Natural Freedom

...and?

so it seems your country is like the USA now (in the USA it's also close to 50%)

Not surprised the country I live in is almost on the top... I know hardly anybody my age whose parents are not divorced or don't live together (So the number is higher, if you count in the non-divorced but not together living people)

I saw an awful case of this bewilderment with a male colleague. He was shocked when he was looking through his desk drawer and found that his wife not only was filing for divorce but had also been consulting lawyers about a divorce for over seven years.

"I'm the provider," he said to me. "I've always done what I was expected to do. Why did she want a divorce?"

"When I talk to the husbands, they usually have a very different explanation as to why their wives feel the way they do," writes marriage counselor Willard Harley. "They often feel that the expectations of women in general, and their wives in particular, have grown completely out of reach.

"These men, who feel that they've made a gigantic effort to be caring and sensitive to their wives and get no credit whatsoever for their sizable contribution to the family.

"They feel under enormous pressure to improve their financial support, improve the way they raise their children and improve the way they treat their wives. Many men I see are emotionally exhausted and feel that for all their effort, they get nothing but criticism."

About a week ago, my uncle came to live w/ us after his wife (of 23 years) kicked him out of their newly built home. She then asked for a divorce. This is soon after he accused her seeing another man. She later admitted to it and said it was her HS sweetheart.

My uncle is in his mid 50s and was getting ready to retire in a few years. Him and his wife have 3 kids together. He's a self made man that owns a successful business and property which he does not want to lose. Just a few days ago, she asked him for the house and business which he built by himself, so basically leaving him in the gutter. I feel for him cause he seems so depressed now, wanting to make things right but unable to....

Here's the problem... my uncle still wants to go back and maybe make things right. He says things like "they can't live without me..." since he handles all the finance and takes care of everything for the family.

I don't think it will ever work out esp. at this point but somehow he still believes. What's the best option for him at this point?? And whats the best way to go about this @ this point in his life??

Scarf, what do you think about women keeping their surnames? My sister was recently married, and decided that she wanted to keep her last name(my father's surname), instead of taking her husband's one - could this be a sign of uncertainty/independance I wonder....

Scarf, what do you think about women keeping their surnames? My sister was recently married, and decided that she wanted to keep her last name(my father's surname), instead of taking her husband's one - could this be a sign of uncertainty/independance I wonder....

NGN’s barrister Sasha Wass QC read out a text from August 2016 sent from Depp to talent agent and Lady Gaga’s ex-fiance Christian Carino, which read: ‘She’s begging for total global humiliation… She’s gonna get it. I’m gonna need your texts about San Francisco, brother… I’m even sorry to ask… But, she sucked Mollusk’s crooked d*** and he gave her some s***ty lawyers…

‘I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion, or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market… I’m so f***ing happy she wants to go to fight this out!!! She will hit the wall hard!!! And I cannot wait to have this waste of a c** guzzler out of my life!!!’

Referencing a new relationship, Depp continued: ‘I met a f***ing sublime little Russian here… Which made me realize the time I blew on that 50 cent stripper… I wouldn’t touch her with a goddam glove. I can only hope that karma kicks in and takes the gift of breath from her…

‘Sorry, man… But, NOW, I will stop at nothing !!! Let’s see if mollusk has a pair… Come see me face to face…. I’ll show him things he’s never seen before… Like, the other side of his d*** when I slice it off…’

‘I had been characterised globally as a wife-beater and if you pardon me, I was Cinderella to a Quasimodo in 0.6 seconds and I was without a voice at that point. Ms Heard made sure the news media got hold of it.’

Like many others who have brought libel actions to clear their names, Depp has found that using the law to defend your reputation is a very expensive way of shattering it—in this case, probably beyond hope of repair.

Allegations of greed also featured prominently in the Depp case. One of Depp’s central claims was that Amber Heard had falsely accused him of domestic violence in order to obtain a more generous divorce settlement. Indeed, Depp’s Shakespearean facility for invective provided one of the guilty pleasures of this sad case. Heard wasn’t just a gold-digger, Depp announced, she was a “gold digging, low-level, dime-a-dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market…” But the facts, as Nicol J prosaically pointed out, suggested otherwise:

"The principal element of that settlement was payment to her by Mr Depp of US$7 million. Ms Heard’s evidence that she had given that sum away to charity was not challenged on behalf of Mr Depp and the joint statement issued by Mr Depp and Ms Heard as part of the Deal Point Memorandum acknowledged that this was her intention… I recognise that there were other elements to the divorce settlement as well, but her donation of the $7 million to charity is hardly the act one would expect of a gold-digger."

Many of Heard’s allegations of violence were corroborated by contemporaneous documents—for example emails, diary entries, or text messages.

High street criminal lawyers quickly become familiar with the alcoholic client who says “I definitely didn’t hit her but I was so drunk I’ve forgotten exactly what happened.” It can be a tricky defence to run in the Swindon Crown Court, particularly when it has evolved, under pressure of undeniable evidence, from the defendant’s earlier protestations that “I can remember everything clearly and I wasn’t drunk.” It’s not any easier in the High Court.

One could go on, but the judgment is available to read in all its damning detail. The judge meticulously examined the evidence for all 14 allegations of Depp’s violence relied upon by the Sun, and found that all but two were more likely than not to be “substantially true.” It is impossible for a fair-minded reader to disagree. The court did hear a recording in which Heard admits to throwing pots and pans at Depp and even to hitting him, but the judgment places this in the context of a relationship in which he was usually the instigator of violence, not her. The judge may have been wrong to skate over the implications of the recording, but even if it were true that Heard occasionally hit Depp, it would not disprove the various allegations made against him. Bluntly: even if she sometimes hit him—and the judge made no such finding—it would not absolve him for using violence against her.

The judge might have ignored or misunderstood vital evidence that most readers of the judgment would not know about: if so, Mr Depp’s appeal will no doubt succeed. But my overwhelming impression of the judgment is that it is fair and careful. There are areas of doubt, there are unanswered questions, and there is some criticism of Heard, but on the central allegations of Depp’s violence the judge gives a reasoned and credible explanation for preferring, in almost every case, Heard’s evidence to that of Depp.

The case raises some issues beyond the obvious one of why Depp decided to take what he should have been told was the extraordinary risk of exposing his turbulent private life to public examination. First, whilst campaigners against violence to women have been understandably quick to welcome the judgment, some of them may not be quite so happy about one of its implications. Nicol J’s decision had nothing to do with a philosophy of “believing the victim” or “standing up for victims of domestic abuse.” It was based on a careful and impartial assessment of the evidence, a large part of which came from contemporaneous text messages recovered from Depp’s or Heard’s phone.