"Usually men go through crises in mid-life," said Kristin Georgi, a 23-year-old manicurist who recently ended a three-month marriage with Hardy. "Not Joe," she tells the Mirror. "In his 80s, you think he would be settling down, but no..."

Once Georgi walked, Hardy filed for divorce at Fayette County Common Pleas Court in Pennsylvania citing, of all things, "irreconcilable differences."

"You think there are some differences there?" joked Georgi. "You think? There is only a 61-year gap."

The divorce has yet to be finalized, but word is that Hardy isn't wasting any of his precious time, having already found a new mate in a 22-year-old named Danielle.

Georgi, for her part, doesn't seem overly distraught by the loss. Along with her youth, she managed to get a number of expensive gifts out of the relationship, not least of which was a Porsche.

Take the case of an Israeli couple who, according to The Times of India, have set the record for the world's shortest marriage.

After a grand total of four days, the two landed in Rabbinical court with the husband complaining about the wife's refusal to live in his parents house, while the wife said she had been promised an apartment of their own. Also, not only was the wife upset about the share of wedding gifts she received, but with the husband's family's taste in gifts.

Still, it can be useful to see how goes the state of marriage in other cultures around the globe.

According to new data from the Rabbinical courts, 5 percent of the marriages last only a year in Israel. Last year, 10,000 couples filed for divorce there, which amounted to an rise of 4 percent over 2005 statistics. Even more striking, Jerusalem, which boasts a large religious population, witnessed a 10.4 percent increase in its divorce rate.

With our eyes wide open to the realities of marriage, we can safely say no culture has a monopoly on healthy relationships.

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Now, according to Israel's YNetNews, the husband has resurfaced in an Israeli jail and says he's willing to free his wife from her nightmarish situation.

The wife and her family say they made every effort to find the husband over years. To everyone's surprise, it appears as if the husband spent the whole time living right under their nose, traveling between Israel and Europe.

For her newfound freedom, the woman has to thank Israel Prison Service's chief rabbi, Yehuda Yekutiel Vizner, who both managed to locate the husband and then eventually convinced him to give his estranged wife a divorce.

After the man finally saw the light, rabbinical judges had him sign divorce papers in prison, thus freeing his wife from what was looking like a lifetime of official bondage.

Really, though, we think the woman was asking for trouble when she married this guy. Not only did he initially leave over financial woes, but in Israel, he's served six complete jail terms, and is now serving his seventh related to property and violent offenses.

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That's the home of Wang Hong and Zhang Hai, a couple who were having trouble ending a four-year marriage because of their difficulty communicating with each other and the local judge. Both Hong and Hai are deaf and mute, making communication understandably difficult.

"In the end we found using mobile phone text messages was an effective way of communicating," said Judge Xue Lixin, who made an earnest effort save the marriage herself.

"I made some phone calls and met with Wang's relatives and friends and asked them to change her mind, but they failed. She came to court four times and confirmed in writing she was determined to divorce."

Turns out it took 200 texts to finally bring an end to the marriage. So that means the first recorded divorce by text wasn't impractical, impulsive or without effort — three things we're pretty sure will factor into the first big city text divorce. Any day now.

But why are we telling you about it? Firstly, because the same people who host Daddy Divorce Camps are in the process of putting together a Mommy Divorce Camp. And second, because while these getaways are intended specifically to help daddies, mommies and the rest of the family are supposed to benefit as well.

For about $600, attendees receive crash courses in a range of divorce-related issues — from legal and financial, to family and child matters — along with anger management and stress reduction techniques. Workshops take place to rebuild confidence and assist in the healing and closure process. Campers can also indulge in some extracurricular activities like sports, a comedy show, and poker.

The poker skills aside, it would seem enormously beneficial for at least one member of a splitting couple, if not both, to get better acquainted with the above issues — and take an anger management course or three. Also, as long as Daddy's new confidence doesn't turn into bullying, we'd much rather be dealing with a man in the process of finding himself, than one lost in a sea of fear, anger, and self-pity.

"In military-speak it's about surveillance and reconnaissance," King says of keeping track of documents, old check statements, and credit card account balances. "It is war. Do not share lawyers. Remember it's war and that's the way to address it."

Thinking strategically like a general leading troops is essential. Discussing impulsive retribution, King explains: "Whatever pops into your head, don't act on it. It could end up hurting you later in court with your settlement, with custody issues."

In King's army, however, emotions are standard issue. "There was nothing out there that says it's OK if you're feeling terrible — only dry lecture books," King says of her experience when she went through her own divorce. "You need a friend to hold your hand through the painful moments. There's so much you don't know."

But like any general, King had to make her share of tough decisions. Her first order of business was to put her ex's family off-limits. As for friends, there were three camps: hers, his and theirs.

"Oh, let him have them," said O'Connell. "She had plenty of players in her army."

For couples with pets, a split usually means just that. Steve and Lynelle, the advice team over at The Herald Bulletin, recently responded to one Madison County, Indiana man facing this issue.

After settling the standard business of finances and property, he and his ex-wife were left fighting over custody of their dog. It was his to begin with, but she was now threatening to sue over custody of the pooch. She had apparently become really attached to the dog and demanded they share custody of it as if it were a child.

"I told her that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard."

In fact, as advice man Steve tells it, a number of states are actually in the process of reconsidering the status of pets as mere property. Some courts have even gone so far as to set up parenting plans for pets, including custody visits!

Both Steve and Lynelle agree the man will most likely win full custody of his dog if his ex-wife takes him to court. "Despite your wife's attachment to the animal, your attachment goes back before you met her so she would need an extreme argument (such as documented pet abuse) to take the dog from you," Steve explained.

We're pet lovers, and dog lovers all the more, but joint custody for something that drinks out of the toilet seems a little nuts. Don't these people have lives? And the idea that a court would even waste its time with something so silly says more about the litigious nature of our culture than anything else.

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Those of you who caught CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday were witness to just such a demonstration from French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he abruptly excused himself from an interview with (the fabulous) Lesley Stahl after she broached the issue of his wife and her recent departure from the world stage.

At the time of the interview, wife Cécilia Sarkozy hadn't been seen since July and rumors abounded over the fate of the presidential marriage. Two weeks later, Sarkozy's office announced it was over.

"If I had to say something about Cécilia, I would certainly not do so here," Sarkozy coldly informed Stahl before stripping off his microphone.

"What was unfair?" Stahl pleaded.

"Au revoir, merci et bon courage (Good-bye, thank-you and good luck)," Sarkozy said on his way out.

This isn't the first time Sarkozy's lost his cool over Cécilia. A French journalist who asked about the marriage at a press conference was denounced straight away for the media's "inelegance" in pursuing the matter.

Still, other than the occasional outburst, there is "no evidence that the end of Cécilia is affecting [Sarkozy's] passion and drive in his work," says Stahl. So, while politicians may not be immune to the stress of divorce, it doesn't seem to be any match for their personal ambition and acute narcissism.

In all the analysis over French President Nicolas Sarkozy's failed marriage, I've come to the realization that a public, high-profile separation is actually a lot like your average breakup.

Sure, for politicians and otherwise famous figures, there's the uniqueness of a national, and sometimes international audience, plus the fact that elections and multimillion dollar movie contracts could be impacted by the split.

But, listen to how Canada's Globe and Mail describes political marriage in the context of Sarkozy's situation: "Marriage is an extension of the leader's image. It speaks volumes about character traits that are otherwise inscrutable or absent."

To a slightly lesser degree, I'm sure this applies to anyone. We all have images to uphold, both in our professional and private lives. When separation and divorce rear their ugly heads, it forces a person to question not only how their image could be affected, but their true identities as well.

The paper goes on to say, "A strained and unhappy marriage is better than divorce for a political career. The optics of divorce are damning: The one person who knows the leader of the country more intimately than anyone else has lost faith in him."

Again, such an occasion could just as easily inflict serious emotional and psychological damage on any of us. And, again, it's not only others' perceptions that can cause harm. When faced with divorce, we all have to ask ourselves a difficult question: How could the one person who knows me better than anyone else have lost faith in me?

Take the story of Xiao Li, a pint-sized 12-year-old girl from Shenyang, Liaoning Province. According to China Daily, Xiao hasn't grown an inch since her parents divorced four years ago. Poor Xiao now stands a wee 3.9 feet tall and is towered over by her larger classmates.

Apparently, Xiao has suffered from depression ever since her parents split, an ailment doctors say can affect the production of growth hormone even to the point of slowing a person's physical growth.

Now we can't confirm the accuracy or science behind any of this. But that doesn't take away from the power of Xiao's heartbreaking story. The awful truth is that divorce does tend to damage the kids, or at least affect their emotional and, it seems, physical development.

Yours truly had front row seats to a painful separation and divorce as a child which left emotional scars that may never completely heal. It's important to remember, however, that bearing witness to divorce will likely do less harm to a child than witnessing a lifetime of family dysfunction.

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