Stick Horse Cowgirls

I’ve written about this before.  It’s worth mentioning again because we are all prey to the idea that our circumstances are special, different.  The rules and statistics don’t really apply, so we think.  This can cloud judgment. Mattie was married to a well-known personal injury lawyer, “Jim.“  I had heard of him; don’t know of him except by his reputation.  I expected to find lots of assets.  I was right. She’d been married to him 34 years.  She was 52.  He was 18 years older than her and at a well-preserved 70, rich and thanks to Viagra,  going strong in all respects. Frankly, it seemed to me that Mattie ought to wait it out…he was content to be married while he continued to sow his elderly oats.  Apparently when one is rich one can find plenty of fertile ground in which to do so, no matter your age.  Divorce was going to be emotionally hard and, surely, he’d either die or stroke out soon. But I always tell my clients, ...

I hate to even look back to see how long it has been since I last wrote.  My work has been unbelievably busy.  I know that sounds like a cliché—we are all too busy—but this has been a time when I had very, very little down time, sometimes going weeks at a time without a real day off.  Writing in our blog has not seemed an option for the past few months. Do I sound whiny?  Well, that probably fits.  I feel whiny.  And I feel too old for this pace! But I am determined to pick my blogging back up.  It has, in times past, been a real lifesaver for me; which also sounds like a cliché but it is not much of an exaggeration.  It has been my therapy in times when I have needed it to get through my divorce situation and it has been my favorite pastime—a healthy outlet even when I no longer needed therapy!  So I have made it my goal to write more.  Everyone needs a healthy outlet,right? Now for some updates: First, I am divorced.  Yea! ...

Yet again, blame this post on V.   She has assured me that since this has been on TV, we’ll retain our PG-13 rating. Have you seen this ad? It only confirms what I have learned in my fifth decade of life: Most everything revolves around sex. You think I’m wrong?  Nope, I’m not.  I’ve practiced family law 32 years ( shudder ) and I know this to be true.  Now.  A bit late in the day.  I would have denied this ten years ago. We women have got to get it through our heads: Men just are not as relational as women are.  They have a pull to sex  from a perspective that we don’t have.  This is not to say that we don’t like sex, too; only it is different for them and not nearly as relationship-based as we women assume.  And it pulls in a way that can lead (often) one away from family and fealty. Notice in the video—it’s the men scrapping for it. The last issue of Discover magazine has a whole article on this.  Just look at these qu...

Yes, there are bright spots in the dismal terrain of broken families in which I work.  As I work to help clients manage the dissolution of their families, normally I am in an acutely adversarial role.  This is required because the parties are so polarized from hurt that they are unable to be collaborative.  I understand that.  Been there, done that myself. Often where children are involved I see parents so blinded by t heir pain and their own rejection issues that seeing the best interests of the  kids is impossible.  Many is the time I have had clients tell me, “ I want him to have every other weekend, PERIOD.  It’s best for the kids…”   Yeah, right.  It’s best for the kids to see Dad four days a month?  No, it’s a great way for you to jab back at him for his hurt to you and to have some control in this life of yours that has spun out of control. But, they are sincere most of the time, I have come to understand.  Pain colors pe...

I was a Brownie and then, for one year only, a Girl Scout.  I remember saluting and saying the Girl Scout “Promise” and our motto: Be Prepared. Prepared for what?  Truthfully, that question never crossed my young mind back when I was saying these words in unison with my sister scouts.  Five decades later, I know: Be Prepared for Curves Life is Certain to Throw You. This motto came to my mind while I was at an informal gathering of friends recently—all women.  One of them told me her story, words tumbling out of her mouth so that I could not get a word in edgewise; I could tell the words were pushed out by pain.  I know, from experien ce, of her need to have someone else listen.  She is not my client but she found out I am a  lawyer and felt compelled to tell me.  I was riveted: Jon and Mary did it all right.  They were correct to the Nth degree.  Jon’s parents were Missionaries.  He grew up in the mission fields of easter...

Yes, I’ve been away from blogging.  I’ve been putting in very long hours and some weekends—I’m too old for such a schedule!  Besides, it cuts into m blogging time! But, nothing like a couple of scandals to bring me back into the game. I had to chuckle the other day when my sister-in-law on the East Coast called to check in. “ You okay ?” she asked.  “ The kids (mostly college-age with a high schooler) have been saying, ‘You’d better check in with Aunt C.  She hasn’t written anything about Arnold Schwarzenegger !’”  Ah, my reputation as a crusader against adultery…losing battle that it is. Well, here goes: What can I say about Arnold and Maria that hasn’t been said?  He’s a scumbag.  I think most of us knew that he had tendencies toward cheating from accusations of sexual harassment over the years, so I doubt that there were many who thought he was walking the line.  According to the pundits I’ve heard on the topic, he is widely regarded as being ...

Susan and John.  They had a charmed life; both had deep trust funds from old money.  They had grown up in the same country club, had fallen in love and married seventeen years earlier.  Susan had a career as owner of a retail store.  She didn’t have to work and started this out of her passion, but still she made money.  She was a smart girl.  John had a successful career as an executive in a large locally-based company. They had two sons, in the third and fifth grades.  John was on the private school board.  Susan was as involved as any mother could be in school and sporting activities. John decided he wasn’t happy.  He came to see me to get out of the marriage.  He didn’t blame Susan.  He said, in fact, that she was a great person, a great mother, and did her best at all.  He just wanted out.  He confessed that the fault was his.  He had been through an affair and, while that woman was not someone he would leave his...

Appearances deceive sometimes.  Our minds can fill in what we want to see but isn’t there; our assumptions can lead us astray. Sometimes this is merely interesting.  Sometimes it can lead to peril. I was in an airport awaiting a flight to Florida some time ago.  Walking ahead of me was a woman in a brown leather jacket with a long, beautiful ponytail swishing attractively in high contrast to the dark leather.  I just could not help noticing and admiring these beautiful locks.  Imagine my surprise when she turned to expose an equally-impressive beard, a grizzled, worn face that I would never have put with that ponytail!  This was, in fact, a man! It happened again, to a lesser degree, on the same trip.   I was deplaning in Houston to make my connection, standing in the aisle.  I was behind a young African American woman.  I “knew” this because she had attractive braids streaming down her back, a cute figure dressed in jeans, and a ...

Just what do people think statistics are, anyway?  They are a collection of data which gives us a picture of “what is.”  They often give us a tool to predict.  And this applies to people, too, who are, after all, only sheep—the Lord was right when He called us that. Yes, we follow paths just as a predictably as sheep.  Sorry to be the bearer, if this is news to you. Oh, you may think you’re different.  In fact, you do think that you’re different.  That is common to us all.  We want things to be the way we want them to be, not as they are.  We want to be different—special.  We have our little individual differences, true, but in the big, broad-brush things, humans are pretty predictable. This is why marketing works and doctors can make educated guesses and why those high-falutin’ FBI experts can do criminal profiles without ever seeing the bad guy.  See?  Here we are: I try to tell folks this:  The best predictor of f...