Category Archives: marriage advice
'I learnt these four money lessons the hard way when my marriage abruptly ended at 26.'
A man is not a financial plan.
I learned the truth of that maxim 25 years ago, when my (rather short-lived) marriage ended. It had lasted four years.
I felt like the black sheep of the family when it happened because, back in the early 1990s, it still wasn’t really ‘acceptable’ to get a divorce. Whereas now, some 50,000 marriages call it a day every year in Australia.
We were both ridiculously young – I was 22 when we married – and so not on the same page in so many ways.
I recognise I was insecure – emotionally and financially. Growing up, what we kids lacked in material ‘stuff’ was made up for in love and support. I’d learned to be very canny with money, but I didn’t want to live thriftily forever, worrying about the next bill.
I wanted to ‘get ahead’ and although I was working and intended to keep pursuing my career and bring in my own income, I had this deep-seated belief that a husband would help take care of me financially: that only together, we would get this great life with our own house.
I’ve come to believe women are hardwired for financial security. We thrive when we have clarity and a sense of control, and when we have that, certainty and confidence follow. It took some serious life lessons to gain that perspective and undoubtedly influenced my change in career, becoming a financial adviser a decade ago.
I didn’t believe in myself back then. I didn’t believe I could stand on my own two feet without a man, this man, by my side. When push came to shove, though, I could.
Four actions proved invaluable:
Build an ’emergency fund’.
The first was having an ‘emergency fund’.
Back then, I managed the money and could put a little away every week ‘just in case’ we had an unexpected big bill. It was a hangover from growing up in a household where money was always tight.
Happily married dad earns thousands as an “Ex Coach” – and gives his tips on how to win yours back
13th Nov 18 | Real Life
Lee Wilson draws on his own experience from two “very painful” break-ups in his late teens to help others.
A relationship coach, who specialises in winning back exes for spurned lovers, has claimed he is so successful, he makes thousands of pounds each month by giving his clients a few simple pointers.
Coach Lee aka Lee Wilson, 38, of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, advises around 4,000 lovelorn people each year, charging $87 (£67) for each half-hour session and $47 (£36) for an “emergency break-up kit,” including a video and text guide to rekindling a broken romance.
Happily married to stay-at-home-mum Joanna, 40, the father-of-two said: “The biggest and most common mistake people make when they’re trying to get back with their exes is to become desperate and grasping.”
Lee at home in Nashville, Tennessee (Collect/PA Real Life)
He continued: “They often beg and ask to be taken back, appealing to the other person’s mercy and immediately putting themselves in a position of weakness.
“That nearly always just digs the hole even deeper, because they didn’t go out with that person in the first place through mercy – they did it because of love and attraction.”
A relationship coach for 18 years, Lee draws on his own experience gleaned from two “very painful” break-ups in his late teens, to help others.
Stressing the importance of playing it cool and not giving your ex too much attention, he explained: “That personal experience was hugely helpful for me in my later career, because afterwards I realised the value of not trying too hard.
“Suddenly, at college, when I wasn’t actively looking to be in a relationship, I had all these girls asking me out!”
Lee, who studied theology at university, realised he was a natural when it came to giving relationship advice while working as a copywriter for a marriage guidance firm.
Lee has been an ex coach since 2006 (Collect/PA Real Life)
Leaving copy writing behind, in favour of coaching, he was soon helping couples having marital difficulties, with confidence – despite only recently having married Joanna in 2000, who is now mother to his two boys, who he does not wish to name.
His focus then turned to winning back exes when he realised the vast majority of his requests for help were coming from friends and acquaintances, looking for pointers after being dumped.
Since rebranding himself as the “Ex Coach” 12 years ago, he has been taking up to 14 calls each day from hopeless romantics, wanting to get back with people they have loved and lost.
Lee and Joanna have two sons (Collect/PA Real Life)
With clients based everywhere from the USA to the UK, Australia and Ireland, he tries to teach them to use the same aloof charm which made him a university heart-throb, back in his 20s.
Lee, who helps an equal number of men and women, continued: “I always tell people who come to me that you need to give the other person space and that means not texting them and not constantly trying to contact them, telling them how much you miss them.
“Your absence is power. Let them go and tell them that you respect the decision to end things and then let that person start to miss you and notice that you’re not there any more. When they then choose to contact you, it’s important to show them that you are in a positive place and could potentially move on.”
Lee initially worked as a marriage counsellor before becoming an ex coach (Collect/PA Real Life)
But, even with his self-professed magic touch, Lee admits that once three months has passed, after a break up, the chances of reconciliation are slim.
Still, he estimates the success rate among clients who follow his advice is between 55 and 75 per cent.
When his coaching fails, he claims there is normally an additional factor, like long distance, or a particularly acrimonious split involved.
Can You Talk Your Ex Into Getting Back Together? https://t.co/VHk6vxuoGE
— Coach Lee (@myexbackcoach) August 27, 2018
He added: “Normally, I find that my method is helpful in most instances, even the most extreme.
“For example, a man came to me after his girlfriend dumped him, because she had discovered he once went to jail – though for a crime he hadn’t committed.
“He kept phoning her to the extent that the odds of them getting back together seemed very small, when he first came to me. But, a month later, I got a text out of the blue from him saying it had worked!”
Lee at home in Nashville, Tennessee (Collect/PA Real Life)
Meanwhile, Lee said that his own rock solid marriage has helped him to coach others.
He said: “Obviously, my marriage with Joanna has helped a lot with my work and vice versa.
“My advice for anyone is just not to rush things, not to force anything or lock someone down. Focus on your partner as a person and not as an object of desire – and if you do that, things should be a lot easier and more natural.”
© Press Association 2018
'Amra and the Second Marriage': Film Review | London 2018
The director of former Oscar hopeful ‘Barakah Meets Barakah’ probes the troubled sexual politics of Saudi society in this bittersweet family farce.
Saudi Arabia’s shaky progress toward a more liberal, open society suffered a serious blow last month with the brutal murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Even so, the kingdom’s cinema industry is already undergoing a quiet revolution, with new ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman lifting a longtime ban on foreign films and opening the first new cinemas in 40 years. This past decade has also seen a trickle of promising home-grown features like Mahmoud Sabbagh’s Amra and the Second Marriage, government-approved productions that nevertheless use surreal humor and gentle satire to criticize oppressive religious and patriarchal power.
A young writer-director who studied film at Columbia University, Sabbagh earned wide acclaim for his 2016 debut feature Barakah Meets Barakah, which premiered at the Berlinale before landing theatrical distribution in several European and Middle Eastern markets. It later became Saudi Arabia’s second-ever official Oscar submission, and the first Saudi film to be bought by Netflix.
Amra and the Second Marriage has a similarly bright look and playful tone to Barakah Meets Barakah. But it also has a broader social sweep and sharper satirical edge, boldly squeezing irreverent humor from potentially contentious topics like the niqab veil, gender equality, religious hypocrisy, domestic violence, recreational drugs and sharia divorce law. Imagine The Handmaid’s Tale rebooted as a Coen brothers comedy.
This blend of universal comic spark and timely feminist subtext, coupled with the novelty factor of witnessing everyday life inside the hermit Saudi kingdom, should give Amra and the Second Marriage solid festival appeal and niche theatrical potential. World premiered at the London Film Festival last month, it next screens as part of the Arab competition strand in the rebooted Cairo film fest later this month.
This drama mostly unfolds in a modern family home in a well-heeled residential complex on the edge of the desert. Mid-forties Amra (Alshaima’a Tayeb) is struggling to raise two teenage daughters almost single-handedly, rebellious secret stoner Hamida (Um Kalthom Sara) and moody musical prodigy Jamila (Sara Alshamik), while also caring for her aging, mentally fragile mother Nafisah (Eisha Farhan).
Amra’s husband of 25 years, Hilal (Saleh Al Bashbishi), is a virtual stranger who treats her more like a domestic servant than soulmate. Indeed, she only learns through second-hand neighborhood gossip that he has made plans to marry a much younger second wife, Syrian beauty Ishtar (Waad Khayami), to secure the male heir that Amra has failed to provide.
Thrown into panic by her younger rival, whose arrival signals an imminent downgrade in her own social and financial standing, Amra resorts to desperate measures, prayers and curses in a bid to sabotage the impending wedding. She solicits fruitless advice on divorce from a smug young judge with three wives of his own, and consults a comically bogus imam who runs a shady side business selling holy water. His advice is hardly helpful: “Women are the firewood that makes Hell burn,” he cautions, “showing ingratitude to one’s husband is a mortal sin.”
A shell-shocked Amra is caught in a confusing cacophony of conflicting advice. While more progressive friends and women’s rights groups encourage her to throw off society’s patriarchal shackles, others brand her a “spiteful traitor” for refusing to bless the new marriage, and her monstrous mother-in-law Sa’adiya (Khairia Nazmi) threatens to expel her from the family home. Meanwhile, her handsome new neighbor Rashid (Turki Al Jallal), a recently widowed young father with a more westernized secular outlook, seems to offer Amra a possible escape route from stifling tradition.
Despite a rambling, episodic mid-section and a handful of underdeveloped characters, Amra and the Second Marriage is an engaging and richly detailed snapshot of modern middle-class Saudi society. While some jokes are clearly culturally specific, Sabbagh is careful to keep the satire as universal and relatable as possible, spicing up the marital melodrama with sporadic detours into comic horror as Amra harbors increasingly murderous revenge fantasies. Standing out in an Almodovar-sized ensemble of strong female characters, Tayeb fleshes out her slightly cartoonish heroine with subtly rendered flickers of wounded pride, fiery defiance and bitter resignation. There are dark currents beneath the surface levity here.
Amra and the Second Marriage is not a game-changing, taboo-smashing, feminist polemic. Its nuanced critique of social and religious conservatism is carefully calibrated and sweetened with humor, for reasons that are probably as much politically pragmatic as they are dramatically valid. But Sabbagh’s lively comedy of manners represents another welcome baby step in the Saudi movie industry’s current mini renaissance, which is good news both for local filmmakers and for fans of free-spirited, big-hearted, contemporary Arab cinema.
Venue: London Film Festival
Production company: Elhoush Productions
Cast: Alshaima’a Tayeb, Sara Alshamik, Um Kalthom Sara, Zizi Alhariri, Turki Al Jallal, Shaimaa El Fadul, Eisha Farhan, Mohammed Alhamdan, Khaira Nazmi, Waad Khayami, Saleh Al Bashbishi
Director: screenwriter: Mahmoud Sabbagh
Producers: Mahmoud Sabbagh, Anas Batahaf
Cinematographer: Victor Credi
Editor: Emad Maher
Music: Tamer Karawan
Sales company: MPM Premium
95 minutes
Woman celebrates divorce by blowing up wedding dress
Nov. 13 (UPI) — A Texas woman celebrated her divorce by destroying her wedding dress with an explosion felt from up to 15 miles away.
Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler, 43, said her divorce was finalized Friday in Medina County after 14 years of marriage and she wanted to celebrate by destroying the dress.
“I wanted to remove all things from our marriage from our house,” Santleben-Stiteler told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Photos in the attic, ring in the safe (but probably going to sell it) and the dress I wanted to burn.”
“I had a lot of advice and suggestions from friends and family, like donating it for premature babies and baptism gowns. However, to me, the dress represented a lie. I wanted to have a divorce party to burn the dress,” she said.
Santleben-Stiteler gathered with friends and family at her father’s farm in Lacoste, about 25 miles west of San Antonio, and she used a scoped rifle to trigger the explosion with Tannerite, the explosive component in exploding shooting targets.
“We were all getting messages asking if that was our explosion people were feeling and hearing around the county, up to at least 15 miles away,” said Carla Santleben-Newport, Kimberly’s sister. “It was like, ‘Uh, is everything okay over there?'”
Santleben-Stiteler said the explosion was cathartic.
“On the one hand, it was like being on set of some action movie. The explosion was huge,” Santleben-Stiteler said. “It was liberating pulling that trigger. It was closure for all of us.”
