Some guys just can’t help but acting like noodleheads. And some women are just gluttons for punishments.

It seems Joey Buttafucco’s second wife still hasn’t cut ties with the buffoon. Apparently 45-year old Evanka Buttafucco withdrew her divorce petition against Joey, according to the New York Post. This, even after Joey was recently photographed cavorting with his old flame Amy Fisher, who shot his first wife, Mary Jo, in the head in the 1990s.

What Evanka ever saw in Joey in the first place is beyond me and, no doubt, a lot of other women who are shocked that anyone could be with him. Wouldn’t you think knowing your beau’s first wife was shot in the head by his teenage lover would have been warning enough?

Now Joey’s tom-catting around with Amy, nicknamed the “Long Island Lolita” once again. Granted, Fisher, now 32, has been out of prison for quite a while, and current photographs show her looking prettier and much more refined than she did in 1992. But sheesh, Evanka, the world is watching.

Mary Jo, for her part, somehow always seems as cool as a cucumber on TV. Recently, she was on CNN’s "Larry King Live" with her long-time fiancée. However, during their TV appearance the two began to look uncomfortable when pressed about when they’d marry. Perhaps she has doubts about this guy too.

If that’s the case, at least Mary Jo is trying to avoid making another mistake. Evanka could learn a thing or two from Mary Jo, don't you think?

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The bitter divorce saga between former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and Dina Matos McGreevey continues. McGreevey, in 2004, publicly disclosed that he’s gay, resigned and came clean about having an affair with a male aide.

Dina McGreevey, who last month published a tell-all book, Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage, blames Jim for lackluster book sales because he called her “homophobic.” Unlike what she says in her book, Dina has also taken issue with the fact that he now claims she knew he was gay while they were married.

Meanwhile Jim says her book isn’t selling because it’s “poorly written” and “dull,” and, get this, because she dressed inappropriately for an interview on “Oprah” to plug the book. In a letter to a family court judge, McGreevey cited Dina’s “awful appearance” in “an inappropriate and ill-fitting ballgown with a plunging neckline.”

Thought your divorce was bad? Boy, do these two ever hate each other. My first impression of Jim’s comments, like most everyone’s I’m sure, was just a big “Huh? How stupid is that?” But think about how deep these marital wounds must be on both their parts.

I bet those fashion comments have less to do with Jim being an idiot and more to do with a well-thought out way of publicly humiliating Dina. He wasn’t trying to trash her for her appearance. He’s trying to prove she wasn’t the “in-the-dark” wife she says she was and, that she knew he was gay by making the most stereotypically gay comment possible.

If that’s not a man giving his ex the ultimate “up yours,” I don’t what is.

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Poor misguided Britney Spears. It seems the 25-year old poptart contacted a lawyer to cut her mother Lynne Spears out of her will, according to Life & Style magazine.

The latest in Britney’s long-running feud with her mom is that her ex, Kevin Federline, is getting cozy with Lynne and is quickly becoming her biggest ally, according to Jeannette Walls of MSNBC.com. A lot of the trouble reportedly started this winter when Lynne took Britney to rehab. Since then, the only time Lynne sees her grandchildren, writes Walls, is when K-Fed takes them to visit her. So Lynne is siding with K-Fed on the issue of custody.

Good grief! First, Britney rises to stardom with a fan base of 8-year-old girls imitating her dance moves and gyrations, then moves on to playing with a giant snake on stage, a quickie marriage, then marriage to K-Fed, bears two kids, drinking binges, partying with Paris, maybe some drugs, and public meltdowns culminating with her shaving her own head.

I remember when Madonna first came on the scene with “Like a Virgin.” I watched her morph into a Marilyn impersonator followed by a svelt brunette, then shock the world by parading as a sex fiend, later sacreligious Catholic girl, Warren Beatty’s girlfriend, lesbian, Brit, yoga worshiper, Jew and now uber-homemaker/mom and children’s book author.

Madonna’s transformations were shocking, swift and radical. But unlike Britney, they appeared to be mostly by design. Even though it shocked our parents, Madonna’s marketing genius and penchant for reinvention are what keep her in the limelight more than 20 years after she first rose to public awareness. In many ways, she's lasted much longer than contemporaries like Cyndi Lauper and Deborah Harry.

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Remember when Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley were married? Well, since her separation last year from fourth husband Peter Cook—the guy who humiliated her by flinging with his teenage assistant—it looks like Brinkley is enjoying fond recollections of her days with the Piano Man.

NBC’s “Extra” caught Brinkley and Joel on camera, albeit separately, arriving at their daughter Alexa Ray’s concert. Arriving alone, serial bride Brinkley, wearing an ear-to-ear grin, told reporters that she and Joel are friends. “We had the quickest, shortest, fastest most amicable show-biz divorce,” Brinkley said. “That’s what my lawyer told me anyway.” Joel and Brinkley married in 1986 and divorced in 1994. Joel is married to Katie Lee Joel, 26, a cookbook author and food correspondent for Bravo and the Food Network.

Granted, Brinkley was mugging for the cameras, and if her divorce from Joel was tough at one time, it’s history now and she certainly wouldn’t mention it to reporters. Still, it makes you wonder why her split from the musician wasn’t bitter, while the divorce from Cook presumably is. Could it have been because Joel didn’t cheat on her (as far as we know) and Cook did?

As easy as it is to understand how people fall into adultery, it remains the hardest thing to forget. Even separation due to something like substance abuse doesn’t have such a significant long-term effect. That may be because it’s not personal. The inability to stay on the wagon has little to do with one’s spouse. So does financial irresponsibility.

But it’s near impossible not to feel the deep hurt that comes when a partner has been cheating. It’s hard to believe we’ll ever hear Brinkley singing the same tune about friendship and amicable divorce when it comes to Cook now, or 20 years from now.

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Make no mistake about it: I’m a die-hard Larry David fan. I adore his crankiness and when I catch “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO, I can see more clearly which bits Larry contributed to “Seinfeld.”

I'm also convinced that the TV Larry David is pretty much the same as the real life Larry David so I was particularly disappointed when the news broke last week that Larry is separating from his wife Laurie, upon which Cheryl Hines' character is based. Was the split his idea? Does he have a young girlfriend? What’s the deal?

Most reports I’ve read assume it was Laurie who initiated the split because she could no longer take being around such a curmudgeon. There are people who love him and those who hate him, but as one of those in the former group, I find Larry’s self-centered ways and neurosis quite endearing.

I’m finally starting to realize why: My husband Ted is very much like Larry. I get a huge kick out of some of that complaining. In fact, I would often watch “Curb” thinking to myself, “My God, that’s Ted, but more verbal and with much more time and money on his hands. How cute!”

But as adorable as it is on TV, if you’re a fairly optimistic person, it turns into a hellish situation. If types follow suit, what Larry doesn’t portray on the show is the constant and irrational pity he has for himself. On TV, Larry’s typically a moody drag. His wife on the show, Cheryl Hines, does a fair amount of placating.

There are many other issues between Ted and me apart from his being a curmudgeon, but I can tell you with certainty, the charm of a grump wears thin after a while.

Maybe some day we’ll know what actually happened between the Davids, but for now, I guess I have to liken my affection for Larry to my Woody Allen crush—understandable, but unrealistic once you really look at the man.

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I know there are a lot reasons men and women don’t agree to a divorce when one partner wants to leave. I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish they’d just let their partner go.

Disclosures last week about Carl Bernstein’s book on Hillary Clinton which alleges that she refused to give Bill a divorce, got me thinking about the topic.

According to Bernstein, Hillary was worried about being a single parent. She also, apparently, had come to terms with Clinton’s tendency to stray before they wed, which is one of the reasons she married him.

I personally know of a few couples with similar situations where one wanted to leave and the other wouldn’t agree.

In one case, the husband of a female friend of mine won’t let her leave. From the things she tells me, he behaves like a sadistic, control freak and it sounds like he gets pleasure out of her unhappiness. (Many of their marital troubles revolve around his lack of ethics in his business, lying and putting his family in a precarious financial position).

I know of other cases that are less complicated, but have to do with economics, where the wife is fearful her husband won’t continue to contribute to the household if they separate.

What makes me the saddest though, is when women don’t let their husbands leave because they’re afraid to be alone. Maybe they can’t imagine not being with their husbands or they think they love their man too much to let him go, or perhaps they have low self-esteem.

I would hate to think someone was staying with me out of obligation, or worse, because I begged him not to leave. Letting the man who wants to leave, go, is probably the hardest thing to do, but it’s also one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves.

 

The Brits are right up there with Americans in terms of escalating rates of obesity and it appears they’re following us in another alarming trend: The increasing use of private investigators in divorce cases.

A new private investigation firm in the U.K. is getting most of its business from spouses who want proof their partners are cheating. God almighty: Following your spouse during lunch, snapping pictures from a parked car, posing as a construction worker…it all sounds eerily similar to the divorce detective character played by Nicholas Cage in the 1992 movie “Honeymoon in Vegas”. But this game is being played at a higher level.

Beyond spying on suspected adulterers and adulteresses, both husbands and wives are increasingly hiring investigators to hunt for secret assets one maybe be hiding from the other. In the long run, this quest is probably more practical and ultimately, may yield far more satisfying information.

Have the urge to say “Gotcha you x!?&”? Want bona fide proof that he’s not just working late every night, losing weight and dressing better for nothing?

Before you spend all that money to hire a detective, consider that if you live in one of the 15 states (including California, Arizona, Colorado and Michigan) that allows no-fault divorce, getting confirmation that your spouse is cheating probably won’t help your bottom line. Why? Because marital assets (or community property) will likely get split down the middle, no matter how much of a louse he is.

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We’ve heard that when men fall in love, they fall harder than women, and that males are generally happier being married than females.

However, a new study out of Canada finds that men who had divorced or separated were six times more likely to report an episode of depression than men who remained married. Also, the rate of depression for men surpasses the rate for women. In fact, men were three and a half times more likely to have been depressed than women who were still in relationships.

Perhaps, but what the statistics don’t say is which sex initiated the breakup among these respondents. If it was split 50/50, the numbers are telling. Personally, I’ve seen both reactions, that of deep depression more devastating than the wife’s, and the reverse situation from the same man.

I was a close observer of a highly masculine, very handsome, charismatic charmer who was thrilled to finally separate from his wife to be with his longtime mistress full-time. Unfaithful, (that’s what I call him), was married to her for over a decade, had two children with her but was never “in love” with her, he said, and later grew to dislike her intensely. He couldn’t stand to be with his wife any longer, but I never knew for sure if his then-girlfriend had also pressured him to leave.

Unfaithful and mistress were married immediately. They were both deeply in love and had been for years. And truth be told, she was more suited to him than wife No. 1. Frankly, I thought his second marriage would last, but she walked out on him after 15 years.

He was angry and broken-hearted. A six-foot tall wounded bird so deeply depressed, he confessed to me he considered suicide until he started taking antidepressants and running around looking for women and sex again after a month or two.

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Psychologists have long told us that some of the most traumatic and/or stress-inducing events are death of a loved one, divorce, illness, losing a job and even getting married—a happy, but nonetheless stressful life event.

It all seems to make sense, right?

Perhaps, but if you buy into some new research, it takes to task this logical information.

What ranks as more stressful than divorce? Forget death of a loved one or illness, because being promoted ranked more stressful than divorce, according to a recent online survey of business executives. According to the survey, nearly 20% of business leaders said climbing the corporate ladder not only beat out divorce in terms of stress, but also death and relocation.

Corporate life can certainly be an all-consuming hell, especially if you’re working with cut-throat colleagues but still, more stressful than divorce or death? After wondering whether these corporate bigwigs were for real, being so unable to see outside of their own life situations, it occurred to me that maybe the reason they find divorce more palatable than getting ahead is because divorce isn’t a constant condition, and is often a relief.

Surely at least a quarter of the respondents have been touched by divorce. And perhaps the end result of the hell of separation, legal fees, bitterness and even problems with children and custody arrangements, is well worth the price of freedom.

For more on this story, click here: http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/may/21/survey_promotion_more_stressf...

They're unromantic and pessimistic. Yes, prenuptial agreements get a bad rap whether they ever have to be invoked or not. And for those of us who are divorced, a fair and equitable prenup may have saved us a lot of grief, not to mention legal fees.

But here’s a new twist: Acendi Interactive, a crafty company specializing in online legal information, inexpensive prenups and other self-help information latched on to the recently released data on declining divorce rates and linked it to prenups. “Premarital agreements help smart couples stay together,” said Charley Moore, RocketLawyer.com legal commentator in a press release. “Mature couples…and their frank understanding of the financial relationship created by marriage is resulting in happier and longer lasting marriages,” Moore noted.

When I got married, I was deadset against a prenup, but in retrospect, I see Moore’s point. When my then fianceé sheepishly mentioned it (he brought more to the table financially), I was insulted. At the time, when he said he only brought it up for my protection, my response was flip: “Any prenup that I’ll agree to, you won’t want to sign.” Yes, I forgot that marriage is, in fact, not much more than a legal contract.

In my case, not having a prenup wasn’t cause for divorce, but I do believe my husband would have been less territorial about money if we had one. I married a man who, in his own words, “worked very hard for whatever savings he had,” and he didn’t want to feel he’d “lose” half if we didn’t stay married. This made me livid, and his response was to joke about “spending everything quickly” if need be.

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