I am about to say something that many might consider blasphemous -- I don't think couples should live together.
Now, before you cast me as some pro-marriage, uber-conservative who has been reading one too many National Marriage Project (NMP) studies, be assured I am not. At the risk of sounding somewhat Orwellian, let me clarify: Living together is OK for some couples and not for others.
Don't want to be parents? If there are no kids to deal with, planned or still at home, please -- move in and out with whomever you want as often as you want.
It's also OK for same-sex couples; until other states wise up and follow the lead of Vermont and Massachusetts and allow same-sex marriages, we haven't given gays and lesbians much of a choice, have we?
It works for people like me, too. As a divorced middle-aged woman who is about to be an empty-nester, shacking up -- with someone respected and accepted as part of the family -- works.
Finally, cohabiting is fine if you've put a ring on it -- an engagement ring, that is -- or have a wedding date in mind or have been talking marriage (to each other, obviously). Or, if you don't "need a piece of paper to prove your love," you at least know that you're committed to each other.
But if you are a young adult who thinks you might want to have kids one day and maybe even get married but you aren't sure that your current sweetie's The One, please don't move in with him or her.
I can hear the grumbling; "How will I know if we're compatible or not if we don't live together?" Easy -- you know because you've spent enough time together as a couple. If you really don't know if you can live with his smelly socks in the hallway or her panties hanging in the bathroom, then you either haven't known each other long enough or you haven't been paying attention. In either case, you're just not ready to marry. Please, date some more.
Couples rarely split up over socks and underwear; they split because of affairs, alcohol, addictions and abuse. They split because their expectations of marriage differ. And they split because they never should have been together in the first place -- probably because they moved in together to see if they could live with the socks and panties while they were ignoring other, much bigger issues.
So what's so wrong with living with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Let's forget the studies pointing out the booze (cohabitors drink more), weight (they're heavier) and happiness (they're not quite as happy as married couples but they aren't more miserable, either), because those aren't the issues. Nor are the results of the latest NMP study, "Why Marriage Matters," which predicts doom and gloom for the children of cohabiting couples. The NMP has an agenda; it wants to promote marriage. Still, even a recent and presumably agenda-less Pew Study finds similar results, at least when it comes to cohabiting couples' economic well-being; they're poorer, and that puts stress on a relationship. A lot of stress.
As a society, we need to pay attention because there are 12 times as many cohabiting couples today as there were in the 1970s.
Last month I wrote an article for HuffPost Divorce about my research that revealed 30% of divorced women knew they were marrying the wrong guy on their wedding day. This statistic triggered much consternation and denial. After wading through hundreds of comments bashing the institution of marriage, doubts about my methodology, and nasty remarks about women, men and relationships in general, it appears everyone missed the point.
So let me put it another way: Have you ever talked yourself into a decision that you already knew was the wrong one? Of course you have. We all do. Have you ever taken a job that you knew in your gut wasn't a good fit for you? (Totally ignored the weird vibes from your new boss? Assured yourself you could learn to be "detail oriented and good with numbers.") What about buying that car that you really couldn't afford? (A $600-a -month car payment on a thirty thousand dollar a year salary -- yeah, right.) Or maybe you agreed to split the rent with your slovenly college friend in order to afford a nicer apartment. (Shut your eyes and hope she had magically changed into someone neat and tidy.) And what about the third donut you ate for breakfast this morning? (The little voice in your head promised: "I'll go for a run after work.")
We can rationalize anything. But when we talk ourselves into dating the wrong guy or girl -- that's where the potential for lifelong heartache begins. So after hearing one too many clients admit that had doubts about their relationship long before the wedding -- the therapist in me wondered what I could do to change that. (And yes, men do it too -- but I'll get to that later.)
I want to clarify that the doubts were not the garden-variety nerves that typically accompany any life-changing decision. They weren't just "cold feet" or "wedding day jitters." Rather, the women in my study talked about issues, concerns, doubts and other red flags that existed throughout the course of their relationship. Not just on their wedding day. The problem was that they had brushed their concerns aside. Instead of facing up to the red flags or exploring their gut feelings -- they squelched them and stayed in the relationship anyway.
Is the world ready for a reality show starring teen bride Courtney Stodden?
We better get ready because 17-year-old Stodden just inked a deal with Merv Griffin Entertainment to produce her new reality show, reports RadarOnline.
The blonde bride who made headlines when she married 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchinson in June, told the website, "We are so excited to be working with Roy Bank, a great professional in this business. We are proud that we were able to find the perfect producer for our reality show an are thrilled to be working with this prestigious production company."
Ever since news of the couple's marriage broke, the two have been defending their love for one another. With Stodden's obvious obsession with fame, it surprised no one when the couple began talking about developing a reality show last month.
Hutchinson told Australia's "The Morning Show," that they had been "seduced by a lot of producers wanting to do a reality TV show," and they were currently negotiating with a prominent producer.
Stodden weighed in proclaiming that "It's going to be a reality show like no other."
NASA this week completed the first in a series of flight-like parachute tests for the agency's Orion spacecraft. The drop tests at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona support the design and development of the Orion parachute assembly.
Flying at an altitude of 25,000 feet, a drop-test article that mimicked the Orion parachute compartment was deployed from a C-130 aircraft. Once airborne, two drogue chutes were deployed at an altitude of 19,000 feet, followed by three pilot parachutes, which then deployed three main landing parachutes. The drop test article speed as it impacted the desert was approximately 25 feet per second.
The tests were the closest simulation so far to what the actual Orion parachute landing phase will be during a return from space.
Since 2007, the Orion program has tested the spacecraft's parachutes and performed 20 drop tests. The program provided the chutes for NASA's pad abort test in 2010 and performed numerous ground-based tests. Results from the previous experiences were incorporated into the parachute design used in this test.
As the wife of a warden, Bobbi Parker knew all about the pace of life inside the Oklahoma state reformatory where she lived in a house with her husband and daughters before disappearing 17 years ago with a convicted killer.
Now Parker is facing prison time herself, though jurors are recommending just one year for helping Randolph Franklin Dial escape - a charge that carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The Greer County jury convicted Parker Wednesday of assisting Dial's 1994 escape from the southwestern Oklahoma prison her husband, who still works for the state prison system, helped supervise.
Parker, 49, showed no emotion as jurors returned their guilty verdict. She said nothing as she was handcuffed by sheriff's deputies and escorted to the county jail adjacent to the courthouse after District Judge Richard Darby denied requests for bond that would have allowed her to remain free during an expected appeal. Darby set formal sentencing for Oct. 6.
Her husband, Randy Parker, bowed his head and was comforted by family members after the 12-member jury delivered its verdict following about 14 hours of deliberation over three days. Parker, a 27-year employee of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections who now works as its security and facility operations manager, testified during the trial that he still loves his wife despite her disappearance with Dial and almost 11-year absence before they were found living together in 2005 in East Texas.
Prosecutors alleged Parker fell in love with Dial and ran off with him on Aug. 30, 1994, when her husband was deputy warden of the prison in Granite. Defense attorneys maintained that Dial drugged her, kidnapped her at knifepoint and held her hostage for more than a decade by threatening to use his alleged mob connections to harm her family if she tried to flee.
Police said they found the pair living happily as man and wife on April 4, 2005, on a chicken ranch near Campti, Texas.
Prosecutors said they were happy with the jury's decision in a trial that lasted from the spring to the edge of autumn and involved more than 80 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence.
"We're just grateful for the work of the jury to sacrifice their summer," said Assistant District Attorney David Thomas, the lead prosecutor.
District Attorney John Wampler, who filed the original charges in 2008, said he believes the verdict vindicates the prosecution.
Italian prosecutors sought to persuade an appeals court to uphold the murder conviction of Amanda Knox, saying during closing arguments Friday that "all clues converge toward the only possible result" of finding the young American woman and her co-defendant guilty.
Speaking for two hours in a packed room, Prosecutor Giancarlo Costagliola urged the jury to keep in mind the family of the victim, British student Meredith Kercher, who was Knox's roommate at the time of the slaying. His fellow prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, urged the jurors to ignore the media hype and what he said was a pro-defendant slant surrounding the case.
A verdict in the appeals trial of Knox and her co-defendant and one-time boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito is expected at the end of September or early next month.
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Costagliola denounced what he said was "an obsessive media campaign that makes everyone feel like the parents of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito."
"As you make your decision, I wish that you jurors feel a little bit like the parents of Meredith Kercher, a serious, studious girl whose life was taken by these two kids from good families."
Mignini claimed that the prosecution was "subjected to systematic denigration of a political and mediatic nature" and urged the jury to forget the pressure of an international press he said was overwhelmingly in favor of the defendants.
"The trial must be held here, in this courtroom," Mignini said. "This lobbying, this mediatic and political circus, this heavy interference, forget all of it!"
Mignini showed graphic photos from the murder, and said he will never forget seeing Kercher's eyes wide open as he went to inspect the crime scene. As if to emphasize the contrast, he also showed the court a photo of the two defendants kissing in the immediate aftermath of the killing outside the house that was being inspected by police. The move led Knox's lawyer to object.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher on the night of Nov. 1, 2007 in the house Knox and Kercher shared while exchange students in Perugia.
Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison; Sollecito to 25. Both deny wrongdoing and have appealed the verdict, which was issued by a lower court in December 2009.
The prosecutors argue that the 21-year-old Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex assault. In the original trial, the prosecutors had sought life sentences - Italy's stiffest punishment. Like the defendant, they have also appealed the lower court's verdict, as they can in Italy.
Costagliola, at the start of closing arguments expected to last two days, summed up what he said were the clues that point to the defendants: bloody footprints found in the house that are compatible with those of the defendants, cell phone activity and witness testimony that appear to contradict the defendant's alibi that they spent the night at Sollecito's house and stayed there until about 10 a.m. the day after the murder, a staged burglary at the house of the murder aimed at sidetracking the investigation.
This all pointed to ascertaining the defendants' presence at the scene of the crime, he said, adding: "All clues converge toward the only possible result of finding the defendants guilty."
Knox, 24, appeared tense during the session. Her mother, Edda Mellas, said it was hard for her "as she has to listen to people saying horrible and untrue things about her."
Costagliola also talked of an independent review of DNA evidence that cast doubt on much of the genetic evidence used to convict Knox will help his daughter overturn the conviction. He challenged the results of the independent review and defended the findings of the original investigation.
In the first trial, prosecutors maintained that Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and that Kercher's DNA was found on the blade. They said Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Kercher's bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim's genetic profile.
The independent review challenged both findings. It said police had made glaring errors in evidence collecting and that below-standard testing raised doubts over the attribution of DNA traces, both on the blade and on the bra clasp, which was collected from the crime scene several weeks after the murder.
The review boosted Knox's chances of being acquitted and freed after four years behind bars, and gave hope to her family.
Curt Knox, the defendant's father, said he was hopeful and grateful to the appellate court for having granted the review.
Behind razor wire and thick concrete walls, Troy Davis spent what may be his final hours Wednesday with friends and family, awaiting his execution at 7 p.m. for the murder of a police officer over 20 years ago, a crime he maintains was committed by another man.
"Troy is in good spirits," said Amnesty International spokeswoman Wende Gozan Brown, who visited with Davis on Tuesday, after he received news that a final plea for clemency to a state pardons board had been rejected. "He is steadfastly maintaining his innocence, as he always has."
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Davis's pending execution has sparked an extraordinary outcry nationally and internationally that continued Wednesday, with thousands of people expected to participate in evening protests and vigils at Georgia's death row prison and the state capitol. By early afternoon, dozens of protesters were already singing and praying in a small cordoned-off area on the prison grounds.
Earlier this week, the state's pardons board was bombarded by hundreds of thousands of petitions to spare Davis's life, including calls from former FBI director William Sessions and Bob Barr, a four-term Republican congressman from Georgia and death penalty supporter. Many of those opposed to the execution noted the lack of physical evidence tying Davis to the crime and the recantation of critical eyewitness, many of whom told attorneys for Davis that they had been pressured by police to testify that Davis was the shooter.
"Imposing an irreversible sentence of death on the skimpiest of evidence will not serve the interest of justice," Barr wrote in an editorial on the case last Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning, Davis offered to submit to a lie detector test, but the request was denied by prison officials. "I guess Troy Davis felt like he had enough witness testimony in his favor that he felt that the polygraph would not be necessary," said Laura Moye, director of Amnesty International's U.S. death penalty abolition campaign, when asked why Davis had not submitted to a polygraph before.
The Davis defense's last-minute petition to the Superior Court was rejected by a state judge late Wednesday afternoon.
As the hours until the execution dwindled, calls for clemency continued from around the nation and the world, including from a group of former death row wardens, who wrote to Georgia authorities calling on them to halt the death sentence due to doubts about Davis's guilt. Among the group was the former warden in charge of the Georgia death chamber.
"While most of the prisoners whose executions we participated in accepted responsibility for the crimes for which they were punished, some of us have also executed prisoners who maintained their innocence until the end," the wardens wrote in a press release. "It is those cases that are most haunting to an executioner."
Meanwhile, the family of the murdered policeman, Mark MacPhail, and the case's original prosecutor have argued strenuously for Davis's execution, and have asserted that there is no doubt that he is guilty of the murder.
And that's how the new series introduces us to the three new Angels - ex-cat burglar Abby (Rachael Taylor), former dirty cop Kate (Annie Ilonzeh) and disgraced marine Gloria (Nadine Velazquez). Yet, the same can also be said for the three actresses that signed on for this "Charlie's Angels" ABC reboot.
Sadly, there's nothing here that distinguishes this from the original "Charlie's Angles," except that Bosley is now a smooth womanizing computer hacker named Bos (Ramon Rodriguez)
We learn from an opening Charlie voice-over that the Angels are on a mission to rescue Sarah Daniels, a 16-year-old being held captive by the legendary unseen trafficker Baharo. Long story short, thanks to some kung-fu magic -- and the fact that Bosley somehow has access to a 'satellite camera' that can see inside the room (insert groan here) -- the Angels rescue Sarah.
So what do they do? Celebrate, of course! But one Angel is not happy. Gloria is frustrated that they will never track down Baharo himself, but the matter doesn't concern her for long because as she leaves the agency, Gloria is killed by a car bomb!
And now the girls are sad -- very sad. And they say things like, "I never thought my heart could hurt this much" and "We were a family, she was our sister." And now we're sad because it's not over yet.
The pressure was on Simon Cowell to deliver a knock-out first show with the launch of X Factor USA tonight - and he didn't disappoint.
The 51-year-old, who quit his coveted role on American Idol to bring his British format to America, wowed viewers with a series of both weird and wonderful performances, and a dose of controversy.
A single mother who had everyone in tears, a reformed drug addict hoping to turn his life around, the most bizarre but endearing older couple, and a man who pulled his pants down mid-act, were just a few of the highlights of a stunning first show.
The production was undeniably slick - zooming overhead shots showed panoramic American scenes as the judges were introduced with explosive fanfare and that catchphrase so familiar from the UK show - 'it's time to face the music.'
This was no accident, Cowell brought out the best of his production team to ensure that the magic translated across the Atlantic, and tonight we saw plenty of it at the L.A. and Seattle auditions.
Joy: Stacy is congratulated by her family after her talent is recognised at last
But following the model of the original, the fanfare was just a sideshow to the stories that were to unfold over the first two hour episode on America's Fox Network.
And America seemed to eat up each tale of woe and redemption as reception to the show on Twitter was hugely positive, as the program played the enthusiastic observations kept rolling in.
One tweeter described the show as 'magical,' while another wrote: 'Every1 and any1 gets a chance-No matter what's your age,race or background..New Fav show.'
