Q. What does everyone want from a marriage?

A. For someone else to be the wife!

Exploring the many cultural assumptions exposed by divorce - sex, money, dating, love, home, and health - Splitting Up is both a guide to the new social landscape and a serious search for personal meaning in an age of rapidly shifting cultural values. According to social theorist and lawyer Larry G. Frolick, divorce is neither a legal nor a therapeutic problem - it is a serious cultural issue. No one can perform the old social roles anymore.

Drawing on his most interesting cases from twenty years practicing law, and from studies in culture, the author shows how the seventy-per-cent divorce rate is the flip side of mall marriage - that is, a relationship based on consumption, rather than on saving - and how divorce is part of our common destiny, a painful world many of us will one day encounter.

This fascinating book takes the reader on an unsettling trip into the strange world of divorce, revealing the new social order and the roles we must play in it to survive - Working-Warrior Mom, Treat Daddy, and the Lost Child - as our society evolves into the next millenium.

Splitting Up is a hip handbook for divorce in the twenty-first century, a guide to survival and renewal. The many topics include:

• The Worst Divorce Story Ever Told
• Sex Realities: Sex Talk & Real Sex
• Divorce Statistics & the Myth of Undifference
• Depression: Can a Million Therapists Be Wrong?
• My Ex-Spouse was an Alien!
• McParenting in an Age of Wire Monkeys: Children Need One Thing
• The Lawyers Other Lawyers Use
• Your Money & Your Sanity & How to Keep Both
• and much, much more!

Larry G. Frolick graduated from the University of Toronto with degrees in both law and anthropology. He practiced family law for twenty years, during a time when the divorce rate skyrocketed in North America. His previous work about children has won international awards. Openly critical of our legal and medical systems, which he feels have failed the people, Frolick insists we need a radical personal approach to divorce today. He has two children, and lives in Toronto's Beaches district, in a "library with a bed."

Larry Frolick's profile page

With 20 years of practising divorce law under his belt along with a degree in anthropology, Frolick offers a unique cocktail of insight, common sense and storytelling to the divorcing public...Splitting Up is a true reflection of the breakup experience by virtue of its broad, consistently honest and often slapstick approach...For those in search of personal enlightenment and self-discovery, this is the thinking persons breakup manual.

The Toronto Star

While Frolick makes no bones about his agenda the books primary aim is to sound the alarm on official culture Splitting Up will not disappoint readers in search of straight up advice on the nuts and bolts of divorce.

Quill and Quire

Frolick brings to the book both a scholarly understanding and a wealth of stories from the war zone of marriages on the rocks...his book is at once accessible, useful, and thought-provoking.

CBRA

Frolicks book is a blend of hard-won practical advice, such as the type of lawyer or therapist to get in a divorce, or to avoid, and radical social theory...Splitting Up is a valuable book for anyone interested in relationships during social change.

Lakesider

What this book boils down to is a field guide to surviving the breakup of a marriage and learning to deal with single life in a world approaching the new millennium...This book may bring comfort to those who need some kind of direction in their post-divorce life.

Beach Metro News