How to Not Get Divorced

Because Life in the Boomer Lane forgot to bring to the gym her copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the book she currently reading, she was forced to pick up a copy of the September issue of Glamour from the Gold’s magazine rack.

Just when she was starting to carefully read “Readers Share Sex Things They Hate,” in order to make sure she wasn’t participating in any activity that most other people dislike, she was startled to notice an article on the facing page titled, “How Not to Get Divorced.” How not to get divorced is sort of important, considering the percentage of the population that was/is involved in divorcing/getting married/divorced/thinking of getting divorced/thinking of getting marrying again/thinking about nothing in particular. In America, there is one divorce every 13 seconds. That’s 6,646 divorces per day, and 46,523 divorce per week.  That way more divorces than people.  

First off, the entire article takes up one slim column (one-third) of one page. Even “How to Look Better in Your Profile Picture,” takes up exactly the same amount of space. Let’s get something clear: LBL is a strong advocate of having a profile photo that is as good as possible. But when stacked up against how not to get divorced, she isn’t sure they are of equal importance. One could go even further (that “one” being LBL herself) by saying that a certain percentage of people going online wouldn’t have to care about profile photos to begin with if they stayed married.

Back to How to Stay Married. The article was written by Raoul Felder, who isn’t related to either Raoul Wallenberg or Raoul Castro. Felder is also known as “Captain Divorce, The Duke of Divorce, Doctor Estranged Love, and Shellackhead. He is one of the top 100 attorneys in America and one of the top handful of divorce attorneys to those in the population who like to divorce even more than they like to marry or eat breakfast. His website says “He also represented and been consulted by members of European and Eastern Royalty.” In addition to divorce, he was involved in “paternity cases of professional athletes and figures in the music and entertainment world.” He also makes a mean kugel.

When he isn’t representing the glitterati of the world or writing books or appearing on radio and TV, Felder has enough time to give his advice to the readers of Glamour (median age 33.5). So let’s dive right in. Felder’s wisdom consists of four items:

1. Do your own thing. Have a lifestyle out of the relationship. LBL might be way off base with this one, but isn’t that the reason why a lot of marriages fail?

2. Read a book every two weeks. “You have to keep introducing new lines of communication.” LBL likes this point a lot, although it didn’t help much with Then Husband. Then Husband, a devotee of obscure historical non-fiction, economic policy, and anything having to do with the Civil War, remained conspicuously silent when LBL launched into a synopsis of the latest book she was reading involving “this woman who finds an old diary and then it turns out to be her grandmother’s and then her boyfriend turns out to be the grandmother’s grandson.” Now Husband, who reads obscure political blogs that announce what is happening in the world before it actually happens, quantum entanglement, the history of the first Romanov era, and sailing, is no more impressed with LBLs choice of reading material.

3. Keep some secrets. “There are plenty of things you don’t have to share with your spouse.” Refer to item #1 for LBL’s response to this one.

4. Get your issues out in the open. “When people think their marriage is in trouble, they either build a house or have children.” As a realtor who depends on people relocating or needing larger homes for growing families, this is one item LBL can get behind. For her purposes, don’t air your issues, folks. Just get a different house. In fact, let’s just say that whatever your issues are, the answer is get a house. Preferably in Northern Virginia. For a lot of money. And you know who to call.