Tag: marriage

The Optimism of Anita Hill

Published on February 12, 2020

Law Professor Reflects on Her Past, Our Present, and Being a Symbol of Sexual Harassment

Before there was a Weinstein trial, before there was a Kavanaugh hearing, and before there were fed-up females shouting #MeToo in chilling harmony from rooftops ’round the nation, there was Anita Hill. Stoic, young, and starkly alone, she sat in an unforgettable teal dress before a pride of powerful white men and revealed the sordid details of her boss’s sexual harassment.

It was 1991, and her story might not have gotten any attention at all — except that this particular boss was about to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court.

Hill, an honors graduate of Yale Law School and the youngest of 13 children born to Oklahoma farmers, testified that during the years she worked for Clarence Thomas — including, ironically, at the government agency responsible for adjudicating sexual harassment claims — he had repeatedly asked her out, described his anatomy and sexual prowess, made reference to pubic hair on his soda can, and talked about porn depicting bestiality, group sex, and rape scenes.

‘Divorce Coach’ in Your Corner?

Published on December 31, 2019

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.

Best Husband So Far, Hands-Down

Published on October 29, 2019

An Ode to Mr. Roshell on Our 25th Anniversary

Before you, I never paid much attention to a boy’s hands. They just weren’t on my radar the way those other, more typical physical fixations were.

And yet, I noticed your manos right away. Soft, smooth skin stretched taut over long, elegant fingers. Just like a magician’s hands: nimble, busy, mesmerizing.

An artist, musician, and tinkerer, your hooks always seemed to be reaching for something to create, to play, to build. As both an extension of your industrious character and the pliant means of scratching your ardent itch to improve the world around you, your hands were ever grasping for a problem to solve, a brokenness to fix.

And just like a magician’s, they turned everything you touched into something better. Something beautiful. Something bewitching.

Will I Marry You? Why Knot

Published 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,…

Love Makes You Fat. Here’s Proof.

Published 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.

Plan B Partners

Published on November 6, 2014

See, I have this dress. It hangs unworn in my closet, flattened between more practical items. It doesn’t fit me well anymore — neither my body nor my lifestyle. It’s a little too short and show-offy.

But, man, there were a couple of years when it not only made me feel beautiful, stylish, and sexy, it made me become those things. That frickin’ frock was the crème de la closet.

There’s a foolishly optimistic part of me, a tiny gooey spot in my otherwise fully baked brain, that holds out hope I might someday rock that dress again and feel that good in it. And be that good in it.

And because that fantasy is so delicious — because the mere memory of wearing it guns my engine as I’m rifling through my wardrobe each day — I will never, ever give that dress away. It’ll hang there between my sensible skirts and other forgiving go-to garments until I’m too old even for those.

But I was surprised to learn recently that size-too-small dresses aren’t the only things that people keep simmering on the back burners of their lives. A study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that technology is making it easier than ever before for people to maintain a “backburner relationship,” or to stay in digital communication with someone they see as a potential future lover.

Here’s the surprising part: People in committed relationships have just as many “backburners” as single folks do. And these results jive with a recent Daily Mail survey revealing that half of married women have a “fall-back partner” in mind just in case their marriages go south.

Happy Amnesia-versary

Published on October 24, 2013

When it comes to celebrating wedding anniversaries, there are two distinct types of wife: the needy ones who demand hearts, flowers, and other manufactured, predictable demonstrations of affection just so they can feel appropriately, annually adulated. And there are the more evolved, laissez-faire ladies who reject clichéd notions of romance and not only prefer but even inspire frequent, spontaneous acts of tenderness from their un-put-upon partners.

And I’m totally that first one.

But I’m not proud of it. You see, I have a kind and generous husband who regularly, spontaneously, exuberantly fills my gas tank (absolutely not a euphemism), rubs my back, and fills my gas tank (yeah, that time was a euphemism). He’s creative and patient and funny and smart, handsome, hardworking, and pretty much perfect in every way.

Except he has acute flipping amnesia about our anniversary. He’s lived through 19 of them now (only because I have lousy aim), and it’s the same every year: I wait for him to mention that it’s coming up; he doesn’t; I finally remind him; he is surprised; the day comes; he does nothing; I confess that I was hoping for some small acknowledgement of our enduring … you know … love linkage; he gulps and says he’s sorry; I huff around for several days telling myself that gas-tank skills are nothing to sniff at.

Avoiding the Custody Shuffle

Published 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.

Take This Ring and …

Published 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. Afterwards you can get a new ring, one of the Mens Tungsten Rings for example start the new journey.
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.”

Relationship Dissection

Published on June 17, 2010

Down underground, in the basement of UCSB’s psychology building, behind two locked doors and another emblazoned with red hazard signs, a man lies in a pitch-black room, his skull in a scanner. Behind a window, lab techs stare silently at black-and-white renderings of his gray matter.

If this clinical scene doesn’t make your heart flutter, your face flush, and your guts flip-flop with jumpy juice, then you’re clearly not a scientist at the university’s Brain Imaging Center.

But Bianca Acevedo is. She’s a postdoctoral research fellow (am I the only one who enjoys calling women fellows?) who studies the neuroscience of love. “It’s a relatively new field, but it’s flourishing quickly,” said Acevedo, who spends her days translating lofty romantic notions into precise scientific terms. Working with the campus’s “Close Relationships Lab,” she uses a “Passionate Love Scale” to evaluate the “neural correlates of long-term pair-bonding.”

All of which would be funny if it weren’t just a little bit creepy.