This was something that former View host Debbie Matenopoulos didn’t want to see. On Internet sites, there were rumors that her husband was cheating. Now to her shock and dismay, her husband, the music executive Jay Faires, has surprised her by filing divorce papers in California.

"I am deeply saddened by the dissolution of my seven-year relationship with my husband, a man I truly believed I would be with forever," Matenopoulos said in a statement to E! News, where she now works. “Although my public persona may seem unconventional at times, I do not take marriage and family lightly, and I am quite traditional.”

Faires filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court citing the usual — irreconcilable differences. He also said that, since the couple does not have any children and she is gainfully employed, he should not have to provide any spousal support.

It appears, he wasn’t supporting the relationship for some time. The couple, who married in July of 2003, did separate in March of this year. But like many women, Matenopoulos thought they were going through a rough patch and that maybe a separation would give them time to appreciate what they had.

But perhaps she should have read How To Tell If Your Man Is Cheating. Although she may have known that less than 5 percent of couples who separate ever get back together, hope is something all of us have when it comes to reviving troubled relationships.

Before it is truly over, women try really hard and are willing to forgive many sins in an effort to keep their marriages afloat. However, the boat has now left the dock and Matenopoulos will sail on solo, seeking a safe harbor with someone who will appreciate her, which is just what she deserves.

For every bride who discovers she had an ally, a mother-in-like, after the wedding, there are those who realize they have a monster-in-law. My monster-in-law gave me a fuzzy sleep suit with a big zipper up the front the first year of our marriage, possibly the least sexy piece of clothing ever. I felt like the Easter bunny. It was royal blue.

But the mother-in-law in the beautiful coastal town of Ravello, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, must have been a doozie. The Italian press was all over the story of a man who got his marriage annulled this week because of interference by his wife’s mother. One Italian newspaper talked about mother-in-laws who put themselves between husband and wife, “with the docile tenderness of a Rottweiler.”

The Italian press readily conceded that it’s usually the husband’s mother, and not the wife’s mother, who acts like a Rottweiler. Last year a poll by Eures, a job portal on the internet, said that 3 out of 10 Italian divorces were due to "the unusually close attachment of Italian men to their mothers." The mothers sometimes move in, take care of the house, and often criticize their daughter-in-law’s housekeeping, cooking or child rearing.

This case was not nearly as severe; it hinged on an oral contract. Antonio Paolillo, a car dealer, was set to marry Maria Assunta Gemma Criscuoli in 1998, and there was a little bambini on the way. Paolillo, 27 at the time, apparently was apprehensive about his mother-in-law-to-be. So just before the wedding he told his bride, 21, that she had to keep her mother out of their marriage.

If not, he said, he would get a divorce.

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Does your spouse chew too loudly? Maybe he can't beat his smoking habit. Or perhaps he's garnered a bit too much attention from the ladies? According to The Times of India, these minor annoyances have morphed into major grounds for divorce. If you follow our Relevant News coverage, you may have noticed a trend. Some of the most unusual divorce stories come from one country: India.

Taking a cue from Western culture (unfortunately, that would be us), Indian couples have increasingly rushed to the courthouse should a facet of the beloved's bother them. Of course, these are just a handful of cases of the already low 1.1% divorce rate for the country.

Couples have supplied a plethora of off-the-wall reasons to split. We recently wrote about the man who filed because his wife's acne was "traumatic" and he could not share a home with her. A few weeks back, a homemaker gambled in the temperamental stock market and her husband wasn't willing to shoulder the financial loss with her. Just a few months ago, a frustrated husband drew up divorce paperwork should his wife light up one more cigarette.

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Some call it karma or comeuppence,  or stars colliding but not in your favor: Sienna Miller's romance with "Brothers and Sisters" star Balthazar Getty now seems over.  Sources say that Getty was stalling getting the divorce he had promised, and now the relationship is over.

As we reported, Miller was caught canoodling with the very married Getty this summer. The affair sparked a lot of criticism since Getty has a wife and four children, one just a baby.

Although his representative released the standard defensive, that the actor had had problems in his relationship before this happened and he and his wife were in the midst of separating, the news came a shock to his wife, Rosetta.

In the past four months, Rosetta has played it smart by building her own life away from her husband but still welcoming him to share the children's birthdays and school events. This allowed him to see what he was missing while the novelty of something new perhaps wore off with the ho-hum of everyday life. Plus, it's hard to be involved in a relationship that so many disapprove of, something the couple faced on a daily basis. Getty complained about the intrusiveness of the press, calling it "dangerous."

Last weekend, Miller acknowledged to Us Magazine that it's "nice not to have a relationship that the press constantly want to scrutinize."

Well Sienna, the press wouldn't be scrutinizing it as much if you were not with a married man.

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We all know that physical infidelity is wrong. Whether you blame it on genetics or lack of control, both men and women agree that having sex outside the marriage isn't okay.

Emotional infidelity, however, is another matter. According to ScienceDaily.com, researchers in Ireland have found a difference of opinion when it comes to Internet flirtation and cheating.

According to the study, men perceived physical infidelity as more upsetting, while women were more upset by emotional infidelity.

What, you may ask, is emotional infidelity? Any online relationships or acts, including cybersex. It may be easier than you think to get wrapped up in a virtual love affair.

Can't say the results are too surprising, but an interesting confirmation of what we already suspected. How many wives are or have been suspicious of their husbands' online activity? Turns out, he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. Perhaps those husbands should be more careful where they point and click.

An Australian university study has found that older adults have dismissed the traditional relationships rules, reports web site OneIndia.com. A majority of the women interviewed prefer Internet romances to face-to-face ones. The female study participants' explanation? They never want to live with anyone again. Additionally:

"...they had no wish to become someone's nursemaid and housekeeper. They had already been there, done that," ABC Online quoted [researcher] Malta as saying.

And women cut to the chase quicker later in life, as well: The study found that older individuals become sexually intimate faster and the relationships are of shorter duration. Translation: These women are making their own rules.

How does Internet love equal new-found freedom? According to study findings, while younger women use online dating to find a life partner — and thus are more self-conscious — older women have gone through that process and are now open to dating and exploring new, nontraditional relationship possibilities.

The population of Costa Rica is 76 percent Catholic, and it has showed in its laws, which forced couples to stay married for three years before they could get a divorce. (Chris Kattan would have been sunk.) The country almost reached Sharia levels when it allowed men to remarry right after divorce, but forced women to wait 300 days, or have a pregnancy test.

Costa Rican law protects life “from the moment of conception,” and interprets this so strictly it will not even allow the “morning after” pill to be advertised there, since it prevents implantation in the womb.

A pregnant woman, it seemed, had to wait 10 months after divorce to make sure that one man’s children wasn’t going to be raised as another’s. Thus the ban for women on remarriage within 300 days of divorce.

All that changed earlier this year, when the 300-day waiting period for women was eliminated by the Sala Constitucional (Constitutional Court), making women and men equal.

Earlier this month the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the requirement to wait three years after marriage before filing for divorce “violated the rights of an individual” and “deprived a person of his or her liberty to rebuild their lives.”

From now on, a couple in Costa Rica can marry one day, realize their mistake, and divorce the next. It won’t be easy, of course. It’s never easy.

But it will be easier than miserably staying married while living apart.

Brad Pitt says he'd love to marry Angelina Jolie, yet is frightened by the prospect of another divorce, reports web site myparkmag.com.

The actor's 2005 divorce from Jennifer Aniston was traumatizing enough that Pitt is apprehensive to attempt a second marriage.

Turns out, Pitt is not alone in his fears — or his choices. An Australian study released this summer revealed that most men would prefer to be single than face the possibility of divorce, reported Reuters.

Author Carl Weisman conducted the study as research for his book, So Why Have You Never Been Married? Ten Insights into Why He Hasn't Wed, to combat the assumption that there's something wrong with bachelors. Weisman concluded that lifelong single men made the conscious choice to avoid the pain and difficulty of a failed marriage.

Says the article:

"Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all," said Weisman.

Having endured a divorce, Pitt is aware of the toll the process can take, which would probably make anyone less likely to try again, don't you think?

Back in 1979, mothers almost always got custody; joint custody was so rare it was almost unheard of. But one Minneapolis husband and wife pushed the courts (it helped that the husband was a lawyer) to consider their wishes to share parenting. In an interview with the father and daughter 30 years later (the mother died of cancer in 1994) Minnesota Public Radio revealed how beneficial joint custody can be.

John Bujan and his wife, Nancy Stein, decided when their daughter was 4 that their marriage wasn’t working. Molly Brom, that daughter, now 36, remembers riding in the car with her parents when they told her they were separating.

Her first question: Would her father still come to her birthday party? He did.

They separated for a year, during which time Molly went to kindergarten and spent three nights a week at her father’s home and four nights at her mother’s. The parents felt the situation was working beautifully, and said that to the referee when they filed for divorce.

The referee, on the other hand, discouraged them. “Why do you want joint custody?,” he said. “These things just don't work out.”

In the 1970s, with the divorce rate hitting an all-time high, the conventional wisdom was that children of divorce would end up delinquents, or misfits who would never make a lasting connection to another person. But Molly’s parents fought for and won joint custody.

It was so revolutionary then that The Minneapolis Tribune ran a story about the family in 1979 with the headline “After Marriage Break-up, Children Can Still Live with Two Parents.” It seemed almost an answer to the bitter divorce portrayed in that year’s Kramer V. Kramer.

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She was beautiful, and had a 5 year old daughter with her husband, the actor Danny Huston. She committed suicide this month before their divorce was even final, but the divorce did not “cause” her suicide. What caused it was bipolar disorder.

Katie Jane Evans, 35, was a born and bred English beauty, and her husband, 46, was the illegitimate son of the director John Huston and the English actress Zoe Sallis. They married in 2002, and moved to a house in the Hollywood Hills, in California, while Huston appeared in movies like How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. They visited Huston’s half sister, the actress Anjelica Huston. She was friends with the aristocratic Emma Parker Bowles, who also lived in LA.

Life seemed glamorous and exciting. Then things turned bitter.

The divorce proceedings, which she filed in California last year, were fraught with charges and countercharges. He used drugs. She tried to commit suicide with pain killers and alcohol, and had gone into rehab. He wasn’t capable of caring for their child. She wasn’t capable of caring for their child. She told Huston’s talent agent that she was bipolar, and had hidden that from her husband for their entire marriage.

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness also called manic depression; people with a severe form live chaotic lives on the edge, take risks, have periods of exhilaration and wild creativity, followed by deep depressions. Some 20 percent of the most seriously afflicted commit suicide.

Despite the acrimony, the terms of the divorce were settled amicably: Huston gave her their Hollywood Hills house and $17,500 a month, half his income, and they agreed on shared custody of their daughter, Stella.

But, her friends said, she went into a deep depression over the end of her marriage.

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