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.

Rebecca Romijn knows a thing or two about X-Men and wants to set the record straight. In an interview with Page Six magazine, Romijn, who starred as Mystique in the X-Men movies, refuted rumors that her divorce from John Stamos happened because she didn’t want kids.

“There is absolutely no truth to that,” said Romijn who has a recurring role in the hit television show Ugly Betty. “I desperately wanted kids. I was never a girl who dreamed about what her wedding day would be like, but I’ve always dreamed about decorating my baby’s nursery.”

Well, her dream is coming true. Now happily married to Jerry O’Connell, who played a detective in the TV series Crossing Jordan, she is seven months pregnant with twin girls and looks, as she says, like a “beached whale.”

Romijn was married to Stamos (best known from ER) from 1998 to 2005. But one can suppose that she may have had lingering doubts about the relationship, and wanted to wait until she was certain about the marriage before building a family. Sometimes you don’t really know someone until you live with them for a while. They can be fun boyfriends or even a romantic husband but a wife might wonder if they have the qualities to be a good family man.

As for O’Donnell, Romijn said, “I knew early on he would be a fantastic dad. He’s a pragmatic, smart, savvy, enthusiastic person. He really lives his life with tremendous integrity and he’s a healthy person in every single way.”

The couple married in 2007. O’Connell had to backtrack on a comment he made on Conan O’Brien’s show in September, when he called his wife “huge.” He told People magazine, "I meant to say that there are specific areas of my wife that are larger than normal and growing every day. All other portions of my wife are quite petite. I apologize to her and will be coming home with flowers."

A 50 year longitudinal study of 17,000 people in Great Britain, the National Child Development Study, has concluded once again that children of divorce are more likely to struggle academically and have emotional problems, are usually less well educated, and are more likely to divorce themselves.

But as Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And unhappy families, whether they divorce or not, have unhappy children.

Consider what life was like in one Italian family that is now facing divorce.

The mother and father face five years in prison for completely refusing to consider the effects of their incessant arguing on their 12 year old son as they pursued a divorce. Italian privacy laws have withheld the names of the parents, but not their behavior. Prosecutors in Milan have asked the judge, Cesare Tacconi, to charge the mother and father with mistreating a minor.

The child, prosecutors say, had a "syndrome of anxiety and depression" that prevented him from concentrating in school. When a court-appointed health worker visited the home, the report said the son seemed “disturbed,” had fallen behind in school, and believed, with some evidence, that his parents hated each other.

The prosecutors said, "Each blamed the other for shortcoming and educational errors in bringing up the child."

The parents, the report said, used the child as a psychological punching bag in their battle. It is the first such charge in a European court. Judge Tacconi will decide in December whether or not the case should go to trial.

No word on whether mom and dad have managed to get a divorce yet.

Despite everyone’s assumptions, E! Network has renewed Denise Richards’ “It’s Complicated,” a reality show inspired by her contentious divorce from "Two-and-a-Half Men" star Charlie Sheen. As divorced women know, this life event can get complicated — but some break-ups have more drama than others.

And Richards divorce makes the title “It’s Complicated” perfectly apt.

Richards and Sheen have been battling in the tabloids since their break-up in 2006. Complicating matters, after she split from Sheen, Richards started going out with Richie Sambora, who was married to her friend Heather Locklear.

Richards told Larry King that she “did not break up the marriage” because Locklear had already filed for divorce. “Richie and I were friends and they were going through their divorce,” she said.

Her divorce alone provided plenty of material for the first season of her show. It averaged 1.1 million viewers a week, which is why E! has made a commitment for a second season.

Recently, Sheen unsuccessfully fought to prevent their two young girls, Sam and Lola, from being part of “It’s Complicated.” But Richards won that battle and claims she is not exploiting them.

“In making a decision to do a reality show, I needed to commit to that and I wanted it to be real,” she told King. “And the reality is I’m a single mom to two little girls. The show is not about my children. They aren’t featured in the show. They’re in it very little. We’re just doing every day life and it’s being filmed.”

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.

Peter Cook’s goose may be cooked. By dishing to ABC’s Barbara Walters, the porn-loving ex of Christie Brinkley broke a confidentiality agreement not to discuss his divorce. But his temper, he says, was boiling because he felt that he got unfairly grilled. The interview will be aired on 20/20 on Friday.

So why did Peter Cook carelessly cavort with an 18-year-old and also resort to on-line porn? Seems he felt that the Mrs., one of the most gorgeous gals on the planet, wasn’t making him feel desired.

"I was seeking a connection I could not find in my own marriage," Cook said to Walters. "I think the emotional aspect of our lives had changed. I think we were both feeling more like we were living with a brother and sister than a life partner."

So, he said, he suddenly realized something was missing.

"I wanted a little acknowledgment, a little attention, a little thank you every now and then for my efforts, for the amount of time I took to care for her and my family, for the wealth I was building," he said.

At times, the architect and builder said, “I pulled up [to] the driveway to the home that I found, that I built, that I lived in, and I felt like I was a guest in someone else's life."

Well guess what? He is now a guest who’s not welcome anywhere.

Cook has found his life systematically dismantled now that he doesn’t have Brinkley by his side.

As we reported in July, Brinkley divorced Cook after finding out that he was fooling around with Diana Bianchi while also spending up to $3,000 a month on Internet porn.

With the confidence of a captain of the girls' basketball team, Sarah Palin swished her way into the office of Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, took a jump shot at being Governor of Alaska, and then slam dunked the nomination for the Republican vice presidency.

Along the way, she’s accomplished a feat that often sidelines powerful women. Throughout her impressive career, she has never made her husband look diminished.

How she has dribbled her way around this challenging issue is a subject truly worthy of debate. After all, studies in Social Forces and The Journal of Marriage and Family say that women who are more successful than their husbands have higher divorce rates.

Many powerful women have come forward to admit that their careers have sent their relationships to the bench, including Pink and Reese Witherspoon. Amy Adams in this month’s Vanity Fair says she’s looking for a guy who won’t look at her success as his failure.

Sarah Palin, however, seems blissfully unvexed. Using her arsenal of charm like a lethal weapon, she is showing America that you can be powerful and sexy at the same time. And you can keep your studmuffin by your side, looking happy.

Hillary Clinton, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel — none of these women’s relationships with their husbands conveyed much marital heat in public. The husbands were more likely to get their wives into hot water, or have been so lukewarm, no one paid any attention to them.

Now we have Todd Palin, the hot political hubby.

At campaign stops, Todd Palin looks macho while doing nothing more than standing there holding their baby.

As we say at FWW, you have to love your kids more than you hate your spouse after divorce. Now Elizabeth Edwards has applied the same logic to why she is staying in her marriage following the admission of her husband’s infidelity.

In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Edwards acknowledged that rebuilding trust "is probably the most difficult hurdle” to overcome following John Edwards’s affair with Rielle Hunter.

But there are reasons to clear that hurdle: the children.

As a woman living with stage four cancer, she knows in the back of her mind that her husband will be the children’s caretaker. She says that she wants the kids to look at their father as “an advocate for poverty, not for this current picture of him, to be the one they carry with them ... I need to create the picture for them that I want them to have."

Edwards is now applying her crayons to all the ambiguous blanks in their life’s coloring book, trying to shade in the blanks that exist and make an enduring family picture. By sticking it out with her husband, who has been shamed and is also in need of forgiveness, she is teaching her children acceptance and resilience and making the best out of a bad situation.

At those moments when the hurt sucks the color from her face, looking at her children, Cate, 26, Emma Claire, 10, and Jack, 8, must fortify her, and stir those feelings that she must keep her family life intact. The alternative, leaving him, pales in comparison to having him for whatever time they have left.

As our blogger Gi Gi once wrote, you are never mad 24 hours a day. Gi Gi is most forgiving of her husband when she sees him be loving to her children.

It is no secret that many who divorce make certain mathematical calculations. If I have 10 good years left, do I want to be with this guy? Maybe not.

The Washington Post recently reported on Japan's declining marriage rate. Short story: Men are looking to wives to take over maternal roles, and that scenario isn't very appealing to most single Japanese women:

"There is the rarely stated but almost universal expectation of Japanese men to be fed, clothed and picked up after. 'I am willing to take care of and give comfort to a man whom I care about, but that does not mean I want to be his mother,' she said."

In fact, WaPost found that women who had married were less likely than their male counterparts to remarry after divorce. The article states that post-divorce, men are unhappy and remarry quickly, while "the women are relatively happy and often delay remarriage." Perhaps it's the "burn me once" theory?

In addition to the lack of women looking to take on the mommy role, a stalled economy and a posh home life are keeping adult children in their parents' homes. A Calgary Herald piece from early August reported that Japanese parents — fed up with housing, feeding, and taking care of their single adult children — were taking matters into their own hands and organizing events exclusively for parents to find mates for their children.

"A government report from 2005 showed 71.5 percent of men aged 25 to 29 were unmarried, compared with 47.1 percent in 1990. For women, 32 percent from 30 to 34 years of age were single, compared with half that number in 1990."