White House/ TV/ Divorce/Out-of-Wedlock/Daddy Blues/Finances/Group Weddings/Workplace spouses - 10.05

[Smartmarriages& #174; Mailing List]

- WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE: WATCH LIVE OCT 27
- LOOKING FOR COUPLES FOR MAJOR MORNING TV SHOW
- DADDY/BABY BLUES?
- SIGN OF THE TIMES: DIVORCE "ADJUSTMENT" SHOW.....
- MORE SIGNS: OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTH RATES IN EUROPE
- FINANCIAL INFIDELITY
- DEPT. OF MATRIMONY
- "WORKPLACE SPOUSES" IT'S A MARRIAGE OF SORTS

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- - WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE WATCH LIVE OCT 27
I just got this and know not many of you will read it in time, but in an
hour or so, 2pm EST you can watch Julie Baumgardner and Wade Horn at the
White House Conference on "Helping America's Youth".  The 2pm session is on
the family.  The President and First Lady opened the conference this morning
and the First Lady is hosting the day-long event.
To listen OR to read the transcripts of the presentations, visit:
http://www.helpingyouthconference.org/about.htm
 
###########################
- LOOKING FOR COUPLES FOR MAJOR MORNING TV SHOW

Here's another chance to help and spread the news that these issues are a
normal part of a good marriage.  To be expected and that they, of course,
can be resolved if you learn the skills of managing the disagreements.
This is a major program that's been very helpful in helping us spread the
word.  Please help.  Free trip to NYC.  - diane

Hi Diane,
I am looking for couples who would be willing to share (on-air) funny and
vexing stories about the challenges they face or have faced in their
marriages (or in a past marriage).  We are specifically looking for:
1.  A couple who has struggled or is struggling with the question of
whether a spouse can be good friends with the opposite sex.
2.  A couple who can tell funny stories about how their marriage
changed after having a baby -- the unexpected challenges,
frustrations, etc.
Sara Needham
Associate Producer
415-290-1121
s_needham at mindspring.com

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- DADDY/BABY BLUES?

This request comes from a good reporter at Parenting, a major magazine that
has done excellent marriage stories for us in past.  She's good. Encourage
you to help her if you can.  - diane
 
> For Parenting magazine: I¹m looking for moms whose husband had some form of
> the baby blues. We¹re not talking full-blown depression, here, just a normal
> post-partum funk, the kind that affects a huge number of people.
>  
> I¹m interested in hearing about:
> --symptoms (did they seem anxious or sad, indulge in alcohol or drugs or video
> games till 3 a.m., put on weight/lose weight, have trouble sleeping/sleep too
> much, less able to make decisions, lose interest in favorite activities);
>  
> --how it affected mom and baby (did dad's state compound mom¹s blues? Strain
> mom and dad¹s relationship? prevent daddy-baby bonding?);
>  
> --how it got resolved (did mom confront dad? Did you work through it together?
> Did dad seek help independently? Did it just subside with time?).
>  
> Please include your age, baby¹s age, location, and at least a few lines
> describing your experience/perspective. If you're feeling shy, I can disguise
> your identity. Need to hear back by Friday 10/28.
> Aviva Patz
> avivapatz at yahoo.com
> 
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- SIGN OF THE TIMES: DIVORCE "ADJUSTMENT" TV SHOW.....

> This show will be dedicated to helping people from all across America find
> happiness and closure with their separation or divorce. Hosted by a panel of
> men and women who have experienced divorce themselves, the show will provide
> our guests with advice from professionals, activities to help them regain
> self-confidence and an emotionally nurturing environment.

############################
- MORE SIGNS: OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTH RATES IN EUROPE

One third of births in EU outside marriage in 2004: Eurostat
font size  ZoomIn ZoomOut

One in every three new births in the European Union (EU) in 2004 took place
outside marriage, said Eurostat, EU's statistical service, on Tuesday.

The highest shares were found in Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, France,
Slovenia and Britain, where the rates exceeded 40 percent. Cyprus and Greece
recorded the lowest shares of below 5 percent. The average rate was 31.6
percent, said Eurostat. . . . .

These figures come from a report published jointly by Eurostat and the
Council of Europe. . . . .

The fertility rate -- average number of children per woman -- is estimated
to have increased from 1.48 in 2003 to 1.50 in 2004 in the EU. The
corresponding rate for the United States in 2004 was 2.07.

The highest fertility rates were found in Ireland (1.99), followed by France
(1.90), Finland (1.80) and Denmark (1.78). No member state, however, reached
the replacement level of 2.1. . . .

http://english.people.com.cn/200510/26/eng20051026_216868.html

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- FINANCIAL INFIDELITY

Couples need to be open about finances
The Washington Post
By Michelle Singletary
October 23, 2005

Would you ever lie to your spouse about your spending?

Have you ever run up a large credit card bill and kept it hidden from your
honey? Right now, are there new clothes stashed in the trunk of your car or
in the back of a closet? Do you have an iPod your wife doesn't know you
bought?

According to two surveys, financial infidelity is a common problem in many
relationships.

Nearly one-third (29 percent) of adults aged 25 to 55 who said they were in
a committed relationship (either married, engaged, or living with a partner)
said they had been dishonest about their spending habits, according to a
survey sponsored by Redbook magazine and lawyers.com, a free online
directory of lawyers.

OppenheimerFunds, an investment management company, came up with similar
results in its recently released 2005 Women & Investing Survey. The company
found that for men (24 percent) and women (26 percent), cash was named as
the number one item that they are most likely to hide from their spouse.

And what purchases are people most likely to hide? Entertainment (20
percent) and electronics (16 percent) topped the list for men, while women
named clothing (23 percent) and food (19 percent).

It's the next findings from the OppenheimerFunds survey that I think
contribute to this deception.

Slightly more women (40 percent) than men (36.8 percent) have a checking,
savings, or brokerage account to which their spouse does not have access.

''Because so many couples now maintain separate banking and credit card
accounts, the risk of deceit is even greater," said Alan Kopit, an attorney
and adviser to lawyers.com. ''The fact that you have individual accounts is
not open license to do whatever you want if you want to remain financial
healthy."

In the Redbook/lawyers.com survey, which appears in the November issue of
the magazine, women were more likely to be the ones keeping information from
their partners. It seems it is easier to hide extra purchases or overdue
credit card bills if you're in charge of the household budget. Forty-one
percent of women were found to be responsible for the household accounts,
compared with 21 percent of men.

Kopit said the financial deception that couples practice is the outcome of a
larger problem -- a lack of communication and shared financial goals.

''Couples have to communicate," he said. ''They need to come up with some
common financial goals . . . and figure out how to reach those goals."

I see all the time what Kopit is talking about. Check out this question I
received recently during one of my regular online chats:

''If my spouse continually pays her credit cards three to four months late,
how concerned should I be that her abuse of credit will affect my own?" the
chat reader asked. ''In the past 10 years, I have had to transfer her credit
card balances over to me three times because she had rung up charges for
thousands of dollars and was not making her monthly payments. Now that we
own a home I no longer feel the need to step in to prop up her credit,
because I have excellent credit and no longer need her co-signage for a
big-ticket loan. We have had many fights on the issue and I simply cannot
get her to understand how valuable it is to pay your bills. Now that my
daughter has just turned 13, I need to focus more of my resources towards
her college savings, rather then than my spouse's spending habits."

What this couple has is a classic failure to communicate.

Oh sure, they're talking -- but arguing is not effective communication.

Read the chat posting again. Obviously this couple isn't communicating
because he thinks the problem is his good credit name. But he needs to
realize there is more at issue here than his credit score. He's angry and
frustrated.

His wife clearly doesn't see that her spending is seriously damaging her
marriage and their family. Her spendthrift behavior is their problem.

I know it may sound simplistic to say you have to communicate if you're
having financial conflicts. But let me ask you this: ''How's the lying
working for you?"

#################################
- DEPT. OF MATRIMONY
WE DO
The New Yorker Magazine
October 10, 2005

Maryann Reid, the engineer of Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, is neither married
nor a parent. But she is an old-fashioned romantic. Although she writes
fiction of the single-girl-in-the-city variety for a living (recent titles
include ³Sex and the Single Sister² and ³Use Me or Lose Me²), she has found
dating in New York a ³disturbing² experience. Having become increasingly
impatient with her own prospects, Reid, who is thirty and lives with her
mother in Marine Park, recently turned her ambitions to those with more
immediate possibilities. Her basic idea was this: Find ten cohabiting
couples with kids. Plan them a free wedding.

The other day, at the House of the Lord Church, a Pentecostal congregation
in downtown Brooklyn, Reid was stage-managing the rehearsal for the mass
wedding, which was to take place two days later. In attendance were ten
affianced couples (they were chosen after submitting to phone interviews and
home visits by Reid), their parents, siblings, best men, and maids of honor,
and their children, who ranged in age from fourteen months to sixteen years.

To finance the festivities, Reid had solicited donations: ten gowns, veils,
and headpieces; ten wedding cakes, by Fort Greene¹s Cake Man Raven; twenty
bouquets; three hundred invitations; fifty bottles of champagne; and one
reception hall (the Brooklyn Borough Hall rotunda). The gowns were
particularly appreciated. ³Seeing the dress on me made me really emotional,²
one bride said, recalling her fitting. ³I was hyperventilating. They were
running around getting me water. I was holding on to the footstool.² Most
crucial, Reid had secured the assistance of the House of the Lord¹s Reverend
Doctor Herbert Daughtry, who would counsel and marry the couples, and of a
professional wedding planner, Patricia Washington. ³When she first came to
me and said ŒTen brides,¹ I was, like, ŒTen brides, all at once? Hell no!¹ ²
Washington recalled.

As the grooms trickled into the sanctuary (they had . . . .

To read the full article visit:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051031ta_talk_julian

(Send me news if your Community Healthy Marriage Initiative arranges a
wedding like this. - diane)

################################

- "WORKPLACE SPOUSES" IT'S A MARRIAGE OF SORTS
Boston Globe  
By Kate M. Jackson 
October 23, 2005 

(This one features Scott Haltzman whose book "The Secrets of Happily Married
Men" will be out in January.  This article has to remind us all of the
Shirley Glass keynote and her sign: "Danger: Men and Women Working!)
            
''Workplace spouses'' Duncan Gilkey and Alexis Contant of the Boston Design
Center discuss marketing strategy. While they are both married to other
people, their professional devotion to each other has not wavered.

Alexis Contant and Duncan Gilkey love to be together. They finish each
other's sentences, share a palpable fervor for design, and gaze
affectionately at one another across the conference table as they recall the
''instant connection'' when they first met 10 years ago.

''We just knew,'' said Contant.

Gilkey, 43, of South Natick, is the president of the Boston Design Center,
and Alexis Contant, 37, of Newton is the vice president of marketing ‹ they
are both married, but not to each other. While they have worked together on
and off throughout their careers, their professional devotion to each other
has not wavered; her sense of humor grounds him, she is more jocular in his
presence.        

Gilkey and Contant are classic ''workplace spouses.'' With people spending
so much time at the office these days, the notion of work wives and husbands
is a growing phenomenon in offices across the country. While platonic, an
office matrimony is rooted in the intimacy of common goals and shared
experiences. Some workplace spouses act as creative muses; others bicker and
nag each other. They do not exchange rings, but vow to critique each other's
presentation honestly, or take a lint roller to the other's jacket before a
big meeting.

While alliances have always existed in the workplace, ones between men and
women are invariably different, say relationship specialists, because of the
sexual dynamic. As for work wives and husbands who have contractual spouses
or significant others outside of the office, specialists say it is their
management of boundaries that will ultimately determine whether their office
marriage is annulled.

''The workplace spouse is a relatively new concept and not yet part of a
company's organizational DNA,'' said Dory Hollander, an executive coach and
workplace adviser. ''Many people don't know what to make of it yet.''

It is only within the last 25 years that men and women have become peers in
the workplace, said Hollander. This new camaraderie, coupled with long hours
spent at work, has caused a fundamental shift in the way people conduct
business and interact with one another, she said.

As the workplace continues to evolve, specialists say this type of
relationship will likely become more and more common, and as Hollander
notes, will be mostly harmless.

''Most people don't go to work hoping to find a work wife or husband,'' she
said.

These workplace relationships are often sprung from inevitability rather
than an intention, said Scott Haltzman, an assistant professor at Brown
University's department of psychiatry and human behavior and author of ''The
Secrets of Happily Married Men.''

In the workplace, the boundaries are much more clearly defined, as are the
specific goals you're working toward, he said.

''When you're dating someone, you're often putting your best face forward,
trying to win someone over,'' said Hollander. ''When you're working
together, you get to witness someone in real time, how they handle crises,
how they interact with other people. Someone walking down the aisle after
knowing someone for two years may not have this kind of first-hand knowledge
or have logged as many hours with this person. On some level some people
will never know everything about their spouses' work lives, just as the
office spouses will never know everything about each other's home lives.''

Gilkey has been married to his wife, Alison, for 18 years and has two sons.
Contant has been married for seven months to Jordan Smoller, a geneticist
and physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Gilkey said both of their
spouses have met and approve of their workplace ''marriage.''

''At home, we're married to very different people who complement us and we
embrace the differences,'' said Contant.

''My husband is saving lives, we're hocking furniture, but my career is just
as important to him and we talk about it.'' But Contant notes that because
she has an outlet in Gilkey, her work life does not consume her home life
and vice versa.

This is one of the aspects of such a relationship, adds Hollander. While
your significant other's eyes glaze over as you rehash the details of a
dysfunctional staff meeting, your work wife or husband is intrigued.

''They want to know who was there and who said what,'' Hollander said. They
are plugged into the inside jokes, the office politics, and the
passive-aggressive co-worker in the next cubicle.

Gilkey also points out that because he is so intense about his work, he
relies on his wife, Alison, to keep his priorities straight. ''I don't miss
my sons' games. We have dinner together,'' he said, ''but she is still
supportive of my work and relationships.''

''If I was married to someone who was jealous or insecure, I could not have
the relationship I do with Alexis,'' said Gilkey. ''I would adjust my
behavior to defend and protect Alison's feelings.''

Still, it's not always easy for some committed couples to see their mates
develop intimate connections with other people, said Haltzman. ''It's
important for men ‹ women too ‹ to be very sensitive to how their workplace
relationship will be perceived at home.''

Haltzman said the most important thing workplace spouses can do from the
very beginning is ''demystify'' the office relationship.

''If you can, introduce the at-home spouse to the workplace spouse to prove
it's a nonthreatening relationship ‹ that's a good start,'' he said. ''Be
explicit from the very beginning about what the relationship is and isn't.''

''At the office, don't set up the impression that there is anything intimate
going on. Leave doors open when you're alone in your office. Always take
phone calls from your spouse. Don't set up an environment that makes it easy
to go over that line or where there is too much physical contact,'' Haltzman
said.

Taking these measures will also help demystify the relationship at the
office where co-workers are always nosing around for rumor mill fodder, said
Hollander.

''There are many workplace couples out there who love each other to pieces
platonically, but when other co-workers observe that level of synergy or
exclusivity, they begin to feel out of the loop,'' she said.

Diana Downey, an editor at Standard & Poor's in Boston, said she thinks
workplace camaraderie is important but treads cautiously in her office
relationships with men. ''I'm more careful. I won't stop the friendship, but
I'm mindful of what others might be saying or speculating. You can suffer
from that, especially if you work in a close-knit team environment or small
office.''

As for Gilkey and Contant, they continue to live in wedded bliss at the
office ‹ until 7 p.m. do them part.

Secrets of a successful office marriage

   1. Maintain boundaries. Keep work and home lives separate.
   2. Demystify the relationship at home and at the office.
   3. Be explicit from the very beginning about what the relationship is and
is not.
   4. Leave office doors open.
   5. Always accept phone calls from spouse or significant other.
   6. Introduce at-home spouse to workplace spouse.
   7. Don't set up an environment that makes it easy to cross the line.
   8. Minimize physical contact.

Sources: Scott Haltzman, assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry and
Human Behavior, Brown University; Dory Hollander, executive coach, workplace
adviser, and founder of WiseWorkplaces Inc.

http://bostonworks.boston.com/globe/articles/102305_spousework.html

Copyright Boston Globe
**************************
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