Monthly Archives: May 2013

May 22 2013
3 Comments
Advice

How to Deal: Other People’s Happiness

One of the worst things about being newly single is dealing with “wedding season.” (In case you’re not familiar, wedding season is when most people get married, usually falling somewhere around May through August, but also September through December and February through April.) It’s not that getting divorced makes you a horrible bitter person, but when it seems like everyone you know in the world is getting married or engaged, but your life is crumbling all around you, it’s hard to want to celebrate love.  It is quite easy to drown your sorrows in a jar of peanut butter, but we’ve been told that we prescribe that home remedy far too often, so we’re going to give you some non-nut-based tips for coping with other people’s happiness.

Tips for how to deal with EVERYONE YOU KNOW IN THE WORLD getting married or engaged when your life is crumbling all around you:

  • The name of the game is denial.
  • First clean up your Facebook. Hide all stories from every newly engaged or newly married friend. In fact, play defense and  hide stories from anyone who has been in some sort of committed like relationship for more than 90 days.
  • Warning: your Facebook newsfeed will get a lot more depressing, but that’s ok because you should spend less time on Facebook and more time in the world trying to meet someone richer/younger/hotter/older.
  • If you’re getting announcements in the mail, fire your mailman and move to Costa Rica with no forwarding address.
  • If your mom keeps calling you and telling you about cousins and friends and blah blah blah just got married or just had the cutest baby, DO NOT TRY TO FIRE YOUR MOM.  What you can do instead, is as soon as she starts talking like “do you remember SO AND SO?” just concentrate hard on something else like naming all the bones in the human body.  And if you’re already a bone doctor or something, think about something that you don’t understand like “Who is Demi Lovato?”
Time to commit this to memory.

Time to commit this to memory.

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May 15 2013
2 Comments
Getting Real

Let’s Get Real, Part 2

We’ve all read “facts” about divorce. Some of these facts try to show you that if you get divorced you will ruin your life and your children’s lives, and probably the lives of innocent bystanders. But sometimes these “fact makers” don’t give you the real reason behind the fact, and that can change everything.  So unlike those science-y statistical weirdos, we’re going to get real and drop some truth bombs on you.

FACT:  In 2005, some stupid science person released a study showing that children of divorce are more likely to divorce as adults. This study was done ONLY to make you feel TERRIBLE.

GETTING REAL:  Think about it. How many people do you know that stay miserably married because of one of the following reasons: 1) societal pressure 2) familial pressure 3) religious-related pressure? We guesstimate that it is somewhere between four and one million people that you know. We bet a lot of people don’t get divorced because their parents and family would disown them if they did, and they would lose their only support system. Instead, they stay in miserable, horrible, destructive marriages, and their kids turn out just GREAT (sarcasm!). Now, imagine instead that your parents ARE divorced and you are in a terrible marriage. You certainly wouldn’t feel any pressure to STAY right? Because what is your MOM going to say? She’s divorced too!  Well, since she’s your mom, she’ll still probably say something, but at least you’ll know she’s being horribly hypocritical.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Everything you do in your life is going to somehow ruin your children. Trust us. There exists a study somewhere that says so. So we say, don’t worry about it. Or at least, don’t OVERLY worry about it. No matter what, your child still has a 100% chance of being miserable and resentful (of you) as an adult.  Just like everyone else. Sorry.

We give it five years.

We give it five years.

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May 09 2013
5 Comments
Advice, Lists

Hey dummy, you can’t save your dumb marriage

Believe it or not, there are people out there that think they can save your doomed marriage from its inevitable divorce-y end. OK, they don’t ACTUALLY think that, but they think they can convince you of it and/or they want to sell you something. The people trying to sell you something are usually pastors, but not the real kind, the kind that appear on TV and try to sell you books. These TV pastors would be happy to sell you a book entitled something like, “HOW TO SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE FROM THE BRINK OF DIVORCE BY FORCING THE DEVIL OUT OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP AND ACCEPTING GOD’S LOVE.” (Note: To be safe, don’t buy any books that we haven’t written.)

Other non-pastor people might write articles about saving your marriage, for seemingly no other reason than to make you feel like a failure. These people aren’t doing it for money. They just want the satisfaction of feeling superior to you. Maybe one of these people *believes* they’ve saved their own marriage from the brink of divorce, but what they don’t know is that the only reason their husband is acting happier now is that he has a secret 25-year-old girlfriend.  Here’s the real deal, ladies and gentlemen: you can’t save your marriage from the brink of divorce. You CAN’T! If your marriage is already on the brink of divorce, it’s because someone (either you or your spouse) no longer cares. Maybe you or your spouse NEVER cared. Maybe you’ve both been miserable the whole time. Maybe you or your spouse fell in love with someone else. Or one of you just got bored and wants to start over. That’s ok. It happens. But don’t blame yourself. That isn’t going to help ANYONE.

Here is a list from a real, live article we found that provides you with a list of ways to save your marriage. The author gives 7 things you can do to save your marriage telling you that “chances are good” you can fix it even if you really feel it’s headed for divorce. This author is lying to you. Here are her 7 brilliant ideas:
1) Say “I love you”— Good thinking. If you only tell your spouse, “I love you,” after reading a listicle, your marriage is definitely salvageable.
2) Accomplish something together— Here, the author actually suggests–FOR REAL– that you do yard work together or spruce up the bathroom. First of all, who actually uses the phrase “spruce up”? Secondly, we’ll give you one guess as to how many marriages have been saved by caulking a bathtub together. Yes, you guessed right.
3) Give a gift— This can be okay. It’s not going to save your marriage, but gifts are nice. However, we would change the suggestion just a bit. We should change it to “Receive a gift.” There’s nothing wrong with a nice parting gift before you go your separate ways. Maybe a vacation or something. But not one that you have to go on together. Gross.
4) Have sex— If just reading this made you retch a little bit, your marriage is over. Our condolences.
5) Flirt-– Now, THIS one sounds fun! Who doesn’t like flirting? Wait, what? Oh, they mean flirt with your spouse? Ugh. No, this is a terrible idea. If your spouse doesn’t want to be with you anymore, no amount of flirting is going to change his or her mind. In fact, they’ll probably just feel sorry for you. You don’t want to be that person. The person who is the sad pathetic puppy dog, flirting away, while your spouse secretly looks for apartments on craigslist. Don’t be that puppy. Be a sexy puppy who gets divorced.
6) Take over a job— By this, the author means, if you are a man and your wife is always the one to do the dishes, maybe YOU should do the dishes. Granted, she’ll probably like it. But will she feel inclined to stay married to you because of it? Probably not. She’d probably rather just buy plasticware and divorce you. But nice try!
7) Commit— When the author says “commit” she apparently means do something like renew your vows or have a ceremony of some sort. Can you even wrap your mind around that? Here, let us set the scene for you: You and your husband have been on the outs for months. Well, if you’re being honest, years. You don’t sleep in the same bed. You don’t have date nights. He stays up all night playing World of Warcraft and you chat with your friends online about how much you hate your life. He always forgets your anniversary. He’s been taking secret phone calls in the bathroom and you’re pretty sure he isn’t a government spy or anything that would explain that sort of behavior. You’re sad and unhappy. He’s sad and unhappy. So then you read an article online and decide to have a ceremony to recommit to each other. You say:
“Husband. I know we are living miserably, and have been for years. I know we’ve talked about divorce. But I think we should go out in the backyard and pick wild flowers. Then we should hand them to each other under a full moon and say vows to each other to re-commit to our marriage. I am sure this is the answer to our problems and will result in long lasting love.” He won’t hear you say this of course, because he is wearing headphones while playing World of Warcraft. But at least you tried, right? Ok. Now you can file.
Bathtub caulk: saving marriages since never.

Bathtub caulk: saving marriages since never.

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May 02 2013
4 Comments
Advice, Graphs

Is he cheating?

If you Google “I think my spouse is cheating on me” you will get approximately one million different webpages that purport to tell you how you can determine whether or not your spouse is cheating on you. We’re going to be real with you: if you Googled that, he or she probably is. But if you still aren’t sure, we’ve created a flow chart that might help:

Cheater

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