DIVORCED BY THE HOUR

When I was growing up, the women in my family were a practical lot. My mother married three times: at the age of 18, she fled a husband who was too controlling; she then married my father, who died young and left her with two children under the age of eight; and her third husband was an alcoholic and a gambler whom she later divorced. My aunt had similar experiences with her three husbands, one of whom had numerous affairs. So the conversations I had with my female role models when I was young were never about dream weddings but about financial independence. My mother’s mantra became: “Make sure