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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While George Bush and friends ponder whether it’s ethical and morally correct to use stem cells from a handful of embryos for scientific advancement, one couple—ironically from Texas—are battling each other over the rights of their own embryos.

The couple, Augusta and Randy Roman, are divorced but stillfighting over their frozen embryos that they stored after Augusta miscarried. Despite the divorce, she wants to have children using the embryos and he wants them either to be destroyed or kept frozen.

Augusta, who is 45, says using these embryos—which were created from her own extracted eggs and Randy’s sperm—are her last chance at having her own biological children. Randy says the embryos weren’t intended tobe used outside of their marriage or in a way that limits him to serving as a “sperm donor.”

The fight and court case of Roman v. Roman is so heated it will go before the Texas Supreme Court. Previously, a Houston trial court ordered the embryos to be turned over to Augusta, but Randy appealed and won. The Supreme Court case isn’t yet scheduled, and there are reasonable arguments to be made in favor of both sides, but it’s plausible that the fight will ultimately come down to one simple document. It’s a consent form signed in 2002 stating that the embryos would be discarded in the case of divorce.

I can see how Mr. Roman, at this point in time, doesn’t want children to come out of a marriage that’s ended. But let’s face it, sperm is cheap and rather easy to come by. For him, it’s only about masturbating into a cup.

I’ve never personally had eggs extracted, but I know it’s not fun. And it’s certainly not something a woman would want to do more than once, even if she wasn’t considered “too old” to have her eggs harvested. I hope for Augusta’s case the decision is made with the sensitivity of the issue in mind.

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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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Children of divorce are twice as likely to be prescribed a medication for attention deficit disorder (ADD), such as Ritalin, versus those who parents stay together, according to a recent report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by Professor Lisa Strohschein.

The study of more than 4,700 children began in 1994 while the families were still in tact, and the result was that more than 6% of 633 children from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, versus 3.3% of children with parents who stay together.

“It shows that divorce is a risk factor for kids to be prescribed Ritalin,” said Strohschein.

While other studies have shown that children of single parents are more likely to get prescribed drugs such as Ritalin, the new study probes the question of whether the problem is caused by being born to a never-married mother, or another factor altogether.

“So the question was, ‘is it possible that divorce acts a stressful life event that creates adjustment problems for children, which might increase acting out behavior, leading to a prescription for Ritalin?”’ Strohschein told Reuters.

I say no. I might be overtired and cranky, but is this really a surprise to any of us? Does a researcher really need to spend a whopping 17 years no less, trying to substantiate whether or not divorce, or any home problems for that matter, make kids act out?

Professor Strohschein, take note, unstable conditions do affect people—kids and adults. That may, in some cases, mean divorce. Or lack of divorce for that matter, especially when the children are living in a virtual war zone whenever both parents are home. How about a study on happy vs. unhappy home situations, or kids exposed to parental fighting?

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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.

 

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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Conservative author Fred Hutchinson advances the notion that a married couple is more likely to divorce if it aborts a pregnancy. Part of the reason, he said, is because “any human attempt to change the nature of marriage has harmful consequences for the family.”

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.

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