Marriage Education in the Workplace | SUCCESSFUL Hollywood Marriages - a SERIES! - 5/31/07

[Smartmarriages]

- MARRIAGE EDUCATION IN THE WORKPLACE
- TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: HOW STARS STAY HAPPILY HITCHED

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- MARRIAGE EDUCATION IN THE WORKPLACE

The workplace is still one of our major frontiers (we have so many frontiers
- keeps it exciting).  But, back to the workplace and this great article -
another one to clip and save and put in your community marriage initiative's
"to do" folder: "get local businesses interested in providing marriage
education classes."  The features experts will present at Smart Marriages
conference Denver AND attendees will receive a copy of the special report:
"Marriage and Family Wellness: Corporate America's Business?" sponsored by
Chick-fil-A's Winshape Foundation Marriage CoMission. You can also attend
their workshops and meet with Tim Gardner who will provide special
consultations and tips for accessing the workplace at his Marriage
Ministries exhibit. Or, contact him at
Marriageministries.net   - diane

> 220 - Friday, June 29, Denver
> Marriage & Family Wellness: Corporate America¹s Business?
> Jeff Fray, PhD, David Olson, PhD, Gary Oliver, PhD, Matthew Turvey, PsyD
> Research makes the case: employees with healthy marriages are more productive.
> Learn what HR executives say they need and how marriage educators can deliver.
> Corporate examples.

> 605 - Sunday, July 1, Denver
> Marriage @ Work
> Tim Gardner, MA, DMin
> Innovative, practical, proven strategies for adapting marriage education
> principles to the business environment. Learn what one committed educator can
> do ­ and how to do it. Multiple examples.


Working on Your Marriage -- at Work
Realizing That a Happy Staff
Is More Productive, Employers
Offer Relationship Training
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 31, 2007 
By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

People often complain they are married to their jobs. Now, some companies
are helping employees work on their marriages, on the job.

A small but growing number of companies have implemented training programs
designed to help employees strengthen their marriages or other personal
relationships. Some companies are motivated by religious values to encourage
strong marriages and families. But now, amid evidence that divorce and
relationship stress can make workers less efficient, more companies have
begun offering marriage training programs with an eye to keeping their
businesses running more smoothly and profitably.

Some employers are offering their workers free marriage or relationship
education classes at corporate retreats, with spouses encouraged to attend.
Others sponsor lunch-and-learn sessions at which workers hear speakers on
relationship skills, like more diplomatic ways to fight with their spouses,
or they provide audio programs with relationship tips for workers to listen
to while driving. At some companies, the programs are aimed mainly at
employees who are being transferred, which can create friction in a
marriage.

After an executive at Gregg Appliances Inc., an appliance and electronics
retail chain based in Indianapolis, became concerned that workers were being
unproductive or leaving the company because of marital stresses, the firm
began sponsoring marriage training classes at corporate retreats in Florida
for its general managers and their spouses. This year's session, which
focused on finances, featured a version of the "Newlywed Game," so couples
could gauge how well they really knew each other's financial habits.

Ed Koplin, a principal at X-nth Inc., an engineering firm based in Orlando,
Fla., wanted to help his employees learn how to relate better to each other
and to those outside of work. One important skill: how to listen more
effectively, so the other party feels more understood. "These are life
skills that will help you at work and help you at home," says Mr. Koplin,
who works at the firm's Baltimore office.

Howard Yocum, a senior electrical engineer at X-nth, says the course has
helped prevent his domestic arguments from escalating into bigger fights.
"Instead of using fight-talk, I change it into more of a discussion-type
thing," Mr. Yocum says.

Marriage training sessions are part of growing trend of employers offering
programs -- from weight-loss regimes to childcare -- aimed at helping
workers become happier, with the additional goal of making them more
industrious.

Productivity lost from marriage and relationship stress can cost employers
some $6 billion annually, according to an estimate cited in a new report,
"Marriage and Family Wellness: Corporate America's Business?" sponsored by
the Marriage CoMission, a marriage strengthening advocacy group in Atlanta.
Another study cited in the report found that in the year following divorce,
employees lost an average of four weeks of work. (The report is available at
http://www.marriagecomission.com/go/corporate.)

"Unhappily married employees decrease profitability. Those in failing
relationships can hurt a company's bottom line, through higher distractions
and absences, higher health-care costs and increased stress," says Matthew
Turvey, a psychologist and co-author of the report.

The programs are generally free or highly subsidized for workers. For
employers, lunch-and-learn sessions can cost several hundred dollars for
speakers, while short courses on relationship issues can cost about $500 to
$1,500. Marriage retreats can cost companies several hundred dollars or more
per couple, depending on the venue. Many marriage trainers are psychologists
or are certified to teach marriage skills through programs often established
by psychologists or clergy members.

At annual conferences that Chick-fil-A hosts for its franchise operators,
the Atlanta-based restaurant chain has seminars on topics such as "How to
Divorce-Proof Your Marriage" and offers marriage counselors for individual
sessions with couples. The company also makes available to its corporate
staffers and franchisees and their spouses Christian marriage training
sessions at a rural retreat in Georgia.

A recent attendee was Karen Rogers, a Chick-fil-A property management
analyst who has been married for 17 years. "It's important to take time away
together, to focus on that relationship," she says, adding that the session
was in seminar form, not group therapy. "They make it very safe. You're not
up there spilling the dirty marital laundry out in front of your
co-workers." The session was based on television show "The Amazing Race,"
and included segments on creating marital "teams."

PRC, a sales outsourcing firm based in Plantation, Fla., recently hired
marriage trainer Sheryl Kurland to lead lunchtime sessions on successful
marriages and relationships in some offices. Ms. Kurland, an author and
speaker on marriage issues, says her sessions have no religious overtones
and are also open to gay and single employees. In her presentation, she
includes four ways to handle arguments that work in most relationships. One
idea is what she calls "your department, my department." If one spouse, say,
never picks up the towels after a shower, you can nag him or her forever, or
you can just decide to pick it up yourself. "End of subject, end of stress,"
says Ms. Kurland.

Workplace marriage programs can be controversial. Tim Gardner, who runs the
Marriage Institute near Indianapolis, says several companies he has
approached have been cool to his offers to teach courses because they fear
marriage training programs could discriminate against single or divorced
employees, or gay couples. Other companies say they have no business
intruding in workers' personal lives.

Marriage trainers say their courses aren't marriage counseling, but courses
that teach real skills, such as how to listen and communicate more
effectively, and how to defuse disagreements before they escalate into
full-blown conflicts.

"We're not talking about getting everyone in a hot tub and sharing all their
problems," says Dr. Gardner. "It's a skills-based set that benefits all
sides."

One thing Dr. Gardner teaches to clients such as Gregg Appliances is that
couples should set goals in their marriage. Some ideas: set up a weekly date
night or take a yearly vacation without the kids. Or set up 10 minutes a day
just to talk and catch up, without focusing on scheduling or problem-solving
or child-care logistics.

Some employees at CommScope Inc., a telecommunications-equipment maker based
in Hickory, N.C., are working with Dr. Gardner on a relationship-skills
program called "Marriage at Work." "When I first announced it to my region,
people thought it was a little too touchy-feely," says Steve Scattaregia, a
regional vice president for CommScope in Indiana. "I work for a company that
has given me a lot of latitude to try stuff like this."

##########################
- TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: HOW STARS STAY HAPPILY HITCHED
(( Can't help it, this one gives me hope and I want to share it to encourage
more of the same - more focus on "Hollywood" positives.  This article would
be all the stronger if it pointed out that many of these long unions are
remarried stepfamilies.  Would offer hope to these most challenging unions.
- diane))  

To Have and to Hold: How Stars Stay Happily Hitched
FoxNews.com
May 30, 2007
By Hollie McKay

This is the first article in a FOXNews.com SERIES about marriage and
relationships in honor of "wedding season." Keep clicking back this week and
next for more stories!

Divorce and Hollywood have been synonymous since ... well ... Hollywood. And
that's still the case, with the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Britney Spears
and countless others all recently bustling from bride back to bachelorette.

However, the fairy tale of never-ending nuptials does live happily ever
after for some celebrity pairs, like Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Paul
Newman and Joanne Woodward and Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne. So what
makes marriage work for these special couples?

“Hollywood celebrities do appear to be under far more pressure in their
relationships than non-celebrities,” said Sloane Veshinski, a
Hollywood-based marriage and family therapist. “But through trust, respect
and the ability to be public when it is required for work and private when
the focus needs to be on family, a long-lasting marriage is definitely
possible.”

Date nights are "what lies beneath" the flourishing 14-year matrimony of
Michelle Pfeiffer and her TV producer husband David E. Kelley.

“My husband and I still have date nights, and I look forward to them all
week," Pfeiffer told Hello! magazine. “You have to spend time away from the
kids and stay up late and talk, go to the movies or do the crossword puzzle
together.”

So what is it about continuing to play the dating game that keeps couples
happy?

“Dates allow the couple to spend quality time together on the relationship
and their own needs as people,” Veshinski said.

For some, old-fashioned passion keeps the love alive.

Will Smith believes that going “Wild Wild West” regularly with his wife of
10 years, Jada Pinkett Smith, is the secret to domestic delight, according
to Starpulse.com.

"The key is really, really good sex,” the site quoted Smith as saying. “I'm
really good at it.”

However, Veshinski doesn’t believe that sex itself is necessarily the most
important aspect of a marriage.

“Healthy and effective communication is probably the most critical factor in
the success of a relationship,” she said. “It allows for the couple to be
able to discuss and process issues of importance, whether great or small.”

But if you ask Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, who’ve been
together for 10 years, they’ll tell you their child is the secret ingredient
in their coupling.

“Matthew and I have a good marriage that was made stronger with the birth of
our son,” Parker told the Calgary Sun.

“Having a child makes a marriage more romantic. It certainly did with ours.
You have this new, wonderful thing in common that you love separately and
together in a new way.”

For other stars, the solution is simple: Marriage is a commitment forever,
and they will “love and honor each other for all the days of their life."

"A deal is a deal. To me that says it all. Marriage is for keeps," Courteney
Cox, who has been married to David Arquette for almost eight years, told Eve
magazine.

The “Scream” stars, who have had to battle rumors that they are having
marital trouble, also had the words “a deal is a deal” inscribed on their
wedding rings.

Country couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who married in 1996, also support
the idea of an everlasting espousal.

“My husband and I have made the choice that our marriage is the most
important thing to us,” Hill told Redbook magazine. “We respect what we have
and understand how we need to feed it."

But even for happy couples, it's not always smooth sailing. After 28 years
of wedded bliss, Ozzy Osbourne doesn’t deny that there are rough patches.
But his trick is to continue rocking through the tough times.

“Some days Sharon and I don’t talk,” he told Playboy. "Some days we're like
two kids. Some days we're ... not even on the same planet. But you get on
with it.”

Alternatively, some stars have instead selected to scan beyond Hollywood
Boulevard for that special someone.

“There have been many successful marriages between celebrities and
‘ordinary’ people,” Veshinski said. “The secret to success for these
relationships is the ability for each individual to make the necessary
adjustments to accommodate their different lifestyles.”

For example, Meryl Streep has been merrily married to her sculptor husband
Don Gummer since 1978, and Lisa Kudrow and French advertising executive
Michel Stern went from “Friends” to tying the knot in 1995.

But for those who still believe that two stars can be tied for all time,
there are some miracles.

Bob Hope and Dolores DeFina stayed together for 69 years, in sickness and in
health 'til death did them part. Meanwhile, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
have 49 years of matrimony behind them and a fervor still on fire.

“Paul and Joanne were married during a time when celebrities had more of a
private life,” Veshinski said. “But fame aside, it appears that they have a
genuine love for one another that has grown over time.”

The marriage maestros themselves think laughter is the secret to
long-lasting love.

“Sexiness wears thin after a while, and beauty fades,” Woodward said,
according to brainyquote.com. “But to be married to a man who makes you
laugh every day, ah, now that's a real treat."

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

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11th Annual Smart Marriages Conference, Denver Adam's Mark Hotel,
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