Letters to the Editor
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My guess is
that programs like these ultimately foster the opposite of their stated goals. The reason is that they seem predicated on the idea that, if you just find the perfect person, then your relationship, marriage, whatever, will be easy. I hear the same message when I hear someone say they want to find their "soul mate."
As several posters have already remarked, relationships work because the two people involved want them to work and show it by doing the things required to make them work. Certainly there are people out there who have no concept of how to make a successful, mutually supportive relationship, and they are to be avoided. Beyond that though, the sine qua non of a good, long-term relationship is the desire for it.
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DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A SOUL MATE
someone who works with you emotionally and seems easygoing to you.
through hard times that connection, where the people feel like best friends to each other, really helps pull the relationship forward or keep it on an even keel.
I see it in my sister's marriage, where they hardly ever argue and are very good to each other, relatively effortlessly.
Others I see are grinding on each other or work power plays rather than cooperating.
Lots of people are compatible as soul mates, the problem is when one tries to bring in a bunch of other minimal criteria as expectations of what the other person should have in them.
a guy a while back wrote a computer program where you get to pick desired qualities in a mate and he calculates how many people in the USA would have ALL the expected qualities. Some people have such high expectations that out of a population of 280 million, there may only be 10 people in the country who match on all counts.
sure we'd all love to be married to Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Connelly (at least I would), but in reality we are all compatible with similar people to ourselves.
in my view, soul mate first, last, and mandatory, or else expect eventual divorce- which I never want.
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I know people
who were married for a decade or more and then got divorced and who told me "I never knew him/her."
They had 10 years to cross examine their mates.....A while back I saw yet another such marriage expert on TV. Her claim was similar to this one: a woman should go into a date (no wonder I hated dating)with a list of questions and answers -just as if she were going into a job interview. I recall thinking: "Marriage is not a job. A job you quit the second a better offer comes up." My mother's advice was better. Be Yourself.
I'm not sure, there exist statistics to prove just about anything, but I don't think hasty marriages do any worse than well-considered marriages. It is definitely a gut thing; so the trick is to be 'in a good space' when meeting anyone (esteem is the key as an earlier writer said). Then you will take care of yourself.
I think marriage is a pressure cooker at times (life is) and how we handle life and our marriages when the pressure is on is key to it all. You never know anyone until you see them functioning under pressure and that usually won't happen before the marriage.
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What i liked
was the quote from the woman who took one of the seminars and realized that she was a 'jerkette.' Often, when I've taken such soft-skill 'courses,' I've managed to learn more about myself and it's been very helpful to realize that I have certain behaviors that I might want to change.
And being taught to recognize the controlling personality has been very helpful for me. That was the 'type' of partner I kept going for for years to my unhappy experience. I've now found someone who is neither a leader nor a follwer. Someone I can walk alongside so to speak. But it took being able to see that about her that has been the biggest help to me.
I've said for years that relationship skills need to be taught in our schools. I'm glad that one of these programs is being used in at least some of them.
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Another Way
Two people who are thinking of making their relationship permanent but wonder about their ultimate compatibility could do far worse than taking an extended journey together, one in which rigors and things going wrong must be expected.
How each of you, and you as a couple, interact and solve your problems will tell you a very great deal about each other and your relationship.
Such journeys together early in our relationship, to interesting places, in which regular eating places, stops to sleep, and shortages of money, and other problems were inevitable, did a great deal to persuade both of us that marriage was possible. In any case, you are living life. Both of you.
Last summer we celebrated our 25th anniversary, and 31 years of our relationship.
Foxessa
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it takes one to marry one
To follow up on the letter titled "What I liked", the major component necessary for making a successful marriage is some self-knowledge, and that is something our American culture tends not to value very highly - too philosophical, too cerebral, not "go with the flow" enough. People marry "jerks" (or are "jerks") because they have no idea what is driving them, who they are deep inside, what the impulses might be that push them to marry someone who is "wrong" for them, but pushes all the passion buttons. Any program that nudges Americans just a tiny bit in the direction of self-knowledge has got to be helpful in bringing people to more fruitful relationships, whether in bed or out of it.
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Laugh if you will. . .
But I, for one, would have benefitted from taking such a course before I entered what quickly turned into a very unhappy marriage. I'm not saying my experience is universal or anything; it just is what it is. I would have been better off had I been set up by the village crone! :}
Other than that, I think Dottygirl had lots of words of wisdom. I especially like her suggestion that teenagers be taught, at least better than they are taught now, how to manage their money. That would help make for better marriages, and would help society in a myriad of ways.