Couple That Married For Looks, Money, Decide To Stay Together For Attractive, Well-Connected Children

Lake Oswego, OR - When faced with the tough choice that many couples today deal with, Thomas and Melinda Kempf made a refreshingly unselfish decision.

After 15 years of marriage, the Kempfs were about to call it quits, with Thomas’s job taking him out of town most every weekend and holiday (usually to Vegas) and Melinda struggling to balance her chores as a mother of two (daily trips to the mall, finding work for the maid and cook, and shopping online). They felt it was time to move on to the next stage of their independent lives. After days of counseling, the two decided that they couldn’t split up, because their young children, Jason and Kaylee, mean too much to them.

Thomas, who married Melinda “because of her awesome body that I could show off to my friends” couldn’t leave the family “just as Jason started to play basketball with Warren, the son of Intel’s VP of Marketing James McAllister.”

“I figured Jimmy and I could sit down in the gym and chat about processors, market share and penetrating into Apple’s stranglehold on college campuses, all while pressuring Jason to invite Warren over a couple times a week,” continued Thomas as he texted from his iPhone.

For her part, Melinda, who married Thomas “because where else am I going to find someone who makes $250,000 at the age of 27 and will buy me an Escalade?” says she is excited to see how little Kaylee does in her first beauty pageant, scheduled for Friday the 20^th.

“Jason never wanted to do pageants as much, but I can see that the little girls in his class are starting to see what strong jaw line he has, and that his boyish charm will continue to win them over for years to come. But Kaylee loves to perform. She loves to sing and dance and smile and wave, and has Hollywood written all over her future and bedroom. For Thomas and I to split up now, when her singing lessons cost $1,000 a week and these pageants take up more and more of our time, would be irresponsible and not fair to these innocent, sweet children.

Staying together for the kids is a growing trend among possible divorcees aged 25 – 55, but it is not proven to make the marriage work any better.

Thomas shares a cautionary tale: “My buddy David wanted to stay with his wife after their kids became friends with the Knight boys, you know, from Nike, but his wife just kept gaining weight and her last couple of hair styles just didn’t work anymore. It wasn’t enough.”

Despite things improving for the Kempf’s, they still see struggles down the line. Melinda thinks Jason will be a singer-songwriter, while Kaylee will blossom in her pageant competitions, but Thomas sees both as wonderful networking opportunities at Princeton, Yale, or some other snobby school for rich kids.

Let’s hope they can put aside their differences, and stay together for their promising, happiness-providing children. It would be a win for all of us.