Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well
Ashton Applewhite
Language: English
Pages: 302
ISBN: 0060928883
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One out of every two modern marriages ends in divorce, and 75 percent of those divorces are initiated by wives. Author Ashton Applewhite is one of these women, having sued for divorce after enduring an unfulfilling ten-year marriage. Cutting Loose is a wonderfully appealing book for women who want to leave their marriage but fear the consequences.
Shattering the media-generated image of the lonely, deprived and financially strapped divorcee, Applewhite provides a much needed reality check. Cutting Loose introduces 50 women, varying in age, race, class and predicament, who have thrived after initiating their own divorces. Their fears of financial, emotional and romantic ruin were never realized; on the contrary, their lives improved immeasurably, and their self-esteem soared.
Cutting Loose also answers the crucial questions: How do you finally decide to make the big break? What is getting divorced really like? What are the shortcomings of the legal process? What about custody and child support? financial and emotional survival? and how does a woman's self-image change during and after divorce?
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small children moved into her mother’s apartment when her eight-year marriage broke up. When her not-yet-ex-husband would come over and browbeat her, “I learned to be a broken record,” Phyllis recalls. “My lawyer taught me to say, ‘I have to talk to my lawyer,’ ‘I have to talk to my lawyer,’ ‘I have to talk to my lawyer.’” Women with limited resources are less attractive to top-flight lawyers, who routinely require an initial retainer of $3,000 to $10,000. If the settlement looks to be worth
Heather’s sake, Caroline and Richard put themselves in their daughter’s position, honestly and selflessly. It’s not easy—it means picking one’s battles, biting one’s tongue, and keeping the inevitable irritations and conflicts to oneself—but it’s the right move. It’s hard to manage this as smoothly as Caroline and Richard did. One strategy that can really help is to establish clear new boundaries for family relationships. Dr. Ahrons considers this essential, and suggests visualizing the
is in good emotional shape and able to deal with her children’s needs appropriately, they have all weathered the divorce well. It is reassuring to know that kids are astonishingly resilient, though no conscientious parents want to put their children to the test. When Amanda, then in architecture school in Boston, moved out with their toddler son, her husband Anton’s behavior was truly horrendous: he was incredibly abusive to her in front of Evan, reported her for child abuse, even pulled a gun
to provide. Gloria also gave up custody, because she knows she’s not Supermom. Hospitalized once for bipolar mood disorder, in the wake of her divorce Gloria found the demands of an eight-year-old from her first marriage, a toddler, and a baby too much to handle. Her older daughter still lives with her, but for the present she and Lee have agreed that the two younger children should stay with their dad. Gloria sees her son and daughter every other weekend, from Friday until Sunday. She and Lee
came as a shock, but they were able to be there for their mother. One daughter said honestly, “Mom, 90 percent of me says this is just grand that you’re getting a divorce. The other 10 percent says, ‘But it’s my mommy and my daddy.’” Shortly afterward, Olivia’s son told her that it had made him and his brother “really reexamine ourselves as husbands and men.” Olivia starts crying when she thinks about “what it’s done to the children in terms of not having a family to come home to. That is tough.”