The divorce case involving the R & B singer Usher and his ex-wife Tameka Foster has been a high profile drama for months. Finally, late last month, an Atlanta judge awarded primary physical custody of the couple’s two children to Usher. The children are ages four and three, respectively.
Over the summer, the dispute between the two parents was prominently in the news following the tragic death of Foster’s 11-year-old son in a jet ski accident. The boy was Usher’s former stepson.
After last month’s custody ruling, Usher talked with Oprah Winfrey about his troubled marriage. His comments suggested he was still trying to make sense of that had happened.
“I really felt like we were friends,” the 33-year-old singer told Oprah. “She made us enemies in a way that I could never fully understand.”
Usher admitted, however, that he too played a role in the unraveling of the friendship. “Towards the end of our marriage,” he said, “I found myself lost, and I just wanted out.”
According to Usher, he asked Foster to delay the custody proceedings until after her 11-year-old’s funeral. She declined to do this – then took to Twitter to criticize Usher following the Atlanta judge’s custody ruling.
Foster has made a motion for a new trial in the case. That motion is still pending
Usher and Tameka Foster were married in 2007, so it was not a long-lasting marriage. It was, of course, on Usher’s end, a celebrity marriage. But the media theatrics in the case tend to obscure the underlying theme of lost friendship that came out in the Oprah interview.
Research in recent years on the causes of divorce points to the increased chances of divorce when members of a married couple lose the sense of friendship with each other.
Source: “Nasty Celebrity Custody Battles: Usher vs. Tameka Foster,” ABC News, Luchina Fisher, 9-18-12
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