Tag Archives: breakup

boomer marriage

Boomer and Bust

boomer marriage

The love generation keeps on splitting up. Ah, capricious age!

For younger generations, who are getting married less often and later in their lives, the divorce rate keeps going down. It is Boomers (those who came of age in the 60s and 70s) who are tipping the statistics toward that notorious 50% mark.

Since these people have lived together a lot longer than I can say, I will reserve judgement. When Gen X hits their 50s they may go through a wave of divorce, too. It’s a side-effect of people living longer.

But. Does it not seem  inevitable that the original “Me Generation” should be choosing freedom over sta(b)le relationships, even late in life when it’s probably a bad move financially?

What’s behind the uptick in Boomer divorce?

Perhaps it’s just a misguided, old-fashioned attempt to avoid the realities of the onset of old age and death. Sorry, can’t really figure out a way to sugar-coat that one.

Read along in Industry this month. Thanks to my parents for playing along, and not accusing me of intergenerational warfare, and to my brother for originally asking me to “Debunk this 50% divorce rate myth!”

Read Boomer and Bust at issuu.com

Games Worth Playing

Screenshot 2013-12-17 18.09.37

My latest column for Industry is up! Games Worth Playing: How a ritual based upon the I Ching can change the way we think about life and love

 

Perhaps readers are aware of the concept of the filter bubble: that with more and more tools to personalize online offerings, we are more in danger of seeing only the news we want to see. The term, while a nice coinage for the internet and indebted age, is not new. In relationships, too, we see what we want to see.

The bubble first grows in our heads, a fact I learned from a 3,000-year-old book
of divination called the I Ching, or the “Book of Changes.”

I’ll risk my reputation as a serious individual here to admit that, when it comes to relationship deciphering, I’m addicted to what could be considered a tool for magical thinking.

Read more here.

The Good Fight

Also in this month’s Industry, in my latest relationship column I continue to parse out the things that test relationships, including those that lead to its strengthening as well as dissolution. Ain’t life a bitch that way, sometimes? Can’t always separate the experience.

from the article:

What we fight about, over and over, comes to define the outlines of the relationship, the bigger themes, and the irreconcilable differences. But so often we end up on one end of a binary that seems to offer no middle ground. Yes or no. Hold your ground or give way. You are being selfish, or they are asking too much.

So, when the fighting breaks down, what to do?

Read it here: The Good Fight Industry July/Aug 2012.

Thanks for the eyeballs and to all the good ideas, keep em coming!

 

Do the Split: How to Talk Yourself Through a Breakup

Do the Split: How to Talk Yourself Through a Breakup

My latest for Industry, in which I extoll the virtues of getting down and dirty in your misery. The only way through something is to GO. THROUGH. IT. right? I don’t use emphatic sequential periods lightly, people.

 

People won’t even read an article like this until they admit defeat. The rest of ‘em, a sorry lot, are stuck in what online marketers charmingly call the “Get him back” niche. But when you’re ready, and you’ve let go enough to realize you’ve got to buck up, to be on your own side, to look more closely at what you were chasing, there are several non-screwed up and non-delusional ways to approach processing through a break-up.

…Any perceived let-down could actually be a great “f*** it” moment, and cold comfort is sometimes the only kind we’ve got.

When we end a relationship there is an odd pairing of disillusionment and release. It hurts, but the pain feels rich, real. You feel deeply and the tears run on until you’re red and shining like a baby. The appetite is suppressed and the challenge of doing everyday activities can be an existential catalyst: Why are we so alone? Why is life so long and yet death so scary?

Read more here.