Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘love’

Everybody also knows that divorce is painful to all involved. Regardless of your circumstances, both partners and all their children get hurt. Yet, the rate of divorce is soaring and being single again after having children is now part of many parents’ lives. Divorce seems hard to go through, but awfully easy to choose.

In the past, divorce was unacceptable in many societies. Once people got married, which was often by parental arrangement, they were stuck with their partners for life. Marriage was literally “until death do us part”. Being married for life was what everybody did. The average divorce rate was 0%.

Believing that ending their marriage while both partners were alive was not an option, the only available course of action was to make the marriage work. Sometimes, that was just as much fun as digging holes, but everyone dug 7 a day and kept their mouths shut.

Now, when you try to make a marriage work and you are committed to it for the long haul, you make decisions accordingly. You join bank accounts, split the responsibilities for best household performance and comfort, do your best to get to know your partner and try to be accommodating. In return, you could also rely on your partner to be there for you in times of difficulty, simply because he or she was as committed to the marriage as you were.

Marriage today is not what it used to be. I believe some of it is due to couples believing that they cannot fix their marriage, heal from conflicts and overcome the challenges they go through as part of life.

Couples that are still together do not have fewer difficulties. They sort them out before they get out of control.

In my relationship coaching program, I hear many couples use statements that make fun of commitment, mock stability and relationships and encourage giving up the marriage as an easy, accepted and preferable thing. They have read them on the Internet, seen them in “funny” PowerPoint presentations or watched them in video clips.

One of my clients is going through a divorce over something that could be easily fixed if both partners could sit together and talk. They had an argument over money. She wanted 150K, he wanted to give her 90K and to sort this out, they have had to hire lawyers, go to court and pay the 60K the argued over in fees. So forget about it, because divorce is never easy!

If you check the beliefs of divorcées about marriage, you will find that they always have the wrong ones – those witty, mocking, sarcastic beliefs.

My suggestion is to make sure you swap them with good beliefs. To help you do it, I have gathered the best marriage quotes I could find. I hope you will find some you like and can adopt, and I hope you can make good use of them.

Pressure is an isolating feeling. People under pressure see themselves as if they were under attach and their top priority is to survive, if only emotionally. So they focus on their own feelings, regard most interactions with suspicion and withdraw into a “safe space” as much as they can.

The problem with pressure is that it also damages our ability to reason and function severely. It interferes with remembering things, with being creating and with our perception of what goes on around us. We see the world through narrow slits in a thick armor, we see everything tinted bright red, we hear everything pitchy and sharp and very little makes sense.

Intense pressure can even make us feel like there is no hope and nobody to help us. It is as if we are invisible.

A long time ago, I saw a movie, I think it was Ordinary People, where a mother walked over to her teenage son, touched him gently and said, “I see you”. That line stuck with me and I have used the idea in it many times with the people I love.

I think the “I see you” method works well because the other person is using an invisible shield that is very effective at blocking direct methods, like advice, jokes and uninvited help. It works especially well with teenagers, who see many things as threats to their identity and independence.

Now that you know what quality time is and what quality time is not, what can you actually do with your own kids? Here are some great things you can do to have more quality time with your children and help them feel loved and close to you.

Ask open questions

Whenever you meet your kids after school and work, show interest in their day. Do not confuse asking questions with interrogating – one comes from curiosity and the other one from a need to control. So pay attention to the tone of your voice and to your intention and ask to hear the child’s answer. If you expect some “correct” answer, it is not quality time and your child will not trust you next time to answer your question. Instead, gently explore with your child his or her impressions, reasons and feelings.

Tip: when you ask a child “How was your day?” the answer is typically in the form of a rating, e.g. “Good”. To avoid this dead end, rephrase the question as “Tell me about your day” or “What happened to you at school today?”

Love, as you know, is the most important thing you can give your children. Although you may not have any doubts about your love for your children, they often do. If you want to understand their doubt, think of your own doubts about your parents’ love for you.

Now, when I am a parent myself, I have no doubts about my parents love for me, but when I was a child, I had many doubts. It took me a long time to learn that what they called “love” was not my definition of love and I translated their behavior into “They don’t love me”.

In my parenting workshops and coaching sessions, many parents share the same feelings with me. There are things you discover about your parents’ love for you only when you have your own kids and when you get the opportunity to learn about “love languages”.

The great book “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman describes 5 different ways to express and receive love:

- Words of affirmation
- Gifts
- Physical touch
- Acts of service
- Quality time

This post and the next one are about Quality Time, because Quality time is very tricky for parents in this day and age.

Last week, Ronit and I saw a movie that made me think there are some people with no love in their heart. Then, we attended a wedding ceremony that was all about love, and that got me thinking about parents’ role in making the world a more loving place for their children. Since Christmas is coming and we will have a lot more time with our kids, the timing is perfect.

The film we saw was called The Whistleblower. It is a story of an American police officer who works for the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and uncovers a women trafficking operation. We sat on big, soft cushions on the grass at a park by the Brisbane River, the weather was perfect, the atmosphere was magical, we were happy for the chance to get away for a bit in each other’s company.

Then, the movie started.

The level of brutality shown on the screen by the traffickers towards the women, the complete disregard for the law and the strong violation of every moral system I could think of disturbed me to the core. I had to struggle to keep watching some scenes and felt terrible for poor Ronit who is generally more sensitive than I am.

When we talked about the movie in the car on the way home, we both wondered what would compel anyone to abuse another person in such a way. Our conclusion was that these people had no love in their hearts. Not romantic love. Kindness, compassion, empathy, tenderness, comradery, friendship and understanding towards another human being.

This is NOT a film review. It is a post on love and romance and marriage and kids and family and parenting. But it is inspired by the fact that Ronit and I watched the movie “Crazy, Stupid, Love” this week and it has been running around in my mind to the point where I just had to write about it.

Steve Carell makes movies that are full of embarrassing moments and this usually turns me off. I see him as the American version of Mr. Bean. I also find his acting melodramatic and externalized and I generally prefer subtle and deep. In this film, he was not only the main character, he was also the producer, which should have had me running in the other direction, except I only found that out in the final credits, and by that time, I already had a lot of respect for him.

If you have not seen Crazy, Stupid, Love, it starts with a marriage breakdown and divorce, continues through the attempted recover of both partners and their children and at the same time, weaves in the generational difference between the old one-partner-from-a-young-age and the new ongoing-partying-and-casual-sex-until-thirty-something.

I came away from the movie with a lot of love in my heart. In the past few days, there is more love in everything I do, more softness, more attention and more respect. I checked the patterns of my life against scenes from the movie and compared myself with the characters in it.

I want to share with you what I discovered.

The topic of disciplining kids is going to be forever hot for every parent. It is a hot topic because it bothers many parents and it is hot because too many parents find themselves in a huge conflict over it. Here is a question I got about discipline from a reader.

“Hi Ronit,

My husband and I do not agree on the right way to raise the kids. I spend most of the time with them and he works until late and on the weekends he needs to rest and goes out with his friends.

This week, he said to me that his job is to be the provider and my job is to discipline the kids and that I was failing as a parent. He said that if he was my boss, he would fire me. He thinks I am not objective towards my kids and I do not prepare them for real life.

What is your opinion about discipline?

Gina”

Dear Gina,

How to discipline kids, what is discipline and related issues are a source of friction almost in every home. I think your husband has expectations from you and your children that are probably based on his definition of good parenting and discipline, which I am not sure are healthy, although they were very typical 20 to 30 years ago when he was a child.

In the last chapter of the “Save your marriage” series, I wrote about one trap that married couple are in. It was the “right” trap, when one person or both are convinced they are “right” and do not accept that the other person has a story of their own that can explain their behavior and be just as “right”. Many marriages break down over this type of dispute.

In my relationship coaching, I have discovered there are two more traps that are signs the relationship is going nowhere and may be heading for a breakdown. One of them is the “intention” trap and the other one is the “blame” trap.

The intention trap
Everyone wants to feel good in their relationships. We give ourselves to the other person and we want a good feeling in return. Usually, we find a partner who makes us feel great. At the beginning of the relationship, we want to spend lots of time together, we constantly want to be with him or her and when we are not together, we imagine us being together.

Our marriage is good when we look forward to the time we will spend together, because it boosts our self-esteem and motivates us.

Over time, this excitement gives way to stress, work and kids, and many couples just wait for the moment things are quiet, so they can veg in front of the TV, hit the bed, sleep in on the weekends or go away on a holiday. Most of their time is not filled with fun and the fun bits are pushed to the side. When we push too much of our “fun time together” to the side, the arguments start.

I do not think I have ever learned how to argue and in marriage. Strange as it may seem, I believe it is very important to learn how to argue, because if we do not argue fairly, we increase the stress and the pressure and decrease the fun time together.

My life and relationships used to be mostly based on some imaginary expectations and assumptions that were the result of mimicking my parents and other people I knew, who had done the same growing up. I would go as far as calling that period “my dark ages”, but after I went through life coaching, things became a lot clearer.

Today, I want to give you an example of how a simple exercise changed my view of my marriage with Ronit for the better and, in fact, improved the way I interact with everybody in my life.

This was before Ronit and I discovered communication styles and love languages and I had a strong feeling I was going out of my way to make Ronit happy, but she was doing very little to do the same for me. I thought this was unfair and I was frustrated.

Fortunately, I had a session with my life coach, Sheryl, that week.

I started pouring my frustration as soon as I sat down. If you have ever been to life coaching, you know you can only do this for a very short time.

“Gal, I get that you are upset and that from your point of view, things aren’t equal in your relationship”, Sheryl said.

“They sure are”, I said.

“But by now, you already know that what matters most is your perception of the world, not how the world is. So let’s look at your choices and your focus, OK?”

I nodded in apprehension, because I knew what was coming.