or racism this elicits.

"I made a joke and said, ‘We have to quit talking like this. I can barely type through the tears.'"

"She typed back: 'Well, I have Kleenex and margaritas. By Google Maps, you live 34 minutes from here.' 'When she opened the door, I said, "How about a hug for an old friend"... And she hugged me. And I gotta tell you, that hug alone was kind of like putting an electric blanket on high around me.'... They remarried... Why? 'To right an old wrong,' [she said], 'I say this to him over and over again, how incredibly rare it is to have a chance to right a wrong. To have a chance to have a redo is just nothing short of a miracle.'"

From "They Married, Divorced and Then Married Their Ex-Spouses Again/Five couples share how and why they decided to reconcile and tie the knot again" (NYT)(free access link).

From the comments over there: "I have never forgiven our parents for divorcing while we children were teenagers — because years later they got back together again and eventually remarried. They put us kids through a lot, and apparently it was completely unnecessary. It's unfashionable for couples to 'stay together for the sake of the children,' but absent abuse, I wish more would consider it."

"When the lockdown started... my husband and I decided to quarantine... at our house on Martha’s Vineyard.... A week later... my husband told me he wanted a divorce."

"He packed a bag, got in his Jeep and boarded a ferry. We had been married for nearly 21 years. When he reached New York City, he laid out his narrative: He thought he had wanted our life but didn’t. He thought he was happy but wasn’t. A switch had flipped. He didn’t want our house or our apartment. He didn’t want any custody of our children."

I'm reading "Was I Married to a Stranger? I thought I knew my husband of 20 years. I didn’t — and still don’t" by Belle Burden (NYT). 

For a less poetically written version of this story, read The Mirror: "Wealthy mum says husband 'left for another woman in lockdown and didn't want custody of kids'/Flobelle 'Belle' Fairbanks Burden, 54, from New York, US, said Henry Davis wanted to end their marriage during Covid lockdown at their Martha's Vineyard home in spring 2020." Here, unlike at the Times, the ex-husband is named and we see photos of the couple, plus news that Belle is a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

"Did you send this because it's like DeSantis with Trump's head?"

I ask — it's my second question — after Meade texts me this:

 

"DeSantis with Trump's head" refers to the first post of the day, "Why is DeSantis peeling an orange?"

"‘Mommunes’: Mothers Are Living Single Together/Women are joining forces under one roof, using the age-old power of sisterhood to split the household bills and raise their children."

A NYT article.

All over the world, women are joining forces under one roof, sharing the load of child care and household bills through the age-old power of sisterhood.... 

"A life-size head of a horse, made from Greek Pentelic marble, that looks remarkably like the one on display in the museum, tiny chips and chisel marks and all..."

"... carved by a robot. At a workshop in Carrara, Italy, a robot sculptor has been putting the finishing touches on a copy of the Horse of Selene, scheduled to go on display in London during the first week of September. The horse is one of the best known of the 2,500-year-old sculptures — also known as the Parthenon Marbles — taken from the Acropolis in Athens in the early 1800s by Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin, when he was ambassador to the occupying Ottoman Empire.... The British government says Elgin had permission to remove them. Others say the permission was limited to pieces found in the rubble.... In any case, Elgin had the 5th-century B.C. marbles torn down from the Parthenon and shipped to Britain, where he intended to display them privately in his home. He instead sold them to the British government for $42,000 to help pay for a costly divorce."

From "A solution for the Elgin marbles: Robot-carved replicas? Amid a global reckoning on colonialism and cultural supremacy, pressure is growing on the British Museum to return the sculptures to Greece" (WaPo).

"Roe v. Wade... invited no dialogue with legislators. Instead, it seemed entirely to remove the ball from the legislators’ court."

"In 1973, when Roe issued, abortion law was in a state of change across the nation. As the Supreme Court itself noted, there was a marked trend in state legislatures 'toward liberalization of abortion statutes.' That movement for legislative change ran parallel to another law revision effort then underway — the change from fault to no-fault divorce regimes, a reform that swept through the state legislatures and captured all of them by the mid-1980s. No measured motion, the Roe decision left virtually no state with laws fully conforming to the Court’s delineation of abortion regulation still permissible. Around that extraordinary decision, a well-organized and vocal right-to-life movement rallied and succeeded, for a considerable time, in turning the legislative tide in the opposite direction."

Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1992, shortly before Bill Clinton nominated her to the Supreme Court, quoted yesterday, in Aaron Blake's WaPo column, "What Ruth Bader Ginsburg really said about Roe v. Wade."

Blake is quoting that to correct people who might think Ginsburg thought that Roe was wrong about the existence of a right to abortion. 

"Estranged parents often tell me that their adult child is rewriting the history of their childhood, accusing them of things they didn’t do, and/or failing to acknowledge the ways in which the parent demonstrated their love and commitment."

"Adult children frequently say the parent is gaslighting them by not acknowledging the harm they caused or are still causing, failing to respect their boundaries, and/or being unwilling to accept the adult child’s requirements for a healthy relationship. Both sides often fail to recognize how profoundly the rules of family life have changed over the past half century.... Deciding which people to keep in or out of one’s life has become an important strategy to achieve that happiness....

"A Chinese court has suggested that infidelity is insufficient reason for divorce, prompting heated debate across the country...."

"'The latest attitude on divorce by the law is to prevent frivolous dissolutions,' read the article, which was later removed after public backlash. China is fighting a rising divorce rate through state counselling and forcing couples who want to split into a one-month 'cooling off' period.... The topic drew 980 million views in 48 hours on Weibo, China’s leading social media platform...."

The London Times reports.

"Ashley, who transitioned in 1960 aged 24, was a dancer in Paris, a top fashion model in London, a nightclub owner in Marbella and a Knightsbridge restaurant owner."

"Her lovers are said to have included the INXS singer Michael Hutchence, the actors Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, Polish counts and English noblemen. She was admired by Elvis Presley — 'he always sent me champagne' — and had advances from Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. The break-up of her marriage to Captain Arthur Cameron Corbett in 1970 became a landmark case after a judge declared it could be annulled due to Ashley’s birth certificate registering her as male.... She was publicly outed as trans in the Sunday People in 1961, leading to all her bookings being cancelled overnight and people assaulting her in the street."

From "April Ashley, trans pioneer, dies at 86" (London Times).

Who was Captain Arthur Cameron Corbett? His claim to fame is merely that he got that marriage annulled. Other than that, he was some British aristocrat — 3rd Baron Rowallan. He met Ashley in 1960, the year of her transitioning, and just before the public outing, and married her in 1963. He had to know what he was doing, and when the marriage broke down, there was alimony to avoid paying.

British mumbo-jumbo from Corbett's Wikipedia page: "Dexter a salmon Proper holding in its mouth a jewelled ring Or sinister a seal Proper."

That's Corbett with his first wife. Not Ashley.

"I had never heard of a Josephite marriage, a union inspired by the relationship between Joseph and the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus."

"And to this day, I am astonished that my parents undertook a similar path with the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church.... My father was a worldly 32 and my mother a winsome 19 when they met.... He was agnostic, though his parents were Presbyterian. She was Catholic.... [A] brush with death prompted him to convert to Catholicism.... Not long thereafter, my three siblings and I noticed that our parents’ double bed was replaced by twin beds.... What we didn’t know was that my father had been married before meeting my mother. His first marriage lasted about two years, and because the church refused to recognize the divorce and end of that union, my parents could not receive the sacrament of matrimony. During my father’s immersion into Catholicism, it was pointed out that without the sacrament of matrimony performed by a priest, my parents were technically living in sin. Mortal sin.... Mom and Dad, with the bishop’s permission, and after taking a solemn vow, could leave the marital bed and replace it with chaste cohabitation.... 'No one is to know of the brother-sister relationship except the Advocate Father O’Brien, the Pastor, the Tribunal, and the confessors of the parties,' the tribunal’s letter said....  [N]ine years after my father’s heart attack and their decision to have a celibate marriage, his first wife died. On an ordinary Tuesday evening in 1970, Mom and Dad were married in secrecy at our parish church...."

From "One Chaste Marriage, Four Kids, and the Catholic Church/A son reflects on his parents’ commitment, endorsed by the Catholic church, to cohabit chastely like 'brother and sister' to avoid mortal sin" by By Geoffrey Leavenworth (NYT).

"During the interview, Winfrey said she thinks women are going to feel 'liberated' by Adele choosing to leave a marriage that wasn’t working, rather than stick it out only for her child."

"'I’ve read where you said you weren’t miserable, but you also knew you weren’t happy,' Winfrey said. 'And so you wanted to bring a happy version of yourself to your son. Which I think is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.'"

 
From "The four most-personal revelations from Oprah’s interview with Adele, from her divorce to weight loss to new boyfriend" (WaPo).

Make yourself happy, because a happy version of yourself is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.

True

False

It's not that simple!

 

pollcode.com free polls

"So TMZ’s confident declaration that 'there is NO PRENUP' might not be correct. As Bill Clinton famously quipped..."

"'... It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is.' Maybe there 'is' no prenup, but there was a prenup, and it just got superseded — fancy legal-speak for 'supplanted' or 'replaced' — by a separation agreement."

Writes David Lat in "Bill And Melinda Gates Are Divorcing; Do They Have A Prenup?/The answer is... it's complicated." (Substack). 

There's a petition for divorce that has a section on "Written Agreements" and then lists only a separation agreement. Lat explains why you can't conclude that there was never a pre-nup agreement.

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