As our male fans frequently like to point out, sometimes, women cheat too. Women! Right? So this one’s for you, fellas. This handy flow chart will help you answer the question – Is SHE cheating?
Everyone Gets Divorced
and other facts we made up
Defense of Other Things
Well, as you may have heard, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA. To that we say, “Great! Now what are we supposed to do with our powers of defense??” Marriage is obviously a lost cause. But we’ve come up with some other things that still need defending.
5 Things You Can Defend Instead of Marriage:
Endangered Species:
You’ve probably been so worried about the crumbling institution of marriage that you’ve forgotten all about the Leatherback Sea Turtles and the Western Lowland Gorillas. The moral fabric of society is a lost cause! You might as well save some whales instead.
The Ozone Layer:
Remember this thing? There’s still a hole in it.
Baby Animals:
So tiny. So… DEFENSELESS.
Brussel Sprouts:
Honestly, they’re not bad.
Your Castle:
What? You don’t HAVE a castle? Oh boy. Did the gays take it from you?!
FAQs: For the Parents
This might come as a shock to some of you, but occasionally, you aren’t the one getting divorced. Sometimes, it’s your CHILD that is getting divorced. And you suddenly have feelings about it. Maybe even sad feelings. And it’s pretty common that your child won’t understand your feelings. Maybe your child is actually quite happy to get divorced, and you’re sad about it. Or maybe your child is sad, and you’re happy about it. Either way, we want to help you get on the same page so then you can both focus on planning and paying for that second wedding. So we’ve decided to answer some FAQs. For the parents.
My daughter just told me she is getting divorced from her husband, and I had NO idea things were even going badly for them! Why didn’t she tell me?
Well, the answer to this question is pretty simple. If she told you, say, 6 months ago that her husband is kind of an asshole, then for the next 6 months until she told you they were getting divorced, you would basically hate him. But she would still be married to him. Do you see the problem here? She couldn’t tell you earlier, because then if SHE forgave him, you might NEVER forgive him. And what if they NEVER got divorced? From then on, all holidays would be awkward for her. And she was NOT going to ruin Christmas Eve dinner, she just was NOT going to do that. Trust us. And what about Flag Day? No one wants Flag Day to be awkward.
My son is getting divorced and I will miss his wife so much. We had become very close! How do I cope with these feelings?!
If YOU love her so much, why don’t YOU marry her!?
But seriously. Put on a brave face for your son, man. Lots of people we like in life come and go. But it’s time to be on your son’s team and support him. HE needs you now. She’s got her own parents to whine to.
I’m humiliated. No one else in our family has gotten divorced, my child will be the first. What do I TELL people?
You tell them that your son or daughter got divorced. Do you want to know why they won’t care? 1) No one cares as much about you and your life as you imagine they do. And, 2) Everyone gets divorced. If this is the only person in your family who has ever been divorced, then you have a bigger problem, and that is, you have a very weird family. Or you just have a family of people pretending to be happy. Which is also weird, when you think about it.
I don’t want to pay for another wedding.
That’s fair.
See? She understands.
Wedding Day Red Flags
We weren’t going to blog today, seeing as it’s Flag Day and we know you’re all probably out, attending Flag Day barbeques, and watching Flag Day parades, and checking out those big Flag Day mattress sales. But then we thought, what better day for a THEME blog?
You hear a lot about “red flags” in relationships. They are, disappointingly, not real flags, but rather less tangible things that should serve as warning signs that you are in a bad relationship. Unfortunately, these flags are almost always completely invisible until after you are already divorced.
But love is blind. And sometimes, “not love” is also blind. Maybe a better way to say it is, “sometimes we are stupid.”
So in honor of Flag Day, we’ve compiled a cheeky little list of 5 Wedding Day Red Flags. (Somewhat based on actual events.)
5 WEDDING DAY RED FLAGS
1. Your parents’ tears of happiness look more sad than happy.
2. You/Your spouse’s emotional state during the wedding ceremony would best be described as “bored.”
3. People at the reception keep looking at you and saying things like “What’s wrong?” and “Are you okay?” and “Do you want to leave?”
4. You spend more time dancing with your new husband’s friends than with your new husband.
5. Come to think of it, your new husband is spending a lot of time dancing with your maid of honor…
An actual flag is much easier to see than the fact that you and your spouse are horribly incompatible.
Facebook Causes Divorce
By now, we’ve all heard that Facebook pretty much causes everyone to get divorced. Or something like that. And it’s not hard to believe, when you think about it. In the olden days, if you wanted to catch your spouse cheating, you had to do a lot of legwork. Those were the days of sitting in the dark in a parked car, waiting for your husband to emerge from a local motel with lipstick on his collar and an off-kilter necktie. You had to look for real clues. Break into a briefcase or two. Or wait for them to really slip up.
Nowadays, you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your almost broken home! Just wait for your spouse to fall asleep and then go bananas on their computer! Email, internet history, Facebook, Amazon orders, whatever! The thing is, you don’t even have to wait around for them to cheat on you. Facebook spying really lets you nip it in the bud. Oh, you “poked” your high school girlfriend? I’M CALLING A LAWYER.
Anyway, the point is, Facebook is, indeed, a slippery slope for marriages on the rocks. But did you know that it’s not the only website that is ruining our lives? We did some of our own research here at EGD and found a few other websites commonly cited in divorce proceedings.
The Top 7 Websites Making People Get Divorced:
1. Facebook
2. www.americasgottalentauditions.com
3. Bing
4. 1-800-PetMeds
5. www.jerryspringertv.com/be-on-the-show
6. http://www.everyonegetsdivorced.com
7. Myspace
Thanks a lot, home wrecker.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Nothing Helps: Tips on Combatting Divorce-Related Depression
If we know one thing here at EGD, it’s that nachos are the greatest food ever invented ever. However, if we know one MORE thing, it’s that getting divorced is terrible and nothing anyone says or does is going to make you feel better. That’s just the way it is. But your friends, god bless ’em, will still try. No one likes to see you so sad. It’s depressing. We can’t even see you and it’s depressing. We can just feel the depressing mopey energy coming through our computers. And THAT is how blogs WORK.
Anyhow, we say all this, because we, too, are your friends. And we know that even though nothing is going to make you happy right now, it’s still worth a shot. We want to make you happy, so we’re going to throw a bunch of ideas at you. Most likely, they will all make you mad or sad or a frightening combination of the two. But you never know. Maybe, just maybe, something someone says actually WILL help. But probably not. Just hang in there, kitty on a tree branch.
SOME DUMB SUGGESTIONS FOR COPING WITH DEPRESSION:
1. Call a friend. I mean, obviously, right? But do it. Don’t just cry in bed. Cry on the phone. Or over Skype. Or even in person. Have lunch. Have lunch with drinks.
2. Get some exercise. I know – it is the WORST. But allegedly, it helps people. Even sad, pathetic people like you. Tip from Jeanne: Set an attainable goal of 30 minutes, doing something easy. Then just quit after 22 minutes.
3. Punch a pillow. It sounds SUPER DUMB but of all the things you want to punch it is the least likely to get your arrested. It is still possible to get arrested, especially if you are making a big pillow-punching scene in a Pier 1 Imports.
4. Keep a journal. Even though everything about your life is terrible, try and write 5 things that you are grateful for. (Hint: Nachos, nachos, nachos, nachos, and nachos.)
5. Just go to the pound and get a new spouse that looks exactly like the old one.
These potential new husbands have had all their shots.
