FLYER | JERK Curriculum in High Schools | Cohabitation - single forever | 10 Dates to the Rescue - 10/1/07

Mon Oct 1 17:44:41 EDT 2007

- CONFERENCE FLYER
- HOW TO AVOID MARRYING A JERK CURRICULUM IN MARYLAND HIGH SCHOOLS
- COHABITATION STUDY: SINGLE FOREVER....
- SO LITTLE TIME.....10 DATES TO THE RESCUE

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- CONFERENCE FLYER!!

Look at the wonderful flyer Jim Steward of the Calif Healthy Marriage
Coalition created for the Smart Marriages San Francisco conference!

Download it and plaster them everywhere. It would also be great if you
forward these to all your email lists.   I can't send attachments to the
listserv, so if you'd like me to send it to you as a pdf attachment, send me
an email: diane "at" smartmarrages.com

To download the flyer, click here:
http://www.smartmarriages.com//uploaded/SMSF08v2.pdf

Let me know if you see any mistakes or have suggestions. I apologize to any
presenters that were left off the flyer.....things are moving fast.

Reminder: Make your hotel and exhibit reservations NOW!  See
http://www.smartmarriages.com for details.

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- HOW TO AVOID MARRYING A JERK CURRICULUM IN MARYLAND HIGH SCHOOLS

Here's a note from Marriage Works of Hartford County Maryland to their CHMI
members about their victory in getting Van Epp's How to Avoid Marrying a
Jerk curriculum into the county high schools.  As I keep saying, we have to
start with the kids and wish you could all figure out how to follow in
Hartford County's footsteps.  I encourage you to visit their Marriage Works
site.  They generously publish the minutes of their monthly board meetings -
fascinating, inspiring, and full of ideas you can borrow: billboard, PSAs,
out reach. Van Epp's curriculum is also being taught in high schools,
seminaries, colleges - very exciting stuff! Van Epp will of course present
the Jerk curriculum in San Francisco.  - diane

> Dear Coalition Members,
> What a GREAT VICTORY we have with the Harford County School Board agreeing to
> allow the teachers to teach How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk/Jerkette in the high
> schools! The parents and students were excited about the program and are also
> in agreement. This was decided in meetings this past Thursday.
> 
> This will be included in the current curriculum. The Family and Consumer
> Sciences Program Committee will make recommendations on how and when training
> will be implemented.
> 
> All of us have worked hard to make this happen. We especially want to thank
> Janice Greemwood for her perseverance and arduous effort to bring this to
> pass. She worked hard to make two presentations. We also want to thank her
> principal, who has been very supportive. This is collaborating to provide
> education and resources that we proclaim in our mission.
> 
> I also want to acknowledge the support of Dr. Van Epp (who created this
> curriculum), as I have numerous conversations with him about taking this into
> the high schools. He has been very helpful.
> 
> Please keep me in prayer for an interview on Marriage Works with Comcast TV
> this Tuesday, Oct. 2nd, at 11:40 am. Hope to see you all next Thursday, Oct.
> 4th, 3:00 pm for our monthly coalition meeting.
> 
> Norma
> <http://www.marriageworksofharfordcounty.org>

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- COHABITATION STUDY: SINGLE FOREVER....

Live-in couples may end up being single forever
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Adele Horin
October 1, 2007

> When they eventually split, it might take them a long time to find a new
> partner, and for the woman, the chance of having children might be lost.

MEN and women who start to live together too early in their relationship
risk wasting years and ending up single, a family researcher says.

Ruth Weston, the principal research fellow at the Australian Institute of
Family Studies, said many young people thought moving in together was "a fun
thing to do".

They believed they would take "each day as it comes", Ms Weston said. But
often they lingered for years in an unsuitable relationship. When they
eventually split, it might take them a long time to find a new partner, and
for the woman, the chance of having children might be lost.

"In the old days people might go 'steady' but there was still opportunity to
meet others," she said. "Now once you are living with someone you are
cheating if you see someone else. When you cohabit it adds a sense of
commitment to a relationship that might be going nowhere."

Ms Weston and Lixia Qu have published a new analysis of 2006 census data
that shows 35 per cent of women aged 30 to 34 are single - neither married
nor living with a partner. For men the proportion is 41 per cent. Among
women aged 35-39, it is 31 per cent and for men 35 per cent.

"This is a lot of people in their mid- and late 30s without a partner," Ms
Weston said, "although some would have once had a partner."

Marriage rates have been falling for decades while the cohabitation rate has
risen for all age groups, the analysis, published in Family Relationships
Quarterly, shows. But while the divorce rate appears to have reached a
plateau since the last census, or even fallen, living together has become
more unstable, Ms Weston said. More people were breaking up before they
married.

The fragility of live-in relationships had contributed to a 15-year decline
in partnering rates - the proportion of men and women in their 30s who had
neither a spouse nor live-in partner, she said. The drop in partnering rates
was precipitous between 1996 and 2001 and had since slowed down but not
reversed.

"The rate is still high in relation to what we know young people want," Ms
Weston said.

She said cohabiting couples in the 1980s had tended to treat the
relationship as a trial marriage and usually went on to marry each other
quickly. "Some might have separated later," she said.

Now many people entered the relationship before they were committed, and
without having discussed their future. "They enter prematurely but can
linger on and waste their time," she said.

The analysis shows for the first time that almost as many men in their late
20s who have a partner are living with them rather than married to them (46
per cent of the partnered men aged 25-29 were cohabitors, up from 38 per
cent in in 2001). For partnered men in their early 20s, about 75 per cent
were cohabitors.

Another researcher, Professor Janeen Baxter, of the University of
Queensland, has shown cohabitors may have at least one advantage over
married couples - men do more housework than their married counterparts.
There was "more equality in cohabiting relationships", she said.

This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/30/1191090943408.html

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- SO LITTLE TIME.....10 DATES TO THE RESCUE

Couple creates 'great dates' to help marriages
The Enterprise (Texas)
By ROBERT LOPEZ
Sept 29, 2007

One of the biggest problems married couples face in today's world is time
management, Claudia Arp, co-founder of Marriage Alive International
ministry, says.

"They're just so busy that they're not taking the time that they need to
build their relationship," she said in a telephone interview from her home
in Virginia. "You've got your profession, and then the children and all
their activities. By the time a couple gets to talking about their marriage,
they're just out of energy. One of the greatest causes of marriage breakdown
is not spending time building up your relationship, because you're so
engulfed in other things."

Arp and her husband David have spent the past 25 years developing a series
of "10 Great Dates" for couples to strengthen lagging ties.

Oct. 5 and 6 they will talk about the importance of having good lines of
communication and setting aside some quality time for each other during a
seminar at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Beaumont.

"It's an opportunity for them to relax, focus on each other and to just have
a day of growing together without worrying about anything else," she said.
"Many times you just have to grab the little moments, but one of the things
that we teach in our seminar is how to develop a dating attitude, and how to
have that time to set aside where you know you're going to focus on your
relationship."

"We sort of prime the pump and some of the topics for the dates are choosing
a high priority marriage, learning to talk, resolving honest conflict,
becoming an encourager" she said. "And then there are also dates on building
a creative love life, developing spiritual intimacy. It gives couples a
track to run on to help them communicate better and set goals."

Divorce rates hit a high in 1979 and 1981 with 5.3 divorces per 1,000
people, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate in
2005 was 3.6.

The Arps have been married for 44 years. Claudia acknowledges the two have
had their rough patches, and says that any couple who claims they've never
had any problems probably is lying. She said divorce is justified in some
circumstances, such as when a spouse is abusive, but overall many couples
still give up too easily.

"They don't really try to salvage their marriage," she said. "Then they
marry someone else and they're still unhappy. So instead of divorcing and
marrying someone else, why not work on the marriage you're already in? Our
culture is not as supportive, not as marriage friendly as it used to be.

"We hear terms like starter marriages, which we hate. That indicates that if
it doesn't work out, you can always get a divorce. It needs to be a life
long commitment."

The "10 Great Dates" provide a series of talking points that couples can
discuss when they go out.
If you go :

What: Claudia and David Arp present "10 Great Dates to Energize Your
Marriage."

When: The seminar will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5 and continue
from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 6.

Where: St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 680 Calder Ave., Beaumont.

How much: Tickets are $60 per couple or $30 per individual. That includes an
Italian dinner Friday and breakfast on Saturday.

Contract: Call (409) 832-3405 or visit www.stmarksbeaumont.org.

You'll have the opportunity to train in 10 Great Dates, 10 Great Dates for
Spanish Couples, and 10 Great Dates for Black Couples in San Francisco.

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