Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts

Thursday, November 03, 2011

WOW Why Young Men Fear Marriage

Why Young Men Fear Marriage:
Posted by Palco MP3

Why Young Men Fear Marriage.Daryl Motte and Seth Conger have got a lot going for them. They're young, attractive, smart, employed, single, funny, down-to-earth, slightly old-fashioned and curious
Love and Marriage


Daryl Motte and Seth Conger have got a lot going for them. They're young, attractive, smart, employed, single, funny, down-to-earth, slightly old-fashioned and curious -- the kind of guys who'd make perfect husbands.
Except that Daryl, 31, and Seth, 28 -- two longtime friends who run the irreverent dating advice blog, We're Just Not There Yet and have an upcoming book by the same name -- are just not there yet when it comes to marriage. And a big part of that is the fear of the D-word: Divorce.
It's a valid fear. Daryl and Seth's generations -- Daryl's a Gen-Xer, Seth's a Millennial -- are already divorcing at surprising rates. Of those who married in 2009, 43.9 percent were men in their age group, 25 to 34, according to the Census Bureau's "Marital Events of Americas: 2009," while of those divorcing, 23.7 percent -- more than half -- were ages 25 to 34. For men ages 15 to 24, 19.5 percent married and 3.8 percent divorced.
Men Daryl and Seth's age are "in that stage of life where they are building their income, their economic independence. The worst thing would be if they were to lose it all," says David Popenoe, who headed the National Marriage Project at Rutgers before it moved to the University of Virginia under Bradford Wilcox's leadership.
For Daryl, that is a very real possibility: "I don't see marriage as an option until the (divorce) laws are equal. They're heavily weighed against men," says Daryl, who adds it's just too easy for people to walk away.
The two aren't alone in their thinking. In AskMen's discussion of Popenoe's 2006 study, "The State of Our Unions," it's clear that along with the fear of losing freedom and space, dealing with emotional baggage and compromise, feeling pushed into something they may not be ready for, and the idea of having one sexual partner forever, the D-word weighs heavily on men:
When we've been divorced and run through the wringer of the court system, many of us are reluctant (read: "terrified") to risk a second commitment. Nowadays, we aren't exactly chomping at the bit to sign a contract legally allowing a woman to clean us out financially. Successful achievers -- those of us who have built companies and high-powered careers from the ground up -- are especially afraid of being forced to hand over all the fruits of our hard labor and may make the decision never to get involved in a serious relationship again.
But even those haven't been through a divorce have come to expect it. In a recent study of newlywed women, half said they expected infidelity would be part of their marriage and 72 percent said they'd probably experience divorce. With so many couples starting their new life together with those sorts of expectations -- even as they vow "till death do we part" -- it's no wonder they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Nor is it surprising that men might be hesitant.
A recent Time article, "Debunking the Myth of the Slippery Bachelor," declared men want to marry as much as women do, according to a study of 5,200 people 21- to 65-plus years old. The standout were men ages 25 to 49 -- they were less inclined to get hitched than the women.
That's what twenty-something blogger Jessica Massa discovered in the past year of interviewing 22- to 35-year-olds across the country for an upcoming book and movie based on her observations on Millennial dating (WTFIsUpWithMyLoveLife.com). "The guys say, 'Oh no, divorce is not an option. That's why I'm going to wait.' They'd rather not get married than get married and get a divorce. And that puts more pressure on them to wait."
Mark Pfeffer sees it, too. The Chicago psychotherapist runs an "unwed anxiety" group for thirty-somethings at his Panic, Anxiety and Recovery Center. It isn't divorce per se that scares them, he tells me; it's the financial ramifications of breaking up -- having to face a "50 percent chance of misery." If someone hasn't married by thirty-something -- and the age for a first marriage now is 28 for men and 26 for women -- then he or she has most likely been to enough weddings and experienced a good share of divorces to see what Pfeffer calls "the carnage" of a marital breakup. That's enough to rattle a thirty-something's idea of wedded bliss.
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais have faith Millennials will avoid the carnage. Co-authors of Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, Winograd and Hais don't see the fear of divorce as a big deterrent to twenty-somethings' marriage plans. The 50 percent divorce rate is more the reality of baby boomers, not Gen-Xers and most likely not Millennials either, they say. Although most Millennials are still too young to be walking down the aisle, the ones closer to marrying age "are being so careful about choosing a mate," Winograd says.
That may be true but many young adults still "hold unrealistic, idealized views about marital relationships," according to a 2007 study of southeastern college students. And it's those unrealistic, idealized views that often lead former love-birds to divorce lawyers.
For Millennials, says Paul Taylor, executive vice president of Pew Research, "Only six in 10 grew up with both parents. So broken homes, never-formed homes, re-formed homes -- it's part of their life experience, and ... they are repeating that pattern, perhaps even more so."
As more chose to cohabit, they won't experience divorce but many won't avoid a breakup --40 percent of cohabiting hetero couples split within five years.
Still, as Daryl and Seth watched their friends exchange vows at numerous weddings this past year, the D-word was the farthest thing from their mind. "I feel there's still hope," says Seth.
But they're just not there yet.

WOW - 6 Secrets To Staying Married Forever

WOW - 6 Secrets To Staying Married Forever:
Posted By Palco MP3

WOW - 6 Secrets To Staying Married Forever, It's tough to listen to your elders when you are young and in love, or in lust, and about to be married
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey

It's tough to listen to your elders when you are young and in love, or in lust, and about to be married. But the collective wisdom from the 200 long-married women I interviewed for my new book The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married can help you navigate the toughest journey of all: living with one partner, under one roof, until death do you part.
While all have been married from 15 to 70 years, their voices come from diverse backgrounds and experiences -- they are rich and poor, and originate from many cultures and religions. Yet their shared ability to build enduring marriages boils down to some common and unifying traits. Here is the distillation of their secrets and strategies, including mine from 23 years as a wife, on what it really takes to make a marriage last.

1. Know That Happily-Ever-After Is A Myth:
Lower your expectations; it's dangerous fantasy to think marriage really means you get to be happy forever. Expecting perfection in a marriage or a mate is a fast ticket to divorce. Listen to the longtime wives on this point: The happiest women have a clear sense of purpose and passion outside of their relationships. We realize that a marriage that runs on multiple tracks makes for a more satisfied spouse who gets to have it both ways -- a committed marriage and personal adventures in uncharted territory. Marital bliss is possible if each partner is blissful without the other.

2. Don't compare your marriage to anyone else's:
It's your relationship, not your sister's, not your mother's, and there is no gold standard marriage. Everyone has issues, problems, and most importantly, their own secrets. Your girlfriend who is always calling her husband "sweetie" and sits with her legs twined with his may be flinging dishes at him when no one is around. So don't worry that your marriage isn't measuring up. Because no one knows what's really going on in a marriage except the two people in it. That gives each of us the freedom to write our own rules. One wife of 20 years I spoke to who is married to a devastatingly handsome man turned out to only be having sex once every six months. Her survival secret is the lipstick-sized vibrator she keeps stashed in her purse. Another wife of 37 years exchanges periodic stolen kisses with her college boyfriend that she claims "can go a long way to sustain a long marriage." This isn't a marriage that you or I may want, but, hey, it's her secret, not ours. Who are we to judge?

3. Hang out with outrageous girlfriends and boyfriends -- with boundaries:
The wives with the highest marital satisfaction have a tight circle of wild women friends with whom to drink, travel and vent. Close friendships provide the escape hatch from the inevitable storms that come with living with somebody year-to-year in the grind of ordinary life. Aside from a warm girl circle, platonic friendships are a sexy pick-me-up without the complications of adultery. Women who love the company of men shouldn't have to eliminate men friends from their lives. These extra-marital males who always think we're beautiful and smart (because they don't live with us) definitely make for a perkier wife. So marry someone who is confident and flexible, a man who knows that the more people, male and female, who bolster your self-esteem means there's less work for him!

4. Take Separate Vacations: You like to camp and your husband likes to golf? Spend a month of the summer in the Adirondacks while he goes with his buddies to Scottsdale or better yet, Scotland. Obviously this works better once empty nest hits. After some weeks apart from each other, removed from clashing over bills and in-laws, marriage seems way hotter than the tepid state in which you left each other. Make sure you have the fundamental quality of trust going into a marriage. Trust allows couples to liberate each other to explore their own passions independently. And partners who keep growing as individuals during each phase of a marriage are the ones with the best chance of growing together and staying together.

5. Remember to talk to each other, and to have sex:
In between wifely gallivants and self-exploration, remember to love the guy you're with -- kiss him hello and goodbye, and make time for conversation, no matter how crammed your two-career schedules are. Don't forget to have sex -- sex is really relaxing and fun and can make all your woes go away, at least for eleven minutes or so! Express gratitude to this guy who is giving you something huge: This is the person who can help you build a safe harbor in a world of chaos and uncertainly. He can give you children. After years of having to Spanx every body part in order to impress your dates, your husband is the prince who gave you the freedom to soften at the belly, and to finally relax. The biggest surprise secret I found is how many wives are still enjoying sex after 75 with their mates of 50-plus years!

6. Don't try to win every fight:
Surrender once in a while instead of always having to be right. Couples who stomp off with unresolved conflicts end up holding onto vintage rage, and antique blame that forms toxic wedges over time. Even if you can't forgive and forget, at least let go and move on when snarly brawls and/or plate-throwing erupts behind your own closed doors. Say "I'm sorry", even if you're not sorry one bit. Showing compassion definitely makes spouses behave better. And the ability to bounce back from strife is the real secret that makes marriages last forever.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Kris Humphries Finds Out Kim Was Married Before on 'Kardashians' (VIDEO)

Kris Humphries Finds Out Kim Was Married Before on 'Kardashians' (VIDEO)

by Jason Hughes, posted Aug 29th 2011 9:30AM
'Keeping Up With the Kardashians'

It's a little bit anticlimactic seeing all these faux tense scenes between Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian on 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' (Sun., 10PM ET on E!). We already know they got married, but that doesn't make it any less fun to watch him wonder what he's getting into each week. We wonder it about ourselves every time the show starts.

This week, he found out about Kim's little discussed marriage back when she was 19. It came up organically in the conversation, as they'd started talking about Humprhies' biracial heritage. Especially when they discovered that his grandparents had a biracial marriage.

Kim casually mentioned that when she got married, her father wouldn't talk to her for weeks, which left Humphries' jaw on the floor.

"You were married?" he asked her, and then turning to the rest of the family. "Was she married?"

It was an uncomfortable moment for everyone, but the fact that she mentioned it so casually made it pretty clear it's not something she was trying to hide. It probably never came up in a conversation -- though how would it? -- and it's not something she talks about, or even probably thinks about very much.

Actually, planning a wedding probably has her thinking about it a lot, but as we know it all worked out in the end and Humprhies can now proudly call himself Mr. Kim Kardashian ... well, you know what we mean.




USA FASHION & MUSIC NEWS

Friday, July 08, 2011

What Does the Bible Actually Say About Marriage?

What Does the Bible Actually Say About Marriage? "
by Greg Carey





Love
   

When you attend a wedding at church, what passages of Scripture do you expect to hear? Congregations occasionally invite me to speak on the current same-sex marriage debates, and I ask them this question. Their answers are remarkably consistent.

Someone invariably mentions 1 Corinthians 13, the famous "Love Chapter." Love is patient, love is kind, love never insists on its own way and so forth. Wonderful advice for marriage, but Paul was not talking about marriage. He was addressing a church fight: the believers in Corinth had split into factions and were competing for prestige and influence. We see echoes of this conflict throughout the letter, but especially in chapters 12 and 14, which surround this passage.

Others call out, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16; NRSV). Another moving passage, but it's certainly not about marriage. Ruth addresses this moving speech to her mother-in-law Naomi.

The second creation story in Genesis comes up: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genisis 2:24). This passage is certainly appropriate to marriage, as it reflects the level of intimacy and commitment that distinguishes marriage from other relationships. Jesus quotes this passage, too, but he isn't exactly discussing marriage. Instead, his topic is divorce (Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8). When ministers read the Gospel passages at weddings, as they often do, the message seems a little off. I'd rather not hear about divorce at a wedding.

One other passage frequently surfaces in weddings but rarely in mainline Protestant churches, the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodists and United Church of Christ congregations that invite me to speak. Ephesians 5:22-33 commands wives to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives. Conservative Christians may try to explain away the offense of this passage, but there's no escaping its ugly reality. Ephesians calls wives to submit to their husbands just as children must obey their parents and slaves must obey their masters. See the larger context, Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

Not a Lot to Say

The point is, Christian weddings rarely feature passages that directly relate to marriage. Only one passage, Genesis 2:24, seems especially relevant, while other passages require us to bend their content to our desire to hear a good word about marriage. Things are so bad that the worship books for many denominations turn to John 2:11, where Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding feast, to claim that Jesus blessed marriage. My church, the United Church of Christ, has developed a new wedding liturgy, but it retains this common formula: "As this couple give themselves to each other today, we remember that at Cana in Galilee our Savior Jesus Christ made the wedding feast a sign of God's reign of love."

So we know Jesus blessed marriage because he attended a wedding? That's the best we can do? No wonder it's common for couples to struggle over the choice of Scripture for their wedding ceremonies. The Bible just doesn't have much to say on the topic.

Let's Be Honest

Unfortunately, many Christians use the Bible to support their own prejudices and bigotry. They talk about "biblical family values" as if the Bible had a clear message on marriage and sexuality. Let's be clear: There's no such thing as "biblical family values" because the Bible does not speak to the topic clearly and consistently.

It's high time people came clean about how we use the Bible. When Christians try to resolve difficult ethical and theological matters, they typically appeal to the Gospels and Paul's letters as keys to the question. But what about marriage? Not only did Jesus choose not to marry, he encouraged his disciples to abandon household and domestic concerns in order to follow him (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 9:57-62). He even refers to those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:10-13). Whatever that means, it's certainly not an endorsement of marriage. Paul likewise encourages male believers: "Do not seek a wife" (1 Corinthians 7:27, my translation) -- advice Paul took for himself. If neither Jesus nor Paul preferred marriage for their followers, why do some Christians maintain that the Bible enshrines 19th-century Victorian family values?

Let's not even go into some of the Bible's most chilling teachings regarding marriage, such as how a man's obligation to keep a new wife who displeases him on the wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:13-21), his obligation to marry a woman he has raped (Deuteronomy 22:28-30) or the unquestioned right of heroes like Abraham to exploit their slaves sexually. I wonder: Have the "biblical family values advocates" actually read their Bibles?

Christians will always turn to the Bible for guidance -- and we should. If the Bible does not promote a clear or redemptive teaching about slavery, that doesn't mean we have nothing to learn from Scripture about the topic. The same values that guide all our relationships apply to marriage: unselfish concern for the other; honesty, integrity and fidelity; and sacrificial -- but not victimized -- love. That's a high standard, far higher than a morality determined by anachronistic and restrictive rules that largely reflect our cultural biases. Rules make up the lowest common denominator for morality. Love, as Paul said, never finds an end.



On Second Thought, Don't Get Married
by Dr. Neil Clark Warren

1 person liked thisMore than 2 million couples will get married in the United States this year alone. Several hundred thousand of these couples should reconsider, postpone their weddings or not get married.

Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is "becoming obsolete."

This is a dangerous conclusion. It's true that far too many marriages, as currently constructed, end up disastrously. But with some common sense societal changes at the front end, marriage can still serve a vital purpose for a vast majority of adults.

Interestingly, around the same time the Pew study came out, the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in their annual report on the health of marriage and family life, affirmed that more than three-quarters of Americans still believe marriage is "important" and that more than 70 percent of adults under age 30 desire to marry someday.

So it's clear that a majority of us still crave to be married. It's like we are hard wired to search after that person with whom we can spend the rest of our lives -- even in the face of these dire marital statistics.

I'm not trying to say that marriage is not in trouble. I am trying to say that there are some clear answers to the question of how marriage can get uniformly more satisfying for the people involved. And this I firmly believe: When done right, marriage can be the greatest institution on earth.

In his best-selling book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks says that "by far the most important decisions that persons will ever make are about whom to marry, and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses." He cites multiple studies that have found a strong correlation between the stability of good relationships and increased life happiness.

But the skill of choosing a marriage partner has often been treated as relatively unimportant in our society and a whole lot less complex than it actually is. And herein lies the secret of why marriage has often turned out so disappointingly for so many.

It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure.

When people choose a partner unwisely, it's a source of enormous eventual pain. During my 35-year clinical career, I "presided over" the divorces of several hundred couples. I never experienced a single easy one. If one or both partners didn't get clobbered by the experience, any children involved often felt deep emotional sadness and loss. Sometimes this sadness kept impacting these people for years -- even decades.

A significant amount of research data, including an in-depth report by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, buttresses my clinical impressions that parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children's risk of dropping out of high school. Moreover, children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological problems and other mental illnesses. And ultimately, divorce begets divorce; i.e., when you grow up outside an intact marriage, you have a greater likelihood of having children outside a marriage or getting a divorce yourself.

I have often suggested that more pain in our society comes from broken primary relationships than from any other source. If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.

Of course, no one intends to be in an unhappy marriage. Bad marriages don't just happen to bad people. They mostly happen to good people who are not good for each other.

And inspiring marriages don't happen by accident. They require highly informed and carefully reasoned choices. Commitment and hard work are factors too. But after decades of working with a few thousand well-intended and hardworking married people, I've become convinced that 75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.

When two people have a relationship which is predicated upon broad-based compatibility, there is every reason to be optimistic about their long term prospects. A marriage of this type has virtually no chance of becoming "obsolete."

If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.

Dr. Neil Clark Warren is founder of eHarmony and chairman of its Board of Directors. eHarmony is an online dating website grounded in relationship science that matches single men and women for long-term relationships.

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