www.Hot-Firefighters.com

Who better to turn to for relationship advice than couples who’ve been married for more than 50 years?

A survey of golden anniversary celebrators reveals the keys they believe can make your marriage closer:

• Smooching!  Nearly all the couples agreed that daily affection is key to their love.
• Laughing together!  Head to a comedy club or watch funny home movies.  Every shared chuckle cements the friendship that lies at the core of every strong relationship.
• Arguing once in a while!  Working through small misunderstandings brings you closer.

GEORGIA FAMILY COUNCIL
11/28/07
By RANDY HICKS

I’m fairly confident that the following conversation takes place every day somewhere in Georgia:

“I’m just not happy anymore. I used to be. I mean, I was excited to be married to her, excited about the prospect of having and raising children together … even growing old together. But now it’s too hard. We argue over so many things and we don’t even enjoy being together. I just want to be
happy again.”

“Well, you deserve to be happy. I hate to say this and hope you’ll forgive me for doing so but … perhaps it’s time to start over.²

“Are you talking about divorce? I can’t do that. The kids!”

“Sure, it will be hard at first, but they’ll be fine in the long haul. Kids are resilient. And besides, their happiness will return after awhile; but if you don’t get out you might never be happy.”

(With sense of resignation) “Maybe you’re right. Plus, if this thing deteriorates much further, our home environment will be even worse. How damaging will that be for the kids? Living with unhappy parents will really hurt them.”

“Right!”

“Ya know, I must admit that I’ve thought about this…but I never wanted to, well, say it out loud. I’ve got to give this some more thought. I just want to be happy again…and I don’t think that can happen in this marriage.”
Now, I know words on paper can’t necessarily communicate the depth of despair and frustration expressed in a conversation like this. But there’s a pretty good chance the sentiment expressed in those words are at least vaguely ­ if not vividly ­ familiar to you.

Two sincere people ­ one being honest about his pain, the other genuinely trying to help.

The problem is that the conversation is laced with faulty presuppositions that rob people of hope, poison the attitudes and tones that shape relationships, and ultimately serve as self-fulfilling prophecies.

Faulty presupposition: The marriage will never get better.

The truth: Even terribly unhappy marriages can turn into happy ones.

The National Survey of Marriage and Families reported 77 percent of marriages rated ‘not good’ at some point are rated ‘good’ or ‘very good’ five years later. A strong commitment to marriage as an institution, and a powerful reluctance to divorce, do not merely keep unhappily married people locked in misery together; they help couples form happier bonds. Staying
together tends to strengthen the bond. This doesn’t mean that problems vanish entirely; instead that couples develop the skills to deal with them.

Why did these marriages survive where other marriages did not? Spouses’ stories of how their marriages got happier fell into three broad headings: the marital endurance ethic, the marital work ethic, and the personal happiness ethic.

- In the marital endurance ethic, the most common story couples reported to researchers, marriages got happier not because partners resolved problems, but because they stubbornly outlasted problems related to finances, employment, depression, parenting, even infidelity.

- In the marital work ethic, spouses told stories of actively working to solve problems, change behavior, or improve communication. When the problem was solved, the marriage got happier.

- Finally, in the personal happiness ethic, marriage problems did not seem to change that much. Instead married people in these accounts told stories of finding alternative ways to improve their own happiness and build a good and happy life despite a mediocre marriage.

Faulty presupposition: I’m unhappy in marriage. If I can get free of the marriage, I’ll be happier.

The Truth: Divorce doesn’t foster greater happiness. Call it the ‘divorce assumption.’ Most people assume that a person stuck in a bad marriage has two choices: stay married and miserable or get a divorce and become happier.

A study conducted by a team of leading family scholars headed by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite found no evidence that unhappily married adults who divorced were typically any happier than unhappily married people who stayed married.

Divorce did not typically reduce symptoms of depression or raise self- esteem. Even unhappy spouses who had divorced and remarried were no happier on average than those who stayed married. “Staying married is not just for
the children¹s sake … but results like these suggest the benefits of divorce have been oversold,” said Waite.

Why doesn’t divorce typically make adults happier? The authors of the study suggest that divorcing couples may simply trade one set of problems for another, over which they have little control. These include the response of one’s spouse to divorce; the reactions of children; potential disappointments and aggravation in custody, child support, and visitation orders; new financial or health stresses for one or both parents; and new relationships or marriages with problems of their own.

Faulty presupposition: If I’m unhappy in my marriage, my children may do better if I divorce, because they¹ll do better in life if I am not so unhappy. The truth: Children actually benefit from, and are comforted by, the fact ,­ not quality ­of your marriage.

The first thing to understand is that less than one-third of divorces occur in high-conflict marriages. And, most parents do not suddenly start getting along after divorce ­ in fact, most have more conflict following divorce than before.

For marriages where there is a high level of marital discord, divorce (especially a quick one) does not benefit children. Research shows that behavioral and psychological problems do not improve for children whose parents divorced. In fact, the problems are no less than those children whose parents remained together. Even in high conflict households, children
show a notable increase in behavioral and psychological problems following divorce. Marital discord is not a statistically significant factor in predicting the psychological well-being of children on into adulthood.
Divorce, however, is. Of course there is an important exception
here.  Obviously a spouse and/or child must not remain in a dangerous home. It is always best for them to protect themselves from these terrible
circumstances. I don’t believe that most people proceed with divorce lightly. Sometime folks are in pain and other times they’ve just drifted apart. But I do believe that most of us are ill-informed when it comes to the issue of hope. Too often we fail to reach out and grab the hope that awaits us and our children ­ the hope of a rewarding marriage if we’ll stick
with our spouse and weather the storms.

Marriage: Eco-friendlier than divorce?
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
December 3, 2007

Divorce isn’t green, says a study being published today.

The research, led by ecologist Jianguo “Jack” Liu, a Michigan State
University professor of fisheries and wildlife, looked at international data comparing utility consumption and housing space per capita in married and divorced households. He found that divorce creates more households with fewer people, using more energy and water and taking up more space.

The analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, does not look at the environmental impact of singles who have never been married, but Liu says he plans to look at singles in a subsequent study.

“If you have more households as a result of divorce, then you would need more housing units, and if you need to build more houses or apartments, that means you need more land, and that will contribute to urban sprawl,” he says.

Others familiar with such issues caution that the divorce link to the
environment is a bit of a stretch.

While divorce leads to smaller household size on average for a population, “it’s not just divorce,” says social demographer Ronald Rindfuss of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied the relationship between population and the environment for more than a decade. “There’s a whole variety of factors that have been leading to people living in dwelling units containing smaller units of people. Divorce is just one.”

Matt Golden, founder of San Francisco home energy audit company Sustainable Spaces, says overall household space is increasing while occupancy is shrinking.

Liu acknowledges that not all people who divorce create two households; some move into existing households with friends or relatives. But the data he analyzed considered only those in which the divorced person was a head of household.

This analysis also did not compare married and divorced households with other types, such as cohabiting or those living alone. The aim was comparing married with divorced, he says.

“Environmental impacts of divorce and other lifestyles such as separation should be considered when making personal choices,” the report says.

Liu says it took four years to analyze the stats, which include
international census data from the 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata in 12 countries; data from 1970-2001 from the USA, Greece and Ecuador; and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a sample of 3,283 U.S. households from 2001 to 2005.

So what about options such as communes, where more people live under one roof?

“That’s one possibility for people to consider,” Liu says.

I think the airplane oxygen mask is a good analogy.  On an airplane they tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on the child.  You have to take care of your marriage first.

–Hogan Hilling–

Excerpt from Lori Odhner’s Caring for Marriage Website,
http://caringformarriage.org/cfm/

The egg is an interesting package. The surface is surprisingly seamless, with no suggestion of how its contents managed to get inside or will eventually get out. As many science students who have devised various tests for the dropping of eggs from precarious heights can attest, it is remarkably sturdy. There is no identifying mark as to its sender or owner, so we are left to guess. Yet the wonder of what happens inside defies any earthly endeavor, when we find ways to peek through the shell and see that soft, peeping life comes where there was slimy ooze.
You are an egg. You began marriage as a somewhat oozy individual, unformed and unfinished. Yet inside you are changing in marvelous ways. To the casual observer, there may be no visible indicator of how drastically you are growing in this marriage, indeed you may well be oblivious yourself. Yet you are softening, developing, and coming to life.

We invite you to write a letter to yourself, articulating some of the ways you would like to see your marriage grow. Set it aside and let it hibernate awhile. Then when it feels hatchy, take it to the post lady and mail it to yourself. No doubt you will have long forgotten what you even wrote, and it
will come as a fresh surprise when it arrives back at your door and you enjoy reading it together over breakfast.

- HONEY, I’M HOME FOR GOOD: A SPOUSE IN THE HOUSE
Centre Times Daily
Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007

Tensions arise in marriages when a spouse retires
By BILL REED
- The Gazette

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. : He alphabetized her spice rack.
She took it as an act of aggression. What else would you expect? For 33 years, Col. Reo Trail had been in the Air
Force, a distinguished career that included honors in World War II and a stint as commander of the Phu Cat Air Base in Vietnam. He was accustomed to discipline, organization and giving orders.

So when he retired to be with his wife and three kids, he decided he’d bring some order to the home front - and he started in the kitchen.

“The first thing he did was alphabetize my spices,” Martha Trail said.

“I thought that made sense,” he said. She was not amused.

That was 1972, and the Trails’ marriage has survived an additional 35 years since his retirement. But the transition wasn’t easy.

It’s a scenario that’s grown more common: As people retire earlier and live longer, a growing number of spouses are having to learn how to get along when both are home full time. This is especially true in towns like Colorado Springs, Colo., where the military makes early retirement a more popular option.

The recent rise in “gray divorces” - divorces among couples ages 40 to 80 - proves that a new chapter in life doesn’t always have a happy ending.

“Some of the people I see, I think: `They’re not going to work this out without counseling,’” said Mary Ann Cook, a “spouse in the house” coach from Colorado Springs, Colo. “It’s what married couples always go through, but it’s exacerbated because you’re together all the time.”

Define the problem

Cook has heard it all, from “We have nothing to talk about after all these years” to “I can’t stand the way he breathes. I can hear him all over the house!”

Cook began giving workshops on how to deal with a spouse in the house after her husband began to work at home 15 years ago. An accountant who worked long hours, her husband came home one day with a fax machine in tow and
announced he’d be home for good. Cook dropped the meatloaf she was holding, and glass and ground beef splattered across her kitchen.

At first, the work-at-home mother and writer admits, she taught the classes to get out of the house. After commiserating with otherwives and collecting stories from her workshops, she wrote the book “Honey, I’m Home for Good!”
(published by Focus on the Family in 2003) to dispense humor and advice to retirees and couples who work from home.

“Just sharing their stories in the class can help them feel better,” she said. “At least they know they’re not alone.”

The big issues are privacy and control, but the practical issues are who answers the phone, who gets the TV remote, who buys the groceries and who controls the thermostat.

The women also feel smothered by husbands who come home and expect to be waited on. They complain about their husbands being underfoot and getting in their business.

Sorry fellas, but after listening to hundreds of stories, Cook has never once heard from a wife who wished she could spend more time with her retired husband.

“I have never heard `I want to do something with him and he’s always off with his friends,’” she said. “Some men have said after reading my book they’re never going to retire. They had thought their wives would be thrilled to have them home.”

When her husband came home full time, Cook thought she needed to look as if she were working hard. They fought over her chatting on the phone with friends, and she started carrying around a broom just to seem busy.

Find solutions

Cook said her perspective started to change as she taught workshops to other women, and to the men who came with them.

Husbands said things such as, “I came home and I wanted to help her out, but everything I’d do she’d tell me I was doing wrong.”

Many couples had the same problem as the Trails with the alphabetized spice rack: He thought he was being helpful. She thought he was invading her territory, and perhaps indicting the way she’d been running the house.

Cook said she realized that communicating clearly was the linchpin to getting along better. Most men and women can’t read minds. Couples need to talk about exactly what they expect from each other.

“If you’re not honest about these things bugging you, you just get bitter,” Cook said. “Then you lash out and the person doesn’t know what hit them.”

Cook, who was so annoyed when her husband always asked when she’d be home as she left the house, instead asked him why he wanted to know. She thought he wanted to control her, but the truth was her friends were constantly calling
and asking “When will she be home?” She was relieved to discover she didn’t need to rush home at an appointed time; he was relieved that she didn’t expect him to serve as her secretary.

“Now it’s like, `Gee, he doesn’t even care if I leave,’” she said jokingly.

Cook also has an easy solution for men who demand to be waited on hand and foot, a common problem in older generations. “I say, just don’t do it. Teach him how to make a cup of coffee. Teach him to make toast.”

Cook walks her students through the ABCs: accept the reality, better the situation, and then learn to cherish the time together.

The Trails said that is wisdom they’ve gained on their own through the years. They discovered practical steps such as giving each other space and time away. They created a den in the basement that Reo could decorate and use as an escape. As for hobbies, he fixes up vintage cars, clocks and
watches, while Martha is passionate about her garden.

Reo, 86, said these days he is grateful simply to have time together with his wife.

Cook said that is profound; the change from griping to grateful changes everything.

“You have the opportunity to make this such a good time in your life, and you don’t want to waste it fighting over territory,” Cook said. “You don’t know how many years you have left together.”

10 tips

How to live with a retired (or work-at-home) spouse, from “Honey, I’m Home for Good!” by Mary Ann Cook:

1. Form an open and honest partnership.

2. Help your spouse feel welcome and comfortable in the home.

3. Communicate clearly, keeping in mind your mate’s personality.

4. Consider your mate’s needs and desires, not just your own.

5. Look for the humor in every situation.

6. Speak kindly and respectfully to each other.

7. Provide escape hatches for the rough times.

8. Stay active with separate and joint pastimes.

9. Make time for yourself and don’t feel guilty.

10. Count your blessings and record them in a gratitude journal. (You should include good things about the spouse who is bugging you.)

THE MARRIAGE GAP MEDIA HYPE WRONG PERIL
The New York Post
By CHRISTINE B. WHELAN

November 16, 2007 — MAJOR news outlets are once again scaring smart, accomplished women into believing that they’re doomed to be old maids because they intimidate men. This old saw makes great headlines - but it’s dead wrong. It also distracts from the real problems facing the American
family: Male or female, those with good educations and big paychecks do well in the marriage market - while those without degrees or career success are increasingly unlucky in love.

In 1970, women married around age 21; 68 women enrolled in college per 100 men - and the more education a woman had, the less likely she was to get married. Academic articles of the time routinely reported that women were more attracted to high-status men, whom they saw as “providers,” whereas men were attracted to pretty and docile women, whom they perceived as “motherly” and fertile.

But then a historic shift began: Today, women marry around age 26, make up a significant majority of college classes - about 135 women will graduate for every 100 men - and a woman’s educational achievements increase her chances
of marriage. Recent studies show that today’s young men find a woman’s success to be an aphrodisiac.

This translates into positive marriage statistics for educated women. As part of the Current Population Survey, the Census Bureau looked at this issue in its March interviews of 50,000 U.S. households: Among 35- to 39-year-old women, some 88 percent with advanced degrees have married, versus 81 percent of women without college degrees.

Despite these changes, the conventional wisdom remains that men are less interested in educated or successful women - and the media fuel this concern by publicizing small studies that support out-of-date gender norms.

A recent speed-dating study from Columbia University garnered national attention for its finding that men prefer beautiful, smart women, but are less interested in women that they believe to be smarter than themselves. (Cue the old saw, “Men don’t make passes/ At girls who wear glasses.”)

Missing from all the attention was a key caveat: This research was conducted on 400 graduate students. In other words, its significance pales in comparison to the marriage data collected on the 50,000 Americans covered in the Current Population Survey - data that tell very much the opposite story.

Times have changed, but the reporting on the Columbia study once again played into the fears of ambitious women nationwide about their chances of career and personal success. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd devoted a
column to it, perhaps because it confirms the (mistaken) thesis of her recent book.

All this hype sends the wrong message about women’s prospects. Young women can pursue their education and career goals and stay confident in their odds of marriage.

Equally bad: All this media focus on the odds of marriage for
college-educated women detracts from some real issues facing our families: America is rapidly becoming a nation of marriage “haves” and “have-nots.”

The “haves” are college graduates, who are marrying at higher rates and divorcing at lower rates than the rest of the population. The “have-nots” are those with a high-school degree or less, who are more likely to cohabitate than marry, more likely to have children outside of wedlock - and stand a higher risk of divorce if they do take their vows.

It’s high time we stopped making accomplished women worry for no reason - and focused our attention on educating the next generation about the value of a college degree, the importance of marriage and the possibilities for both men and women of a healthy combination of career and family life.

Christine B. Whelan is the author of “Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women” and a visiting assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Iowa.

No matter what culture or country you live in, it is the same!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Wives want to hear their husbands say three magic phrases more often:  ’Thank you,’ ‘Sorry’ and ‘I love you.’
Shuichi Amano, a 55-year-old magazine editor in Fukuoka and founder of the National Teishu-Kampaku Association, a group he started in 1999 to help save marriages. The association brings members together to exchange experiences about marriage.

Waco couple sharing 28 years of love letters with Oprah                     Wednesday, November 14, 2007

By Wendy Gragg, Tribune-Herald staff writer

Patricia and Alton Hassell have been writing their love story, day by day, for nearly 28 years. Today they’ll tell that story to the world.

The Hassells, both Baylor University professors, will be featured on Oprah Winfrey’s show today, sharing how they have kept the romance alive in their 40-year marriage by writing love letters to each other every day for almost
28 years.

If we can help other people find this level of communication, it’s worth (it), Alton said.

Patricia sent a simple two-sentence e-mail to Oprah last May answering the question of how to keep a love alive. Last week, Oprah’s producers invited the two to tell their story on the show.

Patricia, 60, and Alton, 62, fell in love while studying at Baylor and married in 1968, before their senior year. The married couple wrote sporadic love letters to each other, but Alton decided in 1980 they should up the ante and commit to a daily practice of it. Patricia, busy with their
2-year-old son and eight months pregnant with their second child, was unsure about the daily commitment.

I looked at him and thought, “He has got to be crazy,” she said.

They kept turning out the letters, though, through good and bad.

Some of our letters were sent by airmail, Patricia said, as she mimed tossing a notebook across the room.

And some letters have become family heirlooms, like those they wrote in the labor and delivery room when Patricia was about to give birth to their daughter Sharina. On the day of Sharina’s wedding, Patricia and Alton gave her those letters from the day of her birth.

“She was all puddles of tears,” Patricia said.

Today, the stack of spiral notebooks they’ve written in is taller than Patricia and weighs more than 100 pounds.

The Hassells have a pattern for their daily love notes. In the first part, they talk about their day because that affects the tone of the letter, Patricia said. The second part is “I love you today because . . .” And for the third part, Patricia and Alton alternate assigning a question of the
day. Sometimes the question topic is as simple as plans for the weekend. The question that makes Patricia cry every time is, “If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do?”

Every night before bed, they write their letters and then exchange and discuss them.

The letters play an important role in their relationship as a line of communication that is always open, Alton said. The letters insist they still communicate, even when mad. And the letters bring things out into the open that might not have been said.

“You always have that line of communication, even if it’s the only thing you say to each other all day,” he said.

Along with the letters, the two also have a date every Friday night and surprise each other with ‘just cause’ gifts. Alton, a chemistry professor, said he’s too conservative to make a very good romantic, but his words say otherwise.

“I don’t think marriage is a science at all  it’s probably more of an art,” he said. “It takes both of you, committing to the marriage, both of you making the decision to love.”

Patricia said after 40 years and two children, she is still learning about her husband and best friend through his letters. She scoffs at the women who once told her the spark would die after a couple of years.

“I said at my wedding shower, ‘Oh, I never want the romance to end’ and it hasn’t,” she said.