Urgent...Valentine's Day/Greece/Gallagher/Gifts

Fri Feb 11 18:02:51 EST 2000

from: Smart Marriages

#####   Have a Book Suitable for Valentine's Day?

Then take action now! Vickie Jenkins of KOIT radio in California is
preparing a special show. If you have appropriate books send them
immediately to Vickie Jenkins, 55 Rodeo Avenue, #26,Sausalito, CA
94965. Her e-mail address is vjvoice at pacbell.net.

#####   New York Radio Station Seeks Authors to Interview

We've been approached by Bree Freeman, who hosts "Airwaves" on a 50,
000 watt FM station in Central New York. Authors who do well on this
program, slanted to males and females aged 18 to 39, will be
recommended to their sister stations for interviews as well. Send
review copies and PR information to Bree Freeman, Airwaves, WWHT-FM,
500 Plum Street, Suite 100, Syracuse, NY 13204. Phone 315-472-9797,
ext. 762.

Also, remember to set VCR's for CNN, Marriage in the Millenium, February 
13, 
2000 9 pm EST, 6 pm PST. Features David Poponoe and CONNECTIONS
****************
Diane,
In light of your new interest in Greece, you might want to know
that the Relationship Enhancement (RE) manual has now been translated 
into Greek and that there is an RE Institute in the Greek half of Cyprus.

There are also RE institutes in Peru, France, and
Australia, and French and Spanish translations of the manual.  Perhaps you
can work your way around the world.  
Bernard Guerney
**************
The False Valentine of Cohabitation

TO: Lisa Tarry
From: Maggie Gallagher

    Valentine's Day is almost here, and the University of Michigan's 
Prof. 
Pamela Smock, has released an impressive report on cohabitation just in 
the 
nick of time.
    Dear Prof. Smock:
    The good news is I just heard your study reported on the top-rated  
Z100 
"Z-Morning Zoo.. The bad news is they mistakenly reported that 50 percent 
of 
households are now cohabiting.

 Things are not that bad.  But the Nineties was definitely the decade for 
living together. Since just the late eighties the proportion of women in 
their late thirties who have ever cohabited jumped from 30 percent to 48 
percent. Many of these cohabiting couples have children in the household, 
most often the child of just one partner.  But about 40 percent of unwed 
births are now to cohabiting couples -50 percent of White and Latino 
women and 
about a quarter of Black women.  Most of the increase in out of wedlock 
births in the Nineties is due to increased births to cohabiting 
two-parent 
families, and not to lone women. More couples, driven in  part by divorce 
anxiety,  are deciding they can make families without the formality of a 
legal, public vow. 

Unfortunately for the babies, these fragile, informal families mostly do 
not 
last long. "Only about one-sixth of cohabitations last at least three 
years 
and only a tenth last five years or more," notes Smock.  By contrast, at 
current divorce rates, almost  6 out of ten couples who marry for the 
first 
time create a bond that will indeed last until the death of one partner.  
When it comes to creating a tie between lovers so firm a child's heart 
can 
rely upon it, we haven't invented anything that tops the marriage vow. 

But what about the 55 percent of cohabitations that end in marriage?  
Isn't 
living together first a good investment ?  The answer in a word is: no.  
Married couples who cohabited first have more relationship problems and 
divorces than couples who wait to say "I do" before moving in together. 
Living together first definitely won't help you make a happy marriage and 
it 
may hurt.

    Back in the early mists of prehistory, in the dawning of the sexual 
revolution, experts hoped and dreamed that cohabitation would provide a 
new 
lease on life for love, liberty, and especially gender equality. Sorry,  
it 
seems that women who live with men end up doing almost as much housework 
as 
wives.  But their male posslq's don't share their income, accept 
responsibility for breadwinning, or promise to support them if the going 
gets 
tough, or even be there for the baby.  For women the cohabiting rule 
seems to 
be: most all the work and none of the protection of marriage. As Prof. 
Smock 
concludes, "Given evidence that cohabiting couples are less likely to 
pool 
income than married couples (Blumstein & Schwartz 1983), the findings of 
these housework studies imply that cohabiting women are -- in a very 
important sense -- worse off than married women."
    In these peculiar days, when otherwise intelligent women take getting 
your boyfriend to move in and mooch off your labor and love without 
commitment as a sign of deepening affection, the entire canon of love 
poetry 
needs revising. 

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
    I love thee to the depth and breath my soul can reach
    While scrubbing your dishes, and washing your floors
    And having your babies, while you claim your freedom
    Your leisure, your paycheck and my labor as your own.
    Not much, I know. But this I'm afraid-so afraid-is, perhaps
    As good as it gets. 

Happy Valentine's Day, 2000. 
*************************

Diane,
If you think it appropriate, I'd like to share one of my favorite love 
poems and my all time favorite Valentine's Day gift (adapted from 
The Art of Loving Well, of course).  If Shakespeare had known about 
CMFCE, he'd undoubtedly have said "my dear wife" instead of "my mistress."

SONNET 130 - William Shakespeare 

My misress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

How wonderful it is to be loved in spite of our flaws!  Without 
Shakespeare's gift of language, we often struggle for the right words 
in our own relationships and too often work harder to express just 
what it is we don't like about our partner, what we'd like to change, 
instead of what we most love and appreciate.  For your Valentine, try 
to find the most precise, the most appropriate words and images for 
a few of of those things, however big or little, that brought you 
together and have kept you together--the stuff of love?  

N.B.  Thirty-two years of books and flowers have faded into hazy 
memories, but I will never forget the time my husband, the scientist 
who is more comfortable with numbers than words, gave me this gift.  
I am vowing to respond in kind this year.  Think I'll even tuck a copy 
into some dusty family album so we can rediscover it in years to come 
[PG edited, I suppose, just in case someone else finds it first!].

Other gift ideas anyone? 

Happy Valentine's Day!
Nancy McLaren (mclaren at massed.net)

**************************
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