A 70-year-old man recently tried to rob a Kansas City bank to allegedly get himself arrested, because being in jail beats living with his wife.

Lawrence John Ripple walked into the Bank of Labor at 756 Minnesota Ave., in Kansas City, and passed a note to the teller, which read “I have a gun, give me money.” According to court documents, the teller complied, but instead of making a quick escape, Ripple simply took the money and sat down in the bank lobby. When a security guard approached him, the quirky bank robber simply said he was “the guy he was looking”. After relieving Ripple of the stolen $3,000, the guard notified the police, who arrived on the scene shortly, considering their headquarters are located on the same block.

During questioning, investigators learned that Ripple had argued with his wife and he “no longer wanted to be in that situation.” In the affidavit filed in support of the robbery charge, and FBI agent wrote that “Ripple wrote out his demand note in front of his wife … and told her he’d rather be in jail than at home.”

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In the Western world, when a wife finds out her husband is having an affair she they either confronts him directly about it asking him to stop, or just gets a divorce. But things are a bit more complicated in China, due to the social stigma and financial burden associated with divorce, so an increasing number of women are turning to companies specializing in driving away mistresses. Introducing the “mistress dispellers”.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese businessmen and high ranking officials to signal their status by maintaining a mistress, and with the country’s economy growing at a rapid pace, it’s no wonder that “mistress dispeller” services that combat cheating are becoming very popular. For a considerable fee – typically starting in the tens of thousands of dollars – these companies will coach scorned wives how to strengthen their marriage while employing a variety of tactics to drive away the problematic mistress.

While it may sound like a scam to cheat the poor wives out of serious sums of money, mistress dispellers, or “xiaoshan quantui”, are apparently very good at what they do. Shu Xin, director of  Weiqing International Marriage Hospital Emotion Clinic Group, a mistress dispeller company based in Shanghai, says that every case starts with thorough research on the mistress. An investigation team will analyze her family, friends, education, job and daily habits looking for any information that could help them meet their goal.

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Frustrated by their lack of marriage prospects, a group of single men in the Turkish village of Uzumlu have taken to the streets in protest. The women of the remote village are apparently refusing to accept any marriage proposalz made by the men because they do not want to be trapped there forever. And the men think they’re being ridiculous.

The last wedding in Uzumlu took place nine years ago, and since then the population of the village has dwindled from 400 to 233. According to mayor Mustafa Bashbilan, many women have chosen to move away from the village to cities like Istanbul and Ankara, but the men stayed behind to care for their inherited farm lands. He added that the lack of prospective wives has made the men unhappy, although they are economically well off.

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A Seattle startup is in the news for investing in divorce – its business model is based on the fact that nearly 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the US end up parting ways. SwanLuv offers to pay couples for their dream wedding, but the money will have to be returned with interest if they ever get divorced.

So if you’re about to get married and you apply to Swanluv, they’ll run your profile through an algorithm, study your relationship, and select you if you meet their criteria. Then, they’ll offer you a loan of up to $10,000. You don’t have to return the money, ever, as long as you stay together. But the moment you decide to get a divorce you’ve got to cough up the original amount, plus interest. And stronger relationships are assigned higher interest rates, so the longer couples stay together, the more they’ll stand to lose if they split.

When you think about it, that’s kind of like the opposite of how insurance works. You’re supposed to get paid when things go wrong, but with SwanLuv, it’s the other way round. 

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A Chinese kid was in the news recently for flaunting his wealth in one of the most extravagant marriage proposals in recent times. He arranged a fleet of luxury cars in the shape of a heart before asking his high school sweetheart to marry him. The stunt worked its magic and he got a the answer he desired.

According to news reports, the Guangzhou-based entrepreneur who had dropped out of college to found his own company, decided on the bombastic proposal to make sure no one steals his girl away. They have been dating since junior high, but she has just started attending college, so to make sure no one even attempts any moves on her, he proposed preemptively. He rented a fleet of expensive cars and drove them to his girlfriend’s college dorm.

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A Texas Judge recently sparked controversy for making young Josten Bundy choose between spending 15 days in jail or marrying his 19-year-old girlfriend Elizabeth Jaynes. He took – what he thought was – the easy way out. 

It all started in February, when Bundy got into a fight with Jaynes’s ex-boyfriend. “[He] had been saying disrespectful things about Elizabeth, so I challenged him to a fight,” Bundy said. “He stepped in and I felt like it was on and I hit him in the jaw twice.” The ex, according to Bundy, did not require medical attention, but he pressed charges anyway.  “I took matters into my own hands and I know that’s wrong,” he later admitted. “I know I was raised better, but it happened.”

At one point during the hearing, Judge Randall Rogers asked Bundy if his girlfriend was worth it, to which he replied: “Well, to be honest sir, I was raised with four sisters and any man was talking to a woman like that I’d probably do the same thing.” And that’s when the judge threw Bundy a curveball. He’d have to marry Jaynes within 30 days, or spend 15 days in jail.

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Indonesian homeowner Wina Lia has come up with an innovative strategy to find matrimonial bliss – she’s put up her house for sale and has offered to marry the buyer! 40-year-old Lia owns a two-bedroom home in Sleman, a sleepy little district near the Javanese city of Yogyakarta. The lovely house comes with a small fish pond, a spacious backyard, and of course, the chance to gain Lia’s hand in marriage.

The online ad featuring Lia’s home listed the asking price at $76,500 but also mentioned a unique bonus: “Buyers who don’t negotiate the price can ask the owner to marry (terms and conditions apply).” The ad promptly went viral, with local news agencies tracking Lia down to check if the claim was genuine. Turns out that it was.

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The Romani people, who constitute one of Bulgaria’s largest ethnic minorities, have a unique marriage tradition – a ‘bride market’. Held four times a year on various religious holidays, the market is a chance for poor families in the community to arrange financially beneficial marriages for their children.

The families that gather in the city of Stara Zagora for the festival are part of a gypsy community of 18,000 Roma known as Kalaidzhi. They are traditionally coppersmiths, and among the most poverty-stricken people in the nation. The bride market is a chance for these families to get together, catch up on gossip, and arrange matches for their adolescent children. The event is a colorful one, with grannies dressed in traditional Kalaydzhii long skirts, and children running about and eating candyfloss.

The prospective brides are usually dressed provocatively in mini skirts, with gobs of mascara, flashy jewellery and towering heels. They dance alongside their male suitors on car hoods, which is quite rare in a community that generally does not allow youths to mingle with the opposite sex. In fact, the Kalaidzhi, who are devout Christians, take girls out of school at age 15 to keep them away from temptation.

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After dating for several years and failing to find the man of her dreams, a 40-year-old woman from Houston, Texas, decided to marry herself in an elaborate ceremony that involved friends and family.

Yasmin Eleby’s wedding was quite similar to a traditional one, except the bride wore purple, there was no groom, and it was the bride’s mother, not her father who walked her down the aisle.  Since self-weddings aren’t legally recognized in the U.S., the ceremony – conducted by three ministers – was described as a spiritual one. Yasmin made heartfelt vows to forgive, honor, and love… herself!

“I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support that was shown to me during my celebration of love and life,” Yasmin wrote on Facebook, after the ceremony. She also added that she “couldn’t imagine the ceremony being any more poignant and meaningful.”

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A heartbroken Taiwanese man is suing a teenage girl’s mother for breaking a promise she made 11 years ago. The man, a 32-year-old school teacher at the time, had fallen in love with his 8-year-old student. He became so obsessed that he managed to extricate a promise from the child’s mother that he could marry her when she came of age. Believing that the mother would keep her end of the deal, he spent several years supporting the girl’s family financially. And now that she hasn’t, he’s taking the family to court.

Over the years, the man has spent over 900,000 Taiwanese dollars (that’s about US $30,000) on the girl and her family. He completely covered her tuition and living expenses, and took her out on various occasions. He also paid off the mother’s outstanding debts. Some news reports also provided photographs in which the girl and the man appear to be quite close. It looks like he truly considered her to be his future wife (although they looked more like father-and-daughter). But nine years later, when the man checked the 17-year-old’s Facebook profile, he was in for a very rude shock.

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Zhang Feng was 23 years old when she declared her love for 68-year-old Wen Changlin. The unusual couple, now 27 and 72, have a beautiful baby boy named Tian. Although they look very odd together, their smiles show how happy they are.

The couple from Hunan province in China have been making TV headlines ever since baby Tian was born. Changlin admitted that their age makes them an unlikely pair. “Yes, I look like her grandfather, but I am used to the stares. What is important is our love and the fact that I was able to give her the child she so desperately wanted to cement our union,” he said.

The story of how they got together is a very unusual one. In 2001, Zhang and her father were suffering from a medical condition. Changlin, a Chinese doctor, moved into their home to care for them. He lived there until 2006, when Zhang’s father passed away. During this time, Zhang began to feel safe around the doctor, trusting him more than anyone else. “He took such good care of me that I began having feelings that he was Mr. Right,” she said.

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For the past 12 years, Robert Darling, a 58-year old unemployed man from New jersey, has been traveling to Manhattan in search of a life companion. To make it easier for women to notice him, he carries a sandwich board which reads “Looking for a rich lady to be my wife”, along with his phone number and email.

Robert Darling has never had much luck with the ladies. He has never been in a serious relationship, and never realized he wanted someone to spend the rest of his life with until his middle age. And because he got such a late start in his quest for love, he decided extreme measures were necessary to find a suitable companion. Ever since 2001, Robert has been traveling to Manhattan twice a week to advertise himself to potential wives using a sandwich board. It might sound like a joke o a lot of people, but the lonely bachelor says that every time he leaves home he tells himself that could be the day he finally meets the woman he will settle down with. The sign is pretty clear about his intentions, but so far it hasn’t worked quite as well as he would have hoped. Many women have stopped to have a talk with Darling or have their picture taken with him, but he has been on a single date, and that was with a woman who actually wanted him to marry a friend of hers so she could get a green card.

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Finding true love can be pretty tough for a lot of people, but a female management supervisor from a fairly well-known San Francisco advertising agency seems to think money helps. According to a leaked email, she is offering $10,000 to any of her friends who can introduce her to Mr. Right.

The unnamed husband seeker who sent out the email obtained by Agency Spy had just finished reading the best-selling feminist book “Lean In” by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg. It was 11 PM on a Sunday night and she realized this was the second self-help book she had read in month, she was still single and she had just sprinkled dish soap on leftover pizza so she wouldn’t eat two more slices. Things were not looking well, but there was hope for her still. If Sandberg’s book had taught her anything it was that she needed take a more proactive role in finding love. After all, if she wanted to get a better job, she wouldn’t just sit in the lobby of an employer’s building and wait for someone to offer it to her, so why should finding a husband be any different. But instead of going out and meeting new people she decided to write an email to all her friends, offering to give them $10,000 on her wedding day if any of them manage to introduce her to her future husband.

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36-year-old Nadine Schweigert from Fargo, North Dakota, got married last month. She had a beautiful wedding. Nadine was dressed in a peacock blue satin dress and carried a bouquet of white roses. There was also a lovely white wedding cake covered in peacock blue fondant. So far, there seems to be nothing unusual about this affair; it’s not different from any other run-of-the-mill wedding in the US. But if you paid attention, you probably noticed there was no mention of a groom. It’s not that he didn’t show up, it’s just that there wasn’t a groom to begin with. Nadine just happened to marry herself.

Self-marriage can be a confusing concept to those who don’t know what it’s all about. Nadine isn’t alone, however, many others have done it before. It was even portrayed on the popular TV show Glee, where ‘Sue Sylvester’ ties the knot with herself. These ceremonies are considered secular and purely symbolic. New Age websites such as Encouraging Priestess even share ideas on how to perform self-marriage ceremonies. The idea behind these marriages is to help a person realize that they do not need anybody else to feel complete.

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Babylonia Aivaz, from Seattle, fell in love with an old warehouse where she and other activists protested inside the building, during an Occupy Seattle event. Now, the 107-year-old facility has been scheduled for demolition, so Aivaz decided to marry it to show her love, and hopefully save it.

It sounds like a pretty bizarre situation, especially after you read all the jokes and comments by various media outlets, regarding Babylonia Aivaz’s decision to marry a warehouse. Some joke about the awkward wedding night, others about the solid foundation of their relationship, but the fact is she’s doing it as a form of protest against gentrification. ‘I’m doing this to show the building how much I love it, how much I love community space and how much I love this neighborhood. And I want to stop it from gentrification,’ Aivaz said in an interview. ‘If corporations can have the rights as people, so can buildings,’ she added, referencing a Supreme Court decision on political advertising.

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