Marital Situation - Dual Responsibility!

It's well known that 50% of FIRST marriages end in divorce.

Do you know what percent of SECOND marriages end in divorce?

It should be LESS than 50%, right? After all, who would make those same painful mistakes again?
People marrying a second time have the "benefit" of knowing what kind of person to pick this time, right?

The divorce rate for SECOND marriages is 70%! And THIRD marriages; closer to 80%!

"You mean my chances get worse not better?"

That's right. Because the key to succeeding in marriage is NOT finding the right person; it's YOU becoming the right person.

Did you know that women who finally get out of abusive relationships usually
fall in love with another abusive man? What bad luck, right? It's not luck.

Did you know that men whose first wives cheated on them usually get cheated on by their second wife too?

How could that be? You'd think that after suffering the torment of infidelity a man would only marry a woman with impeccable morals and unwavering commitment.

You'd think...but it doesn't work that way.

Listen to this story. It'll pull all the pieces together for you.

A man once came to a town and asked the local sage, "I'm thinking about moving here. What kinds of people live here?"

The sage asked the man, "What kinds of people live in the town you came from?"

"Where I'm from the people are liars, cheaters, and mean spirited," the man responded.

"The people are the same here," said the sage.

Then another man came to town and asked the sage the same question, "I'm thinking about moving here. What kinds of people live here?"

The sage asked the man, "What kinds of people live in the town you came from?"

"Where I'm from the people are wonderful, kind, and courteous," the man responded.

"The people are the same here," said the sage.

People are not as you see them; people are as YOU are.

What do you get when you smile at someone? You get a smile back. And if you stare at someone? You get a stare back. What you get is what you are.

We're NOT an objective observer of the people in our life; we're a subjective
influence. In other words, our presence changes
what we observe.

Let me give you a simple example. Let's say you wanted to measure the temperature in a small room. So you bring a thermometer into the room and wait for a reading. But since your body temperature is 98.6 degrees, the fact that you're in the room changes the reading you get. As long as you're there, things are different.

It works the same in your marriage. Your relationship is not simply a function of who you pick; it's also a function of who you are.

Who you are and who your spouse is mixes to form the dynamics of your relationship. I know you want your spouse to change. And YES your marriage
would be better if they did. But YOU changing can change things just as well.

I'm NOT saying that everything is your fault. If your spouse receives my mails, then they're reading the same message directed to THEM. It's no ones fault; but it's everyone's RESPONSIBILITY. In other words, BOTH you and your spouse contribute to the dynamics in your relationship, whatever they are, and BOTH you and your spouse can single-handedly change them.

No matter what your spouse did to cause your marriage to deteriorate, they're responsible. And they should change. But you played a role too. I know that's hard to hear. It's a bitter pill to swallow. But once you swallow it, you're no longer a helpless victim; you become empowered to change circumstances that seemed out of your
control.

It's easy to confess your spouse's sins. And you're probably correct about what your spouse needs to change. But it does no good to be right. And it's a complete waste of time and energy to focus on your spouse's problems. There's nothing you can do about it. Your spouse will change only when they're ready to change. The only relevant question for you is: What's YOUR fixing? You had a role in the deterioration of your marriage. I've never seen a marital situation caused by one spouse. There's always dual responsibility.

What can YOU do to improve the situation?

Reflect on your past relationships. Do you see a pattern? Look at your parent's marriage. Are you recreating the model you saw when you were a child? Have you explored with a professional the childhood roots of your relationship habits and
how they contributed to your marital circumstances?

Even if your spouse had an affair, you're partly responsible. That doesn't mean that it's your fault and it doesn't excuse your spouse's inappropriate behavior, but the question still remains: What was your spouse seeking outside your marriage that was not available within it?

Don't just sit there sulking in the misery of your situation while you wait for your spouse to change or for God to perform a miracle. If you want your situation to change, then change it! Do YOUR part. Because if YOU change, then everything around you changes too.

You might be thinking, “I have changed. But my situation has not." Change itself
is not good enough. You've got to make the right changes. Like a scientist, you have to know EXACTLY what changes to make to get the outcome you're looking for.

How could everything change so dramatically?

"The difficultly with marriage is that we fall in
love with a personality, but we must live with a
character."
- Peter Devries

We can only appreciate the profundity of this
statement if we understand what is meant by
CHARACTER.

"Personality" is easy to understand. Your
"personality" is how people experience you. It's
your public persona.

But what is "character?" And why is "character"
so crucial in your marriage?

Character is who you are when no one is watching.

Let me say that again so you can read it slowly
and really digest it this time.

Character is who you are when no one is watching.

You see, when you and your spouse met, you met
each other's PERSONALITIES. You showed your
spouse and you were shown by your spouse your
public personas. I'm not saying you tricked each
other. It's just your personality; how you
display yourself to others.

But marriage lasts too long in too close quarters
for anyone to sustain a public persona.
Personalities eventually give way to an INNER
SELF that gets revealed for the first time. And
there you each stand, naked as if no one is
watching. But someone is watching. And that's
when you meet for the first time...again!

You and your spouse don't meet the person who
charmed each other's friends, bought gifts for
each other's parents, and always smiled from ear
to ear. No, this time it's a meeting of your
CHARACTERS.

In many cases, it's not only that you're meeting
each other for the first time, but it's that
you're meeting YOURSELVES for the first time.

Most people wouldn't be caught dead treating
anyone the way they treat their spouse. Most
people don't recognize their own behavior. "I'm
just not myself with him/her." Well then who is
that person? Next, that's YOU...it's
your character. (And your spouse meets their
character.)

The reason so many people fail at marriage and an
attempt at marriage renewal is NOT that they
don't like their spouse. It's that they don't
like THEMSELVES. And while everyone else in their
life is like a mirror reflecting their
personality; their spouse is a mirror reflecting
their character. And most people don't like what
they see.

Many people would rather choose to be with
someone else than remain with their spouse and
have to continue to be with themselves. (Did you
get that?)

Balthasar Gracian wrote in his 17th century
manual on success, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, as
follows: "You are as much a real person as you
are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the
interior is twice as important as the surface.
There are people who are all facade, like a house
left unfinished when the funds run out. They have
the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a
cottage."

Explicit sex education images criticised by Christian group

Children as young as five are being shown "explicit" images to teach them about sex, an evangelical Christian pressure group has claimed.

The Christian Institute has complained that at least 10 books or teaching packs used in English primary schools for lessons on sex and relationships, contain images or descriptions that are "obviously unsuitable".

Its report, Too Much, Too Young, criticises, among others, a BBC teaching pack for its images of a nude man and woman and the children's book Mummy Laid an Egg, by Babette Cole, for its child-like drawings of a man and woman having sex on a skateboard and wearing red noses. The book won British Illustrated Children's Book of the Year.

A number of councils have recommended the books and lesson plans to schools in their area. The institute said many parents would be "deeply upset" to find these images were being shown to their children.

Other teaching packs criticised in the report contain short explanations of bisexuality, anal intercourse and oral sex.

The report suggests parents stand as governors at their local primary school so they have influence over which images pupils are shown. It recommends they ask teachers to show them the materials being used and, if they refuse, advises them to demand it through freedom of information legislation.

"The current approach to sex education, which demands ever more explicit sex education at ever younger ages, has wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money and comprehensively failed to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion rates," said Mike Judge, head of communications at the institute.

The Department for Education is conducting an internal review of personal, social, health and economic education, which covers sex and relationships. This will be published later this year.

Currently, all primary schools are required to give lessons on human biology as part of the science curriculum. While lessons about sex are not compulsory, many schools choose to include them in the curriculum. Governors decide what is taught beyond the compulsory curriculum and parents are allowed to withdraw their children from any sex education lesson that is outside the science curriculum.

The Sex Education Forum, which campaigns for all pupils to have high quality lessons about sex and relationships, said primary schools tended to teach children basic facts about the difference between boys and girls' bodies, and which parts of the body were private and should not be touched by others. "This is not about teaching primary school children to have sex. One of the purposes of sex and relationship education is to try to protect children from abuse," said Lucy Emmerson, principal officer at the Sex Education Forum.

Teaching about sex and relationships was "patchy" in many schools and often "too little, too late", she added. "It is not acceptable for a child to finish primary school and not know what periods are or what they should do if they are abused."

She said the images contained in books and teaching packs had to be seen in the context of a lesson rather than on their own. "We strongly advise parents to become involved in a school's decision on which teaching resources to use when teaching about sex," she said.

How Can I Save My Marriage?

Saving a marriage begins with your attitude. After you DECIDE to work on it, you have to keep your attitude in the right space. After your decision has been made, give yourself time to learn how to be a couple again. You may have a few uncomfortable moments, but the journey can also be enjoyable. Below are a few thoughts and ideas:

1. If you don’t want to take on something that interests your spouse, and jump in with both feet, you can still ‘share’ your thoughts and let them know you noticed what is important to them.
2. For example, clip an article out of the paper on your husband’s favorite football team, or record a TV appearance by your wife’s favorite actor.  Better yet, read a newspaper article about something that interests your spouse and talk to them about it over dinner.  Ask them questions about what you read and what they know about the topic and watch their face light up.
3. Listen to your spouse talk about their favorite subject or hobby and, instead of shutting them down, try to hear ‘clues’ in what they say about what makes them interested in the subject.
4. Talk to them about what YOU find interesting in the subject.  For example, if your husband belongs to a book club and he always talks about the books he is reading, ask him about his favorite authors or what kinds of books he likes best – mystery, suspense, sci-fi.
5. If you can’t share the interest, at least show your spouse that you respect and honor it.  Register your gourmet cook spouse in a local session with a famous chef or find a website or a recipe you think will interest them.
6. A particularly effective and favorite way to develop a common interest is to look at what interests the both of you now.  Then try to find a common area or a ‘type’ of activity you both like.
7. An example might be if both of you like sports, but you don’t have a sport in common.
8. Perhaps you bowl and you work out at the gym, and your wife runs.  So, you are both in good physical condition and you both like to be active.  Maybe you’d like to take a sailing course together.
9. Eventually, you might even buy a boat if you both like the activity.   But, for right now, start small.
10. 10. If you both like music and there is one kind that you both like, buy tickets to a concert and go see the artist. Don’t wait, don’t talk about it. Just do  it.
11. 11. Or, plan a day in the city to go to a museum that has exhibits you may both like.  Your spouse will gladly walk through the exhibit he does not like, to get to the one he DOES like and you’ll get to time to talk to each other as you wander around.

If his/her interests don’t align with yours, try doing something NEW together that neither of you has tried or experienced before. If you are bored, that means YOU are boring! Take the next boring or peaceful moment and get out of the house. Go somewhere or try a new activity that you wouldn’t ordinarily even think about.

Along the way, you will rediscover the things you love about each other and the things you already have in common.  And together you might just develop some new interests!  Remember, action creates results (negative or positive) and inaction breeds nothing except the reminder of your discontent. If you want to change your situation, change your actions!

Saint Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.

The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.

Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. The good Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome in the days of Claudius II. He and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this kind deed Saint Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. He suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, about the year 270. At that time it was the custom in Rome, a very ancient custom, indeed, to celebrate in the month of February the Lupercalia, feasts in honour of a heathen god. On these occasions, amidst a variety of pagan ceremonies, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed.

The pastors of the early Christian Church in Rome endeavoured to do away with the pagan element in these feasts by substituting the names of saints for those of maidens. And as the Lupercalia began about the middle of February, the pastors appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's Day for the celebration of this new feaSt. So it seems that the custom of young men choosing maidens for valentines, or saints as patrons for the coming year, arose in this way.

Relationships don't need promises, terms,or conditions.It just needs two wonderful people; one who can trust and one who can understand.

Love is What Holds A Relationship Together...

A relationship is a contract usually between two people connecting them emotionally and physically. Most relationships are started with the intentions of a couple spending the rest of their lives together but not all relationships work out. There are a variety of causes to the ending of a relationship including but not limited to: a cheating partner, a controlling partner, an abusive partner, a lack of communication from both partners, and partners becoming "burnt out" or tired of one another. 

In all of these causes to the ending of a relationship the key seems to be a deprivation of the binding glue of a relationship, love. Love is what holds a relationship together and when one or both individuals participating in said relationship lose the amount of love they once had for one another, or the love they once had for themselves, the partner/s resort to relationship ending tactics such as cheating, and abuse.


Most relationships tend to fail. Not because of absence of love. Love is always present. It's just that one was being loved too much and the other wasn't being love enough.

Little Black Samba - Grover Washington Jr (1981)

Treasure what you have...

There was this guy who believed very much in true love and decided to take his time to wait for his right girl to appear. He believed that there would definitely be someone special out there for him, but none came.

Every year at Christmas, his ex-girlfriend would return from Vancouver to look him up. He was aware that she still held some hope of re-kindling the past romance with him. He did not wish to mislead her in any way. So he would always get one of his girl friends to pose as his steady whenever she came back. That went on for several years and each year, the guy would get a different girl to pose as his romantic interest. So whenever the ex-girlfriend came to visit him, she would be led into believing that it was all over between her and the guy. The girl took all those rather well, often trying to casually tease him about his different girlfriends, or so, as it seemed! In fact, the girl often wept in secret whenever she saw him with another girl, but she was too proud to admit it. Still, every Christmas, she returned, hoping to re-kindle some form of romance. But each time, she returned to Vancouver feeling disappointed.

Finally she decided that she could not play that game any longer. Therefore, she confronted him and professed that after all those years, he was still the only man that she had ever loved. Although the guy knew of her feelings for him, he was still taken back and have never expected her to react that way. He always thought that she would slowly forget about him over time and come to terms that it was all over between them. Although he was touched by her undying love for him and wanted so much to accept her again, he remembered why he rejected her in the first place-she was not the one he wanted. So he hardened his heart and turned her down cruelly. Since then, three years have passed and the girl never return anymore. They never even wrote to each other. The guy went on with his life..... still searching for the one but somehow deep inside him, he missed the girl.

On the Christmas of 1998, he went to his friend's party alone. "Hey, how come all alone this year? Where are all your girlfriends? What happened to that Vancouver babe who joins you every Christmas?", asked one of his friend. He felt warm and comforted by his friend's queries about her, still he just surged on.
 

Then, he came upon one of his many girlfriends whom he once requested to pose as his steady. He wanted so much to ignore her ..... not that he was impolite, but because at that moment, he just didn't feel comfortable with those girlfriends anymore. It was almost like he was being judged by them. The girl saw him and shouted across the floor for him. Unable to avoid her, he went up to acknowledge her.

"Hi......how are you? Enjoying the party?" the girl asked.

"Sure.....yeah!", he replied.
She was slightly tipsy..... must be from the whiskey on her hand. She continued,
"Why...? Don't you need someone to pose as your girlfriend this year?" Then he answered, "No, there is no need for that anymore......"
 

Before he can continue, he was interrupted, "Oh yes! Must have found a girlfriend! You haven't been searching for one for the past years, right?" The man looked up, as if he has struck gold, his face beamed and looked directly at the drunken girl. He replied, "Yes......you are right! I haven't been looking for anyone for the past years."
 

With that, the man darted across the floor and out the door, leaving the lady in much bewilderment. He finally realized that he has already found his dream girl, and she was.....the Vancouver girl all along! The drunken lady has said something that awoken him.

All along he has found his girl. That was why he did not bother to look further when he realized she was not coming back. It was not any specific girl he was seeking! It was perfection that he wanted, and yes.....perfection!!
 

Relationship is something both parties should work on. Realizing that he had let away someone so important in his life, he decided to call her immediately. His whole mind was flooded with fear. He was afraid that she might have found someone new or no longer had the same feelings anymore..... For once, he felt the fear of losing someone.

As it was Christmas eve, the line was quite hard to get through, especially an overseas call. He tried again and again, never giving up. Finally, he got through......precisely at 1200 midnight. He confessed his love for her and the girl was moved to tears. It seemed that she never got over him! Even after so long, she was still waiting for him, never giving up.

He was so excited to meet her and to begin his new chapter of their lives. He decided to fly to Vancouver to join her. It was the happiest time of their lives! But their happy time was short-lived. Two days before he was supposed to fly to Vancouver, he received a call from her father. She had a head-on car collision with a drunken driver. She passed away after 6 hours in a coma.
The guy was devastated, as it was a complete loss. Why did fate played such cruel games with him? He cursed the heaven for taking her away from him, denying even one last look at her! How cruel he cursed! How he damned the Gods...!! How he hated himself....for taking so long to realize his mistake!! That was in 1999.

The moral of this story is :
Treasure what you have...
Time is too slow for those who wait;
Too swift for those who fear;
Too long for those who grief;
Too short for those who rejoice;
But for those who love...
Time is Eternity.

For all you out there with someone special in your heart, cherish that person, cherish every moment that you spend together that special someone, for in life, anything can happen anytime. You may painfully regret, only to realise that it is too late.