Gene Seibel wrote:
Not sure about you, but I, like many other pilots am not really a
"group" person. Many groups end up rehashing over and over the details
of their individual experiences. Essentially wallowing in their
collective misery. The fact is that two people in a relationship are
individuals who each have a free will to make decisions. As long as
both have the relationship as a priority, it will survive. If one no
longer values the relationship, it can not continue, no matter how
badly the other wants it to.


I'll tell you what I know about marriage, straight out of Sociology 101: men
and women approach marriage and relationships differently. A man will assume
that everything is hunky dory unless he's actively being bitched at. He only
thinks about the relationship when there are obvious problems. A woman, on the
other hand, reexamines the relationship *every* day, whether things are good or
not. Every day. So what happens? The woman is unhappy but keeps it to herself
until she's sure she wants out. Then she says she wants a divorce and the guy
is left scratching his head wondering what the hell happened.

Been there, done that. My own marriage went that way. I was clueless when it
happened. When I sat in class and listened to the instructor describing this
scenario, I thought he was talking about me. And he was... and every other poor
schmuck who gets dumped. The pain is worse because it comes from nowhere like a
bolt from the blue, at least for men.

As an aside, I ended up later taking Marriage and the Family as an easy
elective. Only those students who had been married got As. More to the point,
all of us who got As also were divorced.

One other thing worth noting about relationships: if you reduce it to a power
struggle, the partner who cares the least wields the most power. Think about
it.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE