Enlisting the Break-Up Pros

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 30, 2020

Could Japan’s Wakaresaseya Woo Away Our Ball-and-Chain POTUS?

Dear Wakaresaseya Agency,

We were recently perusing the news when among the usual fare of planetary plagues, unsurvivable hurricanes, and right-wing Christian three-ways, we read about your surreptitious services. We don’t mind confessing we’re entirely intrigued.

Can it be true there are businesses in Japan dedicated solely to breaking up relationships? And that people hire these covert agents to bust up their own marriages by luring their spouses into affairs??

It’s hard to believe — but then again, if someone had told us six months ago that we’d be marching to save the US Freaking Postal Service and shoveling mountains of money at Ole Grampa Biden, we’d have laughed in their unmasked face, sputtering, “Shyeah, right, I’d sooner homeschool my kids!”

Will I Marry You? Why Knot

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 21, 2018

Reverend Starshine Reporting for Duty Only two men have ever seriously asked me to marry them, and I said yes to both. One was my husband,…

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Love Makes You Fat. Here’s Proof.

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 8, 2015

“Love makes you fat,” my adage-spouting grandmother always said. Now science proves it.

European researchers discovered earlier this year what anyone with eyeballs and a few married friends could have easily told them: that couples are generally heavier than single people.

It’s been proved before — by a study in 2013 that showed the happier people were in their marriages, the more weight they gained. And by yet another one the year before that.

(Okay, lightweight social scientists, time to find a new subject. Might I suggest 7 Ways That Listicles Are Making Us Stupid or Why Are We Still Talking About Donald Trump?)

So what’s the reason for this now officially undeniable link between mass and matrimony? There’s the obvious answer, of course: that once you’ve found a partner, you stop working so hard on your appearance. You skip a spinning class here and there, stop spending mornings wrestling with your straightening iron and — oh, what the hell — buy your first-ever pair of elastic-waist pants.

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Avoiding the Custody Shuffle

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 15, 2011

My parents split up when I was a toddler, and I’ve always felt lucky that I was too young to feel the full sting of my “normal” being torn in two.

While divorce alleviates the intolerable tensions of a sour marriage, the children of divorcing couples rarely feel the same relief. Mom and dad’s breakup rocks their notion of “family,” and ping-ponging between dual residences upends their sense of “home.”

That’s why more and more divorcing couples are opting to let their kids remain in the family home while the parents rotate in and out instead. Dubbed “bird-nesting” (in some species of birds, both parents share in the feeding and protection of their young), the practice tends to be tricky for mom and dad, but easier on kids.

Santa Barbara dad Maddox Rees and his wife have been bird-nesting from their family home since they separated two years ago. When one is at home with their sons — ages 10, 9, and 4 — the other stays at a one-bedroom apartment that they also share.

Weird? A little. But it made the most sense for them at the time.

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Take This Ring and …

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 1, 2010

Marriages begin with the promising plink of ritual: aisle-marching, veil-lifting, rice-flinging. But they end with the unceremonious thud of reality: stacks of documents, pained court appearances, crammed moving vans.

In Japan, a nation where ritual is revered and divorce is on the rise, couples have found a way to bring the same pomp, poignance, and purpose to their breakup as they did to their nuptials: divorce ceremonies.

Since last year, entrepreneur Hiroki Terai has officiated more than 20 such ceremonies at his Tokyo “divorce mansion.” He charges $600 to help divorcing couples mark the end of their relationship and take a vow to begin their lives anew. Ex-husband- and ex-wife-to-be ride to the event in separate rickshaws and smash their wedding rings with a gavel as friends cheer. Divorcés say they feel relief — even release — when it’s over.

More typically in the States, folks have separate celebrations when their divorces are finalized: “I’m going to have one this month when the cord cuts,” says a spouse-sloughing friend of mine. “But it’s going to be with girlfriends at a bar. I thought I would burn the wedding license and auction his wedding band — you know, the one he took off when he dated other women.”

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