Table of Contents
The Purpose of this Book
Page 1
A Brief Introduction to a Mini Marriage
Page 5
A Bite Sized Memoir: Sleepless in Chicago
Written by Michelle Nicolet
Page 9
A Bite Sized Memoir: Gay Thoughts
Written by Karen Jerabek
Page 27
A Bite Sized Memoir: A New Understanding of God
Written by Michelle Denicola Poole
Page 61
A Bite Sized Memoir: A Sticky Note Separation
Written by Dana Zamrik
Page 89
A Bite Sized Memoir: An Affair to Remember
Written by Michelle Joyce
Page 125
Mega Life Makeover –
Becoming Young, Divorced and Fabulous!
Page 157
NEXT
A Brief Introduction to a Mini Marriage
After reading The Starter Marriage by Pamela Paul, we all agreed that the term “starter” was insulting. None of us planned on “trading up.” This wasn’t a test marriage until we got a better one. We decided to find a name that embodied what our marriages were – real, but short. The term mini marriage was coined.
Mini Marriages are a social phenomenon sweeping the country. They're marriages that last only a few years and end before the couple has children. Young divorces are commonly portrayed as merely an inconvenience for the couple and not the life altering and traumatic events that they really are. Despite the short term nature of these unions, they are entered into with the hope that they’ll last a lifetime. When they end, couples typically experience an intense grief over the loss of their marriage which is rarely acknowledged in our society.
Since you didn’t have children many people shrug off your divorce as being easy. It’s assumed that you can simply slide right back into your single lifestyle like you didn’t miss a beat. And it’s true, there are no outward signs that you’ve just emerged from a divorce. But, on the inside, you’re not the same person you were before you were married. What we discovered is that it’s very common to struggle to find yourself as you go through a divorce.
Mini Marriages aren’t just a Hollywood trend either. Not only did Jessica Simpson, Avril Lavigne, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Applegate, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian get divorced after brief marriages, so did your neighbor and your co-worker and you probably didn’t even realize it. Everyone knows that the divorce rate in the United States is about 50%, but what we didn’t realize was how many of these divorces were from mini marriages. Marriage is most susceptible to divorce during the first few years with 20% of all marriages ending within the first five years. According to the Census Bureau statistics, the median age for an American woman’s first marriage is 26 years. The median age for an American woman’s first divorce is 29. Recent statistics site that 2.2 million people under the age of 35 get divorced each year. We decided to write this book to share our stories so that we could offer support and hope to the millions of women who are divorcing after a mini marriage.
We’re five women who got married when we were in our 20s and divorced by the time we hit 30. We never thought that we would be among the “divorced”, but here we are. Each of us fell in love with men that we thought we’d spend our lives with, share our hopes and dreams of the future with, have children with and grow old with. We entered our marriages thinking that they would be strong, successful marriages. None of us considered the possibility that it might not work out. None of us considered the possibility of divorce. It wasn’t even something that crossed our minds. We were in love and we were going to make our marriages work. Other people get divorced, not us. Within a couple of years, all of our marriages were over and we became those “other people.” We became “divorcees”.
None of us had just one fight and walked out the door like it’s often portrayed in the media. We tried and tried and tried some more to make our marriages work. But, they didn’t work and we refused to resign ourselves to unhappy, unfulfilling marriages. It wasn’t until we felt we had exhausted all resources and all means to save our marriages that we finally accepted divorce.
When we found ourselves in the midst of getting divorced, we looked for support on how to deal with our impending separations and divorces while in our 20s. That’s when we found each other. We connected in cyberspace from across the county, from different backgrounds and from different lifestyles. We all felt the heartache, the loneliness and the despair that comes with having a marriage fall apart. We logged onto a message board to share our stories and find friendship with women just like us. Regardless of how different we are, we bonded through our divorces and formed a sisterhood of young, divorced women.
Our message board was the only resource we found to help us deal with our mini marriages. We didn’t find any books that we could relate to and we didn’t have friends or family that could understand what we were going through. That’s when we decided to write this book. We’re here to be a testament to the fact that divorce is a painful experience no matter your age or the length of your marriage or whether you had children. We share with you our stories of anguish, confusion and, eventually, triumph over our divorces in hopes that we can bring an understanding and an insight into this underground culture that is oftentimes misunderstood. The chapters that follow are bite sized memoirs from each of us about our marriages and our divorces. In the last chapter, we offer a dose of sisterly advice on how to move on with your life and we share updates on where our lives have gone in the five years since we wrote our bite sized memoirs.
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