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Can you imagine being hired by a family as a travel agent, being privy to personal details about them, deciding in the process, that, regardless if it is unethical, you would pursue the husband? You are in your mid-forties, divorced, no children, you know what it is to struggle and being ruthless feels natural so you move in on the husband ever so cleverly, bit by bit (phone calls going back and forth, emails, hey, how about meeting?), it is a game, meanwhile, acting so “nice” to the wife as you infiltrate the sacred zone of family. You see nothing wrong with what you are doing. As a matter of fact, you convince yourself there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. Unprofessional? You tell yourself, no, even though you were let go from a prior job for inappropriate behavior, this time it is different, and besides the husband is responding and I am getting away with it so far.
Or can you imagine being hired by a family to be a nanny, being trusted to protect and care for children and become part of a

Since the launch of Huffington Post Divorce in November of last year, “The Moment I Knew” has been a critical part of our DNA. The idea turns the traditional concept on its head, asking readers to share, via Twitter, the moment they knew their marriages were over.
When we put out the initial call for responses (hashtag: #themomentiknew), the feedback was overwhelming. In 140 characters or less, readers vented about some of their most profoundly intimate moments, ranging from the blackly comic (“He crumbled baguettes all over the food and serving utensils knowing I have a severe wheat allergy”) to the gut-wrenching (“I was having surgery and had to beg my husband to come visit me in the hospital”) to the just plain peculiar (“When he said, ‘Life isn’t just about bacon and Warhammer 40K, you know’”). We compiled their responses into a slideshow, which continues to be one of the most popular–and most frequently referenced–features on our site.
So I’m excited to announce that, on the evening of Tuesday, April 5th, we’ll be taking “The Moment I Knew” offline for the first time, with the help of

In the emotionally-charged world of child custody, there is a fundamental myth that both enslaves women and disenfranchises men.
While there are inherent animal instincts hardwired into our species when dealing with infants, parenting is a learned behavior. And the myth that women automatically know how to be a good parent solely by virtue of having given birth doesn’t only put unfair expectations on women but minimizes the role of men in the rearing of a child. Short of not being able to breast feed, men have the same abilities to protect and guide the development of a child as women. Yet this myth propagates the notion that men are innately incompetent to nurture a child which, unfortunately, plays itself out daily in Family Court.
From a legal perspective, most courts are obligated to focus on the best interests of the

Where do therapists learn about divorce? Not in school!
As I was preparing to speak at a National Association of Social Workers California Chapter conference, it occurred to me that nowhere in my education had I ever taken — or even seen — a course on divorce offered.
I took classes on death and dying, bereavement, issues impacting children (one of which was divorce), marriage, and relationships, but I had never formally learned about marital dissolution from the adult’s perspective.
Curious about it, I asked my class of several dozen counselors if they had ever taken or seen a class on divorce and all shook their heads no.
I went on line to research whether there might be any colleges or universities offering psychology classes on divorce. Other than some brief references to the topic, I could not find any classes devoted solely to this topic.
Given how prevalent (and often devastating) an occurrence divorce is, I am astounded that there is not more education about it offered in psychology or social work programs both undergrad and graduate.
In the three hours I had to talk about the divorce continuum (from contemplation through post-divorce issues) I felt that I barely scratched the surface. There was so much more I could have said and much more I’m sure the students wanted to know and/or discuss.
Law school students have classes specifically about Family Law (which is an entire branch of the law) and Contracts. They learn about the legal contract of marriage, about pre and post nuptial agreements, community property versus equitable distribution, fault and no-fault laws, paternity, palimony, child custody, child support, and on and on.
Financial professionals also receive a good amount of education on divorce matters given that a predictable part of their job will be to assist divorcing clients with tax issues, division of assets and debts, financial planning, and budgeting.
Therapists, on the other hand, receive relatively little schooling on

Divorce used to be a lot easier. Oh, not because of changes in divorce laws or family courts, but because the worst that could happen is that you’d cause a scandal in your neighborhood. Outside of maybe your mom, your close friends and your shrink, few knew all your dirty details.
Only the rich and famous had their breakup dramas exposed on the front page or turned into best-sellers, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, a fictionalized account of how her husband, Watergate legend Carl Bernstein, dumped

As she stood at the mailbox, Suzanne’s face went pale when she saw the return address: Department of the United States Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Official Business. A chill traveled down her spine, a feeling that reminded her of the day she stood in front of the judge as he finalized her divorce. That was 18 months ago, yet it felt like yesterday. Trying not to panic, Suzanne nervously tucked the letter behind her bundle of junk mail as she walked back into the

Divorced parents, more than anyone, can feel extremely vulnerable during disasters, especially if you are counting on investments to help you shore up the financial hardship that always comes when you have to support two households instead of just one. The last thing you need when a crisis occurs is to feel like the whole world is crashing in, including your emergency funds. Fortunately, with a little forethought and preparedness, you can have confidence that your assets are covered, even in uncertain times.
There are three critical aspects to protecting your assets for any emergency — preparing before disaster strikes, surviving the catastrophe and

If you’ve been left by your husband for another woman, you may have wondered why the pain is so excruciating. Women tend describe the experience in extreme terms. A sixty two year old woman I interviewed for my book, whose husband left her for someone else after thirty-three years of marriage, was typical:
“I cried every day for two months. I still cry two years

The other day a younger friend, a woman in her twenties, called to share news of her engagement. She’s been dating a great-seeming guy for about a year, and she sounded exuberant, glowing, over the moon. “Congratulations, Eleanor! I’m so happy for you.” Yadda, yadda, yadda, and we wrapped up the call.
The truth is, as a divorced woman in her forties, it’s hard for me to get excited about anyone’s impending nuptials. Very hard to pretend the divorce and adultery statistics don’t exist, to push into the background my own painful memories of marital discord, the tedium and pain of having the same fights over and over again, the feeling of being unloved and

“How can you leave your children?” It was the question leveled at me when I was away from my children for four months to interview the atomic bomb survivors in Japan. I heard it again, when I was facing divorce and my husband and I had to decide what was best for the children. We decided that he would keep primary physical custody and, as a joint legal custodian, I would move down the block and be a very involved, noncustodial mother. It worked for

News flash: My daughters have a new baby brother! No, don’t congratulate me–I wasn’t the one who gave birth (I’m happy to report). My ex-husband and his wife had a baby, which makes him my…umm…stepson once removed?
I’m pretty sure there isn’t a name for that relationship. It’s complicated. Anyone who is involved in a blended family knows how complicated it can get; if you’re not involved in one, just imagine how complicated it might be, then multiply that by

I’ve stopped dating. I’m sixty-eight and I feel like I’ve aged out of the dating market. My ex and I split when I was fifty-nine, which doesn’t seem like that much of a difference age-wise, but it is. I got into Internet dating heavy duty at sixty, but I lied on dating sites and said I was

Christina Aguilera has clearly been struggling lately. There have been a series of mishaps, including her mess-ups at the Super Bowl and at the Grammy Awards, but even more startling are her repeated public displays of drunkenness. Last week the singer was booked for public intoxication by LA authorities, having allegedly been so drunk that she was unaware of her surroundings and the extent of her drinking. According to a Sheriff’s spokesman, Aguilera, “was not capable of taking care of

A dear friend in Wisconsin called me the other day. She was distraught. Turns out, her ex-husband had eloped over the weekend to marry the “other woman” who had existed within their marriage. My friend was

It seems the public can’t get enough of Charlie Sheen these days. Every day seems to be another media interview, re-publication of alleged text messages, or re-publication of tweets that Charlie has supposedly sent out. It is almost as though Charlie, having attacked CBS and those associated with his long running and highly successful sitcom “Two and a Half Men”, has used the dispute to promote himself, and his “lifestyle” in a rather odd way. While one could speculate that there are any number of causes to Sheen’s latest public ramblings, the problems now seem to have become more personal in

My son, now 23 years old, sleeps across the room as I write. I’m visiting him in Jamaica, where he’s spending three months as part of his Thomas J. Watson postgraduate fellowship. He spent last night on a boat with a friend he’d met a few weeks ago in

The wedding plates I selected were a far cry from my mother’s gold-plated antiques which had been handed down from generation to generation. Yellow, pink, and blue flowers blossomed across the face of each slightly different ceramic plate. My plates were optimistic, zany, a little wild–a true expression of who I fancied myself to be.
Paralyzed in the dinnerware section of Macy’s, I fretted over my second decision: how many plates should a bride have? Like Julia Child I might begin cooking feasts for 12! Maybe I’d host dysfunctional family gatherings for 18, at which bipolar relatives and future offspring would toss plates across the room when the conversation became

Dear Agi,
I was married for seventeen years to the only man I had ever really dated and together we had two children. As the years went by we fell into the stereotypical dilemma of putting on the pounds, lots of them. I guess after years of marriage and raising our kids we didn’t have a lot to talk about, so eating dinner in front of the television was easier then sitting at a table in complete silence. We finally ended our mutual silence by a very loud divorce two years

Most of us grew up with our dads away at work all day, and our moms at home cleaning and cooking. These traditional roles told us that mothers were the caretakers and fathers were the providers and in the event of a divorce, the children almost always lived with their mother and visited their father on weekends.
My oh my – have times changed! More families today have two working parents, which requires sharing of parental responsibilities. Even in families where the mothers stay home, today’s fathers are far more involved with their children than most of our fathers were.
The reality is, however, that all parents offer different parenting

The National Family Resiliency Center, Inc. (NFRC) is a private, non-profit mental health center located in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. The NFRC has one special goal–fostering healthy relationships in all families regardless of

In her latest book, A Strange Stirring, historian Stephanie Coontz rewinds the tape to the 1960s, when Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, and points her historical lens on this book, which many believed sparked the feminist movement which in turn caused divorce rates to spike. Did Betty Friedan cause thousands of women to divorce? Yes, says Coontz, who is also the president of the Council of Contemporary Families and a respected Family Studies professor. But Friedan’s teachings, she says, also saved many marriages and ushered in a marital era of more equality.
JB: On this site, one writer quoted Phyllis Schlafly as saying feminism was the cause of divorce and it sparked hundreds of angry comments. But in your book you agree that Betty Friedan’s feminist writings did launch many

Last summer, former Governor Paterson signed a bill making New York the 50th and final state to enact no-fault divorce. Sponsors said a complaint for no-fault divorce would be irrefutable and thus obviate the need for any trial whatsoever with respect to grounds. I was heartbroken when I heard about the bill; to me, standing up for marriage and family in America now was truly an impossible dream.
Under the new statute, parties no longer need prove fault or that they’ve lived apart under a separation agreement for one year in order to obtain a

As a bestselling psychotherapist author and marriage counselor, I spent a lot of time in the 90s on television talking about love and romance, and promoting my five books on the subject, including Guerrilla Dating Tactics and How to Stay Lovers for Life. I told the world that marriage can work if the two people want it to work. I was unfailingly optimistic. I was