I should back up. There is that bench that rings the perimeter of the store’s dressing room and is attached, somehow, to the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that comprise the four walls. I spent half of my childhood on that bench, a receptacle for my mother’s sartorial decisions. Picks piled on my lap. Possibilities dangling on my head, from the hook above.

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My mind could not comprehend what my eyes were seeing. I studied his mug shot on TV. Here was the face of the man I had loved, the cleft in his chin, his square jaw, the soft, smooth skin just below his eyes, which I’d kissed a thousand times. Who was this broken man with the downcast eyes? Did he look away when the shutter closed because he was thinking of his children? What happened to the proud young father who cradled his newborns like fragile glass, the guy with a contagious laugh and shiny blue eyes, who owned any room he walked into?  A hometown celebrity, a respected journalist, with a good wife and four great kids -- now, reduced to this. Who was this man?

The kids in bed, I turned down the volume on the TV in a futile attempt to shield them for just one more day. My colleagues in the press, with whom I’d jockeyed for position at many a crime scene, were now covering a crime that would deal my kids a blow unimaginable. “The accused is charged with three counts of statutory sodomy stemming from a series of sexual encounters with a teenage boy at a high school field house.”  For years I’d been blase about broadcasting the worst day of someone else’s life. In one minute, I knew what that felt like.

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Yet there I was standing in the kitchen one morning at 51, smack dab in the middle of a divorce, when the impending date of my 25th reared its big, ugly, gargantuan head, nearly boinging itself right off the calendar at me. Up until then, I hadn’t given any thought as to how I was going to celebrate. A few years before, I’d have keeled over on the spot if you’d told me I might be marking the milestone alone while my husband ate dinner with his fiancée.

Once reality sank in, there was no calming my anxiety. Even my regular meditation practice failed me. Or rather I failed at it. I was certain I’d be dragging myself around all day with a long face, vulnerable to spontaneous bouts of blubbering. So I immediately made a midday salon appointment. Wash that man right out of my hair, so to speak. It was a start, but only; in my mind a big day required something equally big to mark it.

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In fact, over the years, I have experienced a deep bond with Anne, particularly now that our relationship has more to do with parenting than a failed romance. Ten years ago, when we were still trying to salvage our marriage -- we’d spent years in couples counseling -- our therapist asked us, “Why would you want to be someone somebody settled for?” Why, indeed? The only answer we could honestly give was the love we each felt for Lillian, who was then 3. We didn’t want to ruin her life by getting divorced.

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It came up on my Twitter feed Friday, which made the news seem all the worse -- a bit of factual flotsam on my phone. It wasn’t some cocktail party rumor. I felt sick and off-balance, searching for confirmation, vision blurred with tears. I thought, I feel like I’m reading an obituary.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I texted my husband.

“Yeah, it’s really sad,” he wrote back, without nearly enough emotion for someone who always wore this ecstatic expression during the infinite groove on “Expressway to Yr Skull.”

“If it can happen to Kim and Thurston, it can happen to anyone,” a friend said morosely. Another asked, “Do you know why they’re splitting up?”

"No,” I snapped, feeling oddly protective of their privacy, “and I don't want to know. That's their business.”

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Tomorrow morning I submit my divorce papers to the court with my husband. If I could have anything I wish, I wouldn't be doing this. We'd both be going to counseling and giving it our very best to save our marriage. But he didn't want to, so we are going to be divorced.

We don't have kids, so it's made things easier. We're not fighting about possessions or money. We're just walking away after 15 years of marriage.

We've been separated for nearly two years, and I've been going to counseling all along. He hasn't. I've changed, he hasn't. I still love him. I don't know if he ever really loved me. I've come to accept it, thanks to antidepressants and the love of my many good friends and family -- cousins, who live in a nearby country and whom I see a couple of times a year. I love my husband's big family like my own, and I've done everything to remain close to them. I know they love me and I will continue to see many of them and my nieces and nephews. I would simply die if I thought I couldn't have them in my life anymore. I love them so much. So, it sounds like I'm doing fine all things considered, doesn't it?

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I love your column and think you are very wise. I could use your advice. I am an early 40s woman who has been twice divorced. The first marriage was right out of high school, no kids thankfully, and the second one was in my early 30s. Again, no children came of this relationship. Both husbands cheated and that is the reason I left. I did a great deal of emotional work on this pattern of picking men and realized I was picking narcissists.

I started choosing men who were the opposite of narcissists -- guys with Asperger's disorder. Men who were so thankful to have a date that I knew they wouldn't cheat on me. This resulted in a history of three-month relationships. I began to feel I was cursed, that all my relationships would end at three months. My point of view is that it takes me that long to see the real person without the illusion that we tend to create in new romances. I am always the one to end relationships.

I am currently in a new relationship with a person who I have a great deal in common with. He is definitely not Asperger's. He seems insightful, caring, giving, intelligent, funny and thoughtful. However, it seems we have a lot of disagreements.

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Without exception, their wives or husbands had told them they were not in love with them anymore, that they were disenchanted with their marriages and wanted out. For most of them, it came as a complete surprise; all of the people around the Sunday table were "dumpees." The "dumpers" did not need a group.

I never wanted to join their ranks -- but life doesn't always give you what you want.

My wife and I met in 1992, after I won a prize in a literary magazine. My wife's then-husband was the editor of the journal, Prism International. He and I became fast friends. His wife was gay. Eventually, I offered his wife an ear if she ever needed to talk. She and I met at a reading I gave a few months later, and I had sprung-socket eyes, I swear.

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I am a young newlywed with a wonderful child who is the best thing that could have happened to me. My husband and I love each other, but I primarily married for the benefit of our young daughter that we had before the marriage. I realize now this was a huge mistake; I have recently caught him having an affair. This is not the first one and most likely won't be the last. Now I feel trapped. I have no intentions of leaving him, because my daughter means too much to me to destroy her world, so I try to make the best of the situation. I know that he loves me, regardless of what happened, and that combined with our daughter is enough to convince me to stay for now.

The problem I am having is that we have these insane fights over things that I do not understand. He will blow little things out of proportion, like when I have plans to spend the evening with girlfriends (this usually primarily causes us to fight, even though when he has plans I say nothing), and then claims that I am the one starting the fight and not him. He is oblivious to ever being mean or starting these fights, so when I get mad in turn he thinks I am being the ridiculous one. It's like we are in different universes, and this leads to a huge breakdown in communication and we eventually just stop talking about it. He forgets about it an hour later and is fine, and I in turn am angrier than ever. It brings up all the emotions in me that I have held onto from the recent past, which primarily screams "you need to leave this marriage, it's not healthy and not normal."

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The sweet keepsake, which I've saved in an Ikea box, along with childhood photos, feels thoroughly modern to me. It looks like something a young, proud -- and dare I say -- hip couple might order from an Etsy vendor. But to family and friends at the time, the memento reflected my parents' sensibilities. When I came onto the scene in 1978, all squishy and pink -- their second daughter -- my mother and father were already running a well-established million-dollar children's clothing business. 



My parents invented the concept of what today we fondly call the "ironic kid's T-shirt." You can thank them for those silk-screened onesies with despondent statements like "Unemployed."

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Shriver separately issued a statement saying it was a "heartbreaking time," and one of their children, Patrick, expressed sadness and a yearning for normalcy in a Twitter message.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver jointly announced May 9 that they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. Yet, Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier in the year after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the child is his, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger told the Times on Monday in a statement that was later sent to The Associated Press. "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry.

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Schwarzenegger and Shriver jointly announced May 9 that they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. Yet, Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier in the year after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the child is his, The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger told the Times in a statement that also was sent to The Associated Press early Tuesday. "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry.

"I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time," the statement concluded. "While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not."

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"This has been a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us. After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion, and prayer, we came to this decision together," said Maria and Arnold, adding that they would continue parenting their four children together.

"They are the light and the center of both of our lives," said the couple, whose marriage in 1986 has suffered more than its share of ups and downs.

Maybe there had been warning signs of late: a YouTube video from March where Maria asks her audience for advice for getting through a "transitional period"; active tweeting from both parties on April 26 without mention of their anniversary; Schwarzenegger's recent trips to France, Nigeria and Brazil where frequent Internet updates made no mention of his wife.

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"Dad says I don't have to talk to you" were his first words.

I stifled the urge to run. Instead, I introduced him to my 2-year-old daughter, Lila, who stared up at him in awe.

Without breaking eye contact, he took her juice box, crushed it in his hand, and dropped it on the ground. Then he turned to his father. "Can we go?"

So much for meeting cute.

Tom and I moved in together three months later, but it took four years, five therapists and another baby to turn us into a family. I remember the turning points: the day 8-year-old Aaron knocked down a boy who had pushed Lila in the McDonald's play area. The first time I helped him study for a test and, later, saw the triumph in his eyes when he got an A. As the years passed, the bonds strengthened. Lila, whose father had abandoned her when she was 2, started calling her stepfather "Daddy." The older kids banded together to torment their little brother but defended him with fists and kickboards when he was bullied at the town pool. We survived learning disabilities, braces, bad grades and annoying questions about our different last names.

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I met my husband when I was 24 and he was 26. We married two years later, and except for nights we spent apart, I can't remember a time in the first nine years when we weren't physical. We lived in the Pacific Northwest, and we hiked often, finding it impossible not to stop and fool around in the many meadows and forest beds we created. When we decided to get pregnant, I had read that it was best to wait 36 hours between bouts of intercourse, and it became a running joke that we were the only couple we knew who had to have less sex in order to have a kid.

But things changed.

No one is to blame for where that piece of me went for the five or six years when sex felt like an obligation, instead of what it had been in my 20s: fun, an expression of pleasure and love, and did I mention fun?

Certainly, I played a part. Just before giving birth to our second child, I had blown a disc in my neck. Chronic pain, pregnancy and prescription painkillers are not a recipe for erotic bliss. Instead, I found the closeness I'd always craved holding my children, nursing, carrying an infant. My husband's job sent him out of town once or twice a month for days at a time, and I was in a high-pressure graduate program when I wasn't caring for our children.

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Six and a half years ago, my first and only marriage detonated after only 14 months. My ex-husband, a recovering alcoholic with, it turned out, much bigger mental problems, left in a spectacularly sudden and cruel fashion. He said he'd never been attracted to me, and he told lies about me to his family and friends, and he left. I was lucky, empirically, to get off this easy and only lose a little over three years of my life to the debacle, but the shock of it was deeply traumatic and I was shattered. I was 34.

That winter was one of the wettest in Los Angeles history. It poured and poured, reflecting my own relentless floodgates of pain and confusion. I cried, I screamed, I beat pillows. I found an apartment and moved, and cried and screamed some more. I went to work each morning and spent my days working with foster kids in the inner city, and then I returned to my little apartment and spent the evenings watching the rain and crying.

After a couple of months, I logged into Netflix looking for a critically acclaimed show to help me feel something different -- something better, maybe, or at least more complex -- preferably a show with at least four or five seasons out on DVD and ready for rapid absorption. I found "Sex and the City."

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On Howard Stern's show earlier this week, Arquette -- who has spoken in the past about how having sex with other women made him feel "pretty manly" yet also made him cry -- copped to trying to bust a move on his estranged wife during a family trip to Disney World. Or, as he put it, "Listen, I tried to fuck her, and she doesn't even want me." Apparently his smooth come-on line to her that "This is the happiest place on Earth! Let’s make it happier!" only got him to the makeout stage; he admitted: "We were ... eighth graders. Seventh graders."

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That we could stand together even for a moment was miraculous, given the lawyers and the lies. Given Exhibit A of the property settlement agreement, an Excel spreadsheet detailing what was his and what was mine. And Exhibit B, the visitation schedule for our three children, age 1, 4 and 5 at the time.

That was nine years ago. I think of that photo as I pluck items from the memory trunk I keep in my office. I wonder how we might have looked, in those moments after the divorce, when our life was a drizzle, and the rain fell like so much broken glass. I wonder if Larry still has the snapshot -- and why he ever asked someone to take a picture in the first place. Maybe that was closure for him, a seam on the day once the camera clicked.

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I've been reading your column for quite a while, but I have yet to see any problem similar to mine. I'll get right to the point. I'm in love with a dreamer. I like to dream, too, but I also like to face facts. Neither of us are getting any younger. He's 57, I'm 55. We have known each other for over 40 years.

We dated as teens, but he was a bad boy then. To make a long story short, he went to jail, and I met and married his older half-brother. It was a huge mistake on my part. My marriage only lasted nine years. We didn't keep in touch. When he got out, he married and his lasted 25 years before it also fell apart. Last year he found me through Facebook, and asked me out, and we have been together ever since.

Before I started dating him again, I had been alone for over 10 years. I was quite used to taking care of myself and I think I'm pretty comfortable in my own skin. Other than the time he was in jail, he has never been alone, and seems to be quite uncomfortable with the very idea. He says he wants to marry me, move to a warmer climate, and get a fresh start. That is his dream, but it's not mine. I would love to spend the rest of our lives together, and I would marry him, but I don't want to move.

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