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Judy Sheindlin – On Why She Divorced Her Husband Over Enormous Grief
Judy, 79, got married to her first husband Ronald Levy in 1964. The marriage lasted for 12 years and produced two children.
After welcoming her two kids, she put off her blossoming legal career to become a stay-at-home mom. However, when she chose to return to her job, her husband was less than happy and not at all supportive. According to Judy, he would call her job a “hobby” and she later grew to resent it.
The marriage couldn’t survive any longer and Judy made the tough decision to divorce him. In 1976, Judy met Jerry at a New York bar and they started seeing each other. There was one problem that bugged Judy and it was that Jerry hadn’t divorced his wife, even though they had been separated for years. Also, he lacked the desire to legally split from his then-wife.
Judy knew she had to put her foot down and warned him not to call her again unless he had filed for divorce.
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“I said, ‘I’m not going to do that,'” recalled Jerry. “So she whipped out a calendar and said, ‘Pick a date. Now.'”
In 1977, after skipping through the huddle, the pair got married. They went on to welcome three children together.
Another problem arose in 1990 when Judy’s father, whom she called “her champion”, passed away, leaving her heavily grieving.
Unfortunately, Jerry didn’t know what to do at such a time. “In a desperate need of a role reversal, “I said, ‘I’ve been taking care of you for 12 years, now it’s your turn to take care of me’,” she told him, “and he was totally unaccustomed to that role.”
“I wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable, and he wasn’t being unreasonable saying that he really didn’t know how to do that. He was 55 and had lived a certain way all his life. He couldn’t even conceptualize taking over that role. He just couldn’t.”
However, Jerry admitted to not knowing what it means to take care of Judy on their documentary “What Makes A Marriage Last”. “What she said was, ‘Unless you change, we can’t stay together.’ I said, ‘Tell me what you want me to do. You can’t just say ‘take care of me’. What does that mean? Do you want me to carry you from place to place? Do you want me to buy you things? Do you want me to feed you? Do you want me to keep you warm? What you have to do is tell me – use your words and tell me what you want me to do to take care of you.’ She said, ‘Just take care of me.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know how to do that.”
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Judy Sheindlin – Subsequent Divorce And Remarriage
The argument escalated to the point that Judy threatened a divorce, to which Jerry replied, “I dare you”. The very next day, he received the papers.
The pair were divorced for a year before they rekindled their relationship, with Judy saying she “missed” Jerry.
“I just had to come to terms with the fact that men of that generation are different,” Judy explained. “They expect, even if they have no right, they expect to be taken care of or catered to.”
For their second marriage, it was Jerry who pushed for it to become official. “I picked her up from work at family court one day, and we were walking through downtown Manhattan,” Jerry shared. “Suddenly I said to her, ‘This is silly. I’m uncomfortable being with you all the time and not being married to you. Let’s get married again.’ She said, ‘Well, how are we going to do that?’ I said, ‘The clerk’s office is right up the street. We can go in and get a license.”
It didn’t take much time for the lawyers to get their license, with Jerry’s New York Supreme Court friend officiating the marriage.
This year, the couple celebrated 45 years of marriage.
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Editorial credit: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com
Lots of 12 year marriages.