Divorce study

Only in the internet age do you get a 28 year old message and think, huh?

Here is how it started. A few days ago I got a friend request on a site that is a lot like Facebook, except not filled with angry lesbians and bitter old queens. It seems this extremely lovely woman was a friend in college. I could not remember her and when I sent her a little note explaining that I enjoyed her request, but could not remember her, she replied that I remained the funniest guy she knows.

So we are now internet friends, she lives in Brazil or some shit, married (unhappily) and wondering what if. Like, what if I was not unhappily married.

Now I am happily unmarried, and that may be a bias of mine. I was unhappily married for almost 10 years. That is not to say I was unhappily married for 10 years, but I was married for almost 10 years and I was, well, in the end, unhappy. For most of the ten years I was just present.

So, my internet friend, and did I mention she seems to appear to be quite hot? She asks me, in such and such a circumstance, what would you do. Such and such being the key words, because people in happy, sexy, fulfilling marriages hardly ever have a such and such question.

Well, that too may not be true. When I was married there were a few times when I would be somewhere without the old ball and chain (I do love that phrase) and some sort of opportunity would present itself. A such and such opportunity you might say, and I would often think to myself, what if this such and such opportunity panned out? Such a dilemma, but because for the most part, my heart is in the right place, my priorities are true and pure and I had one of those understandings, all would magically work out.

So, internet friend, who seriously has had no contact with me, although I don't quite remember if there was contact 28 years ago, needed my advice. Unhappily married people are always casting about looking for advice and you know what? I am almost always happy to offer it. So she shares some shit with me, secrets, insecurities, questions about the future.

Now, you may not know this about me, but I have been conducting a years long study on relationships and divorce. One of the first things I learned is that people divorce for a variety of reasons, hardly any of them are sexy. Or sexual I should say. I did make a note that many people divorce after tuning up their sexuality. In my Seattle neighborhood I would see a woman start to jog, wearing short sexy shorts, stretching at the bus stop, being all sexy up in my business and I would know, not only was her marriage probably boring and on the rocks, but dammit, she was kind of hitting on me.

Now, this was back when I was still pretend married, so when neighbors would hit on me, I would act all flattered and say something sweet like, but you know I am in an unhappy marriage, and they would jog off, leaving hormones and frustration in their wake.

My study found many things to be true, most of them we how strange it is to live in a place with hot older women would, you know, make offers that were both sexy and obvious. That was not part of the official study though, because only one thing was found to be a constant in people who were divorcing and it was this. Children of the couple had to be old enough to attend a school.

That was it. I spoke with literally thousands of couples in the midst of relationship crisis, and every one of them had a different story, some were sexless marriage, some were drug or alcohol related, some were just too freaky for me to comprehend, but all of them had children and once the youngest was old enough for school, the lawyers started collecting outrageous fees.

Back to my friend from 28 years ago. She asked for my advice and I asked her how old her youngest child was. Again, she just thought I was the funniest guy on the planet, this time for no real reason, but she replied and said her youngest was 5. Five is the magic number for youngest child, so without going into details, I told her it would be wise to lawyer up. That is, if they even have lawyers in Brazil. She might be living in South Carolina though.