Mamma Maya

Archive for the ‘School of Relationships’ Category

My daughter was recently in her school’s performance of Fiddler On The Roof. She was one of the daughters. If you don’t know the story, it focuses on the changing culture of marriage, from one where the marriage is arrainged by family and community to one based on mutual attraction.

In one of the songs, the main character asks his wife if she loves him. She replies that for 25 years, she has shared his bed, made his meals, tended his house, raised his children — so what kind of question is that? The point is that in their relationship, love wasn’t even a question or consideration. But after some back-and-forth, they decide that, indeed, they love each other.

This led me to think about what I know about marriage. And here is what I think about the question of love and marriage: we fall in love to get together, then spend the rest of our lives learning to love the other.

You see, the initial attraction is really about “I.” “I” feel a certain way, so I know I am “in love.” But that part of the relationship is driven by my need to feel that way, my need to be with the other person, my need to have my needs met. My needs are fueled by my desire to feel the intense emotion of “being in love.”

But in reality, love is a verb, something I do for the other. So, it takes the rest of my life to learn how to attend to my spouse’s needs. From my desire to be with my spouse comes my desire to meet my spouse’s love needs.

We are “fooled” into commitment by the overwhelming feeling of attraction, and then we have to put forth effort to create a sustained relationship. I say “fooled” because our culture has us believing that this love is the foundation of a relationship. It is not. It is merely a temporary starting point. It is not the destination. It is just a part of the journey to a lifetime relationship.

Those intense feelings will calm over time. The overwhelming need to be with someone that marks the infatuation portion of a relationship is not sustainable on its own. It’s like placing a flame in a bottle. Eventually, the flame will burn all the oxygen in the bottle and be extinguished.

So, there has to be some “fueling of the fire.” This is “love,” the verb. When I act in loving ways, I fuel the fire and keep it burning. If I stop tending to the other’s needs because I don’t feel that infatuation, the relationship will slowly (or not so slowly) die away.

When we continue to believe that “love” (infatuation) is the heart of a relationship, when that feeling is gone, we believe we are no longer in love. That is not the case; we have just failed to fuel the fire.

Reality TV has proven that any two people, given the right circumstances and settings, can fall into love (chemistry of infatuation). But story after story shows that it is harder to make the switch to “true love” that comes from action. Choose action, and don’t be fooled by chemistry.

By acting on love, by making love a verb and not an emotion, we keep the emotional fire stoked. And that is the great irony: if we depend on the feeling of being in love to keep us together, it will fail. But if we set that aside and focus on being loving, the feeling of being in love is sustained. Mature love is a verb, not an emotion.

Discover the secrets of creating a great marriage, even from a crumbling marriage, by visiting http://www.savethemarriage.com. The author’s excellent blog can be found at http://www.savethemarriage.com/blog/blog.html.

There is a joke out there that scientists are beginning to use lawyers in place of lab rats for their experiments. Apparently, the scientists were becoming too attached to the rats and there are some things that even rats will not do.

Is this cynical? Perhaps. But there is also an element of truth when it comes to lawyers and divorce. During a divorce, your emotions are on high alert and you may not be thinking clearly. This lack of focus for the lawyer’s clients is like blood in the water for sharks.

If you can put your emotions aside for just one moment, you and your spouse will realize that mediation is a much better option then going through lawyers and the courts.

IMPORTANT POINT – You do not need the courts to decide the division of marital assets, child support and spousal support during a divorce. You only need the courts to make the entire process official and final. If both parties in the marriage can present a self-negotiated settlement to the courts, the courts are perfectly agreeable to this option. This is why it is so important to do most of the groundwork prior to showing up in court.

If you attempt to negotiate a settlement through your respective lawyers, you will end up spending much more money then you really need to.

Imagine this scenario – lawyer A sends lawyer B a letter outlining their clients position on any particular issue. Lawyer B receives the documents from lawyer A and then issues their own document back to lawyer A acknowledging receipt of documents from lawyer A. Lawyer A then sends a quick note back to lawyer B acknowledging receipt of the receipt of the documents. If you listen carefully, you can here the lawyers laughing silently as they calculate exactly how many payments they can make on their high-end luxury car on your back.

As ridiculous as this sounds, I’m embarrassed to admit this has actually happened to me. It is maddening to know thousands of dollars were spent unnecessarily because two parties could not come to their own solution. If you let your emotions run wild, the lawyers will capitalize on this weakness and start charging you hundreds of dollars for an administrative tug of war.

I realize it is not fair to stereotype an entire profession or group of individuals but if lawyers really had their clients best interests at heart they would send their clients a letter that says – negotiate a settlement yourselves or we will charge you a bucket load of money for your stupidity.

There are other options available if you and your partner are unable to negotiate an agreement yourselves. Mediation is a viable option that can get the job done and save both parties a great deal of money. In the end, long after the divorce has been finalized and the emotions have subsided, both parties will be grateful they used mediation.

Like all things in life, choose a mediator wisely. Not all mediators are competent and effective. If you can find a mediator that both parties agree on, you are well on your way to dissolving your marriage.