Christians say the Big Guy loves you, but not your divorce. Consequently, a St. Louis area company decided to whip any divorce-pondering couples into marital shape by organizing the Institute of Marriage Boot Camp, reports the St. Louis American.

Okay, not so much a "boot camp," per se, as a series of lectures by Baptist pastors, bishops, and assorted church leaders; some serious bible quoting; and a gift bag. Our favorite sound bite:

"God hates divorce," Roach said. "God created marriage, marriage is good. The problem with marriage is the people."

The thing is, according to the article, one-third of Christians have been divorced at least once. In an attempt to salvage the remaining two-thirds of the Christian population, the Religious community reached out with the pro-marriage event.

Who knows? Maybe a few walked away inspired and relationships were rejuvenated. If anyone can work matrimonial miracles, it's, well, God. Or a good marriage counselor. Or a combination of the two.

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.

On the campaign trail, Gov. Sarah Palin proudly holds her baby son, Trig, who has Down syndrome, and promises “to help families who have children with special needs.” You don’t have to know trigonometry to realize what that adds up to.

Gov. Palin addressed that issue in a speech today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to groups that deal with special needs. " ... [T]he truest measure of any society is how it treats those who are most vulnerable," she said, and brought up another way special needs has affected her family: her sister Heather has a 13 year old son with autism. Gov. Palin proposed three ways to better serve families with physical or mental special needs children:

• School choice for parents, with federal funding that will follow the child.

• The full funding of government's obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

• Strengthening the National Institutes of Health, to work on long-term cures and providing better information to families

Gov. Palin also urged extending the Vocational Rehabilitation Act to teach special needs children the skills they need to live independently. But having a special-needs child not only requires expensive, life-long therapy for the child — it requires marital therapy as well.

A little-known fact is that the divorce rates for parents with special-needs children is tragically high. According to the documentary Autism Every Day, the divorce rates for these parents soar to as much as 80 percent. A recent study in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology revealed that parents of a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are nearly twice as likely to divorce by the time the child is 8 years old.

And when I contacted various special needs organizations to get a figure for divorces, spokespeople were reluctant to give a firm number, but acknowledged that it’s “very high.”

Here's your pet's pet peeve. Your beloved animals suffer anxiety when you separate or divorce, just as you do. In fact, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals in London has added divorce to the list of events that can lead to "acral lick dermatitis."

Other causes of ALD – a constant chewing, sucking, and licking of a part of the body – are dogs who are isolated or bored, punished continually, or who have nervous and stressed owners. Sean Wensley, a senior vet at the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, says, “As a result of such licking, the area can become raw and itchy, which in turn leads to further licking or chewing."

Pets mirror our emotions. If your parrot plucks his feathers feverishly, your poodle pouts with downcast eyes, your calico cat meows mournfully, vets translate these things as a form of depression because, folks, they are "furry" upset by the disruption in the house.

And why shouldn’t they be?

As Wensley says, “Cats and dogs, like young children, are sensitive to adult human emotions and, when these become tense or unpredictable, this can cause stress-related heath problems.”

What are more symptoms?

"Dogs that are stressed can show signs of compulsive disorder,” he says, including chasing their own tails. Cats, he says, “can be prone to 'wool sucking' which, as the term suggests, involves sucking or chewing on woolen items such as blankets.”

Parrots sometimes pull out their own feathers after losing a mate — which, in a way, includes a human live-in companion — or experiencing some other type of trauma.

And that’s not all. The hospital’s studies show that when their owners split, pets can develop serious long-term nervous symptoms, including chewing on and biting themselves.

In Florida, there is no such thing as “joint custody”; instead it is called “shared parental responsibility.” The person given custody is technically the “primary residential custodian” and the other parent is the “secondary residential custodian.”

Why? Because courts around the world are trying to remove inflammatory words from family law, in hopes that will make divorce less fractious. In 2005, France eliminated any gender bias in the language in its divorce laws. It treats mothers and fathers as exact equals, except in one area: a wife may take back her maiden name.

As long ago as 1991, the British courts changed the language for custody, in an attempt to remove the sense of ownership that went along with the word “custody.” Because of that, 17 years ago, “we heaved a collective sigh of relief,” said Jonathan Smith, a family lawyer in Great Britain.

The problem, he said, was that the courts were using the new terms “parental responsibility,” “residence,” and (for the parent who does not live with the child) “contact” time.

But, he said, regular people, and the press, continued to talk about "custody" and "access" to the child.

And yet, people keep trying. In 2001, the Minnesota legislature adopted new language for custody and visitation, ahem, “in an attempt to lessen the animosity in custody battles.” One parent is the “primary caregiver,” but both parents are apportioned “parenting time.”

Even in New York, where we and everyone else have endlessly referred to “custody” in celebrity cases, like the Christie Brinkley-Peter Cook divorce, the actual terms are “residential custody” to one parent, making the other parent the “non-residential parent.”

Without saying one word about why his wife, Jennifer Butler, might have asked for a divorce, the actor Bill Murray said that the divorce had left him “devastated.” He was speaking about it now because he has a movie to promote, City of Ember, opening on Friday. So as with many Hollywood stars with a “hook,” he suddenly finds the need to unburden himself.

His wife filed for divorce in May, after 10 years of marriage and four sons, citing “spousal abuse” and her husband’s problems with drugs, alcohol, and sex addiction. That can’t be any fun for their sons, who are age 7 to 15. The divorce was rushed through and the information was private. She kept the children; he is allowed visitation rights and has to pay child support.

But now Murray is telling AP that his divorce is “the worst thing that ever happened to me in my entire life."

After it happened, he said, he was “dead” and “broken.”

"When you're really in love with someone and this happens — I never had anything like this happen. It's like your faith in people is destroyed because the person you trusted the most you can no longer trust at all. ... The person you know isn't there anymore."

OK, that’s a lot of self pity. And get this. The people on the movie are now claiming that the divorce not only devastated him, it made him better.

"If I could get through this in a powerful way, I feel that I have even more potential to do something," he told AP.

"I think I'd be working on a higher level. It'd be great to achieve, to do the art that I thought I was always capable of -- something that really, really affects people and grabs them and makes them feel and become alive."

Love can be sweeter the second time around. At least that's what Nicole Kidman is saying about life with country crooner hubby Keith Urban. The Australian superstars just had a baby girl named Sunday Rose.

In an interview with Elle magazine she said, "I didn't foresee it, that you can meet somebody who you have a deep and more profound love with. I don't mean to take away anything with Tom [Cruise], but I would hope that he has the same thing — I know he has the same thing with Katie. You move into a stage where you're able to be a more fuller person in your relationship."

At FWW, we could have told her that.

You learn from the past and snatch those memories and migraines and turn it around. It's called reinvention and is a script worth noting.

In fact, Kidman also discussed what us girls talk about often. Navigating solo after heartbreak can be lonely at first. "I went through this long period of being alone," she concedes. "I was very, very damaged, and I did not want to jump into a relationship because I would have nothing to give, just shreds of what I was."

But time — and girlfriends who've been there, done that — help heal those wounds, and suddenly a cute singer serenades you out of your doldrums and becomes your dream guy. And then, Poof, the science of love, instead of Scientology, creates the magic.

It could be a script right out of her many movies, including the upcoming Australia. Yes, reel life pales in comparison to her real life now. Looking back, Kidman acknowledged that, at one time, "my screen life was far more exciting and beautiful than my real life."

Not anymore.

Liv Tyler is one of many women who find themselves young and coming to terms with a painful divorce. A-listers like Britney Spears, Kate Hudson, and Reese Witherspoon have also waded through the emotional turmoil of dissolving a partnership and starting anew.

Celebrities they may be, but, in fact, they hurt and heal just like the rest of us.

In June, 31-year-old Tyler told Contactmusic that she'd "rather live 100 percent and feel fully the sadness and loss than not have lived at all" in response to her split with musician Royston Langdon after their five-year marriage ended earlier this year.

In the October 2008 issue of British Harper's Bazaar, Tyler added further explanation on the grieving process:

"For the first time in my life, it's so much harder for me to get up and brush [off] my knees," the actress said. "I am feeling the pain and the loss of everything.

"I don't feel calm and collected. I feel neurotic, like Woody Allen," says Tyler. "I'm a Cancer and sometimes I just feel like a crab without a shell."

The Japanese Chauvinistic Husband Association is opening its doors and branching out.

We've discussed the plight of Japanese men who are affected by a new divorce law that allows ex-wives 50 percent of their ex-husband's pensions before here at FWW — basically, a whole bunch of wives are threatening to waltz out the door after decades of marital neglect.

But now we have numbers and they're pretty shocking.

Japanese wives have played second fiddle to careers, strip clubs, and drinking with the boys. Now that the divorce laws have changed, wives who are fed up have an attractive reason to leave. Some enterprising husbands have formed a support and learning group to help them figure out how to be nice to their wives.

The change in divorce law was first put on the books in 2003, but it didn't come into effect until this year. April showed a 6.1 percent increase in divorce filings, and 95 percent of the petitioners were women. Marriage counselors and legal experts across the country are predicting this is going to get worse before it gets better as wives nearing retirement age look ahead and see a future that looks bleak.

The group's founder is 55-year-old Shuichi Amano, and he says that the fear of divorce is very real for the men of Japan.

"To be divorced is the equivalent of being declared dead," he says. "We can't take care of ourselves."

When his own wife told him she was ready to leave him eight years ago, his sole knowledge of domestic responsibility consisted of pouring water over noodles and frying eggs. He realized something needed to be done. He set about starting the group, and in the meantime learned to cook, take out the garbage, and clean the house.

You’ve seen them at dinner, the couples whose fighting escalates to shouting matches or those who close their eyes into slits, purse their lips and fire off sarcastic put downs at their mates over their Chardonnay or Coors Light.

They seem like they’re heading for divorce.

Not necessarily. Some people fight and like it.

John Gottman, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, says there are three types of fighters:

• The ones who validate the other person’s experience and work it out together. (“I understand why you spent the rent money on a motorcycle for your mid-life crisis.”)

• The ones who fight vocally. (“You middle-aged, mindless jerk! How could you?”)

• The ones who agree to disagree. (“Ok, I guess I’ll have to figure out another way to pay the rent.”)

As long as the verbal fighters understand each other and aren’t bothered by it, they can stay together. Husband and wife know it’s a way to let off steam and so they manage their expectations.

In a study, Gottman discovered that couples argue about the same issues 69 percent of the time. As reported in “Psychology Today,” his long-term study of 670 couples showed that couples don’t actually resolve their problems, but learn to live with them.

Should they change partners, they’ll just get a different set of unresolved issues.

So what’s the key to happiness? “Establish a dialogue with the problems, learning to live with them much the same way someone learns to live with a bad back," he says.

The trick is to acknowledge your partner’s limitations.

Uh-huh. That’s not hard.

Gottman, however, also pointed out that the positive interactions in your relationship have to outweigh the negative arguments five-to-one.

Otherwise the couple won’t last until their silver anniversary, or even their fifth.