Divorce in the Age of Social Media
“Good morning, you great big, half-crazed, pill-stealing druggy, controlling, murderous rapist,” was my morning greeting.
You might wonder if this was from a cell mate or a sadistic guard. No, I was not in prison, nor have I been – though all possibilities must be considered in a variable and largely random universe, as I will explore later. No, this was my morning wake-up call to get around to drive to Orlando for the required continuing education that all licensed professionals must attend to renew their licenses. The messenger of this wake-up call being none other than our oldest son, Bryce, whom I instructed to wake me for my meeting.
No great respecter of privacy, or personal space, Bryce had a shift through my collected correspondence and found a copy of his mother’s initial filing for an Order of Protection From Abuse (PFA). He found it such an amusing read that he called up his younger sister, Kaylee, who is studying art in Rhode Island. Being true Lynns, they considered the filing on both its factual and artistic merit and had one hellacious laugh. (more…)
This plug for Kindle, Kindle Fire and AMAZON Prime Membership is brought you by CUSPER LYNN and Facebook Ate My Marriage.
Facebook Ate My Marriage, the Ebook, is exclusively available on the Amazon Kindle and Free to Amazon Prime Members through the Kindle Lending Library.
The trade paper edition of Facebook Ate My Marriage is available wherever fine books are sold.
For other special offers visit us at www.fbamm.com and www.Facebookatemymarriage.com
Chapter 22: Dr. Kormos and a Greek Island
It had never occurred to me, until Bryce mentioned it, to relate Dr. Kormos’ visit to the event of DeeAnn’s departure. Dr. Kormos, an oral surgeon we met when we first moved to Florida, is a short stocky man, balding, with a long, thick, curly auburn beard and a sort of bacchanalian personality – which is to say hard drinking, bawdy stories, stuffed grape leaves and baklava. His wife, Larissa, who is 15 years younger than him, shows no physical signs that she is the mother of four fully grown children and is an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge of history, art and science. She is not, however, a doctor. A point DeeAnn was at some pains to drive home to Larissa when we were guests at the Kormos home several years ago. (more…)
Image by: ronsaunders47
Chapter 21: Portents and the Island
On our wedding night, DeeAnn and I did not have sex. This is not an entirely unusual event, or so friends have told me, following the full production wedding. So this, I am told, cannot be taken as a portent, despite the fact that we were quite alarmingly regular and mutually satisfied in our sexual relations up until that night. As she snoozed next to me in the airport hotel, thrumming that odd snore that was already familiar to me from our previous two years of living together (and that would grow in volume and develop a distinctive tenor quality over the next three decades), I turned on the television. What appeared was the sequence from a now ancient – and even at that time a classic – television program starring Patrick McGoohan. The program of course was the “The Prisoner,” and the sequence was the scene where the bars slam shut before Patrick McGoohan’s face as a still shot of him is moved to the foreground in the opening sequence; this all to drive home the idea that he was “The Prisoner” and was trapped on “The Island.”
It was that exact sequence that I saw as I lay in the hotel bed, newlywed, unable to sleep (as would be the case for the better part of three decades), and was considering our honeymoon plans. We were going to an island – you know the type: beautiful beaches, debilitating humidity, private hotel enclaves situated among devastating poverty, drug addiction and disease. Where smiling native escorts guide you from the hotel property, for a fee and gratuity, into the “picturesque” recesses of the “tropical island nation” to take in the local sites and nature’s majesty. All of this so that you can walk along “rarely trodden paths” to see “cascading mountain waterfalls,” which your guide has the newlyweds wade out into so they can stand beneath the falls and have their picture taken as they “embrace and shower in its pristine waters.” (more…)
Image by: ryumu
Chapter 3: Instant Messaging
In 2002, after she was involved in an accident in Urbandale during a snow storm, my wife announced that we were moving to Florida. This was not news to me. In the previous decade, my wife had spent a month or more in the state of Florida mid-winter visiting her parents every year. The trend, as they would say, was not my friend. Our dental practice had been going well, and what is more, it went better when she was absent. This is not something I recognized at the time. But love is blind and marriage is a ball gag, harness and handcuffs (if you are single and have never been married you won’t understand that part of the sentence, so don’t even try). (more…)
Chapter 2: Two Lost Bets and Failure
When I arrived at the clinic, Bernice Halson was already in the chair. In retrospect, I should have taken the day off from the practice. I had spent the morning at the attorney’s office signing the paperwork that would bring to an end my marriage. Not an event that puts one in a pleasant frame of mind, nor one that has one in the best of dispositions for the mindless civilities of professional life.
Bernice Halson on a good day is an objectionable patient. She is a committed flosser, brushes three times a day, and attends regular cleanings. Despite radiation from multiple x-rays, with a lifetime of exposure to fluoridation at every possible level, she is the possessor of a fine set of teeth. Even her wisdom teeth arrived and remained, without any inconvenience. Her teeth – like her manicured nails and well tanned and toned body – represented something abhorrent to me. As a dentist, I should marvel that the millions of dollars spent annually to educate children on the importance of oral hygiene should have produced such a perfect patient. I knew better. Bernice Halson was simply vain. Her teeth, like her French manicured toes, were possessions, and as such were maintained to their admirable standard on this premise alone. But what I suppose I find most objectionable about Bernice Halson – attractive, toned and in her early forties – is that she is exactly who and what my soon-to-be ex-wife imagines herself to be. (more…)
Chapter 19: Lawyers (Some Useful Thoughts On and About)
While I have no answers to the relationship questions (and based upon papers our company has been served with by a competing firm that struck upon the same solution we had regarding genetic testing for spousal insanity), I also now have no answers on how to make divorce profitable, outside of being a lawyer. Therefore, I do have a few pointers on the subject matter of lawyers. None of which, I am stressing here, constitutes the practice of law. (more…)
Image: by Generationbass.com
Q: While your book lampoons social media, internet addiction and the technologically induced alienation and isolation of western society, what are your personal views on FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, Twitter and other such services?
CUSPER: Let me start off by saying I do not think my novel covers quite that range of lampoon. It would have to be a trilogy to even start to take a whack at issues on that scale. I believe the novel is more about the personal experience of having one’s break ups or divorce broadcast on social media. As well as exploring how social media serves as an accelerant to the dissolution of relationships.
