Ghosts of Marriages Past can haunt many aspects of a new relationship - your expectations of what a man should do, how you behave in conflict, your ideas of how commitment should look - they can even make your new man look untrustworthy when he's really behaving normally.
— Emily V. Gordon
A lot of people end up getting married more out of expectation than out of passion for each other, but if your options have ever been, 'We either get married or break up,' be careful. Marriage should be a new addition you add to the house that is your relationship, not the structure you impose on the house once it's already built.
Nothing makes a girl feel as unsexy as divorce.
If you don't simply communicate with your spouse what household tasks you would like them to do, you are setting yourself up to be angry.
Cheating is very rarely about the actual act of being with another person.
Sometimes new spouses don't fully process the commitment they've made until after the deal is done, and then they panic.
It's easy to isolate yourself when you're buried in work, or to rely only on work friends for empathy. And while your work friends will always 'get it' more than your life partner, they don't know how to comfort you like your partner does.
Some divorcees turn their pain inward. They brood, and they grieve for a long time, always wondering if they could have done something differently to keep this from happening. They make every problem in their relationship into something they could have prevented.
Keeping physical items from the past is important - we keep old toys, grandparents' jewelry, yearbooks, dance recital programs - and we assign meaning to them. Those items become the memories, and that's a very healthy thing to do. The problems occur when we have too many of those sentimental items, and they start weighing us down.
Marriage is not a magical potion that serves to amplify adoration, reduce deep-seated feelings of resentment, erase fears of commitment, or answer questions about whether or not this is the right move. Marriage is a ceremony that cements your current bond to another human being, and while that's a huge thing, that's all it does.
I am fairly convinced that people plan destination weddings because they would actually like to elope but want to have given you the option to attend.
Your wedding day is supposed to be your big day, and yet a lot of engaged couples find that instead of creating an event that will be important to them, they're dodging through a minefield of modern etiquette traps.
Far from 'rotting my brain,' as I was often told would happen, TV helped me feel less alone at a time when I spent so much time alone.
For so long, TV consisted of a limited number of shows a year, and those shows had to appeal to as many people as possible. The joy of TV now is that shows don't have to be broad anymore - they can be small, weird, and niche.
Stays at the in-laws' aren't inherently sexy.
In high school, I decided that all of my female friends were stupid and traded them for guy friends. I loved horror movies and heavy metal and used these interests to become a 'guys' girl.'
I had a tightly knit group of female friends in elementary school - we called ourselves the Sensational Six.
Marriage, even a happy and successful one, can be extremely stressful, but that stress is worth it if you're marrying the best person for you.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but I imagine a lot of married and divorced people have insights to share about how they felt during their engagement.
As my marriage was slowly dissolving into silent meals and awkward nights of avoiding conversation, I started pondering an unmarried future and wondered if I'd ever be able to hack being single again.
Unequivocally, individual human beings who live together will always have different standards of what a 'clean house' looks like.
If you've experienced cheating in a new marriage, the real work is not obsessively combing through all the details of what happened, but rather figuring out if your relationship is worth saving.
The benefits of a healthy, thriving relationship may not be nearly as exciting as watching your career take off, but both aspects of your life are equally important.
Sacrificing your relationship for your career sounds noble and romantic from the outside, but the reality is that it can create a pattern of self-destruction that will ultimately burn you out on the career you've worked so hard to build. It's a trap and, for some, an easy way out of having to maintain relationships under stress.
In my professional and personal life, when I meet people who feel broken after a divorce, they can usually be divided into two categories: those who truly believe there's something wrong with them, and those that are using their status as armor.
Dealing with wedding stuff is a bit of a double-edged sword - it seems that divorcees are expected to either burn it all on the front lawn, tears silently coursing down their faces, or keep the stuff, shrine-like, concealed somewhere in their homes.
Things can be tough even when surrounded by nice Pottery Barn stuff.
Get married wherever you like, make accommodations for the people you love so they can attend, and forget about the people who can't.
As any daytime judge show can tell you, spending someone's money or taking their stuff because they hurt your feelings is not justified.
I'd watch shows like 'The Kids in the Hall' or 'Twin Peaks,' and I'd see weird people being celebrated and appreciated without compromising their weirdness. On 'The Facts of Life,' I'd see girls who were pudgy, beautiful, popular, tomboyish - many ways of being female - and I'd feel quietly reassured.
Parents go to sleep early. This is universal.
Nothing makes me feel more mushy and full of love for my husband than going back and looking at our flirtation unfolding online. I love reading our old e-mails, texts, and Gchats.
When we each focus on being the dominant force in our own universe rather than invading other universes, we all win.
Sometimes we put so much effort into things we're doing, like dating or wedding planning, that we don't stop to think about whether or not we even want the results of that effort.
Burlesque dancing didn't solve all my post-divorce problems, but what it did do was force me to court myself for a little while.
People all want and need different emotional responses - some people like to be talked down when they're angry; some people want to be left alone.
We all have an idea of how we like to be treated that we would like others to adhere to, and somehow we've gotten in our heads that the perfect person for us will just know what this code of behavior is.
In some cases, newlyweds want so badly for things to be perfect that they ignore warning signs, both in themselves and each other.
Balanced, passionate, grounded people are the ones whose careers are ultimately the most successful.
You're not a victim of your divorce. What you decide to do with yourself and your personal life after your marriage ends is your decision, and completely under your control.
Divorce is one of the most destructive, emotionally traumatic experiences a human being can go through, no matter if you're the instigator or the recipient. It's hard, and it hurts, and it takes a long time to feel normal again.
Marriage will not change your spouse. It will not make him or her more mature, more loyal to you, or better at housework.
People get married for a wide array of reasons and have all sorts of expectations of how marriage will change the relationship. And while it's true that turning the person you're dating into a legal partner does affect certain things, those who expect marriage to be a cure-all for all your relationship woes are sorely mistaken.
No matter how you handle alcohol at your wedding, you will most likely be upsetting someone.
I have a pretty intense work ethic. If something's not done, I cannot let go until I get it done.
I grew up in a very small town in North Carolina, weird and pudgy, without too many other kids to play with. I spent a lot of time watching TV. It was my reassurance that the outside world was bigger and more colorful than the one I lived in.
Holiday food is rich and indulgent. Going-home-to-see-family food is richer and even more indulgent.
'The Babadook,' written and directed by a woman, is a gorgeously told female-focused story of grief, longing, loneliness, and what mourning can become.
Women compete, compare, undermine, and undercut one another - at least, that is the prevailing notion of how we interact.
