Marital Strife--You Have To Work At It

Tue Aug 29 17:30:03 EDT 2000

subject: Marital Strife--You Have To Work At It

from: Smart Marriages

WHERE do they get these mangled quotes?!  

Anyway, when Time Magazine starts doing satirical takeoffs on us,
I guess we've made it.  Now all we need is to get on Letterman's 
top ten reasons list. - diane
============

Marital Strife--You Have To Work At It
Heidi Julavits

09/04/2000
Time Magazine

"We need to get the message out now and tell people before they get 
married that
it's O.K. to fight. Right now we're sending people out onto the football 
field
and not telling them the rules." --Diane Sollee, director of the 
Coalition for
Marriage, Family and Couples Education, quoted by the Associated Press

AMMO WEEKEND WORKSHOPS

Sharing the fate of all health "trends," the harmonious marriage has gone 
the
way of oat bran and the Atkins diet. What was once regarded as beneficial 
has
proved to be less helpful than advertised or even potentially harmful to 
your
health. Across the country, counselors are being forced to recall "happy"
couples who have learned to see beyond their differences because, if 
you're not
fighting, research suggests, your marriage is probably in trouble.

The American Marital Munitions Organization was founded on the principle 
that a
robust marriage is a rocky one. But just as quarreling couples once 
struggled to
achieve harmony, teaching harmonious couples to embrace discord can be 
equally
challenging. Fortunately, ammo recently opened its first "Fight Club" to 
serve
America's untroubled yet troubled marital population. Our series of
weekend-vacation workshops not only touches on the Big Five--money, sex,
children, time and in-laws--but, more important, teaches couples to 
unearth the
antagonistic possibilities buried within their most banal interactions. 
ammo's
workshops are limited to an enrollment of eight. The following fall 2000
sessions are currently open for enrollment:

Where Is Jim Morrison's Grave? Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris; Sept. 8-10 
(No
French Required)

Couples will be abandoned in distant corners of the 100-acre cemetery and
instructed to find Jim Morrison's grave in time to shower before their 6 
o'clock
dinner reservations. This workshop aims to release women's deep lack of 
respect
for men's poor sense of direction, as well as for men's overconfidence in 
their
ability to get lucky and their unwillingness to ask for help in any 
language.
Couples will dine that evening at a three-star Michelin restaurant, 
where, no
matter what they order, they will be served six courses of variously 
prepared
offal, and their credit cards, when they attempt to pay, will be denied.

Blackie Hates the Way You Laugh The Colonial Hunting Resort and Spa, Hot
Springs, W.Va.; Sept. 22-24

Each couple is given a dog and a small lunch and is instructed to hike up 
a
nearby mountain of moderate difficulty. They are forbidden to speak to 
each
other directly and must instead communicate through the dog, Blackie, a 
standard
poodle. By attributing feelings to a poodle, many people (especially 
women) are
freed from the guilt and responsibility of claiming emotions as their 
own. Many
years' worth of complaints, injustices and dissatisfactions can be called 
to the
surface through the use of a canine medium.

Who Will Cook the Lobster? Acadia National Park, Isle au Haut, Maine; 
Oct. 6-8

The couple should not have eaten for 24 hr. before this workshop. The 
lobster is
invisibly wired with a heat-sensitive sound device so that the creature
"screams" each time it is touched. One claw is left unpegged, 
guaranteeing that
both partners are pinched repeatedly. This workshop effectively exposes a
couple's divergent moral compasses and the discrepancies in their survival
instincts and, by extrapolation, the future incompatibility of their 
parenting
skills, attitudes toward capital punishment and openness to unusual foods.

"They're Not Real!" An Aegean Cruise with Elderly Shipping Tycoon Dmitri
Asoukapolis and His Much Younger Trophy Wife; Aegean Sea, Greece; Oct. 
20-22

Each couple will be assigned its own stateroom aboard the 200-ft. luxury 
liner D
Cup. All meals will be enjoyed with the host and his 22-year-old wife 
Annika, a
former swimsuit model from Sweden. Annika will wear less and less 
clothing as
the weekend progresses. All other women on board will be required to wear 
sack
dresses sewed of a natural hemp material. Feelings of discomfort, 
inadequacy and
envy should be stirred in both partners, leading to many arguments that 
promise
to plague each couple at home in America.

AMMO guarantees that all couples participating in the vacation workshops 
will
learn to flip their "quick switch," so they can access their natural 
reserves of
discord. For those seriously endangered couples who can weather even the 
most
awkward, uncomfortable or humiliating scenario without a hitch, AMMO will
provide an in-house, highly trained marital-combat couple. These surrogate
aggressors will perform demonstrations on such topics as "Did You Throw 
Out That
Little Yellow Scrap of Paper with the Very Important Phone Number on It?" 
and
"You Know I Prefer Merlot," and work individually with both members of the
couple, helping them channel their rage and irritation toward the
hard-fought-for state of nuptial bliss.

Heidi Julavits is a writer whose first novel, The Mineral Palace, is being
published this month by Putnam

B/W PHOTO: AP COLOR PHOTO

Folder Name: Sollee
Relevance Score on Scale of 100: 84

______________________________________________________________________
To review or revise your folder, visit Dow Jones CustomClips or contact 
Dow
Jones Customer Service by e-mail at custom.news at bis.dowjones.com or by 
phone at
800-369-7466. (Outside the U.S. and Canada, call 609-452-1511 or contact 
your
local sales representative.)
______________________________________________________________________
Copyright (c) 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Subject:  Sollee: Marital Strife--You Have To Work At It

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The 4th Annual Smart Marriages conference was held
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Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
5310 Belt Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
www.smartmarriages.com  202-362-3332  