Skip to content

Tag: divorce

‘Divorce Coach’ in Your Corner?

Pro Guides Aim to Pave Rough Road to Splitsville

If you’ve seen the new Golden Globe–nominated movie Marriage Story on Netflix, then you likely came away from it knowing three things for certain:

(1) The movie, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, should have been called Divorce Story. (2) Divorce can be brutal, even for couples who aim to do it amicably. (3) Lawyers make everything worse. 

Of course, the film offers just one perspective. Not all uncoupling couples will find their well-intentioned plans of a congenial split dragged down into the mud by ruthless attorneys happy to see them skewering one another’s characters in court.

But amid all the existential upheaval that comes from a marriage cracking apart, it does seem like handing over one’s precarious financial and emotional fates to a professional who benefits personally from litigation is an even worse idea than … well, than marrying that douche in the first place.

And that’s where the Divorce Coach comes in. The latest addition to the booming Coaching oeuvre, divorce coaches have sprung up to support individuals (not couples) who are running the long, painful, and often quite complicated marriage-dissolution gauntlet. They serve as sounding boards and strategizers to help overwhelmed clients navigate the process of divorce from deciding whether to even get one all the way through building a new post-divorce relationship with their exes.

Exes Co-Parenting in Peace?

Starshine Surveys the Pros and Cons of Sharing Kids

I like to think of myself as fairly magnanimous. Generous of spirit. Warm hearted and welcoming when need be. But I’m going to be honest with you: If I had to walk my precious toddler to his first day of preschool alongside his father’s girlfriend — and my child was calling us both “Mommy” — it would be hard for me not to hurt the hag with my fingernails. And, depending how quickly I could get it off my foot, maybe also the heel of my right shoe.

Love Among the Stars

We’ve all got a dirty little secret. A vulgar habit. A nasty pastime we strive to hide from others. Because if the world knew of our crude obsession, we’d be mocked. And rightly so.

I grapple with my secret as I stand in line at the supermarket check-out, trying fruitlessly to resist its seductive call. No, it’s not the king-size bar of Milky Way Midnight Dark. Not the carcinogenic carton of Camel no-filters.

My vice is fueled by the front of a glossy gossip magazine brandishing words on which no intelligent person should find herself fixating: Courteney Cox and David Arquette split!

Let me be clear. I don’t like either one of these actors. I neither admire nor relate to them and might very well turn down an invitation to join them for tapas. And I love tapas.

Yet I feel compelled to know that the couple is ending their marriage after — apologies in advance — not having had intercourse for several months.

Why do I need this information? I don’t know. It embarrasses me that I care about celebrities’ love lives, but I can’t look away. I must know if Jake Gyllenhaal has fallen for Taylor Swift! I must know why Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek divorced after 17 years! I must know what movies Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan watch on stay-at-home-date-nights! (I must try to try to find celebrity examples whose names are easier to spell … )

Should Marriage Expire?

Couplehood is laid out in chapters. One chapter is rife with romance as your peers get hitched. The next is replete with pride as your peers have babies.

The next — the one I’m in now — is saturated with shock, anxiety, and discouragement as your peers bicker, cheat, and surrender their once-happy marriages to the life-hacking bandsaw that is divorce.

It’s ugly. Though my marriage feels sturdy, it’s hard not to wince and take cover, whimpering, under the storm of blame lobbing, heart wringing, and estate dividing that so many friends are weathering.

With national divorce rates around 50 percent, are half of us doomed to betray or grow apart from the partners we promised to have and hold? Are we damned to disillusionment for failing to cherish ’til death do us part?

Our grandparents managed to stay married, either through a stronger commitment to wedlock or a greater tolerance for misery. But if splits are inevitable in today’s live-for-the-moment culture, then can’t they be — shouldn’t they be — less painful?

What if, when our spouses’ faults begin outshining their favors and that irresistible yen for newness comes a-knockin’, we could gracefully excuse ourselves from the union with no hard feelings? What if marriage were a temporary construct? What if it simply expired, like milk?