Divorce Hell

Divorce Hell

Charles G. Irion

Published by Irion Books at Smashwords

Copyright © 2009 by Charles G Irion C.I. Trust.

First Edition 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 9780982598627 Ebook Version

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Dedication

This exposé and guide is dedicated to those souls—men and women—looking for love who have ridden the emotional, gut-wrenching rollercoaster called DIVORCE.

—Charles G. Irion

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Divorce could put you on a bar stool at Joe’s Saloon of Lost Souls, but don’t worry. This book will get you back on the street, or show you how to avoid that fate.

ONE: My Story

My two divorces, and my two ex-wives, taught me lessons that I will pass along to you. Numero Uno became disenchanted with me after I forced her to sell her Porsche during the lean years before I made it big; Numero Dos wrote a will that said, in the event of her demise, I wouldn’t get her kids, my stepchildren, whom I had come to love.

TWO: Divorce as Ritual

Over the centuries, divorce has taken many weird forms in many places. Its history includes a woman saint who grew a beard, the selling of wives at auction, a man who had a hard time getting permission to remarry even though his wife had been declared a witch, and a parrot who testified in a divorce action.

THREE: The Seven-Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch isn’t a myth; it’s a reality, as psychological studies, astrology and research on cell biology show. One lawmaker went so far as to propose that marriages in Germany be limited to seven years, with an option to renew.

FOUR: His Horror Stories

Men have a devil of a time when it comes to divorce. Consider Paul, who wound up marrying and divorcing two sisters, and paying maintenance awards to both; Rich, who found his wife in bed with another guy, divorced her, but still had to endure her stalking and screaming; or Jim, a bar owner who survived a hurricane, but took a worse financial beating when he married and divorced the waitress who helped get him through the storm.

FIVE: Her Horror Stories

Women have it rough, too. Consider Marsha, who battled to raise her three children with little financial help from her deadbeat ex-husband—and little help from public officials who should have been forcing him to pay up; Jennifer, who quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom at the insistence of her husband, then was left flat when he moved in with one of her friends; or Carrie, whose furious estranged husband tried to run over her with his station wagon.

SIX: Famous Divorces

King Henry VIII of England pioneered the field of famous divorces, chopping off the head of one of his wives as part of the drama. Big-ticket and high-profile divorces also include those of basketball star Michael Jordan, comic-book characters like Ant Man, and, of course, panty-less wonder Britney Spears.

SEVEN: Wild Prenups

Prenuptial agreements can get crazy. They guide money splits after marital splits, and multi-million-dollar fortunes often hang in the balance. But people also use them to try to get regular sex, to keep hubby from straying, to squelch drug use, to keep the wife from fattening up, and to decide who takes care of the pooch in post-married life.

SALVATION

If you want to avoid divorce and survive the Seven Year Itch, here’s how. Among other things, you should choose your mate carefully, treasure your spouse, and when things get tough, recall your wedding vows. SPECIAL NOTE: This 40-page Salvation Guide is also available for purchase as a downloadable PDF at:

http://www.irionbooks.com/hell-series/divorce-hell/

Introduction

There’s nothing better than love, and there’s nothing worse than divorce. Love puts you in the clouds and divorce puts you on the psychiatrist’s couch—or on the equivalent of the psychiatrist’s couch, the third stool from the end of the bar in Joe’s Saloon of Lost Souls.

The book you hold in your hands won’t shield you from human emotions. No book can do that. But it will serve as a guidebook for you as you negotiate the heights and the pitfalls of love and marriage.

First of all, you’ll get my insights about how I suffered through two divorces and, each time, came out in one piece. Life with Numero Uno and Numero Dos sent me on two separate tailspins over a period of about 20 years, but I was able to pull up and fly right, and what I learned will help you do the same.

After reviewing those marital adventures (and the bachelor adventures that followed), we’ll jump deeply into an examination of Divorce as Ritual. This will take you on a tour of divorce customs, in all their weirdness and complexity, in many countries over many centuries.

I need to warn you: don’t stray away from the tour guide and the main group during this excursion. Otherwise, you may get entangled with grave-robbing, stray too close to a homicidal practice known as Carolingian divorce, gasp at the image of a husband who wore his boots to bed, risk your life, try to walk through a house that has been literally cut in two, and be blinded by a flashbulb exploding in your face during an steamy encounter with the Unknown Blonde. Furthermore, you may well be shocked by the substitute-baby con game, horrified by straight-faced claims of virgin birth, and dazzled by fantasies of mail-order divorce.

After that interlude, you’ll discover the truth—psychological, biological and astrological—about the Marriage Bomb known as the Seven Year Itch. If you have found yourself scratching in odd places lately, particularly if those odd places are on the anatomy of someone who is not your spouse, this chapter will put your behavior in perspective.

Then we’ll take a look at divorce horror stories—his and hers. Divorce turns plenty of people into raving maniacs, or ambulatory corpses of the kind that populated The Day of the Dead. Who knew? You’ll hear about house sabotage, classic-car destruction, Facebook trashing, underhanded scheming, fisticuffs, bureaucratic blunders, divorce-court disasters. To tell you the truth, it scares me even to think about this section.

Next stop, famous divorces. King Henry VIII and the headsman’s axe, a pre-nuptial agreement written on a cocktail napkin, a basketball player in drag, a woman who slept with a trumpet, a man hiding in a laundry basket, plus marriages so short that they were over before the parties had a chance to change out of their good clothes into something casual, and divorces so expensive that the money could have bailed out Wall Street, with plenty left over to pay back Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi-scheme victims.

Then we’ll take a wild ride through the world of prenuptial agreements, better known as prenups. Prenups deal with who gets what if a marriage breaks up, and sometimes, what happens during the marriage. It’s not all about money, though figures like $150 million do get thrown around. Prenups also specify (or try to specify) who crawls into the sack with whom, who has to stay thin or get thinner, who watches how much football, who has to give up drugs, and who has to vacation with the mother-in-law.

Thankfully, we’ll then get to the good part. That’s where you’ll learn how to avoid the fate suffered by so many couples in this book. In my last chapter, Salvation, I’ll provide you with the tools to find a long, loving and satisfying relationship. It will be a long trip, but there will be a pot of gold at the end. What do you say, should we get started?

My Story

I don’t consider myself an authority on divorce, but I’ve been around and I’ve done my research. Both my life and my research have gone into this book. I hope you’ll be able to learn something from both of them.

First of all, I’ve logged two divorces, with all the attendant trauma — emotional and financial. My two ex-wives, who I will call Numero Uno and Numero Dos based on when I met and married them, not on any sort of rating system, had their good and bad points like everyone else. This tale is not so much about them as it is about life experience.

I can’t say divorcing is ever really good, but you can learn from it, and that’s what I decided to do. What’s the point if you can’t garner something from those empty mornings waking up with a sense of loss, those hours you spend alone questioning yourself, those high-octane adventures in which you try to find yourself through hard partying?

When I decided to learn something from where I’d been, I started my research. I explored divorce rituals through history, and came up with some very odd and revealing information. I probed the mysteries of the Seven Year Itch, and found it was far more than just humbug cooked up by newspaper writers. I examined the divorce stories of the rich and famous and the poor and humble…and everyone in between. I considered the psychology and biology of human relationships. I examined prenuptial agreements and noted how they are used to try to control marriage partners and their fortunes. I even took into account the insights of esoteric fields like astrology.

I reviewed how religion has handled divorce, how various cultures have embraced or rejected it, how men and women have come to terms with it. I applied lessons I’ve learned over the years in college, in business and in life.

To understand my approach, you need to know a little about my life and relationships, so here’s an extended recap:

I was raised in southern California, went to high school in Thousand Oaks, attended junior college for a year, then transferred to the University of California—Santa Barbara. While I was studying there, I was a transfer student at two universities in Europe: Uppsala University in Sweden and Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje in Macedonia. In Sweden, there was a discotheque in my dormitory right underneath my room: talk about education!

Despite the distracting opportunities for social interaction, I took two undergraduate degrees from UC—Santa Barbara, one in biology, in 1973, one in economics, in 1974. From there I went on to a prestigious institution in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, that now is called the Thunderbird School of Global Management. I graduated in 1975 with a Master’s Degree in International Management.

My time at Thunderbird also proved to be the launching pad for my saga of marriage and divorce. Enter Numero Uno. She was a secretary at the school, and she had a way of wearing a mini-skirt, and of displaying the equipment that goes with it, that drove me and my friends wild. Watching her sashay across campus caused my temperature to soar dangerously. One day, I engaged her in conversation. She was getting a divorce. Oh, happy day! I got her phone number, but graduated from Thunderbird before I had time to follow up.

Back I went to Los Angeles, with a job selling pharmaceuticals for JNJ McNeil Labs. A few years passed, and I was a hot item in the pharmaceutical game. I was making money, getting promoted and doing great. Then I wound up in another division, selling medical equipment. My territory included Phoenix, and my address book still held the number for Numero Uno.

I called her. She was now a secretary for a local bank president. And she was still single. Lucky me. We dated, explored the joys of a company car and a company expense account, and talked far into the night. I invited her to Orange County for a visit. She accepted. I fell in love.

By now I was 27, and I had been working my tail off in school and on the job all my life. For many years, I hadn’t had enough money to pursue intense relationships, and when I did get the money, I didn’t have the time. This meant I really wasn’t emotionally prepared for marriage, but what did I know? I was lonely and thought I was ready to settle down.

Numero Uno and I married. I launched a new career selling commercial real estate on commission. Good idea in the long run, disastrous in the short run. In the first year, I didn’t make a dime. We needed to economize, and needed money to live on. The high life I’d offered her while we were dating just wasn’t there. I think the last straw for her was when she had to sell her Porsche. After a year, we drifted apart.

We started divorce proceedings, but were still living together. She started dating. One night one of her dates knocked on my door and said he was there to take out my wife. I wanted to hit him, but didn’t. In retrospect, it was the only good decision I made in the whole relationship.

We completed the divorce. There I was, single again at 28. Once again, as my work in commercial real estate started to click, I had plenty of money. It took me about a year to get back into the swing of dating, but after that, for the next 15 years, I was in bachelor heaven. I was in great shape. I ran every day, climbed mountains, worked out at the gym, took SCUBA diving lessons. I hung out at popular bars in Phoenix. I bought a Mercedes. I bought a home with a hot tub on the side of a mountain. I had enough cash to buy rounds of drinks, and to sponsor spontaneous trips. A few of my friends and I would be drinking with some girls and we’d say, Girls, would you like to have dinner in San Diego? We’d drive to the airport, hop on