Florida Man Seeks Divorce From Absolutely No One

JACKSONVILLE (UP) – In an unprecedented legal maneuver, a Florida man is filing for divorce.

The kicker: He’s a widower who has no spouse.

Edward G. Edward, 60, says he is making the move as a “pre-emptive strike” against future women who might shun him in the manner that he has been shunned for most of this past year.

Edward says that, nearly a year after his wife of 30 years died, he examined the possibility of rejoining the dating scene. He tried everything from asking women he knew personally to applying to on-line dating sites. But no matter how tactfully he tried to pursue his potential suitors, he was always turned down flat.

The most telling turn-down, Edward says, was a woman who recently told him that she “didn’t think of him that way.”

“They never think of me ‘that way,'” says Edward. “Women say things like, “Gosh, I wish I could find a man who wasn’t in it just for a hook-up, who respected me and treated me like a human being. I’d love to date anyone like that.'” Edward gestured to himself and said, “And then they point at me and say, ‘Anyone but him.'”

Edward said that, after a number of similar rejections, he came up with the one-sided divorce decree “to salve my bruised ego. I’ll carry a copy of it with me at all times. Then if, by some miracle, a woman starts to show any sort of interest in me, I can hand her the paper and confidently state, ‘Sorry, honey, we just couldn’t make it work. I’ve already divorced us.'”

Local legal firms have applauded the concept and have stated they expect it to take off nationwide. Andy Farer of law firm Farer and Porer says he is positioning his staff to offer the decrees at all local speed-dating sites.

Edward says he didn’t expect to start a trend but welcomes anyone who wants to follow in his path. “It’s time,” he says, “to give the outcasts of the world their opportunity to stand up and say, ‘You know, you’re just not my type.”