Since September of this year, my daughter's boyfriend has been living with us -- or more precisely, with her, in her bedroom. Violet is eighteen (although she was seventeen when he moved in) and Nile recently turned nineteen, and while the situation has made sense to me from the start,...

When I got married, at twenty-three, I became a stepmother to a seven-year-old-boy. I'd known Jonah since he was four, and his parents had divorced when he was still a baby, so he'd never really known what it was like to live together with his family under one roof. Which...

When women talk about the current romantic lives of their ex-husbands, it's common to hear refrains along the lines of "I couldn't care less who he's with. What a nightmare, she can have him, good riddance." And they usually add "As long as she's nice to my kids, that's all...

I love to post on Facebook, and my favorite all-time Status Update read "Nina Lorez Collins has a lot of things, but she has no shame." This was about three years ago, when I was just coming out of what was probably the darkest period of my life.

Since those...

When I got divorced at age 37, I'd never really dated. I'd met my husband at age 20, and in the five years before that I was basically serially monogamous with various men/boys I met through school. I'd never been set up, never gone home with a guy from a...

The other day I had lunch with a long married girlfriend who was bemoaning the fact that, for fifteen years, she and her husband hardly ever fought, and now, in the last five, they frequently do, which she mostly attributes to the strain of having young children. I've always thought...

Like many of us, I had a truly hideous divorce. Adultery, physical violence, arrests, screaming fights, swimming pools of tears, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and therapy bills, you name it. The worst of it took two years, from the first serious talks of separation in 2005 to...

The other day a younger friend, a woman in her twenties, called to share news of her engagement. She's been dating a great-seeming guy for about a year, and she sounded exuberant, glowing, over the moon. "Congratulations, Eleanor! I'm so happy for you." Yadda, yadda, yadda, and we wrapped up...

I'm not a lawyer, but by the time we were done, my divorce attorney told me I should become one. And while no one person's experience can apply to everyone's, there are a few things I learned that I think can be helpful:

When Larry David portrayed his divorce on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Cheryl got all the friends, I was so relieved. You mean, that really happens? I'm not the only asshole who made each and every one of my friends choose a side?

During my divorce, almost four years ago,...