Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘romance’

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.

Parenting is the most wonderful adventure most of the time, but with the gaining of pride and joy, we lose one important thing – our privacy. Sometimes, this happens so slowly, we do not notice we got from giving up just some privacy to where we have very little of it left.

When I had my first child, I gave privacy up easily. Gal and I both wanted to spend all our time with Eden, but when she was 11 months old, we realized we did not really have a life and we could not blame anyone but ourselves. Every spare minute we had, we wanted to be with Eden, so she went to sleep at the same time we went to sleep. All our conversations were about her. At night, when we looked for a moment we could enjoy some privacy, I remember giggling and shushing each other, waiting for her to fall asleep, but by the time she was sound asleep, so were we…

When you have kids, privacy is not what it used to be anymore. Suddenly, intimate time is so rare and precious there is not a lot of opportunities to be spontaneous. Suddenly, you have to plan your private time together as a couple and the more time goes by, the more kids you have and the older they get, the harder it gets to find a private time to enjoy and love each other.

Luckily for us, we woke up when Eden was just 11 months old. We realized we needed to plan our time together if we wanted to enjoy each other’s company. We sat and thought of some things that would help us “keep the fire burning” between us and how to manage the loss of privacy that comes together with the joy of having kids. I recommend that every couple do these things, regardless of the age of their children. One important thing kids need is parents who stay together, so invest in your togetherness for the sake of your children too.

In the age of divorce aplenty, faithful partners seem to be going extinct. And that is a shame, really, because being faithful to your partner is not very difficult at all. In fact, with a little imagination, it can be both easy and enjoyable.

There is a barrier to breaking up with your partner, but once a couple separates, leaving becomes a viable option for both of them. If the pain of divorce is great, they make the next time easier by not getting married in the first place, saying they are “not ready”. Of course, if separation was done in a mature way without much pain, it makes the next time easier too.

One of my clients, I will call him Carl, is a young man who deals with many people for a living. Naturally, among these people are women and some of these women are in his age group. Occasionally, he likes one of them and finds her attractive.

This creates a dilemma for Carl, because he already lives with a lovely young woman. Sally has been by his side for a good number of years through “thick and thin”. In fact, Carl has made some serious personal growth thanks to her example and encouragement.

In our session, Carl admitted Sally was good for him. “She’s my best friend”, he said, “But I can’t get that other girl out of my mind. It’s making me question whether I want to be with one woman all my life and whether that woman should be Sally. Maybe I’m settling for less than I could get”.

OK, parents, hand on your heart, how often do you do something romantic with your partner? Come on, don’t be shy, it’s all right. How often do you have a romantic dinner, go out dancing together or take time off just the two of you?

I bet your mind just filled with thoughts of “the children”, “my work commitments”, “that project I have to finish”, “how hard it is to get a babysitter nowadays” and various other seemingly-appropriate reasons for your romantic situation being what it is and why you should not be feeling too horrible about it. Besides, is this not what everyone experiences when they turn from a couple into parents?

Yes, they do, and yes, they all feel just as horrible as you do about it, but does that make it better?

Nope.

The natural progression of our life seems to be that we get really excited about finding a partner that turns us on and can be out friend at the same time. We dedicate much of our time and nearly all of our brainpower to finding that person. We embark on a journey of mutual exploration, during which we are typically so fascinated with the other person, they need to do something truly awful to turn us off.

Once we have found our body-and-soul mate, we go through what is commonly known as “settling down” (is this an ugly expression or what?), which includes some or all of the following: moving in together, getting married, joining finances, buying a home, getting a very large debt together (the mortgage) and, of course, having children. These steps seem to extract the interest and variety out of our life and replace them with certainty to the point of routine and with responsibility to the point of stress.

Let’s start with some big words. According to Wikipedia, “Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity”.

When I mention intimacy to people, many of them immediately think of romance and physical closeness, but this is only a borrowed meaning. In fact, many sexual relationships have little or no intimacy in them, while other relationships are based on deep spiritual bonding without any physical contact whatsoever.

In a family, some relationships are chosen for us (parents, siblings and extended family), while we get to choose the others (spouse and kids). Either way, the degree of intimacy in a relationship determines its quality and importance for us, not the kind of relationship. In a sense, when we rate a relationship as “good”, it is because there is enough intimacy in it for us.

Last week, I wrote about the relationship breakdown between parents and kids as a result of watching too much TV. Today, I cover the influence of TV on couples’ relationships, on the divorce rate and on the breakdown of the family structure.

Two years ago, I wrote about the rising divorce rate in the world. What triggered this article was my parents’ 48th anniversary. This year, my parents celebrate their 50th anniversary and I am very proud of them, but because I work with kids and couples, I am concerned about many others.

I believe the kind of exposure on TV to disposable relationships is making it harder for parents, as well as couples without children, to keep their family structure alive and well.

If you want to understand how concerning the statistics is, here are some marriage statistics.

This week, I lost it. I finished a session and came crying to Gal. I think I am surrounded with crazy women. It usually takes me a lot longer to say things like this about people, especially when I do not know them, but this week’s emotions accumulated to the point where I must vent.

Love, as you probably know, is one of the most wonderful feelings. Some people claim there are only two feelings – love and fear – and every good thing in life is a form of love and all the bad things are forms of fear. A stronger version of this only recognizes one feeling – love – and all the rest is lack of love.

Angela’s welcome party was a happy event for many of her parents’ friends and family. While everyone was celebrating her arrival into the world, Angela was asleep in her baby carriage, wearing the most beautiful angel outfit.The pile of presents next to her baby carriage was huge and at the end of the evening, Sam, the old manager at the event hall, helped her dad, Ian, put all the gifts in the car.
“Bless her. She has so many gifts”, the old manager said to Angela’s dad while helping him to load a big pink box with curly ribbons.

“Yes, she does”, said Ian excitedly.

Ian had been a bit worried before Angela’s arrival. He had been looking forward to the delivery day but at the same time worried about providing for his family. The list of things a baby needs had been so big that during the party, he kept looking at the gifts and was happy to see them piling high.

“We really need all the gifts”, Ian said to the old manager.

“Not really”, smiled Sam, “What you need is something that can’t be packed with ribbons”, and he held up a toy that made a funny noise.

Ian looked at the old man, not really understanding. He stopped and looked at him in surprise, “What do you mean? What do we need?”

“One more toy, another nice dress or furniture will make you happy, but she needs something that cannot be bought with money”, said Sam and handed Ian an envelope with a greeting card.

“This is your invoice. Thank you for choosing our venue”, he shook Ian’s hand, smiled and went back into the building, passing by Angela’s mom, Louise, at the entrance.

Ian opened the envelope and took out a greeting card with a photo of a large golden gift box. He opened the card. The invoice was folded inside it. Ian took out the invoice and read the greeting, which was written in pink.

Congratulations!

Being single is no fun when people around you nag. Many times, family members believe that all people should get married and that nagging will “encourage” singles to find a partner. In fact, this is the same whatever you nag your kids to do.