Framingham Community Forum; Dr. Norman Paul: Rationale For Divorce Counselling

Tonight we have Dr. Norman Paulus heading with us last year it was our first speaker and we had a rather formal social change and nine he has with him. It did lose the highest his doctor for an active family. Aaron is. He is assistant professor also tells the school and has recently research assistant professor you know wrong she lost the first school of medicine. Hall serves as a man named in child development and Nancy which is a hard one. Conference on children you home with me. And who's acting as some and who you are for the series and shares letters it is very you know its reactions are slow to go on record and book currently in preparation

is a looming crisis in Leeds which he brews on with assistance from the fans and the finance the man on the floor is blown all out of the way we are going to proceed to nine if everybody is going to be really here that is I will try and describe first of all. When I think of about a rationale for divorce counseling. And then and can describe some of the points from his own experience that I will be alluding to in this initial presentation. Now on this point about divorce counseling is sort of a tricky one because most people think of it in terms of legal divorce. When I

talk to Mrs Fidel or a couple months back about the topic I'm playing to review the nine she was concerned lest I would be promoting legal divorce. I think that's important at this point for me to explain that I will be speaking about different kinds of divorce and therefore about different kinds of relationships people have with one another and in many ways I'll be speaking about every one of us you and me. And in terms of our respective attempts to achieve a sense of being one's own person being one's own self which is at times very difficult at best in a marriage. I'm primarily interested in a lot of the work that I'm doing in trying to figure out why there's an increase in divorce. The figures

presently are one marriage and three ending in legal divorce on a national average and one in two in the state of California. There must be certain kinds of features about the California ambience that accounts for the increased to sticks there. These are the statistics on legal divorce in America. But I'll also be talking about emotional divorce. And before we get involved with the concept of divorce counseling I think it's important that I try to clarify my view of what happens in a marriage before a couple marries they go through a period of ambivalence about the marriage they're concerned about what their families think about them then the projected marriage to be one major reason that people get

married is to escape their parental possessiveness in more positive terms. A person marries to become independent of his family to become a person in his own right. Through an emotional divorce from this family. Once a couple has decided to marry they enter into a very peculiar state of oneness in an actual experience. This state of oneness seems to occur concurrently with when I think of as the emotional memories that point in time when a couple makes a commitment to one another to get married. This is before it's announced anybody else and this very peculiar state of oneness is expressed by the fellow and his fiance. Speaking of himself and his wife to be

as thinking alike enjoying the same food sharing the same interests whether in theatre or music or whatever it might be. This state of oneness is what I think of as a normal state of insanity. Because it is an essential state for a couple to live through as they're preparing themselves emotionally for the marriage by creating a bond that is more lasting than their ties to their parents. This sense of oneness is really designed to help the couple feel that they're together against the world against comments input from others who sort of question the wisdom of the marriage against comments from even within oneself. It's a very intense emotional

blending amalgamation that occurs and in a sense it's this particular feature that I firmly believe that accounts for a lot of the grief that occurs and in all marriages. There are the basic variations of this theme and parents object to the marriage. They may help to create a more permanent bond between the couple whom they tend to seek to separate. You could call this rebellious just by the couple against the parenting call whatever you want but it seems that the greater opposition that exists from the outside world and specifically from family. The more intense and determined the couple might be in getting married. I think it's one of the factors that counts for a locum and now when the

couple gets married they have different images in their heads as to what this marriage is going to be like. And in a sense this is also part of the problem because if you visualize something in your head that this marriage is going to work out and there's going to be. Love over a period of time. It's going to have to be that way. And there is a general reluctance on the part of every human being to give up the integrity of these fantasies and exists in his head. Good example of this that we've all lived through is what happened in 1964 after President Johnson was elected. He seemed to have developed we infer this from behavior. The fantasy that he could pull off a victory in South Vietnam and there was no question about

it the more there was opposition to him the more determined he was that fantasy was inviolate and commanded tremendous determination on his part in terms of commitment of troops material money and the nation's more out. And as he was determined to go about doing this there seemed to be an escalation of crises at home to the extent that the only way that that fantasy could die was for him to make a declaration of intent not to run for public office as president. The fantasy and special specifically the fantasies that are going on in each of us that we not may not even know about dictates certain behaviors that make it very difficult at times to get some kind of sense of leverage as to what the problem is.

In terms of the fantasy of oneness and we're going to make this marriage work sort of thing. The price of a parental intrusion into a couple's marital plans in terms of the destructive intent that the families may have about the couple's projected marriage leaves very often a lasting taste of bitterness between parent and child and the emotional separation is difficult to endure. We can't overlook the emotional importance of children in the lives of their parents but the marital process exists in part to separate the child from his family. At a point in his development when maturation will continue and a certain kind of emotional distancing between the parent and the child. We might argue that a child can only grow with the emotional support of his parents. But this only reiterates the importance of children in the lives of parents who

make an emotional investment in the future development of their children in terms of the business of the fantasy. There are certain mythologies in this country a principle one of which I've gotten quite bombarded with recently in this White House conference. There is a mythology that we care for our children. And there's a great belief that we care for our children. And yet in terms of actual practice actual experience we really more often than not do not know how to listen to a kid and our kids tune into what the kids are thinking about or feeling. And this becomes most critical in terms of a child's ability to indicate where we may be failing the child. Our children because that would mean that we have failed in being a parent and yet the reality is in terms of experience that a parent to be an effective parent has to be a

failure. I think that in a sense this is a place to start because we can never meet all the needs and all of the wishes and all the whims that child may have in terms of what we might be able to do for him or her. But we can find out what they think and what they feel. And when we actually have failed. My interests and a voice dates back to the time when some colleagues and I produced a series of recordings called a chance to grow. The format included interviews of individuals living through different phases of the life cycle beginning with the birth of the first child in a death in the family the Mary sequence was comprised of interviews with three couples with sort of an ecumenical group a Jewish couple

Protestant couple and a Catholic couple. Couples were interviewed several weeks before they were married. Asking them why they chose one another what they wanted from the marriage what problems they anticipated. Then some weeks after they were married they were interviewed again and we found out what the experiences were. How did the marriage work out in terms of the differences between what they had initially anticipated. And six months after marriage the couples again were interviewed and we had them listen to edited audio recordings of their first two interviews. This experience was an extraordinary one for me because it began day. Provide me with many fresh insights about marriage and the forces which tend to shape a good or bad marriage. Interestingly though the couples were able to talk about

budget problems sex problems living problems problems with in-laws. At no time doing the interviews was there ever any reference made to the topic of divorce which in effect represents failure of the marital enterprise. Divorce. Did become a matter of concern as the Protestant couple was interviewed nine months after their wedding not to find that they weren't concerned about getting divorced wanted to find out why they didn't mention this before. The avoidance of the topic during the interview sessions pointed out very clearly the aversion that members of our society have to divorce and the problem in a sense. I don't think it's divorce but if we were to look overall in the

society the inversion is to any evidence of failure or the fantasy of failure and any human enterprise. We have a mythology that one has to succeed and we pretend that failure very often doesn't exist. And so it is with many marriages. There's a lot of pretense that's build up in order to maintain the integrity of that first fantasy that this marriage is going to succeed. The trouble with that is in order to delude themselves many couples rear children who really get bombed out of their minds whether it's a sense of estrangement at school with their peers or at home. One interesting point in terms of this initial interviewing of these couples are getting married is the initial enthusiasm.

That clergymen lawyers physicians received for our idea for interviewing people about their experiences living through divorce or living through death in the family. And it was very interesting to see what happened they were very enthusiastic. These caregivers. But when it came to the point in time to deliver a sample of human beings living through these experiences it was impossible for this to occur. You know I felt that their reluctance to actually be able to get people who were living through these experiences represented their own ambivalence about divorce in themselves and their own concerns about death. I remember once upon a time oh maybe about five years ago my own work with families. I too was very much convinced that I had to

make marriages work. And in that sense I was imposing my own values at that time. On the people that I was sane. I share the aversion to divorce and I would guess that this aversion was a reflection about my own concern about my own marriage and the possibility of divorce in my own life. To pursue the concept of marriage in its emotional aspects. I begin with the wedding ceremony and in many ways a wedding ritual is a necessary performance by the bride groom friends and family of the changing status primarily of the bride as she gives up her name and she leaves her family and is given to her groom at the end of the aisle. Apart from the positive function of the ritual performance which clearly delineates the bride separation from her parents and she joins her

new husband. The wedding vow too should be examined for its effect. I'm thinking in particular about the phrase until death do us part. This concept creates in many couples considerable anxiety especially as they approach their middle years in some ways. Death is viewed as the alternative to divorce. Obviously on both occasions there is an emotional loss. The similarity between death and divorce brings to mind the different kinds of relationships we form with people. For all of us there are any number of temporary relationships in our lives quick casual acquaintances school friends coworkers and neighbors. I can't. I contrast these relationships to permanent party relationships which are relationships with blind or adoptive parents.

The nature of the temporary relationship differs from the permanent relationship not in the difference in duration of the relationship. In a sense you can have many temporary relationships with lifelong friends but the premise is that with a temporary party relationship they are subject to change. But in a permanent party relationship we never lose our status as father uncle cousin nephew son daughter husband or wife except by death or divorce. Marriage is one of those relationships which I would call a permanent party relationship. The obvious dilemma now looms large before before us permanent relationships are not subject to change except the divorce or death. Therefore divorce a change in marital status would not be a viable solution

for many with marital difficulties in terms of marriage being a trapped when viewed in these fixed terms. In each one of our lives our parents marriage is a model for our own marriage and part of the problem making a good marriage of one's own begins with our perceptions of what we see and remember and maybe forgotten of our parent's observable behavior favorably we would view some aspects of the marriage and at times maybe failed to approve of other aspects we may deplore the lack of demonstrably affection between the parents and determine to set a different course in our own marriage. But with this vow to change the pattern of marriage as observed in our own lives and our own parents to our present maint we often fail to distinguish

between the reality of our situation and the fantasy we maintain as a standard or as the standard of behavior. As an example a man may have a notion that his wife's function is to set a meticulous prepared table before him every night. And should she fail to give all her attention to this task her husband's anger is big. Is thoroughly disproportionate to the extent of what stimulated it. Some people say that any time a merit married couple has a falling out and the reason is that one spouse is not meeting the dependency needs of the other. This is an idea related to the notion that one partner can see what he expects the other guy to do to keep him happy and what he expects to do in return. Couples work out a variety of ways of pleasing the other and yet maintain their own equilibrium. There are times however when the marital partners are so preoccupied with meeting the other's needs that the children's needs are

forgotten. There are various combinations of this. Very often we notice a recurring pattern in the difficulties couples have when they fail to meet one another's needs. Their marital problems are reflection of their parents difficulties but the couple denies the similarity because it is too painful for them to admit that their marriage proved no more successful and maybe very often worse than their parents. In spite of the fantasies about their being able to establish an independent and better way of life. Marital problems I find are very often difficult to analyze for a number of reasons. Foremost is the feeling each spouse has that he or she is the victim of the other person. There are times when a man will react to his wife as though she were his mother not being aware of this and he behaving toward her as though

he were her son. And at times as though he were his she would she were his father. There are very mixed bags in this NG. It's like taking it from the husband's point of view. He would be reacting to his wife as if she were his mother and he were the father. Then this can reverse she where the father and he was like his mother. These combinations will recur with almost precise patterning without anybody knowing what the hell is going on. And at the same time each spouse maintains with. A dogmatic fervor that he knows exactly what's going on. I think this pounces really oneself as the last person to know what the heck is really going on. Such marital difficulties are tenacious hold over it from the

emotional ties the spouses form with the spouse forms with his parents had formed in many ways I have redefined my counsellor role from a marriage counselor to divorce counsellor. As I've become increasingly aware that my job is to help individuals recognize what their fantasies are especially those that have derived from the original nuclear family which in turn dictates the unstable nature of the marriage. I'm principally intent on helping each individual in a family to achieve a stronger self sense of his own self form self. So in a sense the problem becomes in many ways a clear one and that is to get the individual divorced from unrecognized fantasies that are dictating maladaptive behavior with the

couple and screwing up the kids heads. In seeing a couple. Sometimes it's sort of a period of trying to figure out what the problem is whether they're able to achieve some collective understanding of what is happening in their marriage and the fantasies dictating and the nature of their difficulties. And if this doesn't work out I've come to use a technique that I call a freeze split after our double Eazy-E split. This is a moratorium on the marriage. It can last anywhere from a week to six months where the husband moves out leaving the wife and children at home. The split is most effective when neither party dates anyone else and sort of simulates a monastic experience. The experience is designed

specifically to recapture some of the behavior some of the feelings that occurred prior to the marriage. In many ways I see one of the main goals is to have each person begin to learn to bear his own alone that's in loneliness rather than requiring the other guy to entertain oneself and distract oneself from what one is about. Very interesting things occur in this setting. First there's a reduction of tension at home which is reflected at times in an increasing sense of comfort in the children. Each party is asked to reflect upon what happened before the split. And during this moratorium I will ask for the cooperation of siblings and parents of each spouse. So as to revive awareness and recognition of the patterns of behavior that were translated and insinuated

in the to the new family. An interesting example of how this can work is that of a couple had three children the wife feeling neglected by her husband had a series of affairs. It was interesting to note that her first affair began after her first child's fourth birthday. When I saw them for the first time the husband was trying to live at home and was annoyed and hurt that his wife had served divorce papers on him a month earlier. During the free split where in this instance it lasted one month I became aware that the wife suffered the loss of both of her parents from tuberculosis when she was four and five years old. She vividly recalls her mother's death when she was four. Dwelling on the scene where she was with friends when the welfare worker came for her to place her in a permanent foster setting. She screamed Please don't take me away. I didn't do

anything wrong. She knew her mother had died. It is though this woman's first affair coinciding with her daughter's fourth birthday was an attempt to remove herself from her daughter just as her own mother had left her. And this leads us to reflect upon the woman's envy for her daughter and so far as the daughter would have a mother with her and later a father that she didn't have. Another instances of parental envy and that is another factor that I think is forms an invisible backdrop and making for tension between spouses parent very often if they want to make a marriage work. Will have to bear this sense of envy in seeing his child. Think parent him better than he himself had been. One woman I saw

some years back told me her mother used to claw at her whenever she tried to visit friends as a teenager. Her mother would also deprive her of the assessor raise adolescent girls would like to have his clothes and cosmetics going to her mother's behavior was very confusing. When this woman was 16. Her mother bought her cosmetics. It was in this woman. He had three generations. When the woman had a daughter who was 16 she would buy her cosmetics and then she would severely reprimand her and saying after she would observe her putting on some lipstick who gave me these cosmetics who said you should use them or could use them and would be as if she would have forgotten that she had purchased them for a daughter in an attempt to be a better mother than their own mother and then just have this perception totally block blotted out of her mind. This sort of

behavior would occur without the mother really being aware of the strange contradictions in her actions. And this brings me to the whole question of whether we are aware of what we're doing in my own mind. I think most of us are anywhere from 90 to 95 percent unconscious because we have no idea as to how we are observed by our spouses and our children. We like to think we know what's going on but one of the ways I've found that is very useful in confronting an individual with the when I call every man's credibility gap is to use closed circuit TV. And then you have an opportunity to see what the other guy's doing all the time. One of the things that I've observed very frequently in the last couple years is the relationship between death and divorce. A guy or gal will lose a parent

and they'll be a minimal degree of grief about and by what seems then to happen is there's a thrust toward dissonance in the marriage and this death of a parent can also include the fantasy that the parent's going to die which can take the form of the subject who is losing the parent to get involved with a series of affairs. There are various combinations of this particular thing. I think at this point what I think might be useful is to have and Doug describe his perception of the process of achieving an emotional divorce from his original family and in some ways I think of what he has been living through and some of the problems he has is really a reflection of something that we've all shared

in one point in time or another. For myself I think that one of the things that has given me a considerable degree of personal pleasure is to see him begin to feel he has a second lease on his own life as things are getting resorted out. Green come here tonight I was trying to establish naturally you're nervous over a situation like this. Exactly what my role would be and I'm beginning to think it's a little bit like a warm body at an Irish wake but so be it here I am. I think to understand my experience of about the last six months perhaps you'd have to know how I might characterize myself. Six months ago and in terms of vital statistics I was convinced I was an adult. I was married and I was the father of three children and

I returned to those three kind strikes in a minute but I was obviously faced with a marriage in trouble my wife was determined the marriage had failed she in effect wanted me to leave or to do something it was obvious that we couldn't make this work between us and being the type of person that I am accepting this side year. On the face of it and leaving was absolutely impossible it just couldn't be done so it was necessary to somehow make this situation fail safe if you will to come apart and. And Byron meant that provided me with a rationale for doing everything possible to keep it together. So this is basically how we ended up with the decision to introduce a third party and in this case it happened to be Dr. Paul and I went into the counseling aspect of this convinced that

somehow by some mystical power which once I got the insight into it possible we'd operate with it and we would put this all back together and things would be just fine and I really couldn't understand what was happening to me to begin with and I'm sure that a little bit of this type of counseling would provide the necessary insight. I've been separated for two months now so obviously it's very the pain of the transition but I guess I could best describe the situation I'm in now is that freeze that Dr. Paul alluded to earlier and it is clearly as I see it now when you're talking to someone that was viewing it with only two months experience so if my viewpoint changes in six months perhaps you'll have told me that but it clearly now I feel better about the situation and much I'm able to come here tonight and talk about it which is a test of something in terms of my view of it if you will.

My children are. At least accepting that and seem to be operating as best I can judge quite well and my wife is I think clearly happy as she certainly seems less strained and the relationship between US operates even on a day to day basis. Clearly in a much more adult normal manner if you will. I'd like to come back to the 3 description points that I gave myself and how they bore on this transition from married to separated if you will. The concept of being a parent was terribly important in this situation and still is but it was important in a strange way it had to hang up and I couldn't hear

you being a parent and not being married if you will in other words there was a if you were divorced or separated somehow your the biological relationship was also dissolved as well as the logistics of being in the house. And it took me a while to realize that even if I were not living with my wife or divorced or what have you that the relationship to the children in terms of being a parent would still have continuity and I may seem trivial to many of you but it was an extremely important facet to my understanding why I had to succeed. Being a parent to me meant being in the house to a large degree and the arbitrator of their grievances to my wife if you will. It was loaded up with the idea of being a successful super daddy if you

will. To some degree this goes back or is related is clearly related to the fact that I was an adopted child so that I had no biological model in which I grew up with my frame of reference was adoptive parents. There is a distinct difference there there's a missing something a naturalness if you will and once you become a. Parent and a true biological sense then you're not really sure what this relationship is dependent on. And it seemed in my fantasy coming out of my childhood you had to be something super And this thing and it was something anybody tied up with being married you couldn't be a parent unless you were married. The same was true to it to a large degree and the marriage itself I was brought up in an orthodox religion and which marriage was considered a singular

event and it was not dissolvable. It had to succeed in any definition you would like to apply to that word. But it seemed to have to have continuity and perpetuation if you will in the face of any kind of trouble. My parents and myself in that framework lived through a severe amount of trouble. My father was alcoholic and I became a fairly strong male figure in that role so that in effect as a child I had somewhat of a quasar fantasised marriage relationship going and so naturally surviving that situation the thought of not surviving one which was brought about through the normal routine of dating and falling in love getting married and having children was absolutely unthinkable it just couldn't occur to me that something could go wrong or this was entered into in such a logical fashion.

So the fantasy of marriage as a success oriented business if you will was something that I clearly carried with me from a long time ago. Also the concept that there was some enormous punishment law with this separation or this divorce if it comes to that if I was relating a failure in this aspect if you will somehow R.E.M. to some degree I was modifying my behavior with an allusion of the sky would fall down if you will or some terrible punishment was awaiting me and some sense now these things are not things that I was daily dealing with but they were certainly part of my cultural background that failure in this area represent and an end of me as a

person and any viable sense so that. The confrontation of this marriage must change was one which came to me loaded with the idea that I was going to lose my position as a parent. I was going to. Fail as an adult not being able to have an adult relationship in this in this one case. And I was going to end up damned as a person. So I brought to the marriage if you will these fantasies from my background which understandable as they might be in their own context they were obviously carried with a great deal of continuity and I did experience and I was not able to separate my reluctance to do anything about this with the thing I was actually modifying it which came from my background

and so it was necessary when faced with this confrontation to somehow put myself in a position where I could at least say if it became reality that I had done everything possible and I ran into a rather shocking experience when the everything possible turned out to be to get the hell out of the house. And it took a while to accept that. And but once it was done it was a synonymous sense of relief perhaps that all of these things just didn't happen I was beginning to be able to see the petition between what was expected affecting my current behavior and how it was tied in clearly what was a discontinuity and it was not part of the same experience. It was a childhood which affected the way I was now but it was not continuing to dictated once that separation became clear.

Maybe I should stop at this point and. Allow it when you and some of anything it was worth thinking about the role of visiting your mother's vary of may be tough to talk about but the I alluded to it. In effect adopting a role as a first marriage if you will an alcoholic father who didn't always make good. And he says that he didn't make it to work he didn't make of the supper table occasionally an adopted child who felt that there was a vested interest in survival and as these two people that had to go because if it didn't go then what was my alternative was very selfish. But is the selfishness that comes with a child thinking of survival of themselves. Not. Only that they're clearly I took on a role as head of a household long before I had any concept of what it means I took

it on the head of a rather strange household because it was one of the first that allowed this kind of debt to be carried on consciously a verbalized that where would I be if it weren't for you when I was an accepted thing. And secondly it was a role the child can possibly carry out in any in any true sense. So it put me in the position of in effect to be my mother's husband and to some degree. And Mammy said work as hard I would try to mitigate circumstances within the household as much as I could. And what it would do in a marriage sense would obviously make any new marriage ended into Love is a situation where the woman involved as my wife was obviously competing in a clear and a very real sense. I know when my wife would argue with my mother when this didn't happen very

often because she avoided almost as much as I did the thing that struck me as being the painful alternative in this in fact I once said to her Don't make me choose because I had these two marriages to keep going at any price. And it's it's a role that's absolutely impossible obviously and once they both fail I can sack reconstructing myself as an individual as a reason representative you know I don't know what I was thinking about really is the freedom to have a much clearer reflection on your premarital experience. Every word I'm thinking about the recognition of the importance of your mother in your life. We visited her very very

private. Avoid telling this twice now so I guess I'm going to have to be separated if you will puts has put me in a situation where the day to day logistics of a marriage together in terms of shopping and house cleaning and complaining about laundry and the usual things that go on in a marriage and car pools and so forth suddenly disappear and it actually turns out to be quite a pleasant experience I found out so I went home that night to to pick up a car to come out here and while I was there two of the kids split up and the other one was in bed so there is some relief and peace in the situation because you can turn your back on that because you got an appointment but you have this this free time and I think what I would like to pose as me to discuss a little bit is

where what what I was some of things you can do with it and if you're involved in this type of counseling and one of the things that has happened there was a fairly Persepolis experience. It was a request made earlier by Dr. Paul to visit my mother's grave. On the face of it this sounds like a Memorial Day type of traditional experience which is the way I viewed it. And he asked this first in June and again in July and kind of casually in August and it came up again in October and at that point I was convinced that I had it sufficiently in the hand that I could do this without any real involvement. And I did it was about three weeks ago I guess that this actually transpired. And I came apart at the seams It was a singular experience in my life where really what was involved here was a purging of that emotional involvement that I carried pretty much with me all my life and

then really a decision point is to OK were you going to be are you going to stay in this kind of a situation where the commitment if you will is to a person that is first of all dead and secondly probably you never really knew as a person. But more is the construct of the mother. And if you ever get in a situation here's something you can do on your own. It's a rather traumatic part of an extremely revealing experience and it became necessary for me to do right then and then decide do I love to do it I mean do I stay in this kind of a tide How do I move out of it and try to reconstruct What's to live and I now sense either living rather than living with my childhood and living on what I think of as a point

that a fair representation. But I'd like you to listen to radio call from a I mean very newspaper and it sends it to tie up very nicely the the relationship between child development and what goes on in the family and principally what goes on between occurrences spouses. It's written by a 15 year old. The title is a reading on love. Once in yellow paper with blue lines he wrote a poem and he called it chops because that was the name of his dog. And that was what it was all about. And his teacher gave him an A in the gold star. And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and showed it on his hands. That was the year father Tracy took them all to the zoo and let them sing all the way home on the bus. And that was a year the girl around the corner sent him a

valentine with Rolodexes and his mother and father kissed alive. That was the year his baby sister was born with no hair and tiny toenails and his father talked him into bed every night. Once in white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem and he called it on him because that's what it's all about. And his teacher gave him an A and told him to write more clearly. And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because it just been painted and the girl around the corner laughed at him for going to Macy's to see Santa Claus. That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames. And his mother and father argued a lot and his father never talked him into bed any more. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it. A question of innocence because that was the name of this girl. And that's what it was all about. And this professor gave him an A and a strange look. And

his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed it to her. That was the year father Tracy died and the girl around the corner wore so much makeup and made him sick to Kister but he kissed her anyway and he caught his sister knocking on the back porch and his mother and father never kissed anymore or hardly ever talked. And he came home at 3:00 in the morning and talked himself into bed and was father's snoring loudly. Once in the back of a book of matches he wrote a poem and he called it absolutely nothing because that's what it's all about. And he gave himself an A and a slash and each stamp wrist and he hung it on the bathroom door because he couldn't reach the kitchen. Reading in on. It.

Anybody want to ask any questions. Any thoughts comments. I. Did have 2 1 0 0 0 and they the idea of failure has to do with his business or the fantasy of being a successful parent. What tends to happen is that you get an idea in your head that you're going to be a better mother than your mother was to you and you can remember all the indiscretions and humiliations that your mother provided for you when you're growing up. And then you get this idea that indeed you're going to be a much better

mother than she was. And so what tends to happen and I think in many ways this is a very common thing that unbeknownst to yourself you're not going to pay attention to your daughter as an example because you have high stakes in proving yourself a success more successful than your own mother. The thing about grandmother mother and daughter that tried and so you're not going to find out or if the daughter tries to tell you where you fail you're going to tune it out because you're determined to prove yourself a better mother than your own mother. And in where this business of innocence death and these fantasies merge together because in a sense for this mother who has this image of being the very successful mother

she has to kill that fantasy often has to die. Otherwise she cannot tune into her daughter. It's impossible. And what tends to happen in terms of practice when the daughter will begin to tell the mother something that she has felt for years being concerned about hurting mother. Something about it lets a kid of 15 mother's initial reaction is out of startle shock and beginning grief because she's confronted with evidence that what she's gotten or had as to her own mission in life is of a her daughter has failed. So my point is I think it's preferable to start off with the idea you're going to be a failure then you're going to be able to be more responsive. It's really I think a matter of becoming

acquainted more clearly with some of the actual facts of the living process. And in many ways. What I think in reference to that is that more attention should be given to making better use of mass media radio and TV to get some of these ideas across to the general public. I think my sense of people is that they're desperately hungry for information as to what the whole damn show's about. OK would you write any questions you might have on cards and then they will be picked up. Question Why has the divorce rate been increasing in recent years. I think you know in many ways are many reasons accounting for a lot of people feel that

it's the ease of getting a divorce is the main factor. I think that one of the major factors is that couples are becoming much more intense in what they one from the other guy a husband wants his wife to make up for all of the deprivation he experienced as a kid she said was supposed to be super and make up for everything that didn't occur in his life. Well that's impossible. That's too much of a burden to put on anybody. And yet if she doesn't meet all his needs and whims then the thing is well who needs her. Question before you get to that I wanted to pursue this

business. One is this a state of wonders that occurs between the emotional marriage and the legal marriage. What happens very often with couples after the wedding immediately after the wedding is that they begin to become aware that there isn't this one this one and two they have the idea that the other guy should give up his or her values for self. Why can't you be like me. Well that isn't going to work. I've seen a couple diddling around with that for 70 years still having hope that one day the other guy's going to cave in. So there is some merit in having hope just keeps you going. Where you're going may not know. Question of a problem arises in your marriage and you discover via your psychiatrist that you've been looking at your wife as your mother and you don't really know her as a

person. I don't know who the person her is mother or that why isn't my parent's medical injection. Isn't there an alternative to a deep freeze such as getting to know her as a wife. The question is how do you go about doing it. That's the real question I mean. Got a lot of you know slogans How do you get to know another person is a human being. I think then that one of the main things to be able to share with the other party is a history of personal experiences of hurt or pain that one had as a kid so that the other guy might be alerted to a tendency to replicate that type of experience after marriage. Question what seems best for children of divorced parents to spend time with each parent such as weekdays with mother and weekends with Father or does this keep the conflicts alive.

I was thinking and maybe you might have some thoughts about it. I get it next spring. Maybe it's only temporary but the thing that has seemed to work in our case is to keep it as unstructured as possible and to do this requires consent on a tolerance on both part of my life and her case to keep them available. This would normally be the time that we see them anyway for like for instance picking the car up and I'd come out here as an occasion for a drive and an hour and I've got a new type of thing which is not too different than what would transpire in the last cycle. Weekends are when I first want to write whoa like I was out of place. It was impossible to hear accurately and in turn I wanted to

watch the football game on TV and I fell asleep on the couch for this became not too different than what transpired the week before when I was a daddy in residence. So I think that if you can make it operate within the limits that approximate casual those are possible or at least the one structures seems to be at least twice approximate in this situation. Did you see the thing is in terms of divorce the legal divorce and this is word fails the system fails. The assumption is when you get a legal divorce you're going to get a concurrent emotional divorce. It doesn't happen and that's why there's bitterness. There's the expectation that you get a legal divorce everything's going to be great.

And times the emotional bond between the separating divorced couple becomes much more intense. And this is why I think that in many instances if you can help a couple and she win emotional divorce they don't have to go and leapfrog that dimension to try to get a legal divorce. I think that what this really boils down to is that each person is in his own trap and there isn't any magical ways out of the trap of the one way street of life. And I think it's characteristic of the human brain to try and weasel out of whatever difficulties he or she finds himself. And what happens is people are trying get away with whatever they can get away with until things cave in and then they're usually startled as to why things are going to hell in a handbasket very fast. Please compare the

effects of children of illegal divorce as compared to an emotional divorce. I think that the increasing incidence of problems of kids in school out of school crime drugs experimenting with various kinds of would seem to be newly emerging behaviors. To me is evidence of the failure of. The functioning of a family as we know it in terms of couples sticking together for their kids. I think in the long run that is one of the biggest mistakes that one can do. Because I hang on the kids next. A sense of responsibility for keeping to one happy parents together. And

I think that a lot of parents do that as a way of weaseling out of their assuming their own responsibility for their own behavior. Why is there a sense of jealousy between divorced people when one remarries and the weapon uses the children. I don't know. I know that children are used as weapons and I think it has to do with the discrepancy between the fantasy isn't going to be great to have a kid and how much of a sion it actually is in bringing up the kid and how much is involved in having to share the other spouse with the child. But I think to me and tends to reinforce

this whole quandary about you know the integrity of the fantasy people generally do not learn from experience even their own. I'm seeing one guy who is now on his fifth marriage to me and he brings in this gal who's never been married before. Then he wants me to sort of give him a reading as to what I think. Just. Because he has a certain misgiving about this gal when she said that when they got married she felt she should have the right to be able to have an affair with any guy she wants. And that he should not be

upset by this. In other words he should condone it without any sense of aggravation or a sense of disapproval. And I said to him I am I said to him I think you're kind of fussy. I am. I have the occasion to see him before he got married the first time 15 years ago and the same things are coming out of his head I wish I had a tape recorder and then the negative feed right back to him but I mean that kind of experience tends to convince me that even beings like to think they learn from experience. And that's part of the big delusion and the more we're deluded about that the more

we're really liable to screw our own heads out without knowing we're doing it but that in a sense to freedom the freedom to screw ourselves as we see fit without knowing it. Are there any resources for couples needing help will have no money and find community service agencies overloaded. I tell you one of the things that I think couples can do if there exists any sense of goodwill between them. If there isn't then you can't do it. And that is to be able to tape record dinner table conversation with the kids and then at some later point listen to it listen to what is not being said and listen to the style of one's way of responding. Listen to how you let yourself get aggravated by what the other guy's talking about. Because that's the where the action is

and maybe you can learn something if you can't learn anything tough. I think this sort of fits in with this other question here how can you see yourself as your spouse sees you without the benefit of close circuit TV I think you can do that with plain audio tape recording. People say they'd like to do it and then they don't do it. People say a lot of things. What fraction of marriages do you estimate are emotionally divorced. I see a biased sample of human beings and from my biased sample. And I think I think in many ways I mean like and I think he's representative of a upper middle class guy. I would think of him as having a certain kind of

cognitive educational input. I think that's a normal situation. I think in these situations not in terms of pathology or sickness because that to me just doesn't make any sense. It's a matter of ignorance not knowing not knowing what is involved in a relationship. People go through college and they can define these things in words but the real magic is in the experience not in the word. And I think this is one of the things that the kids are trying to tell us especially kids are getting involved with film media. And I was so interested in reading anymore. I was telling a friend of mine a couple weeks ago that I think that one of the things that is leading Western civilization the cave then I think the major invention was out of the printing press because I think people then have a certain sense of the gospel truth inherent in what they read.

And one of the reasons that it. We're doing what we're doing here tonight is really to try and get people to think you know one of the biggest drains is on the part of people is to do their own thinking. Somebody else knows how you want to think. Preferably a professional such as a psychiatrist or some book. And so what has happened is that we have are having a generation of kids and adults growing up who can't even trust their own judgment because they're afraid to make a mistake. One of the most appalling things I heard in Washington from a gal who is a vice president of a large publishing house for kids books isn't she is being besieged by teachers and asking her to write a guide as to what the teachers should be asking the kids as to what they're finding or learning about in a

piece of literature. I mean what is the right way to read. What are the right things to get out of the piece of literature. And that to me is just being bad news. Now this kind of question I think of as a weasely kind of question. Let me read it to you. The first is what fraction marriages the estimator emotionally divorce I'd say about 92 percent. OK. That's not the weaseling question the weasely question is what less drastic alternative treatment than the separation phrase do you recommend to lessen this emotional divorce rate. I don't know if anybody's going any good ideas I'd welcome. I mean I don't think you can have it both ways. I don't think you can sort of begin to get a sense of self at times at the same time living with a spouse with whom you're basically incompatible. In a

free split we're each partner leads a monastic and presumably celibate existence. Isn't this form of denial unnatural and therefore a conflict in itself. Yeah. But the thing is you then because you can become aware of the problem and problem and some measure is that we have all these distractions around us that prevent us from thinking about ourselves. The TV too for a variety of sporting events or a variety of magazines newspapers different sounds noises movies what have you. One of the main things is to learn to be Meyer's selves learn to be able to bear your own sense of loneliness to be able to bear boredom because of you can do it your kids can learn from you so that you don't have to be

fair. For Nick Lee hopping around all the time being jazzed up. What do you think of the togetherness bit. Do most people overdo it and in the process smother the other person. A lot of people do a good job of smothering and some gals or smother guys these guys don't know what's happening to them. So that's OK. If you don't feel anything. Sometimes it's great. Oscar Wilde said what ignorance is insensitive bliss. See that's a problem with with words. I mean I think about this I sort of. This one makes me regret the invention of the printing press. I think

I you know it is if you take in a sentence and idea out of context what do you think of the togetherness but well at times the governesses O'Cain of the times of stakes and the question is to be able to find out from the other guy what he thinks and what you think. Most people don't even know what constitutes a dialogue an operation. They think they know and usually what it means is a series of big lectures. That's why I would strongly recommend if you have the guts and most people don't until they have a big fat crisis and then they start screaming and running and punch this thing up. But if you have the guts you would do well to think about using a tape recorder and begin to get some feedback about yourself. And in May it might be a bit painful

but it might be able to avoid a lot more serious pain later. Question How many people reunite after free separation. I guess there is a sort of a request for some kind of statistical. Breakdown. The the reason for the freeze split is to try and make it very clear by virtue of this mock up divorce it is sort of the pretend divorce in a sense is not legal of course that the marital relationship prior to that time is dead. It doesn't work and hasn't worked. It is a mutual acknowledgement of failure and the reason why I think that failure the knowledge point of failure is useful is that it provides options. You don't have to keep on reaching out and trying to achieve success and

success where there really isn't any. I would say statistically and this is with the wind variety of situations the number of people who have been able to get together under the auspices of a different marital situation has got to be different. Otherwise forget it. Some people get back together and have the same lousy situations they had before and they wonder why it doesn't work. But this it just takes over. Let's say about four or five year period it has been but 60 percent are able to evolve a different relationship. And I think the key elements involved. Are the key variables is the ability to get in the the families of origin.

Parents that are alive. The parents who are dead and their influence are already in in the family without the family members knowing about it. I mean as Ed alluded to in terms of his mother not even knowing that that intense relationship existed. And that's what I would call a hidden fantasy a fantasy hidden from men until he can was confronted by it when he visited her grave. It seems as though and likes the present separation What are his chances of going back to his marriage. I don't know. For me I operate with a very high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. I don't know it depends Penton a lot of things but I think the most important thing is for and to be able to have an increasing sense

of himself. Without a great sense of guilt about being alive. How many counselors understand alcoholism pulls the family apart. I think everybody knows that our home isn't isn't good for the family counselors people in industry but it's you know let's sort of pretend that it isn't a serious problem. Why is it so important to hold a faltering relationship together and both partners acknowledge the breakdown. Isn't it better for two or more people to live rather than than. Dying an emotional death. I think that a bad marriage unfortunately leads to a

death of the spirit of the sponsors. And in the sense I think this is then trickles down. To the kids. Kids are like sponges. You know you didn't tell me anything of there's tension in the air. And they reflect the tension and they also have a very strong sense of responsibility. One of the things I worry about in terms of the drug scene. Is that I think that if they take they were really able to control the increasing. Popularity or evidence of hard drugs and they were really able to nail all the heroin and speed who would really be confronted

by a wretched problem. And that is I think it would have an increasing incidence of suicide in the adolescent that. Will make it very difficult. And when it really shakes out in many ways the real problem in cold turkey terms is do you want to have a kid who is on drugs. Or do you want to have on a marble slate. This is a very unpleasant and. Ugly choice. But no one likes to see things as they really are. I mean the thing to do is let's pretend it isn't happening until it hits us in the head. Then we wonder where did it come from. But until we were able to achieve more of a sense of community months or selves I think that we as a viable society have had it and it's just a matter of time.

The stakes are very high for everybody. You made the comment that parents have stopped listening to kids. Is this a recent phenomenon. And how much is this a tribute of all to family break ups. I think that this is attributable. To not really understanding the dialogue the main property of a dialogue is to be able to listen to the other guy expressing a point of view. That is diametrically opposite from your own and respect the individual's right to express it and thereby you reinforce the integrity of his own reality that he has a right to exist being different from you. Is everyone bound to fail. Everyone is bound to fail in

terms of the fantasies of perfection one has and what other kinds of fire fantasies and are determined to work out fantasies by nature have to fail in the extremity because what's involved you see if you have the idea that this marriage is going to work out. Then you're getting involved with trying to control the other guy to make this marriage work out and that can last just so long. Do you believe in marriage legal marriage useful prior to commitment to having children. Doesn't the artificial bound bond encourage taking partner for granted.

The artificial bond of the artificial bond being a legal marriage. I don't understand this question. I think it's good for a kid to have parents who are married. How does that fit this phrase. Will it affect older children do they tend to resent the parents. I think what happens is that they're freer they feel freer to resent the parents they've had the resentment before. And that in very often helps to compromise their behavior. They're really tight and they have difficulty breathing and they wonder what the hell is going to happen next. Scared. Why do you seem to insist that. The beginning of marriage is a fantasy because that's the way it seems to be and this gets

involved with one of the things that no one ever teaches anybody about and that is one of the properties of a fantasy in yourself. How can you tell I can even begin to infer the existence of a fantasy in yourself. How do you know what's really going on. I want me to use your senses as a means of gathering evidence or raw data as to what's really going on. That question suggests the difficulty in discriminating a fantasy from what's real. How can you tell what's real. I would like to know whether Mr Duggan's wife went along with him for counseling or did she just not try to do anything more on her part to save this marriage. She initiated the action.

I was only hazily interested and contributed much and she was the person on the council and insisted that we do this stuff right now at that point I had to continue and then as the cost of doing business. Here is an interesting question. I think you have a very narrow negative view of people. A family in a healthy state is a veritable symphony of interaction trust and concern which helps each other each one to grow as a human being. Aren't you as a healer giving up too soon and doing an immense disservice to those who come to you for help. Maybe but you

know the thing is the person who believes this family in a healthy state trusting concern which helps one each one to grow as human being how do you know this is happening. How do you know I'm behind that smiley happy face of a kid lies tremendous anguish and pain. How do you know if a kid isn't sort of sensitized to sort of look happy to keep you happy. A very popular theme in our culture. Everybody's got to be happy all the time and a lot of people are our own once in a frenzy trying to do that. No no. I'm not suggesting everybody ought to be analyze. The only thing I'm suggesting everybody ought to

think that there is a point of view that has as much validity as one's own that exists and the other person as spouse or child. That's all right right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. You live with me all night. Yeah right you know my bro really like yeah yeah you're right.

You're like oh cool. RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT. Right now I would agree with that and I think that's. But you know from a practical reality this is why I'm very concerned about how to implement the better utility of mass media. You're never going to have enough people to do that. I think that there will be techniques that could be involved in terms of the use of mass being

media to get people to start thinking in terms of what actually happens in the marriage. And I think in a sense maybe civilization is doomed. I have to do is to read the newspapers for two days and I don't get to set too great a sense of constructive things happening in our society. And that's in the local paper or a New York Times. It's immaterial. I do think. And I firmly believe this that the viability of a civilization is dependent upon the functioning of the family in that civilization. And in my own mind I think that a civilization eclipses and is on the down skids. When there are absent generation boundaries between parents and kids

when there is no preparation on the part of parents for their kids to succeed them because this is related to the broader issue of the preparation for leadership we have had a variety of movies and tend to. Highlight how people of the senior generation. Are having affairs with the junior generation you can say well this has happened throughout history where you take a culture and the artistic output of a culture gives you an idea as to what are the shifting values I mean the movie graduate faces Joe. These are capturing a certain segment of real life as tends to exist. You can say well it's ugly and it's too painful to say but don't say it. But that's the way things seem to be happening. I think prevention is critical. But I think it's in the nature of the human being

to avoid prevention until he's gagging and then I wish I could have been prevented before. Now how can you can change human nature I don't know. It would be nice to be able to do that. I think a family that actually has a symphony of interaction is a family where there is a sense of dialogue. And the individuals have a sense of separateness and a sense of internal self-worth and self-esteem. There was this clipping that I found somewhere. I'm on my way back from the planning conference at the White House conference. I got hold of this popular newspaper called The National

Enquirer. Which is designed to shock you like they did to THE LEAD. This one is everyone in the United States is being poisoned by mercury. SHOCKING results of government studies revealed. But the thing that has sort of struck me in it because I hadn't seen this before three your mental health survey shows two of three youngsters in Westchester County prospers New York suburb are emotionally disturbed. That's scary. But that's in Westchester County not out here so let's forget about that. And I think the thing for all of us to do is to stay out of Westchester County because we might catch something down there. I will tell people what I think is happening. I will suggest what I

think are the options and the consequences of exercising different options. The individuals are the ones who decide what they are going to do they have a right to tell me I'm full of beans. They have a right to do anything they want to do. The most important thing in terms of this audiotape and videotape playback the reason why I think it's so important is that I think it's critically important for each person to become an expert about himself to becoming actively involved in seeing this ELV data rather than deferring judgment to the psychiatrists or the social worker or the marriage counselor. My intent in a sense is not that I'm be an expert about N but n becomes an expert about it because that's where it counts. It's a good deal and much good if I'm an expert about him.

Because he's going to be depend about what I think about him and his own autonomy and sense of self are thereby compromised. To me this is a fundamental issue that is very very critical. To the Sun News these days is. My experience in the initial interview it was really just this was one conclusion came very close to my sort of tape recorders in various cities everywhere. There is this man. He's kind of close to the man. So he had the entire scene as well and if you want new motions to anxiety with the way that is your only answer to all of once it's like that you know. Sounds to you just can't possibly relate that anything

that's going on in your life and you're convinced that it's a gimmick. And I spend about a month in those the lines of the effect of this war. If used was to use me to fight me I'm sure that when we go home a lot of the race speech of the right to organize to take a break and on those technical difficulties I'm getting these back and the nerves in me or there was a certain amount of expense involved in generating these tapes. If for no other than a row prisoners who audio library which it was created was something not a financial thing and it was more or less and I'm censoring him as it was a new experience coming across. Simply stated as it's possible to listen and hears on that.

First of all this Honduran using the assortments experience. You're saying things are different morals its costs become fairly loose covering their record so very quickly become sort of in the you know which interactions going on situation and gave me the feeling of being able to watch that guy and it turned out to be quite a very revealing experience here as a character in matters of conversation. There's no tribute given only the first experience and there's people who will look back and since why were so good and this movie has some interest to this story. We are sharing tapes we are counseled together and in research we go

to 60 but they say no you are. Experiences that we have in that environment. We have assured I will. This is part of what's happened to us individually that has some bearing on the other person's life and it's and I think you found the humans on the other persons the reasons they think certain ways is so great it sounds so technical. When you hear about the first time you come across to use beans and trees is proving very very easy. And there you can just come with really in terms of the center of the jihad we came in to your head prior to counseling. We sort of gave you the idea that if you were pretty well so I doubt true but

I think to put this in the right context when I first got involved the psychiatrist as a result of a problem my homegirl had when she was about two and a half or three she started to become severely constipated. This goes back to five years ago. And the usual pediatric exploration the problem ended up with the conclusion that it was probably emotionally based and perhaps a way to have some type a way. My mental health clinic of some type and in the course of doing that the treatment of the child was contingent on some type of therapy for my wife and I saw that I was writing letters separately family therapy I was not proud of that time and so as a group within the current psychiatrist we got involved in what I guess we describe as a traditional therapeutic approach to separate problems.

My wife found the format supportive for a while but inconvenient to attend and it was it didn't she didn't really get started. A little girl came along quite nicely and seemed to be able to overcome the main portion of a problem over a period of about three years and for me it was it was. An interesting experience was the first time out of them but in law itself and not like she was in a group situation so it had a certain amount of entertainment value. You know and so that I participated this in the point where I had something better to do on Wednesday night and more or less ended. But it gave me a frame of reference of being a graduate of a song type of witchcraft school of worldly rather than sanctified and therefore anything that was causing problems as was in

this marriage was basically in my wife's not responses to this treatment. So when she got me to go to Paul who was convinced I was convinced that first of all it was so purposeless on my part. And then after I got there I had some defiance and saw it with my method of operation became that he and I would work together with this girl. And. AS. You can see the arrogance in here and I think it's probably a lot of waiting there instead of is looking you know at this point but it was through this take my goodness in prayer and to get some insight into how I was coming across as a person situation. It really was kind of the Keystone conference I missed on previous experience with the. QUESTION How about a dad who doesn't visit his children even if it is

painful. Disney realize that kids may feel he doesn't love them. Well I don't know about this situation but one of the problems that a lot of thoughts have to get a divorce is to be confronted by the sadness of their children and they're very concerned lest they might become tearful breakdown on the way to handle that is to avoid the whole situation. I think this has a lot to do with the child rearing problems in our culture affectively. Boys from an early age on and girls are sort of picking that up fast are taught you know show what hurts you keep your feelings to yourself don't you want to be grown up. You don't want to be a sissy etc. etc. And so what you have this is sort of an insidious process developing where over a period of time you can

have. And I think it's more a problem for boys and men even though of the female chauvinist women's lives people are sort of adopting these values. You get sort of abstracted from yourself. You forget what a feeling is. I've seen some people. And particularly scientists High-Level theoreticians they don't know what a feeling is. They they know what. Formulas are they really know what anxiety is they're so abstracted from themselves and. These guys. If there is any category human being who is not marriage well that individual certainly is not. Because the real challenge how to get a guy like that to thought very thorny problem.

Our second marriage is generally more successful if so why. They have to be. I mean how many times can you fail. I have the highest praise for the courage of the gentleman you brought with you. Why do you care to tell us what you had hoped this experience did for him. Secondly what do you hope to achieve for your audience with this technique. I think what it did for end was to share some of the ideas that he's had experiences that he's had too in the sense of the representatives of the community. And I think that in a sense

he felt he would want to do this because I do feel he does have a second lease on his life for himself. What do you hope to achieve for your audience with this technique is to think to come through this training against thinking it is and to maybe begin to think that you're not thinking when you think you're thinking that they're sort of complicated but that's what happens. We are living through a period of something that is approximate and desperate. Domestic crisis in this country there is increasing sense of fear and suspiciousness about people. But if we can evolve a more meaningful sense of community because each of us is going to have to croak and die in time and the stakes are very high for

ourselves and the kids that we have in our lives. Then we've had it and the choice is yours and mine as to what we're going to do. What has been your experience with the freeze plate approach mentioned that does reduce prevent potential divorces or is it more apt to lead to divorce with self-realization to 6 months usually tell the story. It varies but I personally think that there is no point hanging in a marriage if there is no possibility of good will and working on something. Don't do the kids any favors because you're just going to generate a lot of problems doing them such marvelous favors as staying together for them. They don't need it. What they need is a have a sense of warmth and lack of guilt induction.

That's about it. With.