Improved marriage counselling can cut divorce rate

That headline sounds almost obvious, right?

We know that you can prove most things with statistics, but having said that, some interesting new figures have come from the UK’s Office of National Statistics…

The number of divorces in England and Wales decreased 5% in 2008 compared to the previous year, while in Scotland it was a 10% drop, and 4.8% in Northern Ireland.

Though the figures can’t paint the whole picture, experts believe that better counselling may have improved the figures.

It’s worth bearing in mind that these statistics don’t include couples that are living together unmarried, and there could be a range of other factors involved. However, it would be good to think that struggling couples are seeking advice and help, and that in an increased number of cases it’s working.

What we don’t know is how the economic crisis will affect rates in subsequent years. There have also been suggestions of a two per cent rise in the UK divorce rate this year.

English schools’ revised sex education curriculum to focus on family

The Evolution of Sex Education

I’m no expert on how sex and relationships education in schools has changed over the years, but stereotypically things have become more liberal of late, with a focus much more on the process and physical repercussions of sex than on moral and societal issues surrounding the subject.

I can’t say that this is absolutely true, because schools can teach things in different ways, with more or less emphasis placed on issues beyond “how sex works”.

However, thanks in part to the way society has changed, particularly over the last decade or so, in its attitudes to sex and its portrayal in the media, the UK government on both sides is now looking at promoting familial and stable relationships.

Yesterday, the standard curriculum for sex education in English schools was updated to place more value on the moral and relational aspects of sex.

Delaying Sex

In an age-appropriate way, children will now be taught that it’s OK to delay having sex, and that they shouldn’t feel pressured by friends or the media into becoming sexually active as the “normal” thing to do.

Stability

Marriage and other stable relationships will be heralded as the “bedrock of family life”, with education on “the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood”.

Bullying and Pressure

Sexually-motivated bullying is sadly becoming more common. Mobile phone technology can be used to send compromising photographs which, apart from being illegal in the eyes of the law, could cause great distress to those victims caught on camera.

Other advice will warn about overtly sexualised imagery now prevalent in most types of media, including television, magazines, advertising and the Internet.

Comment

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said, “Young people today grow up in a very different world to the one their parents knew as children.

“New technologies and a 24-hour media mean that young people are increasingly exposed to images and content that can make them feel pressure to be sexually active before they are ready and can give them misleading information about relationships and growing up.

“We also want young people to understand the importance of marriage and other stable relationships – these are the bedrock of family life, the best way to bring up children and the kind of relationships we want young people to develop as they get older.”

What do you think of the changes?

Photo credit: Made Underground

Via

UK divorce rate could rise 2% in 2010

According to the same online agency that told us Facebook is bad for marriage, the UK’s divorce rate could rise for the first time in a decade.

MD of Divorce-Online, Mark Keenan, expects to see at least a two per cent rise in divorce in 2010, with the recession generally to blame for much of this.

Britain’s annual divorce rate, at around 12 per 1,000 based on current figures, is still one of the world’s highest despite the fact that the rate has dropped over the past ten years.

Interestingly, some reports from last year thought that couples might stay together because of the poor financial climate, yet Keenan reckons a rise in property prices means couples can sell a house and move on without large debts.

Facebook bad for marriage says new research

Social networking phenomenon Facebook is at least partly responsible for one in five marriage breakups, if you believe the latest research from a British online divorce service.

By scanning their divorce petition database, they found that the word “Facebook” was used in 989 out of 5,000 cases sampled.

It seems that virtual infidelity, often starting with “inappropriate sexual chats”, have caused the most upset.

Of course, the research isn’t perfect by any means.

Firstly, this is from a scan of their own database, and therefore implies that their clients are technologically savvy.

Secondly, it only scans for one term, and doesn’t imply that use of such Internet services are wholly responsible for people filing for divorce.

Perhaps if there are already problems in a marriage, one or both partners may make problems worse by their online behaviour, but generally I think this would be a byproduct rather than the initial cause.

Having said that, it’s interesting that seven in ten Brits say online flirting is acceptable.

We also have interesting, albeit sensationalist, stories like that of a couple driven apart by online games.

So, I’m not surprised that Facebook and other online activity can play a part in marriage breakdowns, but it’s certainly not the sole cause in most cases.

Bad economy: divorce down, domestic violence up

Last year, when the scale of the economic crisis was still dawning upon us, the UK’s Office of National Statistics found that the slowing property market could be reducing the divorce rate.

That doesn’t mean that relationships have suddenly got significantly better. In fact, financial turmoil places a real strain on relationships, and new statistics from US-based LegalMatch paint a much more worrying picture.

While this year’s divorce rate increase of 12% was much less than in previous years (28%), cases of domestic violence had increased over previous years.

Added to this, in November 2008, the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, headquartered in Austin, Texas, reported a 21 percent increase in calls compared to last year.

While I’m a strong believer in marriage, the numbers suggest a sad story: that many in relationships where one partner has violent tendencies are even less able to leave now that the financial situation is so dire, and yet that same predicament is obviously leading some people to higher levels of aggression.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can provide a greater sense of security.

What’s really important is to talk to your partner straight away when it comes to dealing with financial problems.

Young people still want to live “happily ever after” but lack skills for marriage

If you believe everything the media says, you’d be forgiven for thinking that marriage is on the way out, with commitment a dirty word.

However, research from the Healthy Marriage Resource Centre amongst 18-30 year-olds suggests that four in five do still want to get married and stay married.

At one level that’s encouraging because it means that a large number of people want to commit to a long-term relationship. However, the Centre suggests that there’s often a wide reality gap between the perception of marriage and the reality.

“Once married, conflicts may arise over money, parenting, and other important issues,” said project director Mary Myrick.

“We want to get people talking about the complexity of healthy marriages and provide tools and tips for making relationships work during challenging times,” says Myrick. “We are targeting young adults because they are the group most likely to be considering marriage for the first time and are most likely to access an online resource like TwoOfUs.org.”

Though it’s so easy to get married, it’s most definitely worth investing time in some form of pre-marriage course or counselling.

Though there’s some evidence to suggest that people in a good marriage can have better health, financial stability and life expectancy, no-one wants to be trapped in a bad marriage that was ill-conceived.

Taking time to sit down, ideally with a more experienced couple, and discuss aspirations and expectations, may seem unromantic in the excitement of planning a wedding and new life together, but I believe it’s vital. I certainly value the course I attended with my wife before we married.

Get that computer out of our bed! Virtual reality drives wedge between couple

There’s nothing like a bit of tech sex to sell tabloid newspapers, so the recent report that a wife wants to divorce her husband because he took part in virtual gay sex in the online game Second Life isn’t much of a surprise.

I reported on the threat of virtual adultery over three years ago, with some counsellors agreeing.

It’s easy to blame the Internet for all sorts of relationship problems, but as far as I’m concerned the reality is that anything can come between a husband and wife if the communication channels become blocked.

The trouble is that, while a husband’s uncontrollable urges for football or fishing or snooker or cars – or whatever other pastimes may take his fancy – can still be limited to some extent, computers and the Internet are available 24/7 and offer access to a huge range of things that could help to undermine a less-than-happy marriage.

Take the case of Lisa Best, as reported in the News of the World (not the most reliable of sources, granted, but let’s use this as a case study).

Lisa woke up in the middle of the night to find her “computer-mad husband … having virtual sex with another man on his laptop while he was in bed with her.”

For the uninitiated, Second Life is a type of virtual world where you adopt a character (called an avatar) and embark on adventures and relationships with other people. It’s escapism. It’s a fantasy, and one that many people find themselves increasingly hooked on.

John, her husband, said that there was no issue because it wasn’t real life.

She said “As far as I am concerned, having virtual sex with a man is the same as having sex with him in real life.”

He said “Second Life is just an escape and my avatar was just exploring things that I’d never sample – or want to sample – in real life.”

So who’s right?

Well, though I have my own views on this, I’ll attempt to sit on the fence and say that there’s no absolute right or wrong answer.

However…

If a wife (or husband) is unhappy with how their spouse is behaving, then there’s a problem.

It’s not for me to say whether John Best fantasises about being with other men, though it seems strange to me that you’d entertain such things – even in a virtual world – for so long without having some desire for them.

For me, that’s not the main point of the story, though I can sympathise with Lisa that it must be causing her a great deal of stress, confusion and inner turmoil.

The main point is why is one member of the marriage so attached to something that their marriage is suffering?

Granted, John may not have realised that his marriage was in trouble until that fateful night – he seemed keen enough to brush off the incident when confronted. However, anyone with such an obsession is in real trouble of messing up significant real-life relationships.

The article notes:

[Lisa] blames John’s computer obsession for destroying their sex life and any social interaction they had.

“Sex became less and less until in the end he just didn’t want it any more. In the past six months we only had it once-and that was after I pestered him for it,” she said.

Houston, we definitely have a problem.

“Over the course of 18 months I basically turned into a computer widow. He was more interested in his Facebook and MySpace friends than in me.”

Think this is extreme?

At one level, perhaps, but don’t believe that you could never fall into such a trap.

I know that, in my own marriage, we’ve put in boundaries and safeguards so that neither of us ends up neglecting the other.

For me, it’s ensuring that I don’t continue to work late into the evenings.

It’s also about maintaining communication. Spending time on Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, or indeed anything else in itself isn’t a problem. What is a problem is when it becomes obsessive or secretive.

What do you think?

Babies aren’t bad for marriage, but starting a family won’t save a couple

Having a baby won’t save a bad marriage.

In fact, some couples report reduced satisfaction in the relationship with their partner after starting a family.

That may sound depressing, even fatalistic, but the truth is that parents who plan a family and collaborate with parenting are much less likely to experience this dip. It’s even likely to lead to a happier marriage and better-adjusted children.

Thinking about it for a moment it may seem obvious, but I’m sure there are still plenty of couples teetering along their precarious relationship path that believe that having a child together will improve their marriage.

Very unlikely.

A New York Times article by Tara Parker-Pope quotes from the most recent studies that point to the time bind facing new parents and the burden on women resulting from increased household work as factors in reducing marital bliss. She holds out hope to her readers by reporting the finding from a 50-year longitudinal study of Mills College women that couples are likely to reconnect once their children leave home.

For parents of young children, that’s a very long time to wait. And it’s not good news for the children either, because children are more likely to have social, emotional, and academic problems when their parents’ marriage is in distress.

Many of these findings on marital distress in the early childrearing years are based on the uncritical use of averages. More in-depth examination reveals that the averages hide considerable variation. Detailed interviews with 96 couples, followed for 6 years after their first babies were born, revealed four different pathways that couples take in deciding to become pregnant and carry the pregnancy to term:

• First are couples who agree about when to begin trying to become pregnant (about half of the sample).
• Then there are the couples who “find themselves pregnant” and decide to “accept fate” and go ahead (about 15%).
• Another set of couples (about 20% of the sample) are still ambivalent when they reach the 7th month of pregnancy.
• Finally, for some couples who are at serious loggerheads about the decision, one spouse agrees to become a parent only because the other threatens to go it alone (about 10%).

The average decline in marital satisfaction was almost completely accounted for by couples who

1. slid into having a baby without planning
2. were still ambivalent about becoming parents in late pregnancy, or
3. disagreed about having a baby but went ahead and conceived without resolving their difference.

About half the planners showed increased marital satisfaction or maintenance of their initially positive level in measurements taken when their babies were about 18 months old. All the couples where one partner had given in (usually the man) were either separated or divorced by the time their first child entered kindergarten.

The study concludes that it’s very unwise to rush into parenthood before both partners are ready. Partners need to start by having a discussion or a series of discussions – by making a decision. If both partners can express both sides of their feelings, it is less likely that one partner will carry all the ambivalence for the couple.

When both partners feel they are part of this major family decision, they are more likely to be able to meet the challenges of balancing the needs of both partners in terms of work and family. All this bodes well for their developing relationship with each other and with their child – and ultimately for their child’s sense of security and well-being.

www.contemporaryfamilies.org/

Are you sailing through life in a relation (ship) or a relation (canoe) ?

When it came to commitment, I could not leave it out because it is the most important thing in a relationship or marriage. So, I had to make room for it.

What is commitment? So many people are looking and searching for their soul mate. You see it everywhere, people writing about it in magazines, in newspapers, on the web, and in the movies. You have seen over and over again where the man meets a women, sweeps her off her feet, they fall in love, and live happily ever after. Right? But, the movie is only 1-2 hours long. It doesn’t show the rest of their life, even if is fake or pretend, you don’t see what happens next. You don’t see all the ups and downs, the storms, the winters, the springs, and the summers of the relationship. This is where commitment comes in.

Think of a relation-ship as a ship, a ship you’re going to sail through in this life. If you were going to sail in this ship, this relation-ship, with only one person for the next 60-70+ years or the rest of your life, how carefully would you choose your shipmate? Would you take the first person that said “let’s go”? Would you take someone that might jump off the ship? Then you would have to sail the ship yourself, stop at every port, and try to find a new shipmate. Wouldn’t you want to make sure the person you decided to sail with is as committed to be on the ship as you are? Or maybe it’s you that needs to be committed to staying on the ship and not jumping off. That would not be a relation-ship. You would be sailing in a relation-canoe, as my good friend Guru Singh says. How well do you think a canoe will do in a storm? Not very well, I’m afraid. Just like the relationship; it will sink.

You must both be committed to the relationship. That means no threatening to jump off the ship when it starts to shake and take on water. No saying things like “if you do this again or say that again then I will jump off this ship!” That is not a commitment. You must both be committed, and it will take work, but it is worth it.

The best example of this is in a movie called “The Story of Us” with Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. If you haven’t seen this movie, go rent it now. In this movie Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer date, then get married, have kids, love each other, hate each other, and just about every emotion you could have. They go through every season. But the best part of the movie is where they decide not to continue to be together in their marriage or relation-ship. Then, they realise what is important and that life will have its ups and downs, its storms, and that it is important to be there for each other through the good, the bad and the real bad. They get what it is to be committed. Are you getting the point?

When my wife and I were going through on of our biggest storms, to date, Guru Singh told us something that changed our lives forever. He said, “Think of a house as being the relationship and the trees, flowers, butterflies, beautiful blue sky, and the birds chirping; are all love.” He then asked us, “What holds a house together?” He then said, “NAILS!” Nails are the commitment. So, when you attract a person of your dreams into your life, don’t jump ship during the first storm, and make the decision to sail through life with them; be committed to them and share that commitment with them forever.

Get 3 Free Secrets from the Book “The Little Book of Secrets, How to Attract the Person of Your Dreams, and Keep Them!”
MakeTheWorldYourStage.com

Who takes responsibility for marital faithfulness?

Gary Neuman has written a book for women. The Truth About Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It is a “relationship advice manual” that’s “dedicated to helping wives”.

While I haven’t read the book, Marie Claire magazine suggests that the main thrust of the book is that “women should make certain changes in themselves, to avoid their partner’s eyes from wandering”.

Neuman, a psychotherapist, has based his book on the responses of 25,500 men, some who have remained faithful, and some who have not.

Ninety percent of husbands who had cheated on their wife said that they were significantly dissatisfied with their marriage.

Rather simplistically, Neuman suggests, “Men will eventually find their way into the arms of another if they are not getting enough sex at home.”

Unsurprisingly, the book’s content has riled many women. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s annoyed some men, too.

Who should take responsibility for marriage?

The man?

The woman?

Or should both partners take an equal share of responsibility in maintaining and nurturing their relationship?

Neuman’s soundbite – that men will stray if they don’t get enough sex at home – may well be a gross oversimplification of what’s written in his book, but there’s no doubt that he’s said it.

This assumes that sex – or a lack of it – is the only thing that will make or break a marriage.

It also suggests that Neuman believes men should be entitled to as much sex as they want with their partner (and even this may still not be enough for some), while the woman should simply roll over and take it (if you’ll excuse the phraseology) – regardless of her feelings.

What rot.

A healthy relationship is built on love, communication, trust, and compromise.

These elements not only maintain super-relationships, but help to rescue those that are in danger of going off course before they smash into the rocks and end in unfaithfulness and potential separation.

I wonder if Neuman – or, perhaps, a female equivalent (if there is such a person) – would blame the man if a woman strays?

Stereotypically, the reasoning would be far less to do with sex – the physical act, at least – and far more to do with a lack of attention, disinterest, lack of romance, feelings of being unappreciated, and so on.

Yet, to varying degrees, any number of “issues” can affect a relationship. If left unchecked, it can lead to unfaithfulness, even without any other person becoming involved.

Sex is important in a marriage relationship, and can maintain a strong bond, but it can’t do that in isolation, and isn’t a miracle cure for a decaying relationship.

I’m sure Neuman’s book has much more to say on the subject, but I’ve a horrible feeling all that’s picked up on is that men are portrayed as sex-starved animals who’ll simply go wherever they can be physically fulfilled, while women are their slaves who should be grateful they’ve been picked, and should do all they can to hold on to them.

In the real world, not all men are like that, and many couples take a holistic approach to their relationships.

In fairness, Neuman doesn’t write rubbish, and I believe he is for marriage (great marriages in fact). However, something in “Why Men Stray…” doesn’t sit quite right.

OK, over to you. What do you think? Have you read Neuman’s book? What did you think, honestly? Leave a comment below.

Lads mags contribute to irresponsible behaviour and family breakdown, says Tory minister

Magazines aimed at young men, often featuring pictures of scantily-clad women and light articles about sex and sexual encounters, are contributing to irresponsible behaviour and the breakdown of family and society, according to the Shadow Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

Suggesting that they simply offer “instant-hit hedonism” during a speech on family, marriage, and education, he said, “Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available.

“We should ask those who make profits out of revelling in, or encouraging, selfish irresponsibility among young men what they think they’re doing.

“They celebrate thrill-seeking and instant gratification without ever allowing any thought of responsibility towards others, or commitment, to intrude.”

A spokesman for the Periodical Publishers Association said that the issues that Mr Gove raised were “deep and complex social issues which reach far wider than simply reading a magazine.”

Mr Gove continued his speech by saying that young men needed to face up to their responsibilities, which in turn could reduce social problems such as teenage pregnancies. He also reiterated the Conservative Party’s commitment to supporting marriage and family, including through financial help.

What do you think? Do “lads mags” contribute to problems in society, and if so how much?

(Via BBC News)

Celeb Watch: Christina Aguilera, Nicole Richie, Cheryl and Ashley Cole

Christina Aguilera and Nicole Richie are both enticing a number of high-profile publications who want the right to print the first photos of their babies. Marie Claire reports:

A bidding war has erupted between OK! and People magazine for the first pictures of Christina’s son Max Liron, and the asking price has already reached $1.5 million.

Nicole Richie and Joel Madden have already signed a deal with People magazine, where they will get $1 million for the photo debut of daughter Harlow Winter Kate.

I wonder at the lives of the rich and famous, yet the bidding war is only active because the magazines know that large sections of the general public want to see the photos. No doubt they’ll be leaked onto the Internet anyway. So much for the privacy of kids with famous parents.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Cole is being urged by her family and friends to leave husband Ashley, after claims from at least two women that he had affairs with them:

The latest claim comes from glamour model, Brook Healy, who is alleged to have been approached by Cole in December 2006 at London’s Funky Buddha club – just five months after the Coles’ marriage – and later slept with the footballer.

The Girls Aloud star [Cheryl] stated: “I was furious… but I’m determined to be strong. Ashley’s a wonderful husband and we’re in love. I won’t let this woman destroy our marriage.”

Next Page »