Blended Families and a Presidential Campaign

Rudy Giuliani is not at all atypical, at least in terms of his rather complicated family life. The New York Times has this rather interesting article on the subject of blended families in tomorrow’s paper. Mayor Giliuani’s travails are not at all uncommon.

How a Couple Fights Is a Strong Predictor of Divorce

Thanks to Jeffrey Lalloway and his California Divorce and Family Law Blog for posting regarding the following information: While all couples may have conflict in their relationship, a Baylor University researcher has found it is not if a couple fights and argues, but how they communicate during their conflict that can determine whether a couple will stay together for the long haul.

Dr. Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, studied hundreds of couples as they communicated through a fight. Sanford and his research team focused on what determines whether a person will use positive or negative communication during an argument. He found that emotion and the types of thoughts a person uses are especially important.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that negative emotion can actually be a good thing. Sanford distinguished between two types of negative emotion, ‘hard’ and ‘soft.’ ‘Hard’ emotion is associated with asserting power, whereas ‘soft’ emotion is associated with expressing vulnerability. Sanford and his team consistently found that hard emotion escalated fights, but they also found that soft negative emotion is generally beneficial for relationships. Soft emotion appeared to increase a couple’s motivation to address a conflict and often led to productive approaches toward resolving the conflict.

‘There is a notion that all negative emotion is bad and we found that simply isn’t the case,’ Sanford said ‘As humans, we are very sensitive to ‘is this person going to fight against me or cooperate with me.’ If you say more things that signal that you willing to cooperate, that can make all the difference.’

Sanford also found that men and women approach arguments differently. His research focused on predictions that men and women make regarding what they think their partners are likely to do. He found that couples often appear to be driven by their expectations during a fight. For example, if a wife thinks that her husband will refuse to listen to her viewpoint, she is likely to use negative communication, and she is likely to do this regardless of what her husband actually does. Sanford said he was intrigued to find that wives’ expectations are a stronger predictor of communication than are husbands’ expectations. Specifically, wives expectations are based on what is currently taking place in the interaction with their husband. Husbands’ expectations are based on their global feelings toward the relationship as a whole.

‘It’s a tendency that women are more event-dependent and men are more schematic,’ Sanford said. ‘The simple take home message is be aware of your thoughts and how you are interpreting things because it could have a negative bias and that could lead to further escalation.’

Source: ‘How a Couple Fights is a Strong Predictor of Divorce’ by Matt Pene of Baylor University News.

Source for Post: Oklahoma Family Law Blog.

Source: Kansas Family & Divorce Lawyer

New Year’s resolutions

I am not ordinarily a New Year’s resolution maker. I do think, however, that the start of a new year provides us with an opportunity to assess where we are, how we’re doing and how we might do better. Dawn Miller at The Step Family Life offers some thoughts on New Year’s resolutions for stepfamilies.

Telling your children about your divorce

One of the hardest, and often most heartbreaking, things about ending a marriage comes when its time to tell your children that you and your spouse have decided to divorce. The words do not come easy, and the answers to their questions are harder still. This article from Divorce Magazine contains some helpful suggestions for managing this discussion, and its aftermath, with your kids.

Questions to consider before marriage

Today’s New Yoork Times contains an article relaying the collective wisdom of an unidentified group of “relationship experts” concerning various questions that couples considering marriage ought to discuss before making the commitment. Without any comment (for now) the experts list follows:

Common law marriage in Pennsylvania

Efefctive January 1, 2005, Pennsylvania abolished common law marriage by statute on a propspective basis. This means that the statute only applies going forward, and does not preclude a couple from establishing the existence of a common law marriage if they can prove that the marriage was entered into before January 1, 2005. This article from Divorcenet.com sets forth a fairly good discussion of what you must show to prove the existence of a common law marriage as a legal matter. In practice this is a fairly stringent standard and can be difficult to prove. As a result, I strongly encourage those who wish to benefit from the legal incidents of marriage to get a marriage license and have a legally valid ceremony performed.

Source: Divorcenet.com

How we react to our partner’s successes is the best indicator of the strength of the relationship

The New York Times this past Wednesday ran this interesting article that discussed the results of a study conducted by a UCLA psychologist, one of her former colleagues and a UCLA graduate student. The study posits that possibly the most imprtant factor for the strength of a relationship is how one deals with his or her partner’s successes and triumphs. It is an interesting viewpoint, and very much in accord with my experience in my practice.