Questioning that U-Shape / Marriage Rituals / Divorce Changes Children/Arranged Marriages - 9/8/08

[Smartmarriages]

- QUESTIONING THE QUALITY OF THE U-SHAPE MARITAL QUALITY RESEARCH
- MARRIAGE RITUALS 
- DIVORCE CHANGES CHILDREN
- ARRANGED MARRIAGES
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- QUESTIONING THE QUALITY OF THE U-SHAPE MARITAL QUALITY RESEARCH

> Diane,
> The materials you posted recently about long-term marriages and an alleged
> U-Shape of marital quality over the years ( http://tinyurl.com/57ysox ) are
> interesting and useful but need to be regarded with caution. None of the
> studies cited used representative samples, and none took into account
> marriages that ended in divorce, so far as I can tell. (Persons who volunteer
> for marriage studies tend to have marriages that are different from the
> typical ones in the population.) Studies with representative samples, either
> repeated cross-sectional studies or panel studies, have generally failed to
> show the U-shaped pattern, unfortunately. Rather the percentage of an original
> marriage cohort (the marriages that came into existence during a given period
> of time) that are both intact and of high quality seems to go down steadily
> with time, though quite slowly after about 25 years. This is sad, BUT IT SHOWS
> THE NEED FOR PEOPLE IN LONG-TERM MARRIAGES TO ACTIVELY TRY TO KEEP THEIR
> MARRIAGES VITAL RATHER THAN JUST ASSUMING THAT THAT WILL NATURALLY HAPPEN. NOT
> A BAD POINT FOR SMART MARRIAGES TO EMPHASIZE.
> Norval Glenn
> University of Texas at Austin

(Emphasis added. This fits with recent reports about a pretty dramatic
increase in divorce in the over-55 crowd. -d)
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- MARRIAGE RITUALS 

When I was interviewed for this one (below), I sent the reporter to our
Marriage Rituals page at:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/intentionalmarriage.html
I encourage you to visit and to send any rituals you'd like to add. - diane

Keeping love alive
Couples say rituals keep unions happy

BY AUTUMN SHRUM
FLORIDA TODAY
August 31, 2008

In an era defined by soaring gas prices, job losses and a widespread Debbie
Downer kind of morale, the thought of true love can be a nice break from all
the worry.

Ah, love.

It doesn’t necessarily mean romantic candlelit dinners, a trail of rose
petals leading to the bedroom or Fabio-length hair blowing gently in the
breeze.

For Lori Matson of Rockledge, it’s her hubby Tim serving her a fresh cup of
coffee in bed almost every morning, a tradition Tim’s late father started
with Tim’s mother.

For Tracy and Wade Atchison of Melbourne, it’s calling or taking a call from
one another precisely at 2:22, “their time,” to signify their wedding date,
February 2, 2002.

If it’s Fred and Loretta DiFrancesco of Viera you’re talking about, true
love means three notebooks full of lists they have compiled for each other
every year on the eve of their anniversary and read to each other the next
morning. The lists contain memories from their 45 years of marriage, none of
the bad ones, rather the happiest moments, like when they found out they
were going to be parents for the first time.

Not even the dreariest times could interrupt these couples’ sacred marriage
rituals. That’s why rituals are so important to relationships, experts say.

“At the core, what rituals do is they give you a sense of history,
predictability, playfulness or something to look forward to,” said Dr. Carol
Bruess, co-author of “What Happy Couples Do,” a compilation of real couples’
“loving little rituals of romance.” Bruess and her colleague Anna Kudak
collected the stories and studied them over the course of 15 years. They
also penned the recently released “What Happy Parents Do.”

“Rituals serve so many functions for couples,” Bruess said. “Couples who
don’t have them, over time, tend not to be as happy.”

Many of the stories in the book are touching, such as one about a man who,
almost every day of 55 years of marriage, brings his wife a flower. He calls
it “the flower of the day.”

Some are a tad strange, such as one husband and wife who leave notes for
each other under the peanut butter jar lid.

Others are just gross, such as couples who squeeze each other’s zits, pick
each other’s belly button fuzz and eat dinner naked. One couple had noticed
that their dog showed more affection toward them than they did toward each
other. So, they started a ritual of licking each other on the cheek, even
when in public.

Sick to your stomach yet? It doesn’t matter because the inventors of these
odd traditions live in their own little worlds, Bruess said.

“Most of them recognize that it might seem unsavory to the outsider, but at
the same time they don’t care, because they don’t think it’s gross,” Bruess
said.

Most importantly, couples who practice rituals realize the value of the
“little things.”

Lori Matson says she doesn’t feel the same without Tim bringing her coffee
in the morning.

“If he goes out of town, I get so discombobulated,” she said. “It really
screws up my day.”

Jan Matson, Lori’s mother-in-law, said the coffee tradition her husband
started will always be one of her fondest memories of marriage.

“It lets you know you’re being thought of,” she said.

Even the men, as macho as they might try to sound, have soft spots for their
marriage rituals.

“I swear, the secret to keeping a relationship long and strong is
remembering the good times and not bringing up all the bad stuff,” Fred
DiFrancesco wrote in an e-mail.

Loretta DiFrancesco sees it the same way.

“I compare our marriage to the Florida weather,” she said. “We get a few dry
spells, a tornado rushing through every now and then, but mostly sunny
days.”

Qualities of a good ritual

Romantic rituals aren’t created to impress others, cover up flaws or to
serve any purpose other than to add pizzazz to a relationship, said Diane
Sollee, founder and director of smartmarriages.com and the Coalition for
Marriage, Family and Couples Education.

“I think one of the reasons they’re so good is that they kind of
institutionalize one of the most important aspects of keeping a marriage
healthy, and that is spending time together as a couple,” Sollee said.

What makes a good ritual is different for each couple, and it can be as
simple as leaving a sweet note for your partner or as extreme as stopping in
your tracks and dancing every time your wedding song comes on, Sollee said.

No matter what it is, there’s one quality a ritual should always have.

“A ritual is there to be romantic,” Sollee said.

And by romantic, Sollee means between two people only.

“It’s not a good romantic marriage ritual if it’s something that’s
child-focused,” she said. “Like we’re going to take the kids out for pizza
every Friday night. That’s not a marriage ritual, that’s a family ritual,
and that’s not sexy and romantic.”

Sandra Haglock, a relationship specialist and owner of Kindly Reminders
Services in Melbourne (www.kindlyreminders.net) says many couples make the
mistake of expecting romance to disappear after time.

“As soon as the wedding ring goes on the finger, people think it has to
stop,” she said. “That’s when we need it the most.”

Many also assume romance has to be expensive, glamorous and constant. But
the truth is, all it takes is effort, Haglock said.

“It takes willingness,” she said. “That’s the main thing. To keep it going,
it just takes a lot of dedication.”

Start your own

Romance rituals often happen naturally or by accident, but the most special
ones are those that are established intentionally, some say.

“The thing about a ritual is that it’s deliberate, it’s conscious and it’s
very important that you be flexible around that ritual,” Sollee said.

Flexibility could mean that although you may not be able to continue
spending Saturday evenings on the town after having children, change the
ritual to spending five minutes in the hot tub every Saturday night after
the kids have gone to bed.

It’s OK to try out some of the rituals from “What Happy Couples Do,” Bruess
said, or the ones listed on smartmarriages.com, Sollee said. Or, if you
prefer to create your own, a good place to start is with conversation.

“Make a decision to talk about it this week, to figure out ‘what are our
rituals?’ and ‘should we add a ritual?’¤” Sollee said.

Rituals can stem from something as common as a Sunday sermon.

Kelly and Tom Edens of Cocoa now regularly pray out loud together since
their pastor made the suggestion to the congregation.

“I noticed that it seems like our relationship has taken a different turn,”
Kelly said. “It’s a deeper relationship now.”

Rituals can also come from passion, desire and sex.

“One couple said that every time they buy a new car they break in the back
seat,” Sollee said about someone who wrote to smartmarriages.com. “And she
said it really adds an element of fun when they’re shopping for a new car.”

A ritual can be kept private or made public, and it does not have to happen
daily, weekly or monthly. Tracy Atchison says she and her husband don’t call
each other at 2:22 every day, but when they do, it lifts their spirits.

“Especially if you’re having a hectic day,” she said. “If someone calls you
in the middle of the day and says ‘it’s our time,’ everything gets put into
perspective.”

The point is to make a ritual happen, and look forward to it.

“We find that it’s a lot about not what you say, it’s what you do,” Sollee
said. “It’s putting love and commitment into action. You can say ‘I love
you’ but it’s better if you’re doing things that remind your body that
you’re loved.”

So go ahead, lovebirds. Take a moment to forget about the chaotic, mundane
or depressing details that may consume your lives and start a new romantic
ritual. Or, revive an old one. Your marriage will thank you.

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- DIVORCE CHANGES CHILDREN

The Washington Times
Divorce changes children
Cheryl Wetzstein
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I don't know when the phrase "Disneyland Dad" was coined, but I saw one the
other night.

My husband and I were at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood
Marshall Airport to meet a flight. While we waited at the baggage-claim
area, a flight from Orlando, Fla., arrived.

After a short while, a girl, about 14, sat next to me on a bench. She pulled
out her cell phone and proceeded to offer an instant snapshot of a child's
life after the divorce of her parents.

"Mom, I do not want to spend the night with Dad," Daughter said. "Please
can't I come home? I just spent a week with him in Orlando, and that was
enough."

I, of course, couldn't hear what the mother was saying, but it was clear she
was in no mood to drive to BWI at 11:30 at night to pick up her teenager.

But Daughter pressed on. "Please come get me. He's standing over there,
texting someone. Probably Pam," she said, needling her mom.

Moreover, Daughter explained in increasingly righteous tones that if she had
to go home with her father tonight and went home to her mother the next day,
then just a few days later, she would "have to go back to Dad's, because
it's his weekend."

"This is just so unfair," she said.

Her conversation reminded me of a book written a few years ago by a
now-adult child of divorce named Elizabeth Marquardt.

"Kicked back and forth like a football" could be a metaphor for a child's
life after divorce, Mrs. Marquardt wrote in "Between Two Worlds: The Inner
Lives of Children of Divorce."

As a child, Mrs. Marquardt once suggested to her father that maybe she, too,
was a football. In response, her father had grown angry, and "he assured me
sternly that this image did not apply to me. He and my mother loved me, he
said."

And it was true, Mrs. Marquardt wrote, her parents did not kick her. They
hugged her passionately before they passed her to each other.

"Still, there was something about that football," she wrote. "I could see it
spinning in its arc, flying freely, even beautifully, from the one who
launched it to the one who caught it. But … it seemed almost too high, too
free; it belonged neither to the place it had left, nor to the place where
it was going. Maybe it belonged in that space in between."

Divorce changes childhood.

In married families, children live inside their parents' world.

When divorce occurs, the world splits in two. And it falls to the children
to make sense of these two worlds, Mrs. Marquardt wrote, even though that is
not fair to the children.

I pondered these words as this teenage girl begged her mother to please
transfer her from one world to the other.

Then I saw Dad. He was in his late 30s, handsome, tanned and fit.

He had three other children with him, two of whom ran over to retrieve
Daughter. She motioned them away with exasperation, as she had one more
thing to say to her mother.

"I hate this," she hissed. "This is so unfair. And if I have to go with him,
I am going to be such a brat. I am going to be brattier than he's ever
seen."

After a tearful goodbye, she snapped her phone shut, stood as tall as her
5-foot frame would allow and walked bravely toward what was left of her
family.

• Cheryl Wetzstein's column On the Family appears Tuesdays and Sundays. She
can be reached at cwetzstein at washingtontimes.com.
-----------------
Order the recording to Elizabeth Marquardt's San Francisco Smart Marriages
highly-rated, 90-minute workshop at http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com/
Or at 800-241-7785 
 
> #758-416
> Between Two Worlds
> Elizabeth Marquardt, MDiv
> Even in the best divorces, kids live divided lives in which they struggle to
> understand their parents' behavior, negotiate tangled family systems, and
> develop values and beliefs.

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- ARRANGED MARRIAGES

First the marriage, then the courtship

Arranged marriages have moved beyond their traditional base and are becoming
a small but growing trend in the US

By Gloria Goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Christian Science Monitor
September 9, 2008

> Nick Gilhool, casting director for the impending Lifetime cable show "Arranged
> Marriage," in which four couples will take the plunge and allow cameras to
> film their first year together, says applicants share a frustration with
> dating and a desire to "be proactive" about their love lives. "Marriage is
> being repositioned and reexamined," he says.


Whisper the words "arranged marriage," and images of women signed over as
chattel are likely to rise in the minds of many Westerners. But, say culture
watchers and sociologists, there's a rising interest in this age-old
practice in the West, as shown by at least two books and three upcoming
television series on the topic – as well as a growing number of matchmaking
sites devoted solely to arranging unions.

More important, couples with no cultural or family tradition of arranged
marriages are entering into matrimony with proper strangers in what is being
called a "turbo-charged back to the future."

While the number of nuptials consummated in this way is still small, there's
evidence that some of the principles of these traditional pacts are drawing
attention and respect from both scholars and singles who are anxious to move
into a married state.

"In this Internet age, we have so many options we want people to narrow them
down for us," says futurist Marian Saltzman, chief marketing officer at
Porter Novelli in New York, who calls arranged marriages one of the
"developing trends of the moment."

Internet dating has exhausted many people, she adds, suggesting that if
online courtship is the yin of modern relationships, then arranged marriages
are the yang. "People are saying to themselves, 'I'm tired of a whole bunch
of cheap Hershey bars. I want gourmet chocolate and a connoisseur to tell me
which of the top two brands I should choose.' "

But, she points out, arranged marriages in countries such as the United
States are "not the old routine of dads selling daughters for a dowry; these
kids have veto power."

David Weinlick and his wife, Elizabeth, began their union through what their
"marriage arranger," good friend Steve Fletcher, calls "a piece of whimsy."

Mr. Fletcher, a political consultant, got together with a group of friends
and announced that Mr. Weinlick would be married on a certain date, but
needed a bride. "After we put this out as a press release, we thought nobody
would take this seriously," he says. Instead, the group received hundreds of
responses and more than two dozen women showed up on the appointed date to
be "vetted" as potential brides.

Ten years and three children later, Weinlick says, "We love each other more
every day." He and his wife, who is a nurse, agree that one of the keys to
the union's success has been their shared values. "We were both committed to
commitment," he adds.

Nick Gilhool, casting director for the impending Lifetime cable show
"Arranged Marriage," in which four couples will take the plunge and allow
cameras to film their first year together, says applicants share a
frustration with dating and a desire to "be proactive" about their love
lives. "Marriage is being repositioned and reexamined," he says.

The tradition of arranged marriages and the lessons it has for 21st-century
couples interests author Reva Seth, an attorney of Indian heritage whose
parents came together in an arranged marriage. "Everyone I know is
questioning the role of marriage today," says the New Jersey-raised writer
who now lives in Toronto with her husband and 4-year-old son.

She began to interview women from arranged marriages with an eye to
discovering lessons for Westerners. The biggest surprise, says the author of
"First Comes Marriage," is that "most of these women are happy, the main
reason being that they have realistic expectations about their partners and
always viewed them as a life partner, not a lifesaver."

One of the cornerstones of traditional arranged marriages is the
participation of family members. In the case of Huriya Manzar, a
30-something computer programmer from Staten Island, N.Y., her parents and
brothers arranged her marriage when she was 18. "For us, marriage is not so
much about two people being in love," says Ms. Manzar. "It is about a
relationship to a larger community, our family, our friends, and our
neighbors."

She says her marriage to a man with whom she had spoken only briefly before
they wed has been about "two human beings compromising and realizing that
the other is only human, not some perfect being." Now pregnant with their
second child, she adds that she loves her husband, although she does not
feel she was ever "in love" with him.

This notion of romantic love and fulfillment through a soul mate is the
cornerstone of much dissatisfaction, says psychologist Stan Tatkin. He's not
surprised at singles investigating arranged marriage because it fits into
one of the basic definitions of happiness. "People generally find they are
more able to find happiness from the things to which they commit
themselves," he says.

Lisa Clampitt, cofounder of the Matchmaking Institute, and her husband of
five years barely knew one another when they wed. "He proposed within 20
minutes of meeting me, I said yes, and a week later we sent out 'evites' to
our friends," says the former social worker with a laugh, recalling that
many of her buddies didn't respond because they considered it a joke. "But,
within two months we'd gone to Las Vegas and married and begun our life
together. We just found things out after committing to each other, rather
than before."

Still, not all stories have such a happy ending. Sophia McDonald, a
university-educated Russian immigrant says that her mother began looking for
a husband for her by contacting an international matchmaker. Ms. McDonald
exchanged letters and visits with a suitor from Seattle, whom she married.
Once in the US, though, she discovered that he had no income and was not who
he represented himself to be. So she divorced him and became a matchmaker.
"I know the dangers these women face and don't want the same thing to happen
to them," she says.

Arranged marriage, as it's practiced traditionally, will never take deep
root in the West, says Robert Epstein, visiting scholar at the University of
California, San Diego. "We don't have the ... most important ingredients" –
a strong community support system, either religious or social, and shared
values or beliefs.

But, says the author of the upcoming book, "Making Love," a study of the
potential lessons from traditional matrimonial customs, Westerners can
absorb the deeper principles, such as that love doesn't have to rely on the
click of Cupid's wand; it can be "made."

He points to a story about an arranged marriage in a novel by Salman
Rushdie. Day by day, the wife contemplates a small aspect of her husband and
resolves to love that single quality. Bit by bit, she comes to love the
whole man.

Just as mainstream culture has absorbed the notion that we can work to
improve our physiques and our careers, says Dr. Epstein, we'll come to
accept that we can "work" on marriage and love.

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