Tech problems | Applications | Happier Wife \ Spanish \ French - 9/14/07

[Smartmarriages]

- WE HAVE A PROBLEM! SUGGESTIONS?  ADVICE?
- MORE TECHIE STUFF: LONG LINKS
- WANT A HAPPIER WIFE? (GETTING TECHNICAL ABOUT WIFE OPERATION SYSTEMS)
- SPANISH TRACK in SF?
- HMMMMMM.....AND HOW ABOUT A FRENCH TRACK?
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- WE HAVE A PROBLEM! SUGGESTIONS?  ADVICE?

Auuugh, just when everyone needs the Conference info - Hotel reservations,
Institute schedule, Airline Discounts - SOME of you are experiencing a
problem with our new website:

>> Diane – some of your links aren’t working – especially
>> around the conference.  Any idea when it’ll be up and running again?
>> Julie Lee, LCSW
>> Federal Project Officer
>> Healthy Marriage Initiative

Actually the links are all working and the information is all there, but on
SOME systems the information on certain pages "drops to the bottom of the
page".  In those older systems, when you click on *Save the Dates* or on
*Conference info* you open what looks like a blank page (all you see is the
left navigation bar and the header bar across the top - you can't tell that
you've arrived at a new page as those (left bar and header bar) stay the
same on every page). You are on a new page AND you need to scroll DOWN to
the bottom of the page.  All the info is there, it's just at the bottom,
beyond the bottom of the left navigation bar.

This seems to affect most everyone that works for the government - I'm told
their system is old.  And, it effects random pages at smartmarriages.com -
for example, it affects the Quotes page, many people's favorite page.  They
email to complain and I have to tell them, (repeat with me) "It's all there,
just scroll down TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE."

My web designer is on his honeymoon in Thailand. So we'll have to struggle
with this for at least another three weeks.

I've posted a note on left navigation bar "CAN'T find Conference Info?" to
try to explain what's happening and guide people to the bottom of the page.
Any other suggestions about how to better "drop a trail of breadcrumbs" and
make this info easier to find?  Appreciate hearing any advice or solutions.-
diane 

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- MORE TECHIE STUFF: LONG LINKS
> Diane – 
> Just wanted to let you know that there was a link in today’s email that did
> not work.  Hope it can be corrected and included in another email, because it
> sounded like a good article:  8 Things No One Tells You About Marriage.  I
> pasted the section below with the bad link.  Thanks for a great newsletter.
> Cassie
>> - 8 THINGS NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT MARRIAGE
>> Diane, This article is about appreciating your marriage and husband
>> from a woman's point of view.  Really a GREAT article ‹ one of the best I’ve
>> read!
>> Please consider sharing with the list.
>> 
>>   8 Things No One Tells You About Marriage - MSN Lifestyle -
>> Relationships
>> 
>> http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/couplesandmarriage/articlerb.as
>> px?cp-do
>> cumentid=5352157&page=1
>> 
>> Bill Chausse

Actually the link works, you just need to paste in the entire link.  It has
split into three lines. I usually try to find the time to convert long links
to short ones, I just didn't have time on this one.  Or, if you want an easy
direct route, here's info on the article and another one from the original
source in Redbook: 

> Hi Diane—hope you’re well. Just wanted to point out that the article
> recommended by Bill Chausse is a reprint from REDBOOK and can also be found
> at: http://www.redbookmag.com/love/no-one-tells-marriage . We’ve been getting
> a great response on it from readers and professionals alike. I think everyone
> can appreciate the article’s honesty about the hard parts of marriage — and
> how it’s often by moving/working through those hard parts that you find the
> real rewards of long-term love.
> 
> Your readers might also be interested in another article we’ve run recently on
> emotional affairs, featuring Steven Stosny as a quoted expert. It can be found
> at http://www.redbookmag.com/love/emotional-affair-ll . This was another
> fascinating piece for us, also with a huge response from readers — some of
> whom read the article and recognized themselves, and others of whom disputed
> the idea that emotional affairs exist at all.
> 
> Jeannie Kim
> Deputy Editor, Redbook

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- WANT A HAPPIER WIFE? (GETTING TECHNICAL ABOUT WIFE OPERATION SYSTEMS)

Men: Want More Sex? Do The Laundry!
CBSNEWS.com
Sept. 12, 2007

(CBS) I came across some studies recently that deal with a couple of topics
that have perplexed men for generations: sex and housework. Not
surprisingly, despite all of the advances women have made towards equality,
they generally still do more housework than men. However, what may be
surprising is that live-in boyfriends do more household chores than
husbands. And some research indicates that women have more sex with men who
do more work around the house than with those who don't do their share. Men
doing housework is, evidently, a kind of aphrodisiac for women. I'm going to
have to accept this last finding, but I have a question: If this is true,
instead of showing photos of all those "hot" young men in bathing suits in
magazines designed for women's viewing pleasure, why not just show pictures
of guys vacuuming the house?

A study published in the September Journal of Family Issues that involved
more than 17,000 people in 28 Western countries concluded that live-in
boyfriends performed more household labor than married men. So, what's going
on with those live-in boyfriends? Are they just doing all this housework to
trick their girlfriends, knowing full well that they won't lift a finger
around the house after they get married? Researchers don't think so. They
have concluded that it's more likely that the "official" status of marriage
suggests to men and women that they should adopt the more traditional roles
that perhaps their parents or grandparents had around the house. There
haven't been enough generations of married men and women performing the same
roles for this concept to be embedded deeply enough in the culture. For
years some people have felt that marriage takes the romance out of a
relationship. Now it might be said that marriage takes the man doing the
laundry out of the relationship.

Neil Chethik wrote a book called, "VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think
About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment." You
might think that after writing a title that long, Chethik didn't have any
energy or words left. But he did. Along with the University of Kentucky
Research Center, Chethik's study with 300 American husbands found that
housework was very important in marriages. Wives were less likely to have
affairs, couples were less likely to consider separation or divorce, and
couples were more likely to say they were happily married if the husband did
more chores than in other marriages. . . .

According to Chethik's study, a man doesn't have to do exactly 50 percent of
the housework to please his wife. If he just does enough so that she feels
supported, she'll be happier. . . .

Chethik even quantifies how much more sex a man is likely to have if his
wife feels he's helping out appropriately around the house: about one time
more per month. I'm sure there are cynics and just lazy guys out there who
might respond, "It's not worth just one more time a month for me to mop that
floor." But keep in mind, none of these researchers is just talking about
sex. They're all saying that a man can make his mate happier by doing more
of the housework. Sex is only a side benefit. . . .

For the full article:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/12/opinion/garver/main3253246.shtml

Neil Chethik's DENVER WORKSHOP made the top 20. Impressive for a first time
presenter - it's not easy breaking into the top runners.  And, as for
placement, looks like the early morning 8am slot on Sunday is a good track
position - eight out of 20 sessions made it into the top 25!  Amazink.

> #757-619
> Where Are the Men?
> Neil Chethik
> Learn practical marketing steps to encourage men to attend classes by creating
> a male-friendly atmosphere that will keep them engaged and working on their
> marriage. 

Order at 800-241-7785 or at http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com
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- SPANISH TRACK in SF?

> Just wondering if you have anything available in Spanish.  Do you have
> seminars or a Spanish track in your conferences?
> Henrietta 

More than half of the Marriage Education and Family Education program
curricula are now available in Spanish.  You'll see dozens in the Exhibit
hall and hear about them in the conference sessions where.  We thought it
would be a good idea to offer conference sessions in Spanish, but when we
tried, we had not a single registrant for these sessions.  And this after
putting enormous energy into PR, radio shows, community grass-roots efforts.
We've decided it's best to offer the conference in English with an emphasis
on training Spanish-speaking instructors to offer the classes/programs in
their communities. Ditto for other languages - people attend the conference
from three dozen countries and many of the programs are now available in
translations: Spanish, Korean, Chinese, etc.  I suggest you visit the
Directory of Programs where the curricula are advertised:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/app/Directory.Home  --  do a search for
Spanish and several dozen will pop up.  (I know some programs are in Spanish
and may not be designated - Program Directors, let me know if your Directory
listing needs updating. - diane)

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- HMMMMMM.....AND HOW ABOUT A FRENCH TRACK?

No couples on the planet shack up more than those in Quebec: census
Canadian Press
Sept 12, 2007 

MONTREAL (CP) — Quebecers have long led Canada in the modern move away from
wedding vows toward common-law coupling, but now the province has roared
past Sweden and Finland to lead the world.

New data from the 2006 census released Wednesday shows no couples on the
planet are known to shack up more than those in la belle province.

The dramatic move away from marriage is accelerating wildly in Quebec, with
35 per cent of couples choosing common-law arrangements compared to 30 per
cent in 2001, the last time the data was collected by Statistics Canada.

In the other provinces, the proportion of common-law couples was closer to
13 per cent. Canada's national average of 18 per cent is well below Sweden
and Finland, where respectively 25 and 24 per cent of couples who live
together are unmarried, but no other jurisdiction in the world outpaces
Quebec when it comes to unmarried unions.

Sebastien Ross and Nancy Mercier didn't shun marriage when they decided to
live together in their Montreal home 12 years ago.

The option just wasn't on their radar.

"The concept of choice is very pertinent because I don't see it as a choice
to not marry," said Ross, who teaches computer skills to people trying to
rejoin the workforce.

"I just don't have the taste and I don't see what it gives me. I don't see
any objective thing that it could change in my life. Not in personal
relations with my partner, not with my family, not anyone. There's just no
link."

Quebecers have steadily withdrawn from marriage since the Quiet Revolution
took off in the 1960s. Quebecers refer to the previous decades as "the Great
Darkness" when the Catholic church, an English-speaking business elite and a
near-totalitarian provincial government under Maurice Duplessis dominated
every aspect of life for francophones.

As new governments of the '60s and '70s kicked the church out of the
education and health systems, Quebecers rejected clerics who forbade birth
control and pushed them to stay on the farm, produce babies and avoid the
evils of liberalism.

Legal reforms that made divorce accessible in the late 1960s liberated a
generation of Quebecers who became the first to "live in sin" and gain
acceptance. The trend accelerated through the '80s and '90s.

"The 1970s was clearly the first era that allowed it," said Marie-Michele, a
retired academic who met her partner, Adrien, in 1972, after they were both
divorced. (The couple did not want to use their surnames.)

"Ten years earlier, it wasn't possible to live like that."

Marie-Michele remembers early discussions with family about her
then-cutting-edge choice to live with a man without marriage.

"But we've certainly never had any real conflict over it," she said.

Adrien, a 66-year-old retired professor, says he likes to joke that
"marriage is the main cause of divorce. So we decided not to marry to avoid
divorce."

"For our circle, we are a couple, there is no difference," Adrien added.
"It's Adrien and Marie-Michele, and has been for a long time. Being married
or not, I don't know what would have been the difference."

Common-law living is increasingly popular across Canada and the
industrialized world. But French-speaking Quebec's history of domination by
one religion combined with a mass conversion to secularism boosted the
phenomenon dramatically in the province, experts say.

Quebec's anglophone and immigrant minorities are more likely to follow the
Canadian pattern, they add.

For francophone Quebecers, marriage and Catholicism were inextricably
linked. When they rejected religion, marriage went with it, according to
sociologist Martin Meunier.

"Quebecers are throwing out the baby with the bath water," Meunier said.

"In other places, religion and marriage are two things. Here, the two were
so closely tied we are liquidating marriage as we liquidate the Catholic
religion."

Quebec has followed a similar trajectory to Sweden, the former world leader
in common-law partnership. Sweden was also dominated for years by one
religion, Lutheranism, and ditched religious allegiance for secular values.

Celine Le Bourdais, a demographer and expert on families at McGill
University, says the various protestant religions more common in the rest of
Canada have been more adaptable than Catholicism, accepting contraception,
divorce and less formal weddings.

"The Catholic church, even now, is opposed to many things," Le Bourdais
said.

Meunier points to other religious rituals that are disappearing. In the
1990s, the children of baby boomers stopped baptizing their children in
great numbers.

"And now we have a complete meltdown where people are dying and aren't even
getting a Catholic funeral," he said.

Le Bourdais said many Quebecers are unaware that common-law relationships
have hidden pitfalls when it comes to dividing property in the case of a
split up, or death.

When a partner dies, property is automatically passed on to children rather
than the spouse, for example. Common-law spouses also have fewer obligations
to share property when they split, she said.

"Mostly it's women getting the short end of it," Le Bourdais says.

Even though Adrien and Marie-Michele and Ross and Mercier say they don't
need marriage, each couple offers a glimmer of hope that the institution
might survive.

Ross and Mercier have two small children, aged three and five. Ross sees
some advantages for children to have married parents in the event of a
sudden death or breakup. They're considering it.

Marie-Michele, 61, admits she has thought a wedding would be nice at
different times in her 32-year relationship with Adrien.

Adrien adds that he likes the idea of a wedding, more for the celebration
with family and friends than anything else.

"Maybe we'll throw a big wedding for our 40th," Adrien says.

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12th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
July 2 - 5, 2008  
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6

List your program and resources on the Directory of Classes at
http://www.smartmarriages.com

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Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
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http://www.smartmarriages.com
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