Billy Collins, a former two-term Poet Laureate of the U.S., penned these lines on the end of marriage:
Once, two spoons in bed
now tined forks
across a granite table
and the knives they have hired
Alas for many divorcing couples, sharp metal objects make an apt metaphor.
It’s also an image in keeping with the popular depiction of marital discord, which often frames it as all-out take-no-prisoners combat between two feuding camps.
Now, stepping into the marital fray is comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who will be hosting “The Marriage Ref“, a game/reality TV show in which bickering couples will submit their disputes to nonbinding arbitration before celebrity guests who will “comment, judge and decide who’s right and who’s wrong in real-life disputes between real-life spouses.”
Of course if you’d rather resolve your dispute anonymously, try the web site Sidetaker (“Let The World Decide Who’s At Fault”) and let the hive be the judge.
Although I hate to admit it, I’m actually old enough to remember the days when the family doctor made house calls.
Childhood ailments brought visits from our kindly, joke-cracking pediatrician who would arrive with his black bag, his stethoscope slung around his neck, as if he’d stepped straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. How I longed for those days when my own kids got sick, as has anyone else who has waited endless hours in a cramped waiting room with a screaming toddler with an ear infection and a raging fever.
Now a group of mediators stands ready to revive a dying tradition. A press release that made its way into the stack of Google alerts in my inbox this morning announces that a mediation practice in New Jersey is now providing at-home mediation services to divorcing couples.
More power to them for coming up with an innovative way to attract and serve clients. Personally, though, I’m not sure that this is such a great idea. I think there’s a lot to be said for mediating on more neutral territory. The marital home is all too often both battlefield and asset in contention.
Perhaps these mediators have some ambivalence themselves about these new services. In its last paragraph, the press release declares that the mediation practice offers “a free consultation … in the martial home” (emphasis added).
Typo? Or Freudian slip?
If you seek proof of civilization’s decline, look no further than Sidetaker, a site that lets the public be the judge in spats between quarreling lovers.
Don’t bother to seek nuance or middle ground here; there’s plenty of blame and fingerpointing for couples bickering over everything from toilet flushing habits to illicit affairs.
Sidetaker (slogan: “let the world decide who’s at fault”) of course is in this for the greater good:
…far too many divorces, break ups, and separations happen over non-critical disputes. Over 50% of American marriages end in divorce. In a fight, each person has their side and are usually backed by their friends (on either side). When you can create a jury of anonymous peers to decide who is right or wrong in an argument, then the bias is gone and the person at fault will just have to suck it up.
A noble sentiment indeed. This site is of the same ilk as People’s Court Raw, which brings the added dimension of video to lovers’ quarrels.
(Thanks to Tammy Lenski for the link.)
…or, alternatively, one million reasons to be a divorce lawyer in British Columbia…
The Globe and Mail reports today that the B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld a $1 million legal bill for a complex divorce, the result of a rancorous legal battle between a couple married for 42 years over the division of some $12 million in assets.
(If you’re interested in the exchange rate, in U.S. dollars, that’s about 952,742 reasons.)
(Photo credit: Arjun Kartha.)
This may ultimately create more disputes than it resolves, but the DNA testing laboratory INDENTIGENE is selling at-home paternity tests.
For only $29.99 (and $119 for the lab fee), you can find out once and for all who’s your daddy.
(Hat tip to Boing Boing Gadgets.)
