Today, author of The Divorce Party, Laura Dave, blogs on Dr. Bella DePaulo’s blog, Living Single on Psychology Today!

You’ve seen some of Laura’s work here, now let’s check her out on the Blog Crawl!

Join millions of people as they crawl the web’s most popular blogs for singles, during the first SingleWomenRule.com’s Blog Crawl for National Singles Week.   In the virtual world, a blog crawl works like a pub crawl, or museum crawl in the real world; each day, you’ll visit a designated blog to read featured blog posts from our favorite voices in the singles community.

“The Blog Crawl is an excellent example of the strength and connectivity of the online singles community,” said Terry Hernon MacDonald of SingleWomenRule.com.  Hernon MacDonald, author of the e-book, How to Attract and Marry the Man of Your Dreams, co-founded SingleWomenRule.com last August. 

Featured guest bloggers include Dr. Bella DePaulo, notable psychologist and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After; author of the novel The Divorce Party, Laura Dave; dating/relationship writer and author of The Real Reasons Men Commit, Kimberly Dawn Neumann, writer Simone Grant of Sex, Lies and Dating, dating coach Ronnie Ann Ryan of NeverTooLate.biz, and Maryanne Comaroto, author of Hindsight: What You Need to Know Before You Drop Your Drawers.

Singlutionary offers stories, advice, humor and love from the Last Single Girl Standing.

“We hand-picked the guest bloggers and host blogs for their tenacious spirit and voice,” said Hernon MacDonald.  “Guiding readers from blog to blog in a crawl helps each blog build their readership, while bringing a fresh perspective and new audience via the guest bloggers, each day.”

The Blog Crawl begins on the first day of National Singles’ Week, Sunday, September 20, 2009.

“On Sunday, we’ll start our crawl with Kimberly Dawn Neumann on Vanessa Torres’ site, That Happened to Me.  Then on Monday, we’ll crawl over to Singlutionary for a guest post by writer Simone Grant,” said Hernon MacDonald.  “Each day of National Singles’ Week, we’ll get a great post from our guest bloggers, and an opportunity to read some different blogs for all aspects of single life.”

The Blog Crawl ends on Saturday, September 26, 2009 with Dr. DePaulo blogging on Onely.org. 
Hernon-MacDonald said, “SingleWomenRule.com’s Blog Crawl 2009 is an innovative and exciting opportunity for the online singles community to show solidarity, strength and community during National Singles’ Week.”

SingleWomenRule.com’s Blog Crawl for National Singles Week
Sunday, September 20, 2009 – Saturday, September 26, 2009

ThatHappenedtoMe.com by Vanessa Torres

Sunday, September 20, 2009
Kimberly Dawn Neumann on That Happened to Me
http://www.thathappenedtome.com

Monday, September 21, 2009
Simone Grant on Singlutionary
http://singlutionary.blogspot.com

Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Ronnie Ann Ryan on Single Women Rule
http://www.singlewomenrule.com

Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Terry Hernon MacDonald on Sex, Lies & Dating
http://www.sex-lies-dating.com/

Thursday, September 24, 2009
Maryanne Comaroto on Dating Advice Almost Daily
http://www.happygirlmusing.com

Friday, September 25, 2009
Laura Dave on Living Single
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single

Saturday, September 26, 2009
Dr. Bella DePaulo on Onely
http://onely.org

There’s a good deal to like about Laura Dave’s The Divorce Party , namely the protagonists, Maggie, and her future mother-in-law, Gwyn, both of whom are involved with men who harbor secrets.

In Gwyn’s case, it’s her husband, Thomas, who, after claiming to have embarked on a spiritual journey that did not include her, announced, “I think my life is going in a different direction.”  Gwyn’s response is to throw a divorce party at which she will serve red velvet cake:

“It is his favorite thing that she makes for him. It was the first thing she ever made for him: their first date, the two of them sitting on the roof of her buiding in New York City. The only building she ever lived in in the city, on Riverside Drive. The best thing that it had going for it was its proximity to Columbia (where she had been enrolled at the Teachers College), and its roof — the piece of the river that the roof looked out over. Thomas brought a bottle of wine with him — a 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. And they sat on the roof until 2A.M., eating the red velvet cake, sharing sips of the wine straight from the bottle.”

Now, as much as I like Gwyn, I know for a fact that I would not find it in my heart to bake a cake for any man who suddenly decided he wanted out. ( I write from experience. When I was way too young, I was briefly engaged to a guy who called it off to join a monastery, from which he was eventually expelled for getting caught doing acid. I wouldn’t offer him an Oreo, let alone bake him a cake.)

Even if  I don’t quite get Gwyn’s thinking (especially since it turns out the dude isn’t even telling the truth about the reason for his departure),  I do like many of Dave’s keen observations, especially:

Gwyn looks at herself in the rearview mirror, the phone still against her ear. She is symmetrical. This is the nicest things she can think about herself right now. The rest of it — the long, blond hair, matching long legs; her cool blue eyes and still fairly lovely skin; her beauty — it has deceived her. In its own way, it has made her feel secure. For fifty-eight years, her beauty has made her feel safe. In her marriage, in her family in her own skin. But she hasn’t been. Her husband is acting like someone she doesn’t know. Her son never wants to come home. Her daughter never wants to leave.”

Dave is right. Not only is it a lie that beauty will help a person hold onto love (because, really, after you’re in a relationship for a while, are you even looking at the other person? No, you’re looking in him), but it’s also fiction that beauty will attract love. Physical beauty attracts attention, definitely, and perhaps interest, but it’s who someone is inside that encourages genuine love.

As for the other protagonist in The Divorce Party, Gwyn’s almost daughter-in-law, Maggie, she’s dealing with a guy with two secrets. I’m not giving  anything away by telling you that, after agreeing to marry him, Maggie stumbles upon a bank statement that leads to the revelation that his family is worth no less than a half billion dollars. That might not be much of a problem for many people, but it makes Maggie rightly wonder what else her fiance hasn’t told her.

The Divorce Party  is compelling, not only because of the questions it poses to Gwyn and Maggie, but also because Dave resists wrapping it up with a pretty little ending. The book may have a lavender cover, but it’s not mindless chick lit.

Be the first one to comment on this post, and I’ll send you a free copy.

By Laura Dave
Laura Dave is the author of the acclaimed novels The Divorce Party and London Is the Best City in America. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Self,Redbook, ESPN the Magazine, and The New York Observer.   For more information, please visit http://lauradave.com/ 

Look for Terry’s review of The Divorce Party next week and your chance to win a free copy!

Laura Dave, author of The Divorce Party

One of my favorite quotes about love and marriage comes from Oscar Wilde: A Man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. While that saying makes me laugh, Wilde is also getting to something important: Marriage is tricky. And in today’s society where the martial woes of everyone from the Sanfords to John and Kate Gosselin are headline news, we are presented with every reason in the world to give up on our relationships — and fewer and fewer reasons to stay. While researching my most recent novel, I sat down and spoke to women, men, and married couples about why they do stay. And, sometimes, why they wished they had. This is the best advice I’ve found.

1. Love is a decision

Watching Governor Sanford stand up over these past weeks and speak about how he found his soul mate in his Argentinean lover reminded me of something Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and author, wrote about Sweat Lodges. She wrote that the only way to be in a Sweat Lodge — to experience all that it brings — is to sit far from the exit. Because if you sit too close, you will find a reason to use it.  

The same is true of any long-term relationship. If you decide to look for an exit, you will always be able to find it: whether it comes in the form of another lover, or another life. But the couples I spoke with who decided to commit to their marriages and relationships — to be present for them, to help them grow more sacred — told me that they were immeasurably rewarded for that decision. The more committed they grew to their marriages — the further they sat from the exit — the more joy and peace they found there. 

2. There is No Weakness In Forgiveness

I’m not happy anymore; or I’m disappointed; or I have doubts. Three familiar catchphrases that free us up to not work to bring a relationship back to a positive place. In fact, we are conditioned these days to believe that the brave thing is to move on when the honeymoon is over. But that very standard makes it hard for any long-term relationship to survive inevitable disappointments.   Read more »