The Washington Post recently reported on Japan's declining marriage rate. Short story: Men are looking to wives to take over maternal roles, and that scenario isn't very appealing to most single Japanese women:

"There is the rarely stated but almost universal expectation of Japanese men to be fed, clothed and picked up after. 'I am willing to take care of and give comfort to a man whom I care about, but that does not mean I want to be his mother,' she said."

In fact, WaPost found that women who had married were less likely than their male counterparts to remarry after divorce. The article states that post-divorce, men are unhappy and remarry quickly, while "the women are relatively happy and often delay remarriage." Perhaps it's the "burn me once" theory?

In addition to the lack of women looking to take on the mommy role, a stalled economy and a posh home life are keeping adult children in their parents' homes. A Calgary Herald piece from early August reported that Japanese parents — fed up with housing, feeding, and taking care of their single adult children — were taking matters into their own hands and organizing events exclusively for parents to find mates for their children.

"A government report from 2005 showed 71.5 percent of men aged 25 to 29 were unmarried, compared with 47.1 percent in 1990. For women, 32 percent from 30 to 34 years of age were single, compared with half that number in 1990."

We mentioned earlier this month that former James Bond George Lazenby and his most recent wife, Pam Shriver, were getting divorced.

As we all know, it's part of the United States Constitution that all celebrity divorces need drama, intrigue, and gross accusations in order to be granted in a court of law. This one, however, is particularly interesting.

Lazenby's ex-wife is making accusations as well.

The Bond star and his first wife, Christina Mather, have been divorced for years. Now she's claiming that he broke her nose when she was five months pregnant, more than 30 years ago. Their daughter, now 34, claims he shoved her head into a toilet and held a gun to her head when she arrived home after her curfew. On this front, Lazenby admits to nothing more than totally ignoring his daughter from the time she was 12 because his younger son was dying of cancer.

Shriver, meanwhile, is claiming that he's drunk around their preschool children and tries to force-feed them alcohol. Lazenby, on the other hand, claims that Shriver is constantly high and drunk and drives the kids around while in a total stupor. Naturally, she says he's lying.

Some day I'd like to write about a celebrity divorce trial where one party completely and fully admits to the wrong-doing. "Yes, Your Honor, I did in fact sleep with the labor and delivery nurse while my wife was giving birth to the twins."

If your new man was going to be working with the home wrecker who took away your husband, what would do? That dilemma may now be facing the lovely Reese Witherspoon, who, post-divorce from Ryan Phillippe, is seeing Jake Gyllenhaal.

In Touch Weekly says that Abbie Cornish — the actress whose affair with Ryan Philippe caused the end of his marriage to Reese — may be cast as Jake Gyllenhaal's love interest in an upcoming film.

Of course the natural instinct would be to say to Jake, "No way do I want you to act in that movie with her." But getting roles in Hollywood is not as easy as finding the latest Fendi bag, and directors make casting choices, unless the actor is a major A-lister. Witherspoon is in that league; Gyllenhaal is not.

And in that line of work, many relationships are created by on-set romances. Angelina Jolie met two husbands and her current amour — Johnny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, and now Brad Pitt — while working on films.

Robert Rodriguez left his wife after meeting Rose McGowan; Russell Crowe had an affair with Meg Ryan, causing her to break-up with Dennis Quaid; and Reese met Gyllenhaal while doing the movie Rendition.

That, of course, is one of the perils of that business. Few other places have you kissing strangers passionately as part of the job requirement, or going off to an exotic location for months, away from family and spouse.

But many people meet their future spouses at work. In an Elle/MSNBC poll, two-thirds of the 31,000 people polled reportedly flirt at the office.

But take heart, that your heart may not be permanently broken. Flirting is flirting.

Only 55 percent of office relationships turn into marriage, according to the Society of Human Resources Management.

Imagine being a refugee from a war-torn country and being told that in order to stay in safety, you had to get divorced. I’m pretty sure we can all say that would be tragic and a travesty of justice.

Now imagine you had two spouses, and the country you were living in said you had to obey the law and pick one. Not such a travesty of justice anymore, is it?

An unidentified Iraqi man has recently decided that he would rather go back to Iraq than stay in Denmark and give up one of his wives. Man, even writing the words “one of his wives” freaks me out. It seems like many of the men I know have a hard enough time being married to one woman, let alone two.

The lawyer handling his case explains the situation like this: “Most of all his wives are saddened by this affair; they don't feel welcome in Denmark.” When I read that the first time, it sounded like they were saying most of his wives were saddened. As in, most of them are saddened, but the rest are handling it like troopers. How many wives does this guy have? But no, he’s only got two — and they’re both bummed.

The crazy thing about this whole situation is that if he did divorce one of his wives, no one in the family would face deportation. They’d all get to stay. The wife who got the axe could still stay in the same house. Let’s face it, they’re in Denmark — nobody’s going to stone him for having two baby mamas. But he likes his family the way it is, so he’s packing up the wives and kids and heading back home. “Now they have left to see how things are in Basra,” says his lawyer.

Well, I think we all know how things are in Basra, but the best of luck to him. I hope to God nothing happens to his children when he gets there or he will be regretting his decision for the rest of his days.

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This is no laughing matter. After just eight weeks of marriage, "Saturday Night Live" alum Chris Kattan and his wife, model Sunshine Tutt, have split.

"Separated for the moment. No plans for divorce at this time," his rep told Us Magazine.

Kattan, 37, and Tutt, 31 — who began dating in 2005 after meeting at a birthday party — tied the knot this past June 28th in Yosemite Valley, Calif. Kattan popped the question at Tutt's grandmother's home in Gainesville, Texas, on Christmas Eve, 2006. He gift wrapped the ring in a present, added Usmagazine.

"She is so kind, sweet and very beautiful. She's also very funny which always is a great thing. She's also very much like me," Kattan blogged on his Website in August 2005.

"She makes me very happy," he went on. "It feels real and honest and I have more of a continuous smile than I have ever had before."

Apparently the smile quickly turned upside down, as often happens to celebrities soon after the wedding.

Any therapist or religious leader will say that the first year is the toughest as people adjust to each other’s habits and routines. But that hasn’t stopped many celebrity couples from divorcing each other after less than a year.

Jennifer Lopez and dancer Chris Judd were married and divorced in less than 10 months, Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney in less than four months, Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage in less than three months.

However, there is hope for lasting unions. Jennifer Lopez subsequently married Marc Antony on June 5, 2004, and they have now been married four years... almost a lifetime for a Hollywood marriage.

Phil Collins isn’t having Another Day in Paradise this week, because he will be paying his third wife, Swiss-born Orianne Cevey, around $47 million in their divorce case, the largest payout ever by a British entertainer.

But at least the 57-year-old singer-songwriter has had a Groovy Kind of Love in the past few years with WCBS-TV anchorwoman Dana Tyler, a divorced woman, 49, who at least is closer to his age.

The two met when Tyler interviewed him in 2005 and they realized there was something In the Air Tonight.

Cevey acknowledged in a later interview that the couple had grown apart in 2005, and were leading Separate Lives. “We really got on well and then we realized our interests were not the same anymore,” said Cevey, 35, who met the singer when she was 22.

But she says, he will always Be in My Heart since she is looking on the “positive side.”

He has agreed that That’s Just the Way It Is, and, frankly, I Don’t Care Anymore.

Collins will keep a home in near Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, near their two young sons, Nicolas, 8, and Matthew, 4, as well as a bachelor pad in New York and a home in England.

But this is shaping up to be a far more amicable divorce than his previous two. Maybe he has learned from experience.

To end his relationship with his second wife, Jill Taverman, after he met Orianne, Collins gave her the heave-ho via fax. Apparently he couldn’t wait One More Night.

(The fax maneuver was worthy of the Artful Dodger.)

However, he still was generous in his divorce settlement, which at the time was more than $34 million for a 14 year relationship. They had a daughter, Lily, together.

Collins also had an earlier marriage to Andrea Bertorelli, which ended in 1980, and produced two children, Simon, 28, and Joelyi, 33.

I would like to tell you that I was once married to Che Guevara, but that would be a lie. (Your first clue is that Che died in 1967, one week after my mother turned 11.)

Since the revolutionary with a modern-day cult following couldn't have me, he had to settle for Hilda Gadea, who has written "My Life With Che", a book chronicling her tumultuous marriage to — and subsequent divorce from — the rebel with a very real cause.

The book is being billed as the history that starts where “The Motorcycle Diaries” left off.

Gadea, who met Guevara in 1953 at the tail end of his motorcycle tour across Latin America, was not initially impressed. "He seemed superficial, egotistical and conceited." As they swooned over poetry and a mutual love of the Guatemalan government, though, she changed her tune and they got married in 1956, six months before their daughter Hildita was born.

It seems Gadea wasn’t the only one with doubts about the romance. A few days before their marriage, Che wrote in his diary, "For someone else it might be one of the great moments in their life, but for me the whole business is rather painful. I'm going to be a father, and in a few days I'm going to marry Hilda. For her, this decision was a dramatic one; for me it was hard. She's finally getting what she wants, though only for the time being as far as I'm concerned, even if she hopes it'll be for good."

Che was right, and when mother and baby Hildita joined him after an extended absence in January 1959, he greeted her with the news that he had met someone else and wanted a divorce. He married his second wife a few days after the ink was dry and was still married to her when he died eight years later.

You'll be happy to note that he still found the time to father another child out of wedlock a few years before his death.

Your mother was right. If he does it with you, he'll do it to you.

Married men are 7 percent more likely than married women to commit adultery. And when a man has an affair, he doesn’t seem to consider the consequences of his actions. So says a study to be published in the fall, “So What Did You Do Last Night? The Economics of Infidelity.”

Infidelity for women peaks at 45, the study found. For men, it peaks at age 55.

Gee, what 55-year-old confessed adulterer has been in the news this week?

John Edwards, who claimed a week ago that he at least had been “99 percent honest” in his statements about the young filmmaker Reille Hunter.

“… [A] wealthy, famous politician such as John Edwards is a man with plenty of opportunity, and it seems that he gave the costs of getting caught little consideration. [That] fits well with our findings,” Bruce Elmslie, an economics professor in the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire and a co-author of the study, told Firstwivesworld.

The study, co-written with Edinaldo Tebaldi, assistant professor of economics at Bryant University in Rhode Island, was based on data from the United States General Social Survey.

It is unusual in that it looks at infidelity from a cost-benefit analysis, rather than a sociological or psychological point of view.

Other points made in their study:

1. Men who are more likely to commit adultery:
• Live in cities (where there is greater opportunity to escape discovery)
• Do not have a college degree
• Do not belong to any particular socioeconomic group

2. What men do not take into account when having an affair:
• The economic status of the new woman, or her ability to bear children
• Their wife’s educational level
• Religion

"As with spousal education, men don't weigh the costs — spousal quality or eternal damnation — when deciding whether or not to have an affair," Elmslie said.

The gossip was right. A month ago, it was reported that Shaquille O’Neal and his supposedly estranged wife, Shaunie O’Neal, were back on the same team. They were spotted applying a full-court press on the beach in the Cayman Islands.

And now, nearly a year after filing for divorce, Shaunie O’Neal says they have changed their minds. Shaq’s divorce petition, filed in Miami in September, 2007, said their marriage was “irretrievably broken.”

Apparently, that was only a brief time out.

"Neither one of us could probably answer why we were getting one in the first place," Shaunie told AP.

and for the new web site Shaunie is launching, this marks the end to the sometimes hilarious charges, suspicions, and counter charges.While it’s good news for the institution of marriage, and for the four children they have together — Shareef, 7, Amirah, 5, Shaqir, 4, and Me'Arah, 1 —

Babies out of wedlock while they were married (him), an affair with a female trainer (her), stashing money (her), selling their Star Island mansion in Miami in November to A-Rod, and apparently telling him a thing or two about divorce (him), selling items on eBay (her), and a new contract with the Phoenix Suns (him).

There was a prenuptial agreement when they married in December, 2005. Shaq’s divorce petition gave her physical custody (considering his new home in Phoenix, and his traveling schedule, that’s only logical) and allowed him liberal visitation rights.

Now Shaunie says that they plan to blow the whistle on the divorce proceedings. "Things have been going so great, that someone actually had to remind us that 'Hey, you do remember those papers are still there.' Literally, it was days ago," Shaunie said.

"So, we've agreed that before we leave Florida in a few days we'll make sure that that's gone away."

Unless all this has just been one big free throw.

Lately people are throwing poison darts at Elizabeth Edwards for supporting her husband’s bid for the Presidency even though she knew he was unfaithful. Excuse me?

If a doctor’s wife finds out her husband has been unfaithful, should she stop him from performing surgery, something he has done for 20 years. After all, you are supposed to trust your doctor.

Politics is a business too.

Elizabeth Edwards may not have believed in him as a perfect husband after learning about his affair with Rielle Hunter, but I’m willing to bet she believed in him as a candidate. They shared a world view, a sense of justice, and a commitment to public service.

That is the person she was backing for President, not the flawed human being who made a mistake. The people who throw around the words “staunch family values” must know that staunch family values means keeping a marriage together.

“’Til death,” right? Not “’til one of us makes a mistake.”

The Edwardses have spent years together, and many of those years running campaigns. It’s what they enjoyed doing, what they shared. Or maybe it was what he enjoyed, and she loved him.

After getting a cancer diagnosis in the last month of her husband’s 2004 campaign for vice president, a shock to both of them, maybe she felt that she owed him another campaign. John Edwards’s second run for president was supposed to be a legacy for her children.

Maybe she thought that this campaign would have a happier ending.

It didn’t.

He withdrew from the race in January. She found out her cancer had returned in March, and was incurable, if not untreatable. And this month, all of the rumors about his affair were confirmed.