Jennifer Lopez and I are a lot alike. Granted, I might not have her 'assets' or have dated P. Diddy, but fundamentally we both have issues with commitment. Forgive me if I do not elaborate on my prior bouts with commitment phobia, but by now most of the free world knows that Jenny from the Block tied the knot on June 5 to singer Marc Anthony.
To get you all up to speed, for the past couple of months after her split from the super-group Bennifer, Lopez was spotted sporting a new diamond, proving we can't be fooled by the rocks that she's got -- she's still Jenny from the Block. Anthony had just finalized his quickie Dominican Republic divorce from former-Miss Universe Dayanara Torres five days prior to the Saturday wedding.
The New York Post recently ran a gossip column citing an unnamed wedding guest and "another friend" saying that J.Lo is expecting -- no, not another Louis Vuitton handbag. The ironic twist of the entire situation might be that Marc Anthony might still be legally wed to Torres, because while he was in the Dominican Republic getting his quickie divorce, he failed to realize that the divorce was not valid for 60 days.
It's a fact that J.Lo has 'issues' with relationships. British bookmakers have the odds at 10 to 1 that she will marry more than eight times and break the record held by Elizabeth Taylor. When bookies begin taking odds on the success of your marriages, something is not right (her current pairing has a 3 to 1 chance of divorcing by the end of the year).
Fact: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Bureau for Health Statistics and the Center for Disease Control, the average woman will marry her first husband at 25.3 years old. J.Lo was right on track with her first husband, Ojani Noa, a waiter, when she married him in 1997.
But now we digress from the board game of life.
Fact: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median age for a woman's first divorce is 29. So using this, J. Lo should have divorced Noa in 2000, but alas, her first marriage lasted only a year. Before we continue, you must tack another four years onto that because the median duration of first marriages is 7.9 years.
For those of you keeping count, J.Lo should have divorced Noa this year. Thanks to the tabloids, though, we all know that Jenny has been around the block a couple of times, first dating Marc Anthony in 1999 and P. Diddy later the same year. After Diddy and Lopez's much-publicized "fleeing police in a Lincoln Navigator filled with guns after a nightclub shooting" incident, the couple called it quits in 2001.
Never one to be unattached, Lopez was engaged less than three months later to Cris Judd, one of her backup dancers. She was apparently being tutored in the Britney Spears school of dating.
Fact: The U.S. Census Bureau also says the median number of years a woman will wait to remarry after her first divorce is 3.1 years. Lopez waited until September 2001, so she seems yet again like she is right on track for the required waiting period -- kind of like when you want to buy a gun. But the average age for a second marriage is 32, so Jenny should have waited a couple more years.
Now this is where we begin to really stray from the path.
Fact: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average second marriage for a woman will last 6.8 years; J.Lo's second marriage lasted only nine months. Fact: The median age for a woman during her second divorce is 37. Lopez was married and divorced by the time she was 32. Looks like that marriage ended before it should have statistically started.
J.Lo's relationship with Ben Affleck can practically be considered a third marriage, and hey, there is always time for a fourth marriage by the end of 2004 (bookies place the odds of her walking down the aisle with Affleck by the end of 2004 at 14 to one -- not half-bad odds).
Jennifer Lopez sets the example for all of us -- jumping into relationships may seem like the right thing at the time, but in the end are you really with anyone that you truly love after you marry your back-up dancer?
Write to Aaron at Olsonfold@yahoo.com
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