With attorneys charging upwards of $300 or $400 per hour, financial advisors charging thousands, and any other professionals needed adding to the long list of bills, divorce can get very expensive very quickly. I don't know anyone who likes to spend their hard-earned money on a divorce. Yet, according to...

No one knows exactly how many gay, lesbian, or transgender people there are throughout the world.

This is so partly because some of these gay folks don't know it themselves and partly because they know it, but they don't want to share this information with others (namely their family...

The holidays are the most emotionally charged time of the year; 
if you like where you are in life, it's a magical time, but if you don't
 like your life circumstances, holiday time can be quite awful.

To those of you who are divorced or divorcing, this can be an...

Not knowing if you should stay or go can keep you stuck in the marital indecision cycle for many years. This can be damaging to myriad parts of your life including self-esteem, relationships with others and productivity.

When trying to decide whether or not to end a marriage, most people...

In my experience, when a person is the leavee, they often tell me initially they would take their spouse back if he or she wanted to come back to the marriage. This is true particularly when the spouse being left didn't see it coming and didn't think the problems in...

Kate Schermerhorn is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker who contacted me after reading the "Getting Marriage-Whys" article I posted recently. She had many of the same thoughts I did about the role that marriage plays in our lives today.

Schermerhorn recently completed the documentary film, "After...

In my last Huffington Post article, I wrote about some of the reasons people get married other than love.

While most of those who responded thought the article had several good points, some told me in no uncertain terms that my ideas were not novel, and the religiously-minded...

This week in headlines, we heard that Mexico is introducing legislation that will potentially put time frames around marriage with the minimum contract lasting two years.

There are now approximately 26 countries throughout the world that recognize civil unions, domestic partnerships and same sex marriages.

While I see...

If you love an alcoholic or addict, you know how terrible the disease of addiction can be and you are indirectly impacted. If you are married to an addict or alcoholic, not only do you suffer from watching the person you love go down the tubes, you are directly affected....

Cora and John had been married for nine years and had no children. One night, they had a terrible argument over a financial issue that had been brewing for some time. John threw around the "D" word like it was nothing. They had never gone to this level of animosity...

Ten years ago, Nan (not her real name), told her then husband, Frank, that she wanted to remodel the kitchen. After over seven long months of hellish construction, Nan finally had the kitchen she'd always dreamed of.

Just when she thought life was going to return to a sense...

When my parents divorced, thirty years ago, my younger brother was the only one of the five kids who hadn't gone of to college yet. As the "only child" at home, my mother leaned on him heavily and, as so many lonely parents do, she turned him in to her...

Being held hostage in a sexless marriage is, to some, nothing short of torture. Sex is not only physically pleasurable, it is also an avenue for intimacy and emotional (and sometimes mental and spiritual as well) connection. It is a stress reliever when relationships are good but it can be...

On June 14th, 2011, my 79-year-old mother died. The good news is that in her last few hours, I watched her get to the place where she only had love in her heart. The bad news is that, even the day before her death, she was expressing ill will toward...

I recently discovered that many mothers and fathers actually dread summer for the mere fact that, without the structure of school for their children, they are left to fend for themselves. They have to either find childcare or camp while they are at work -- which can be very expensive...

It seems that the news has almost weekly reports of a famous couple who has experienced a breach in the marriage by one party or the other having extramarital relations. Today it's Arnold and Maria, last week it was Shania Twain's husband, before that Jesse James, Kelsey Grammar, John Edwards,...

I learned a great deal about the contemporary family at a conference I attended recently for the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF). I found it to be a very enlightening series of talks spanning two days on family trends. Speakers included representatives of the U. S. Census Bureau, authors and...

Traditional marriage (that is, a union between a man and a woman till death do they part) seems to be the subject of a tug of war recently. Same-sex couples around the world are demanding the right to marry. Heterosexual couples, who 10 or 20 years ago would have "had"...

Generally, there are two things that impair a person's ability to make good decisions through a divorce.

The first is the emotional state of the soon-to-be-exes. Most divorcing people have periods of feeling overwhelmed by fear, anger, sadness and other negative emotions.

The second impairment to making good...

Have you ever looked at your cell phone to see that you had made a call you didn't intend to make when the number "2" was pressed as you sat down? Or worse, have you seen that the call was made three hours earlier and you can't remember what you...