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Stonehenge meets Easter Island in Texas |
Stonehenge has always been fascinating to me.
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Jimmy Vaught |
I've never been to the English moor to see the real deal - just to the one in Kerrville that's made of chicken wire and stucco. It used to be in a field near Hunt, Texas along with "reproductions" of Easter Island heads.
Each summer, when we vacation near there, we make a pilgrimage to see it. I wish I had been able to meet the people who built it. I imagine that it was the husband's obsession, and the wife simply shrugged and let him do it, and eventually left him, alone with his vignette in the field.
In most divorcing couples, one of them is "ready" and the other one is in denial about the breakup of the marriage. Very few come to the conclusion at the same time and in the same way. For most spouses, there comes a moment of realization for one of them that things are not ever going to change or get better, and the only option left is to leave. At that point, that spouse comes into my office and says, "How soon can this be over?" They have made the decision and moved on. The hard part for both spouses is that the divorce takes both of them to come to an agreement. It takes time for the grieving spouse to realize that this is not a bad dream, it is not going away, and that everything that was a given isn't anymore.
The divorce process moves along at a pace that is set by the most resistant party involved. I can maneuver and push it along to some degree, but to do so requires the court to intervene and order the other spouse to comply with each request. Hearings are expensive and most clients don't want to spend the marital estate on unnecessary attorney's fees. I often refer clients to various mental health professionals to work with the couple, outside of my office, so that each party has time, in a safe and moderated forum, to hear and understand the other spouse's issues. Sometimes, not often, they reconcile because they are finally communicating with each other.
When one spouse cannot or will not accept the divorce, and refuses to bend on any issue, no matter how small, we go to trial. I find that when a trial is necessary, almost always at least one of the spouses is impaired, either by a desire for revenge, mental illness, arrogance or unrealistic expectations. Trials rarely have the desired result that the spouse who refused to compromise dreams for. No one in the judiciary, to my knowledge, has ever taken a cheating spouse out behind the courthouse for flogging and public humiliation.
Many times the spousal divorce dance plays out along gender lines, as our guest author Matthew Ferrara, suggests, in his article below. In my experience, not all Martians see in black and white, and not all women experience life in color. People run the full gamut, and that's part of why family law is still fascinating to me.
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