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.

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...

Married women unhappy with their sex lives might be interested in Michele Weiner-Davis’ seventh book, The Sex-Starved Wife: What to Do When He’s Lost Desire, which is due out next January. After years of working as a licensed marriage therapist and relationship counselor, Weiner-Davis feels divorce can actually create more problems than it solves.

As for the topic in her upcoming book, Weiner-Davis wrote “A marriage void of sexuality and intimacy is a marriage doomed to fail,” in a previous book The Sex-Starved Marriage: A Couple’s guide for Boosting Their Marriage Libido.

Of course, for all of the books on how to save a marriage and reigniting a lackluster—or perhaps non-existent—sex life, there are plenty others out there that articulate the desire to love outside of one’s marriage. There are books, in fact, that not only empathize and encourage the spouse who wants to stray, but actually offer blatant instructions on how to have a extramarital affair without getting caught.

Don’t want to be spotted in the local bookstore? Doing a search on infidelity on Amazon.com brings up titles ranging from Undressing Infidelity: Why More Wives are Unfaithful and Love Affairs: Marriage and Infidelity, to the even more audacious,
The 50-Mile Rule: Your Guide for Infidelity and Extramarital Etiquette and How to Have an Affair and Never Get Caught.

The 50-Mile Rule, for example, instructs spouses to “deny, deny, deny,” never get sloppy about offering playmates a home phone number and to be careful not to cheat within 50 miles of one’s home.

If you’re going through a divorce, you probably aren’t too fond of recalling the nerve-wracking weeks or months that went into the planning of the wedding. Okay, not all women approach it in this way, but for those who did, how much fun was it to prepare for the party of all parties? And as burnt and bitter as you might be now, who still doesn’t love a good wedding?

Pontificating on marriage and divorce, Andy Rooney, syndicated columnist and the resident curmudgeon on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, says getting married is taken too lightly these days. That’s partly because weddings have become such a part of our entertainment culture.

Rooney has a point.

To a certain extent, I fell into the same trap – even as an extremely cynical woman and product of divorce. Not that I jumped into marriage, far from it. Well into my 30s at the time, I lived with my husband for a couple of years before getting married.

Still, marriage is glorified in the movies, on TV and in newspaper’s wedding announcement pages, Rooney says. No one wants to hear this when they’re engaged, but it’s true.

We all think it’s going to be different for us. But it changes. Even if your husband doesn’t change. At least it did for me. Truth be told, he was the same, but I felt different. It all seemed so much more serious after it became official. Maybe that has something to do with all the preconceived notions we have going into marriage and all the notions of what it should be and the envy of those who seemingly have more loving and/or better husbands. Then there’s the longing of wanting to be back in the shoes of our single friends. And then, dare I say it, there’s the longing for something new and the excitement of being in a new romance.

Granted, abortion and divorce are against the teachings of the Catholic Church, and even those who are pro-choice tend to think about abortion in the context of single women.

Nonetheless, just as anti-abortionists categorize an unwed female who has an abortion as hedonistic, immoral and consciousness, Hutchinson assumes the same about a married couple that aborts a child, implying it views the child as an inconvenience.

There are many reasons a single woman might choose to undergo an abortion, from rape to youth and inexperience. But it’s a decision that most women don’t take lightly, even minority 15-year-old high school girls, says my friend who teaches in a New York City public school.

Likewise, conservatives should take note that if a married couple aborts a pregnancy, it’s not necessarily because they’re a couple of swingers heading down the road to hell. In fact, I know couples who have, out of necessity, had abortions—and not without heartache.

Family friends of mine, a middle-class couple, I recently found out, aborted a pregnancy. At the time, they already had three young children. Yes, money was extremely tight, but the reason they didn’t have the child was because the wife was experiencing emotional difficulties at the time. She was on medication, but even still, one more infant would have put her over the edge. That could have had terrible consequences for the three children they already had, and most surely would have hurt their marriage much more than an abortion.