Cosby & Poussaint | Why Did I Get Married? | Robots | Workaholics | Military Marriages - 10/16/07

[Smartmarriages]

- COSBY ON OPRAH TOMORROW - WED
- ANYONE CONNECTED?
- WHY DID I GET MARRIED RULES AT BOX OFFICE
- MARRYING ROBOTS??
- MARRIED TO A WORKAHOLIC
- MILITARY MARRIAGE

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- COSBY ON OPRAH TOMORROW - WED

> Legendary entertainer and Bill Cosby is all fired up and speaking out. He
> sounds off on the controversy over his 2004 remarks and takes on topics
> including absent fathers, teenage pregnancy, violence and "the N-word." He
> speaks out on some of the problems plaguing American youth including violence,
> drugs and teenage pregnancy. What is happening to our kids and what are we
> going to do about it?


> Op-Ed Columnist
> Tough, Sad and Smart
> The New York Times
> By BOB HERBERT
> October 16, 2007
> 
> They are a longtime odd couple, Bill Cosby and Harvard¹s Dr. Alvin Poussaint,
> and their latest campaign is nothing less than an effort to save the soul of
> black America. . . .

> For three years, Mr. Cosby and Dr. Poussaint have been traveling the country,
> meeting with as many people as possible to explore the problems facing the
> black community.
> 
> There is a sense of deep sadness and loss ‹ grief ‹ evident in both men over
> the tragedy that has befallen so many blacks in America. They were on ³Meet
> the Press² for the entire hour Sunday, talking about their new book, a cri de
> coeur against the forces of self-sabotage titled, ³Come On, People: On the
> Path From Victims to Victors.²

> There weren¹t many laughs over the course of the hour. Speaking about the
> epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young
> fatherless child thinking: ³Somewhere in my life a person called my father has
> not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don¹t know if I¹m ugly
> ‹ I don¹t know what the reason is.²
> 
> Dr. Poussaint, referring to boys who get into trouble, added: ³I think a lot
> of these males kind of have a father hunger and actually grieve that they
> don¹t have a father. And I think later a lot of that turns into anger. ŒWhy
> aren¹t you with me? Why don¹t you care about me?¹ ²
> 
> The absence of fathers, and the resultant feelings of abandonment felt by boys
> and girls, inevitably affect the children¹s sense of self-worth, he said.
> 
> The book lays out the difficult route black people will have to take to free
> the many who are still trapped in prisons of extreme violence, poverty,
> degradation and depression.
> 
> It¹s a work with a palpable undercurrent of love throughout. And yet it pulls
> no punches.  

> In an interview yesterday, Dr. Poussaint said: ³You go into whole
> neighborhoods and there are no fathers there. What you find is apathy in a lot
> of the males who don¹t even know that they are supposed to be a father.²
> 
> The book covers a great deal that has been talked about incessantly ‹ the
> importance of family and education and hard work and mentoring and civic
> participation. But hand in hand with its practical advice and the undercurrent
> of deep love for one¹s community is a stress on the absolute importance of
> maintaining one¹s personal dignity and self-respect.
> 
> It¹s a tough book. Victimhood is cast as the enemy. Defeat, failure and
> hopelessness are not to be tolerated.

To read the full Opinion piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/opinion/16herbert.html?ex=1193198400&en=b0
5e81d893a1c2f6&ei=5070&emc=eta1

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- ANYONE CONNECTED?

We'd love to have him/them address the conference in San Francisco.  Based
on the principle of six-degrees-of-separation, does anyone know anyone that
has his ear?  I suppose with the platforms Cosby has - like Oprah and Meet
the Press - he doesn't need ours, but maybe he'd see us as his soldiers and
would come and address us.  Let me know. - diane


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- WHY DID I GET MARRIED RULES AT BOX OFFICE

A marriage movie trumps em all...


Newsday.com
'Why Did I Get Married?' rules box with $21.5M
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 14, 2007

Academy Awards heavyweights such as George Clooney and Cate Blanchett were
no match for another of Tyler Perry's populist tales.

The Lionsgate release "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?", a marital yarn
whose ensemble cast includes Janet Jackson, Malik Yoba, Jill Scott and
writer-director Perry, debuted as the No. 1 weekend movie with $21.5
million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Perry's flick came in well ahead of Clooney's legal drama "Michael Clayton,"
Blanchett's historical pageant "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," and Joaquin
Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg's crime saga "We Own the Night," which all pulled
in modest crowds.. . .

"Why Did I Get Married?" follows the domestic trials of couples
re-evaluating their relationships during an annual reunion.

"Tyler Perry is a mogul," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office
tracker Media By Numbers. "There is a built-in audience base for Tyler
Perry's movies, no matter what time of year, no matter what the subject
matter."

#################
Newsday.com
'Why Did I Get Married?'
Movie Rating: two stars

BY RAFER GUZMÁN
October 14, 2007

The latest in Tyler Perry's string of therapeutic dramas, "Why Did I Get
Married?" isn't out to win any Oscars. Its aim is much simpler but far more
noble: to present black audiences with images of themselves as educated,
affluent and able to overcome their interpersonal problems.

You don't have to be black to enjoy the film, but you do need a strong
desire to watch people work out their issues using pop-psychology and
self-help techniques. In this movie, the main character is a psychotherapist
named Patricia (Janet Jackson), who frequently encourages her friends to "do
the work" in their relationships. Casual talk over drinks tends to spark
discussions on how to argue constructively with a spouse. And by the film's
end, not one but two marriages are saved by making lists.

Perry, who grew up poor and abused in New Orleans (and who began writing
plays after being inspired by an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show"), is
more interested in message than story. His film tries to give equal screen
time to four marriages -- that's eight main characters -- but it's easy to
remember each couple by the particular dysfunction it represents.

The overweight Sheila (Jill Scott) suffers constant jokes from her callous
husband. Marcus and Angela (an enjoyably feisty Tasha Smith) have fallen
into a spiral of bickering driven by her drinking and his unemployment;
Terry, a level-headed doctor (played by the appealingly natural Perry)
yearns to tear his workaholic wife from her BlackBerry. Patricia and Gavin,
the supposed "perfect couple," have a wound in their past that has yet to
heal.

The movie's lessons (be honest, communicate, value yourself) are taught in
plain, simple language, as if the characters are speaking to us, not each
other. Occasionally they seem on the verge of turning directly to the
screen, as when one husband counsels, "When somebody says something hurtful,
don't say something worse to hurt them."

A more subliminal message lies in the affluence that's apparent in every
scene. The four couples vacation in Colorado, wear fashionable fur, drink
wine by candlelight and drive beautiful SUVs. Perry's characters have many
problems, but poverty isn't one of them.

WHY DID I GET MARRIED? (PG-13). Perry wrote, directed, produced and also
stars in this inspirational drama aimed at black audiences. The cast also
includes Janet Jackson and Jill Scott. 1:58 (sexual themes, adult
situations). At area theaters.
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- MARRYING ROBOTS??

Researcher: Humans will wed robots

AASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht
in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a
paper on marriages between humans and robots.

David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the
college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial
Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage
are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be
seen as suitable marriage partners.

Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of
psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science,
artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human
interaction.

The thesis examines human attitudes toward affection, love and
sexuality and concluded that the findings are just as applicable to
human interaction with robots of the future as they are to the
relationships between humans of today.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upiUPI-20071011-122541-6886&show_art
icle=1

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- MARRIED TO A WORKAHOLIC

> On average, couples in which one partner is a workaholic divorce at twice the
> average rate, according to a 1999 study conducted by the University of North
> Carolina at Charlotte's Bryan Robinson.

Wedded to Work: Saving Your Marriage From a Demanding Job
Finding a Balance Between Work and Family is Hard But Not Impossible
By MAUREEN FARRELL
Forbes.com
Oct. 15, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com ‹

Alan Meltzer told a client seven years ago that if it ever took him longer
than two hours to respond to an e-mail between 5:30 in the morning and 10 at
night, he'd give $5,000 to the charity of the client's choice. Meltzer, the
chief executive of The Meltzer Group, a Bethesda, Md.-based insurance
brokerage firm, still has the account and never had to pay off the bet.

Great for his client. Not so hot for his wife. "I was lonely a lot," says
Amy Meltzer, who says she's basically raised their four kids. "I forged such
a deep bond with my children that sometime when he was home it was weird. He
almost wasn't part of our unit."

Despite this, Meltzer and his wife beat the odds, staying married 29 years.
On average, couples in which one partner is a workaholic divorce at twice
the average rate, according to a 1999 study conducted by the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte's Bryan Robinson.

"In workaholic marriages, there's more marital estrangement; couples are
emotionally distant from each other; and there are often thoughts of
separation and divorce," says Robinson, author of Chained to the Desk: A
Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians
Who Treat Them.

Robinson developed a 25-question test to distinguish workaholics from hard
workers. Among his findings: While workaholics on average spend 10 hours
more than non-workaholics on the job, time isn't the appropriate barometer.
Mindset is. "The workaholic is on the ski slopes dreaming about getting back
to work," says Robinson. "The hard worker is in the office dreaming about
being on the ski slopes."

Spouses can help. To heal family and relationship angst caused by your
mate's unhealthy addiction to work, Robinson says you've got to send a
much-needed wakeup call. Some tricks: Go to the party alone rather than
waiting. Take the children to the zoo at the time you planned.

Also helpful: Make sure time away from work is time away from work, says
Jess Alberts, a professor of human communication at Arizona State
University. "People who live highly structured lives need to make
appointments for time off," she says. However little time it is, it's
important to plan for it. "There's a huge danger that, if you don't spend
downtime with partners and children, relationships will fade." Rituals like
a Friday night date also help.

Finding a hobby, or any activity to engage in together, is another strategy.
"Workaholics have trouble being still and connecting, so [a hobby] helps
them do something and connect with you." says Robinson. Any activity will
do. You can take up golf, tennis or rock climbing, or simply a bike ride or
take a regular evening stroll around the neighborhood.

Workaholics should force their spouses to sit down and work through a plan
for who will be responsible for all areas of domestic life and how the
couple will earn enough money to support the family in both the short term
and long term, says Cali Williams Yost, the author of Work+Life: Finding the
Fit That's Right for You. "You almost need to sit with a pad and paper and
work through everything," says Yost. It can help both spouses to understand
why 70-hour weeks might make sense for several years, but they can arrange a
scaling back down the road.

"You don't want one person to bear an inordinate part of the more stressful
household tasks, because that's going to come back and bite you," says
Rosalind Barnett, executive director of the Communities, Families and Work
Program at Brandeis University. It's important to reassess your happiness
and satisfaction with the level of housework, time spent together and what
amount of time you each spend at work and home. At one time in life, it
might work for the spouse of a workaholic, but if that changes, it's
important to talk about it.

In the end, though, "There's often only so much the spouse can do, and there
comes a point at which it's up to the workaholic to make the change," says
Robinson. "For people who are true workaholics, there are [psychological]
roots that were there long before the spouse came along."

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

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- MILITARY MARRIAGE
Military life puts young marriages to a constant test
Stars and Stripes
By Jennifer H. Svan
October 14, 2007

This one is interesting in several ways BUT one way is it explains q bit the
this year's Rand research report that showed that the divorce rate in the
military ‹ about 3 percent ‹ was no higher than it was during peacetime a
decade ago. It had us all scratching our heads.  Turns out they only looked
at those married after 2002 - those that might have anticipated being
deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

> Relationship expert John Van Epp, author of ³How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk,²
> said the outcome of the Rand study surprised him ³in light of what I was
> hearing other people and other couples say ... and my own common sense. It
> didn¹t seem to tap into the reality of how deployments, especially multiple
> deployments, affect couples.²
> 
> The Rand study authors offered several explanations for why the data didn¹t
> jibe with popular belief.
> 
> For one, they examined the direct effects of deployment only for couples who
> married after fiscal 2002.
> 
> ³All of these couples knew that the deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq were
> under way, and they may have expected and prepared for them,² they noted in
> the study.



When Capt. Angela Batts shipped off to an air base in Qatar this summer, it
marked the first time in nine years she was apart from her husband, Clif,
due to a deployment.

The four-month separation probably was harder on Clif, who looked after the
couple¹s three boys, both agreed.

Although Angela, the sexual assault response coordinator at Misawa Air Base
in northern Japan, wasn¹t in Iraq, Clif still worried.

Once, Angela traveled to another country in theater and she couldn¹t tell
Clif where she was going.

Without her, he missed the small things, he said.

³Acting silly. The laughing. Just holding hands. Being together,² he said.
³I¹d be driving and I¹d look over and she wasn¹t there. It was weird.²

Whether one¹s job is on a ship, behind a desk or in a cockpit, no one in
today¹s U.S. military is immune from deploying to war as airmen and sailors
are being tasked to provide troops to ease the strain on Army and Marine
Corps ground units.

No one gets a free pass ‹ including the spouses left behind to hold the home
together. Marriages are being tested, often strained. Sometimes they break.

The military, recognizing that extended deployments can stress marriages, is
stepping up efforts to help couples avoid going to war with each other.

Experts say they¹re making great strides ‹ but more still needs to be done.

³None of us are doing as much as needed,² said Joyce Wessel Raezer, chief
operating officer of the National Military Family Association. ³We¹re all
doing more than we used to ... but we¹re all playing catch-up. What worked
as folks came back from a first deployment may not work when they come back
from a third.²

Divorce rates soaring ­ or not

In 2005, it appeared that longer, more frequent and dangerous deployments
were creating a casualty far from the battlefield: military marriages.

Alarms were sounded when the Army reported the divorce rate among personnel
nearly doubled between 2001 and 2004. Most troubling was the rate among
married officers: In 2002, it was 1.9 percent; it soared to 6 percent by
2004.

The Pentagon asked the Rand Corp. to research whether stress caused by
deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan was leading to a surge in divorce.

The results of Rand¹s yearlong study, released last spring, showed that the
divorce rate in the military ‹ about 3 percent ‹ was no higher than it was
during peacetime a decade ago.

Divorce rates in the Army, Air Force and Marines rose steadily from fiscal
2001 to fiscal 2005. But it was a rise that returned the rates to those
observed in 1996, when demands on the military were measurably lower,
according to the study¹s authors.

In the Navy, divorce increased sharply the first years after fiscal 2001,
but have declined in the past two.

The study linked longer deployments and divorce only to Air Force members.
It found that among married airmen, the more days they were deployed, the
greater the risk their marriage would end after they returned.

But Raezer said it¹s hard to get a ³statistical handle² on the effect
deployments have on marriages.

Anecdotal evidence suggests ³a lot more marriages are in trouble, especially
among the high deployers,² she said. NMFA staffers hear from spouses that
their husbands or wives are ³  Œnever home or they¹re not home long enough
[or] this repeated deployment to a war zone was not what we signed up for,¹
² Raezer said.

³I¹m over-simplifying a little bit here,² she added, ³but what you hear
often is if the servicemember won¹t leave the service, then the spouse feels
the need to leave.²

Relationship expert John Van Epp, author of ³How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk,²
said the outcome of the Rand study surprised him ³in light of what I was
hearing other people and other couples say ... and my own common sense. It
didn¹t seem to tap into the reality of how deployments, especially multiple
deployments, affect couples.²

The Rand study authors offered several explanations for why the data didn¹t
jibe with popular belief.

For one, they examined the direct effects of deployment only for couples who
married after fiscal 2002.

³All of these couples knew that the deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq were
under way, and they may have expected and prepared for them,² they noted in
the study.

Stepping up efforts

Deployments don¹t tend to break up happy marriages, relationship experts
agree, but they can be the tipping point for one with problems.

³Deployment has a way of just accelerating the hairline cracks in
marriages,² said Army Chaplain Maj. Leo Mora Jr., clinical director of the
Chaplain Family Life Center at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea.

The military has a vested interested in patching those fissures.

³If your family is in turmoil before and while you¹re gone, it¹s hard to
focus on anything and you¹re miserable over there (downrange), so it has a
huge mission impact,² said Air Force Chaplain (Maj.) Darrell Clark of Misawa
Air Base.

Military officials say the service components are creating more programs to
help ease the stress of deployments. Some are reaching Pacific bases.

At Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, the Fleet and Family Support Center recently
launched an Individual Augmentation Retreat Program to help servicemembers
returning from combat zones and their families adjust to life at home.
Presenters at a recent retreat touched on topics from post-traumatic stress
disorder to couples communication, according to Paul Finch, a counseling and
advocacy adviser at the base.

On Okinawa, resources for Marines include the Counseling and Advocacy
Program, the Marine Corps Family Team Building program and the Personal
Services Center to help reintegrate families.

At Misawa Air Base, 300 airmen who recently returned from a four-month
deployment downrange were required to attend a redeployment briefing
sponsored by the Airman and Family Readiness Center. They were told to limit
alcohol use, communicate with their spouses and take them out on a date.

The Army points to its Strong Bonds marriage education program. For soldiers
being deployed or redeployed, the program teaches them special coping
tactics, said Maj. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon.

But is it enough?

Mora, the Yongsan chaplain, said the safety net the Army provides, from
family advocacy to mental health, isn¹t enough right now.

³Our system, across the board, is being overrun by the return of veterans
from Iraq and Afghanistan,² he said.

Part of the problem is money, Raezer said, with many bases only funded at a
level to do treatment.

³You need folks out there working with prevention issues ... [but] you don¹t
get the support until it¹s urgent.²

Van Epp, who¹s headed to Europe soon to train 55 instructors from 11
military installations, is impressed by the effort the military has shown so
far.

But he, too, believes more needs to be done.

³If we look at it in perspective of where they¹ve been and where they are
now, they are to be congratulated,² he said. ³If we look at in terms of the
needs, then they¹re not doing enough.²

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