From NPR:

If you have a happy marriage, you might let your kids date more. If you have a bad marriage, you may keep your teenagers closer to home. A new study links parents’ satisfaction in their own relationships to the dating rules they set for their children. Alex Cohen talks to Stephanie Madsen, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at McDaniel College, about what that link says about parents.

Give it a listen and let us know what you think!

Via Broadsheet:

Turns out there’s an old law on the books in Wisconsin that prohibits couples from leaving the state to marry and returning with a union that’s not valid in Wisconsin. Not sure this is what the drafters in 1915 had in mind, but this would apparently include going to California, say, to marry a partner of the same sex and then coming home to the Badger State. The offense: fraud, carrying a penalty of up to nine months of jail time and a fine of up to $10K.

Would anyone actually want to prosecute them? Ya, shore, you betcha. “Someone has to prosecute them,” Julaine Appling of the Wisconsin Anti-Fraud Family Council told CNN. “That’s a defrauding of the government.”

See you in court, say Wisconsin couple Kathy Cox and Kim Whalen, who, having been together for 20 years, plan to visit CA to tie the knot in August. “The pioneers get the arrows, and the settlers get the land,” they told CNN. “So we’ll take a few arrows.”

You may have seen the much buzzed-about New York Times article in which Maureen Dowd, in consultation with 79-year-old Catholic priest Fr. Pat Connor, laid out 10 requirements for the “ideal husband.” Though I’m pretty sure BG hates MoDo with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, I’ve got to say I think her checklist makes perfect sense. Having witnessed my parents experience the ups and downs of marriage, I’ve come to understand that love is just the beginning of a successful lifetime partnership. So here, in case you missed it, is what MoDo and Fr. Pat urge you to consider. (I’ll use male pronouns as the article implies that only girls are on the big hunt — lies!):

(more…)

Pee-wee Herman always knew what to say. He never screwed up — he totally “meant to do that!” And there’s just no arguing with “I know you are but what am I!?”

Plus: if you exclaimed that you just love something, Pee-wee’d be all over it: “Well if you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?” In fact, in one episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Pee-wee walked his own talk with a formal ceremony in which he wed a bowl of fruit salad. (What to give the happy couple for their fourth anniversary?)

Well, on that why-dontcha-marry-it tip, one woman may have Pee-wee beat. She became so enamored of the Berlin Wall after seeing “his” picture as a youth that she developed a childhood crush that eventually led to marriage. In her mind, at least. As the Telegraph reports, Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, 54, has finally come out about her “husband” and general attraction to inanimate objects (she prefers ’em long and slim, wouldn’t you know.) Apparently she and the Wall are quite loving and happy together, and have been for the past 29 years, which, it should be noted, is longer than most human-on-human marriages these days. But we just have to ask: is making conversation like talking to a … well, you know.

Adultery lurks everywhere, among celeb couples and political leaders, our neighbors and even, on a bad day, our own relationships. New York Magazine, following up on the Spitzer scandal in its own back yard, recently weighed in on the matter, with a lot to say about American culture and the perhaps untenable emphasis we put on monogamy.

According to writer Susan Squire, marriage wasn’t made to handle all this pressure in the first place. The average life span is far greater now than it was 100 years ago, and back in those days, marriage was a more formal institution for breeding and family purposes only. It’s becoming more and more difficult for partners in a marriage to get the variety and sexual attention that they need. The American burden is the ideal that marriage should provide romantic love forever. “Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion,” Squire says. Sometimes partners see an affair as the only way out of that rut.

That’s why Mira Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston, suggests that not all cheaters are evil trolls. (more…)

The concept of “living in sin” could be dying a not-so-slow death. According to USA Today, a new study by the National Marriage Project has found that among Americans and our friends across the pond, cohabitation is growing more and more popular as an alternative to marriage. (From 1995-2005, the marriage rate in the U.S. declined nearly 20%.) Quoth one half of a cohabitating couple, “It’s what’s happening in the world of dating, and it’s not necessarily a path anywhere.”

For some couples, that works out just fine. They’re not interested in marriage, so the only path they need is the one toward their shared mailbox. But some experts — and, you know, people interested in a certain rose-strewn path toward a certain officiant — still wonder if living together is the most advisable next step. So, in certain cases, do certain superheroes.

What are your thoughts/experiences? Have you been shacked up — and back? Share!

Ah, the eternal bachelor. The man who’ll never settle down, the man with many labels: “player,” “commitment-phobe,” “jerk!” — and now, according to new research, a big ole scaredy-cat. Turns out most bachelors out there aren’t necessarily afraid of marriage; they’re just afraid of a bad marriage.

Carl Weisman, a bachelor himself at 49 — and sick of being stereotyped for his status — set out to discover the reason why more and more eligible men are in their early 40s are choosing to stay single (reportedly up from 6 percent in 1980 to 17 percent today). The result: his new book, So Why Have You Never Been Married?: 10 Insights Into Why He Hasn’t Wed. “Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all,” Weisman told Reuters. “It’s so important to these men to get it right.” Yaaah, but isn’t seeking perfection — as some of the bachelors in his study claim they are — the, um, perfect way to remain a bachelor?

Though I generally loathe “Ladies! It’s still possible to get married after [X advanced age]!” stories — maybe we don’t want to get married at any age? Maybe, like George Clooney, we want to stay single for life? And that’s so sad and weird because? — I did, in fact, read this entire USA Today article and will now force it upon you, too.

What I was intrigued to find out was not that it is (“Ladies!”) still possible to get married for the first time after age 45 and that growing numbers of people are doing just that, but rather this: that the CDC tracks this information.

 As in: “A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.” Huh. I thought the CDC tracked (not to mention controlled and prevented), you know, diseases — where one might still find the plague, for example. I’m not sure what this means for marriage. Pox, anyone?

I just got an e-mail with the subject line: “Who’s sleeping with your husband?” But before I could say, “That bee-yotch!”, or remember that I don’t have a husband, I realized it was just a press release — a really depressing press release — for a Web site called MomLogic. Witness:

The other woman wants you to know–your husband is cheating and she’s loving it. Find out why. (more…)

You’re both in the Fantastic Four. Does that mean you’ll make a Fantastic Pair? Not necessarily!

Check out the Top Five Worst Superhero Marriages and Top Five Least Romantic Comics Couples as rated by the comic sites and ComicBookResources.com and Comixology.com. In most ways, these couples’ differences are more human than super-human: their various love Kryptonites include commitment-phobia, age differences, cheating spouses, skeptical friends, the slacker/striver dynamic, manipulation (in this case, of the four elements). Let’s just hope BG and The Lone Loner never make these lists!