Here's your pet's pet peeve. Your beloved animals suffer anxiety when you separate or divorce, just as you do. In fact, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals in London has added divorce to the list of events that can lead to "acral lick dermatitis."

Other causes of ALD – a constant chewing, sucking, and licking of a part of the body – are dogs who are isolated or bored, punished continually, or who have nervous and stressed owners. Sean Wensley, a senior vet at the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, says, “As a result of such licking, the area can become raw and itchy, which in turn leads to further licking or chewing."

Pets mirror our emotions. If your parrot plucks his feathers feverishly, your poodle pouts with downcast eyes, your calico cat meows mournfully, vets translate these things as a form of depression because, folks, they are "furry" upset by the disruption in the house.

And why shouldn’t they be?

As Wensley says, “Cats and dogs, like young children, are sensitive to adult human emotions and, when these become tense or unpredictable, this can cause stress-related heath problems.”

What are more symptoms?

"Dogs that are stressed can show signs of compulsive disorder,” he says, including chasing their own tails. Cats, he says, “can be prone to 'wool sucking' which, as the term suggests, involves sucking or chewing on woolen items such as blankets.”

Parrots sometimes pull out their own feathers after losing a mate — which, in a way, includes a human live-in companion — or experiencing some other type of trauma.

And that’s not all. The hospital’s studies show that when their owners split, pets can develop serious long-term nervous symptoms, including chewing on and biting themselves.

In Florida, there is no such thing as “joint custody”; instead it is called “shared parental responsibility.” The person given custody is technically the “primary residential custodian” and the other parent is the “secondary residential custodian.”

Why? Because courts around the world are trying to remove inflammatory words from family law, in hopes that will make divorce less fractious. In 2005, France eliminated any gender bias in the language in its divorce laws. It treats mothers and fathers as exact equals, except in one area: a wife may take back her maiden name.

As long ago as 1991, the British courts changed the language for custody, in an attempt to remove the sense of ownership that went along with the word “custody.” Because of that, 17 years ago, “we heaved a collective sigh of relief,” said Jonathan Smith, a family lawyer in Great Britain.

The problem, he said, was that the courts were using the new terms “parental responsibility,” “residence,” and (for the parent who does not live with the child) “contact” time.

But, he said, regular people, and the press, continued to talk about "custody" and "access" to the child.

And yet, people keep trying. In 2001, the Minnesota legislature adopted new language for custody and visitation, ahem, “in an attempt to lessen the animosity in custody battles.” One parent is the “primary caregiver,” but both parents are apportioned “parenting time.”

Even in New York, where we and everyone else have endlessly referred to “custody” in celebrity cases, like the Christie Brinkley-Peter Cook divorce, the actual terms are “residential custody” to one parent, making the other parent the “non-residential parent.”

Without saying one word about why his wife, Jennifer Butler, might have asked for a divorce, the actor Bill Murray said that the divorce had left him “devastated.” He was speaking about it now because he has a movie to promote, City of Ember, opening on Friday. So as with many Hollywood stars with a “hook,” he suddenly finds the need to unburden himself.

His wife filed for divorce in May, after 10 years of marriage and four sons, citing “spousal abuse” and her husband’s problems with drugs, alcohol, and sex addiction. That can’t be any fun for their sons, who are age 7 to 15. The divorce was rushed through and the information was private. She kept the children; he is allowed visitation rights and has to pay child support.

But now Murray is telling AP that his divorce is “the worst thing that ever happened to me in my entire life."

After it happened, he said, he was “dead” and “broken.”

"When you're really in love with someone and this happens — I never had anything like this happen. It's like your faith in people is destroyed because the person you trusted the most you can no longer trust at all. ... The person you know isn't there anymore."

OK, that’s a lot of self pity. And get this. The people on the movie are now claiming that the divorce not only devastated him, it made him better.

"If I could get through this in a powerful way, I feel that I have even more potential to do something," he told AP.

"I think I'd be working on a higher level. It'd be great to achieve, to do the art that I thought I was always capable of -- something that really, really affects people and grabs them and makes them feel and become alive."

Love can be sweeter the second time around. At least that's what Nicole Kidman is saying about life with country crooner hubby Keith Urban. The Australian superstars just had a baby girl named Sunday Rose.

In an interview with Elle magazine she said, "I didn't foresee it, that you can meet somebody who you have a deep and more profound love with. I don't mean to take away anything with Tom [Cruise], but I would hope that he has the same thing — I know he has the same thing with Katie. You move into a stage where you're able to be a more fuller person in your relationship."

At FWW, we could have told her that.

You learn from the past and snatch those memories and migraines and turn it around. It's called reinvention and is a script worth noting.

In fact, Kidman also discussed what us girls talk about often. Navigating solo after heartbreak can be lonely at first. "I went through this long period of being alone," she concedes. "I was very, very damaged, and I did not want to jump into a relationship because I would have nothing to give, just shreds of what I was."

But time — and girlfriends who've been there, done that — help heal those wounds, and suddenly a cute singer serenades you out of your doldrums and becomes your dream guy. And then, Poof, the science of love, instead of Scientology, creates the magic.

It could be a script right out of her many movies, including the upcoming Australia. Yes, reel life pales in comparison to her real life now. Looking back, Kidman acknowledged that, at one time, "my screen life was far more exciting and beautiful than my real life."

Not anymore.

Of course it’s a gimmick, but it got our attention. If you’re divorced, and headed for marriage No. 2, you probably don’t want to go through the whole formal wedding deal a second time, nor do you want to pay for it.

Now comes “Elope for Obama.”

For all weddings in October, the Brooks Hill Historic Church in Portland, Oregon, will donate the entire rental fee to the Obama presidential campaign. In fact, you’re told to make a check out to Obama for Change.

You can have up to 50 guests. The nondenominational church is on a hillside 20 minutes from downtown Portland. You can choose from any wedding on their website, with rentals from $395 for an intimate two-hour wedding to $695 for a four-hour wedding. Use of the baby grand is included. Local ministers, usually $200 to $300, will pronounce the vows (religious or secular), also at no charge, in support of Barack Obama. Or you can bring your own minister. Everything, of course is subject to availability. And you need to be in Oregon four business days in advance to get your license. Other than that, party on!

What can we say... Portland is that liberal a place. Cindy Lou Banks, the owner of the church, feels that Obama, if elected, would bring a new beginning to the country, and said, “What better way is there for couples to support his election than eloping in October and forging their own new beginnings?"

How does Banks make money from this? Volume!

Oh, and if you reserve the chapel ($150 deposit) and don’t show up for the wedding, they keep your deposit.

We will now give equal time to any lawyer offering a free divorce in honor of John McCain.

A recent poll of church-going Catholics in England and Wales found that the majority believed a couple should separate or divorce if they are not happy or compatible.

Nonetheless, last Sunday the Pope, speaking in in Lourdes, emphasized his disapproval of “irregular unions,” which is to say Catholics who divorce and remarry without getting a church annulment.

"Initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted," he told the French bishops. The Catholic church holds that marriage is irrevocable and indissoluble because, the Pope said; that’s the way it was instituted by Christ.

Catholics who remarry after divorcing their spouses will not be allowed to receive communion unless the second marriages are unconsummated.

Yes, that’s right. The Catholic church is not against remarriage. The church that reveres the Holy Virgin Mary is against sex.

As Benedict put it last year when he was explaining the church’s views, Catholics cannot receive communion if they remarry because then they would be committing adultery.

The Church, he said, "encourages these members of the faithful to commit themselves to living their relationship ... as friends, as brother and sister."

Now that kind of defeats the whole idea of the honeymoon, doesn’t it?

We hope these kinds of rulings don’t make the difficulty of divorce even harder for some to take. For simplified information on annulment in the Catholic Church, go here.

Liv Tyler is one of many women who find themselves young and coming to terms with a painful divorce. A-listers like Britney Spears, Kate Hudson, and Reese Witherspoon have also waded through the emotional turmoil of dissolving a partnership and starting anew.

Celebrities they may be, but, in fact, they hurt and heal just like the rest of us.

In June, 31-year-old Tyler told Contactmusic that she'd "rather live 100 percent and feel fully the sadness and loss than not have lived at all" in response to her split with musician Royston Langdon after their five-year marriage ended earlier this year.

In the October 2008 issue of British Harper's Bazaar, Tyler added further explanation on the grieving process:

"For the first time in my life, it's so much harder for me to get up and brush [off] my knees," the actress said. "I am feeling the pain and the loss of everything.

"I don't feel calm and collected. I feel neurotic, like Woody Allen," says Tyler. "I'm a Cancer and sometimes I just feel like a crab without a shell."

The Japanese Chauvinistic Husband Association is opening its doors and branching out.

We've discussed the plight of Japanese men who are affected by a new divorce law that allows ex-wives 50 percent of their ex-husband's pensions before here at FWW — basically, a whole bunch of wives are threatening to waltz out the door after decades of marital neglect.

But now we have numbers and they're pretty shocking.

Japanese wives have played second fiddle to careers, strip clubs, and drinking with the boys. Now that the divorce laws have changed, wives who are fed up have an attractive reason to leave. Some enterprising husbands have formed a support and learning group to help them figure out how to be nice to their wives.

The change in divorce law was first put on the books in 2003, but it didn't come into effect until this year. April showed a 6.1 percent increase in divorce filings, and 95 percent of the petitioners were women. Marriage counselors and legal experts across the country are predicting this is going to get worse before it gets better as wives nearing retirement age look ahead and see a future that looks bleak.

The group's founder is 55-year-old Shuichi Amano, and he says that the fear of divorce is very real for the men of Japan.

"To be divorced is the equivalent of being declared dead," he says. "We can't take care of ourselves."

When his own wife told him she was ready to leave him eight years ago, his sole knowledge of domestic responsibility consisted of pouring water over noodles and frying eggs. He realized something needed to be done. He set about starting the group, and in the meantime learned to cook, take out the garbage, and clean the house.

You’ve seen them at dinner, the couples whose fighting escalates to shouting matches or those who close their eyes into slits, purse their lips and fire off sarcastic put downs at their mates over their Chardonnay or Coors Light.

They seem like they’re heading for divorce.

Not necessarily. Some people fight and like it.

John Gottman, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, says there are three types of fighters:

• The ones who validate the other person’s experience and work it out together. (“I understand why you spent the rent money on a motorcycle for your mid-life crisis.”)

• The ones who fight vocally. (“You middle-aged, mindless jerk! How could you?”)

• The ones who agree to disagree. (“Ok, I guess I’ll have to figure out another way to pay the rent.”)

As long as the verbal fighters understand each other and aren’t bothered by it, they can stay together. Husband and wife know it’s a way to let off steam and so they manage their expectations.

In a study, Gottman discovered that couples argue about the same issues 69 percent of the time. As reported in “Psychology Today,” his long-term study of 670 couples showed that couples don’t actually resolve their problems, but learn to live with them.

Should they change partners, they’ll just get a different set of unresolved issues.

So what’s the key to happiness? “Establish a dialogue with the problems, learning to live with them much the same way someone learns to live with a bad back," he says.

The trick is to acknowledge your partner’s limitations.

Uh-huh. That’s not hard.

Gottman, however, also pointed out that the positive interactions in your relationship have to outweigh the negative arguments five-to-one.

Otherwise the couple won’t last until their silver anniversary, or even their fifth.

I was shocked. I stared at the first sentence and thought, "What is wrong with this world?"

"Alarming." That word tripped my whole reaction. "An alarming 70 percent," the news report began.

Yes, it's true. 70% of the American population thinks that divorce is morally acceptable, according to Gallup's 2008 Values and Beliefs survey.

Oh, I'm not shocked at the statistic or large figures. I'm not upset that people think it's okay to get divorced. Divorce doesn't compromise my personal morals in any way.

I was shocked because some poor news reporter out there hadn't hailed the 21st century along with the rest of us.

Aaron Leichman claimed that the statistic of 70% was an alarming number. What's alarming about the majority of people believing that it's acceptable for two people to end a relationship? I get the feeling that Aaron was one of the 30% of the people polled that day.

Ask the people who suffer emotional, physical or financial abuse in a relationship whether they believe divorce is an acceptable moral choice. Ask the people who live hollow relationships or simply co-exist with a stranger in the same house whether they believe separating is immoral.

Immoral means a deliberate violation of the rules between right and wrong. Is it a violation to say, "Oops, I made a huge mistake. Help, please?" Is it a terrible moral conflict to say, "I'm sorry. I fell out of love. I don't want to cheat you or me at a chance to be happy."

Of the other 16 ethical issues covered in the Gallup pole, divorce breezed right on through. No issues, really.

The 30% that believe divorce to be an immoral act are those who identified themselves as conservative, religious or over 65. In short, the opinion that divorce is wrong is an outdated one.