Good Marriage Advice Can Prevent Good Divorce Questions
Posted: Friday, February 20, 2009
by Paul Friedman
Lessons For a Happy Marriage
My daughter and I were walking on the beach today (sorry to you folks living in the Snow Belt) when we saw an elderly couple walking towards us hand in hand. I almost told my daughter that they must have read my Lessons For A Happy Marriage but it would not have been true. There are people who "get it" and live their lives in marital bliss; just not many from our part of the world. The couple coming toward us was clearly from Asia. In other cultures where marriage is not romanticized or psychoanalyzed there is a reliance on tradition that obviously works. In our society the rules for a good marriage are hardly anywhere to be found. Our culture is pretty mixed up. On one hand everyone knows the value of family, yet we seem to focus our efforts on individualism, creating quite a dilemma.
Who is a candidate for a happy marriage? Isn't that a stupid question? It's like asking who is a candidate for becoming part of a family. The only answer that makes sense is: everyone! Then why do we have a divorce rate of around 60% and a happy marriage rate of (I'm guessing here) 5 to 10%? It's because good marriage advice is hard to come by and good divorce questions are easily answered. It should be the other way around!
When I began my mediation practice I wanted to be among those who made divorce a simple process. But I discovered what I thought was amazing: nobody really wanted a divorce, they just didn't know what else to do. My clients were suffering terribly and saw no way out. I made up my mind to get to the bottom of this paradox and stepped back to see if I could help. I looked everywhere for the answers and rejected the false cures proposed by western psychologists who practiced marriage counseling. They didn't know any more than anyone else or they would not have the same rate of divorce as everyone else.
When I thought I knew what would work I switched my practice altogether to saving marriages by teaching what I discovered. And guess what? It worked so fast and so completely that I had to warn couples the "new way" was real and not to doubt it, but enjoy it. I told them it was like having a car with a stick shift, but never learning how to drive it. Then somebody shows them how to work the clutch and shifter, and driving goes from total stress to as fun as can be.
A Happy Marriage Doesn't Take a PhD
All you need is the information I have discovered; it isn't hard to understand and it is less hard to implement; it's all very intuitive (and not like some computer program that is described as intuitive!). My clients ranged from very simple folk referred by the county to Hollywood big names who heard about my results. I am happy to say even the stars were able to save their marriages with my lessons.
Don't put off your happiness. My desire is to help out. I'm pretty sure you will not find fault with my Lessons For A Happy Marriage; you will find great relief. Go ahead, challenge me :)!
This Article has been viewed 166 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.