​If you’ve been on this earth for more than half a century, you already know contracts are worth their weight in gold. And, with so much at stake, a marriage contract should be no exception.

The statistics aren’t kind to our age group. In the United States, adults aged fifty and over divorcing have roughly doubled since 1990.

It’s Your Marriage. Shouldn’t You Make the Rules?
It was in October, 2014 that I tuned into Global TV’s The Morning Show. The hosts were interviewing authors Susan Pease Gadoua and Vicki Larson, who had just written a new book entitled ‘The New I Do’. This book shed new light on how we look at marriage and offered seven alternative models to redefine matrimony for the 21st century. I thought this was fascinating and decided to dig deeper.

What stood out from the interview was the concept of a partnership or marriage in real-world terms. This made sense. Since such a large percentage of marriages don’t last, there must be alternatives or at least a better way of forming a marriage. (This is not the same as a prenup, which deals exclusively with the distribution of assets after marital breakdown.)

Let’s Try This Instead
We have the power to make our own rules. It starts with two consenting adults and a renewable contract. That’s it. As part of a negotiated agreement, your partnership or marriage would include your expectations, conditions, and terms. Your roles would be clarified — removing the ambiguity of who’s responsible for what; no controlling or assuming roles.

If both parties agree, it is legally binding. If the relationship is going hunky dory, you can renew or tweak your agreement. From there, your love, passion, friendship, or whatever you want your relationship to look like will have a better chance to grow.

What Does a 21st Century Marriage Look Like?
What are you looking for in a relationship? Do you know that love is not on everyone’s priority list?
Compatibility
Companionship
Active sex life
Relationship based on lifestyle and desires rather than romantic love
Guilt-free open relationship
and more…

The Long Distance Relationship
My research into ‘gray divorce’ started on a recent trip from Calgary to Edmonton. Having no desire to do this four and a half hour drive in the middle of an Alberta winter, I decided to travel by way of Red Arrow bus. For those unfamiliar with Red Arrow, it is a luxury version of Greyhound.

Read the full article

Baby boomers are guilty of having an attitude that there is nothing younger generations of women can teach us — aside from possibly tech. We’ve been there, done that, and we are the generation that made their lives so much better. I’m calling bullsh#t.

Thoughts from a Gen XerIn 2004, I was employed as a legal assistant (we were called legal secretaries back then) in a mid-sized law firm. We “old timers” would sit around the staff lunchroom and discuss how we would fix all the world’s problems should anyone ask. There were four or five of us in our core group, all 40-ish, except one in her 60s. A new staff hire, a 32-year-old woman I’ll call Sheila, had recently joined us. We may have been a pretty opinionated bunch, but we remained friendly and welcoming to new women. There were no male secretaries at that time.

I liked Sheila right off the bat. She was tenacious: divorced, raising three children on her own, and could easily pass for eighteen. In fact, she told us that when she bought lottery tickets, they would card her. Maybe she was bragging.

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.
— American writer, Harlan Ellison

One day, the lunchroom conversation turned to movies. Sheila mentioned that over the weekend she had watched a new movie called Saw and commented on how much she had enjoyed it. If you aren’t familiar with this 2004 film, it’s a gory, violent, psychological horror.

Thinking I was an expert on cinema, I immediately piped in, “I’ve heard about that movie, and it sounds like garbage.” Without getting annoyed at my rather rude, off-the-cuff remark, Sheila said that if I happened to be a fan of the psychological horror genre, I might think otherwise. That shut me up. She was right. If I were a member of its target market, I would be in a position to rate it. This was the equivalent of a devoted opera fan being asked to comment on a British punk rock band. I was trashing a movie I had never seen and had no interest in.

It appeared Sheila was more astute than I had given her credit, and I found myself taking an interest in what this Gen Xer had to say.

Read the full article