1% Solution Mtgs in SF/ Shockwaves / Men's Fears/ Bias - 6/5/09

Thu Jun 5 17:20:54 EDT 2008

- 1% SOLUTION MEETINGS AT SF CONFERENCE
- HOTEL SPACE 
- SHOCKWAVES OF DIVORCE
- MEN PREFER BEING SOLO OVER A BAD MARRIAGE: STUDY
- AUTHOR BIAS 
- A FEW MORE....
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- HOTEL SPACE

I've been getting calls all day about the Hilton being full. It's NOT full.
They're sold out only one night at the $115 rate - Sat night July 5th.
There is still space on all other nights.  If you need to stay Sat night, we
have the SAME $115 rate right across the street for all nights at the luxury
Parc 55 Hotel - call 415-392-8000.  At least 100 Smart Marriages attendees
will be staying at the Parc 55.  - diane

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- 1% SOLUTION MEETINGS AT SF CONFERENCE

Chris Gersten and his FAMLI 1% Solution Campaign has helped eight states
achieve set-aside state funding for marriage programs including the most
recent: Mississippi just allocated over $2 million for marriage
strengthening programs.  Another victory: New York just renewed its
allocation of $125,000 per year. He's now coaching teams in Louisiana,
Florida and Missouri to earmark marriage education funding in those states.

Other states on the radar: AK, AL, AZ, CO, GA, ID, IN, KS, SC, VA. If you
are from one of these states, or from FL, MO, LA, and would like to help
launch a FAMLI campaign to win TANF funding for marriage programs, register
now to meet with Chris over small group lunches at the SmartMarriages
conference in San Francisco.  These will be small groups of 10-15 people.

If you are not from one of these states, but want to explore what it takes
to play a LEADERSHIP role in launching a Famli effort in your state, you are
strongly encouraged to participate.

The lunch meetings will be from 11:30am-12:30pm on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday in a board room at the San Francisco Hilton.  Starbucks in the
lobby is selling sandwiches. You'll purchase a take out lunch and meet with
Chris and others for these brief meetings.

If you would like to attend, register at the www.famli.us
<http://www.famli.us> website.  You will be sent confirmation and location
of the lunch.

You should also plan to attend these workshops:

> 319
> Working with State Legislators
> Dennis Stoica, MBA, Chris Gersten, Maggie Russell, Scott Haltzman, MD
> Learn to open doors, build relationships, and provide compelling info on the
> benefits and feasibility of supporting marriage. Plus what other states have
> accomplished including "1% Solution" TANF set asides.

> 719
> Texas: How¹d They Do It!?!
> Daphine Lambert, PhD, Jeff Johnson, Maggie Russell, Erin Kincaid
> In 2007, a grassroots coalition passed major legislation that provides $15
> million in state marriage education funding. Lessons learned, challenges, and
> guidelines for your state.

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-  SHOCKWAVES OF DIVORCE

It's sad that people don't know about courses like Retrouvaille and PAIRS,
Marriage Savers and The Third Option, Marriage Builders and Divorce Busting,
and so many others.  We need to row harder and make bigger splashing noises.
- d

Sunday Reflections: Shockwaves of divorce slam entire family
Sunday, June 1, 2008
By Tracey O'Shaughnessy
Republican-American

Last night, my brother told his son that he is getting a divorce. It was the
conversation he had dodged and choked on, the inevitability he had hoped to
defer or evade.

Whenever he came near the subject, he saw himself 35 years before, weeping
into my mother's chenille robe, begging her to tell him that the rumors — my
father's flight, his irreversible departure — were not true. He saw the
hedges going untrimmed, the shingles on the house rotting and then falling
off, the basement ruined by an incontinent dog, the illusion of family bliss
irremediably shattered.

And in spite of all these ghosts, my brother had come to the same conclusion
his father had: He could no longer live in the same house with his wife.

I wish I could say I was sanguine about this decision, or that I stood
resolutely at my brother's side, supporting him in every barbed assault and
eviscerating invective. The truth is, I was shamefully equivocal about the
whole thing. To be a child of divorce is one burden. To watch another unfold
is an acute form of torture, laced with poisonous memories. Misery to an
adult is comprehensible, and even soluble. To a child, it is merely cruel
and incomprehensible.

Nevertheless, my brother was resolute. As his sister, I am bound by blood to
support him — even if it meant distancing me from a sister-in-law I loved.

Divorce has become so common in American society that it is often viewed as
just another pothole on the highway of contemporary life. So common are its
features — the single-parent household, the divorced-dad condos, the
joint-custody juggling act — that divorce has been declawed. The sidelong
glances and collective shunning that my parents endured when they divorced
in the early 1970s has been replaced by a collective shrug. Today , we have
books about "The Starter Marriage," as if the implosion of a first marriage
is inevitable.

Statistics bear this out. Nearly 43 percent of marriages in the U.S. end in
divorce, the federal government reports. The first years of a marriage are
particularly vulnerable ones; one in three first marriages end within 10
years and one in five within 5 years. Today, a married couple with children
is the exception rather than the norm.

There should be safety in numbers — or at least some semblance of solace.
Divorce shouldn't hurt my brother and sister-in-law as much as it does. But
it is hurting them acutely and perhaps irremediably, largely because they
are both children of divorce and intimately acquainted with its cruelty.

When my brother's chocolate brown eyes meet the wounded, familiar eyes of
his 6-year-old son, the anguish is exquisitely familiar. It is, in fact,
unbearable.

Unlike a marriage, divorce is excruciatingly lonely. Marriage, with its
lavish drama and celebratory rituals, is lavish with witnesses and
supporters. It's easy to forget that the reason we squeeze into
uncomfortable, dazzling clothes and embrace a couple exchanging intimate
assertions of fidelity, is to support and sustain their pledge.

So, when a couple unravels so fabulously, it is easy for family members like
myself to feel a wee bit guilty.

It has not gone unnoticed by my family that my brother and sister-in-law
have spent thousands of dollars on professional advice in an attempt to keep
their marriage alive. I often wonder where the rest of us were during these
pricey therapy sessions. Certainly, geography and employment have flung us
into disparate quarters. But I remember my grandmother's quiet assertion
that there was nothing that couldn't be solved with a cup of tea, a kitchen
table and a little forbearance.

When my grandmother had inevitable travails with her volatile Irish husband,
her sister Ruthie would come "up the house" for a cup of tea and sympathy.
In the end, it was mended. It was not perfect, but it was endurable. Today,
things seem less endurable, perhaps because the choices are too robust, or
perhaps because children of fractious marriages will not tolerate such
chronic irascibility in their own lives.

Oh, for a few Aunt Ruths, in their polyester pantsuits and sensible shoes.
Heaven knows how many marriages they saved.

I, alas, saved none, in spite of my fervid entreaties. Now I am left to
figure out how to sustain my beloved and bedraggled brother, my shattered
and confused nephew and a sister-in-law I am supposed to excise from my
life. It will be less of a struggle for me, than for him, to be sure. But a
divorce's effect on a family is not limited to the couple whose marriage
imploded. It sends shock waves throughout a fragile web, ripples that are
deep and tenacious, and whose end is unknown.

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- MEN PREFER BEING SOLO OVER A BAD MARRIAGE: STUDY

Again, if these guys realized it's not just about finding the perfect
partner but about learning how to create and maintain happy and successful,
satisfying marriages....we need to get the word out there that it doesn't
have to be this scary, 50-50 crap shoot about trying to be sure you've found
the perfect mate.  Reading this article reminds me of a quote from the
Marriage quotes page:

> Bachelor's Ill Luck
> It seems so dreadful to stay a bachelor, to become an old man struggling
> to keep one's dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants
> to spend an evening in company, to lie ill gazing for weeks into an empty
> room from the corner where one's bed is, always having to say good night
> at the front door, never to run up a stairway beside one's wife, having to
> carry one's supper home in one's hand, having to admire other people's
> children and not even being allowed to go on saying: "I have none myself,"
> modeling oneself in appearance and behavior on one or two bachelors
> remembered from one's youth. . .
> That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will
> stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is,
> for smiting on with one's hand.
> Franz Kafka

Men prefer being solo over a bad marriage: study | Reuters.com
Mon Jun 2, 2008  
By Belinda Goldsmith

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Bachelor Carl Weisman got fed up being classified
as a playboy, a loser or a commitment-phobe so he set out to find out
exactly why he and a growing number of eligible men were steering clear of
marriage.

Weisman, 49, conducted a survey of 1,533 heterosexual men to research a book
aiming to give women an insight into why some smart, successful men opted to
stay single -- and help lifelong bachelors understand why they are still the
solo man at parties.

He concluded that most men were not afraid of marriage -- but they were
afraid of a bad marriage.

"Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never
getting married at all," Weisman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"This is the first generation of people who have grown up with bad divorces.
People assume there is something wrong if you don't marry but these are men
who have made a different choice and not given in to social pressures."

The release of his book "So Why Have You Never Been Married? - Ten Insights
into Why He Hasn't Wed," comes amid a growing trend for more people to stay
single, with less social or religious pressures on men -- and women -- to
tie the knot.

Weisman said U.S. figures showed that in 1980 about 6 percent of men aged in
their early 40s had never married but this number had now risen to 17
percent.

AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES

Weisman said his online survey found there are three groups of bachelors --
about 8 percent who never want to marry, 62 percent want to marry but of
which half won't settle for anything less than perfection, and about 30
percent who are on the fence.

Four out of 10 bachelors did not want children compared to three out of 10
wanting to be a father. The rest were undecided.

But while 72 percent of respondents said they were not afraid of marriage,
about half of them said the situation that scared them most was marrying the
wrong person.

"It's so important to these men to get it right. My best advice to single
women after bachelors is to be patient. If you're in a hurry to get married
you'll be frustrated," he said.

Weisman also found that financial issues, both positive and negative, played
a large part in men's fear of commitment.

"Those with little money said they would have nothing to offer a partner,
with some suffering self-esteem issues and withdrawing from the dating
pool," said Weisman, an engineer-turned-author with two books now published.

"While those who are financially sound were terrified what a bad divorce
could do to them."

Weisman said his research blew away any idea that single men were unhappy.

"A compelling issue was how many of them had found contentment in a
never-married life," he said. "They had created lives full of careers,
friends and ambitions. It was not like they walk around all day worried
about not being married."

For him, researching the book made him also look at himself -- and he ended
up living with a girlfriend for the first time.

"Now we're looking at getting married. As I researched the book I found I
was looking at men 10 years older than me and it was like looking into the
future. If I didn't change, nothing would," he said.

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- AUTHOR BIAS 

> Hi Diane, 
> A link highlighted in your e-newletter last week referenced video game
> obsessions.  I clicked on it but found myself disappointed that the author has
> a very obvious bias against Christian faith, a bias that would be considered
> inappropriate and false journalism if it were any other group being
> misrepresented.  In the article at
> http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/05/27/rock_band/index.html, the author
> says this:  "I storm back to my desk and type the phrases "my husband"
> "addicted" "video games" "HELP" into the search engine. Hundreds of links
> appear. I click on the first one, a Christian counseling Web site, where a
> desperate woman named Tiffany, whose husband plays video games nine to 11
> hours a day, is reminded by the nonaccredited Christian counselor that man is
> master of her dominion and tells her to pray to Jesus to restore her husband's
> love.  This isn't going to work for me."
> 
> I went to the website referenced
> http://listen.family.org/askdrbill/A000000615.cfm  and read something
> completely different.  The counselor on this website in fact encourages the
> woman to pursue an intervention...and if that doesn't work she "may need to
> make some tough choices."  Hardly what the author of the salon.com article
> represented. 
> 
> I think it is important to set this straight as misrepresentation is what
> furthers discrimination.
>  
> Cindy Pyne 

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- A FEW MORE....

And, since I had to go to the quotes page to find Bachelor's Ill Luck, here
are a few more....

> Ask yourself, "What difference will this thing we're fighting about make in
> ten years?
> In one year? In a month?"
> Unknown
> ****************
> What makes a relationship work is having things in common.
> What makes a relationship passionate are our differences.
> Unknown
> ****************
> She said there are three words that save a marriage, and they're not, 'I love
> you.' They're, 'Maybe you're right.' And Marcus, her husband said, 'Maybe,
> gives you some wiggle room there'.
> Long As We Both Shall Live a book of photos and wisdom from long-married
> couples by Robert Fass
> ****************
> You don't marry one person; you marry three:
> the person you think they are,
> the person they are, and
> the person they are going to become
> as a result of being married to you.
> Richard Needham
> *****************
> Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
> Victor Borge
> ****************

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12th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
June 30-July 6, 2008  (General Conference July 2-5)
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6
DOWNLOAD a conference brochure and register at:
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