marriage

I have great news for romantics. The American marriage is strong. Well, quite strong. Well, it's not so awful that the majority of Americans would give up their spouse in order to telecommute.

However, 5 percent would.

How do I know? Well, my regular perusal of fine, scientific research has led me to a Harris survey performed on behalf of TeamViewer.

You will become divorced from your faculties when I tell you TeamViewer makes software so that people never have to see each other. Its research, though, is socially indispensable because it sought to understand just how badly Americans … Read more

There are a million ways to signal your everlasting love for someone. You could propose while skydiving. Or you could get married in Second Life. But asking someone to marry you with Legos in a wonderful, poetic, stop motion video may take the cake.

Over at the Huffington Post this evening, there's the very touching story of Walt Thompson, who "invested 22 hours shooting and 'God knows how long' editing this stop-motion LEGO marriage proposal for his girlfriend of four years, Nealey Dozier."

Thompson told the HuffPo that he'd kept the project a secret from his … Read more

I have been a best man at five weddings, but have never myself managed to be a ring-slipper.

However, I understand the need for one human being to permanently attach themselves to another. Even if that attachment is virtual.

So I find virtual tears coursing down my virtual cheeks as I receive information that there is a problem with virtual marriages.

The game-makers (and matchmakers) at online-game site Nexon tell me that of the 26,982 in-game marriages that have joyously occurred in a game called MapleStory, 20,344 have ended in divorce.

Because I happen never to have played MapleStory, nor indeed even wondered what it is, I am grateful to Nexon for offering me correspondence with respect to the details of the world's next great social plight.

"I was young, naive, and thought I had met 'the one'," declared one player from Vancouver. "She asked me what I wanted in MapleStory for my birthday, and I told her that the only thing I could ever want was for her to marry me."

I feel virtual sniffles coming on. My shirt is becoming virtually damp. What could have possibly gone wrong?

Tyler--for that is the Vancouveran warrior's name--continued: "She started saying that I wasn't the person she fell in love with. That I had changed, and that I didn't seem to care about her anymore."

So far, so not very virtual. This sounded like an everyday occurrence in our venal little world. Spouses change their minds. Spouses feel insecure. Spouses decide you aren't "the one" any more. But wait, there was more.… Read more

If computers can create friends for you, why can't they create ministers?

This was the philosophical question that inspired Miguel Hanson, a Houston-based web developer and IT consultant as he contemplated his wedding.

As the Associated Press tells it, Hanson couldn't find an associate who would officiate at the betrothal to high school teacher Diana Wesley. So he said to himself: "Wait a minute, I am a Web developer and IT consultant. I am a Master of the Universe. One minister, coming up."

The first thought you might have if you were to create a virtual … Read more

It's almost as if Mark Zuckerberg suddenly guaranteed that anyone who was your Facebook friend would become your real friend.

Here's the very clever, wily and highly seductive Noel Biderman, founder of adultery Web site Ashley Madison.com, putting his money where his, um, whole luscious body is.

According to the Herald Sun, Biderman was over in Australia to renew his wedding vows. I am committed to seriousness when I say that.

Perhaps moved by the bliss that his own relationship has sponsored, he remembered to mention the magnanimous stiffener available to all those who desperately come to … Read more

Your spouse has been working late in the office. You fear it might be the office cupboard.

Your spouse suddenly has a friend who needs a lot of comfort after a bereavement. You suspect the comfort might have slipped beyond the cuddle.

So, please, get yourself a GPS and track that spouse wherever he or she may roam.

This is not merely my suggestion for your peace of mind. It is that of a New Jersey court that decided that following your husband or wife is not an invasion of privacy. It's more of a loving gesture of concern. (… Read more

Have you ever seen "The War of the Roses"? This was a movie in which a husband and wife participate in a considerable amount of divorce drama.

Somehow, this movie comes to mind when I hear that police have now dropped the charges in a case I wrote about yesterday involving a wife, a husband, and a fake Facebook profile.

Should you not like to click on links, let me give you the short version: estranged wife creates a fake Facebook profile for a teenage girl called Jessica Studebaker. Husband befriends fake teenage girl on Facebook. He allegedly … Read more

Apple has removed an iPhone app considered anti-gay following a wave of protests sent through the online petition site Change.org.

Initially approved and available in the App Store in October, the Manhattan Declaration app was submitted by members of the Manhattan Declaration, a movement launched last year by a number of Christian leaders espousing their condemnation of both gay marriage and abortion rights.

In approving the app, Apple originally gave it a rating of 4+, meaning it had "no objectionable material."

But described by Change.org as an application that invites people to join anti-gay and anti-choice … Read more

It seems we can't all get along. It seems that everyone is splitting up these days.

Today, one reads of Eva Longoria filing divorce papers against the San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker. Indeed, the Huffington Post now has a whole section devoted just to divorce.

Can we possibly blame the Church of Social Networking, Facebook, for these woes? Or at least some of them? Might Facebook be to blame for creating so many desperate housewives and husbands?

One man of God, the Rev. Cedric Miller, believes that all married couples should close their Facebook accounts in order to protect … Read more