Jon and Kate Got It All Wrong: Married With Children

Like us, we are sure many of you have been following the on-going saga surrounding the so-called “reality” show, Jon & Kate Plus Eight. Well, it seems like Jon and Kate are going to go their separate ways – divorce seems eminent. Ah, but apparently, the show must go on in spite of their impending divorce. Where to begin!

The sad truth is, Jon and Kate could have learned some valuable lessons if only they had reviewed our research findings! If they had, they might still be happily married and their eight children might have gotten to live and grow up in a loving, caring, and facilitative home environment. But alas, they didn’t.

So here is where our message comes in today – there are four major caveats we have learned over the years from all those successfully married couples we have interviewed that we think applies to the case of Jon & Kate Plus Eight – the Gosselin family.

Here they are in a nutshell:
1. The relationship between mom and dad trumps everything else in a marriage.
2. Successfully married couples do not air their family laundry (dirty or otherwise) in public.
3. Exploiting your family, particularly your children, for fame and fortune is never a good thing.
4. Privacy and alone time are one of the hallmarks of a successful marriage.

In the end, Jon and Kate would certainly have benefitted by knowing the “four caveats of successful marriage,” Maybe there is hope for their family. Maybe there is hope for their eight children.

To learn more about these read Married With Children: Jon and Kate Did It All Wrong

Breaking Up By Text Message Is Wrong!

This week Carrie Underwood, the 2005 American Idol winner, split with her long-time boyfriend, Chace Crawford, by sending him a text message. Can you imagine! Are relationships of such little value that a simple text message is all that is needed to end them?

How can anyone see the hurt and pain in a person they purported to love by using a text message to end that relationship? What lessons can be learned about the failed relationship when you rely on a text message to end it? How can a person grow emotionally in his or her ability to sustain and enhance a loving relationship by using a text message to end it?

Relationships, even those that fail, are too important to be handled with the detachment of a text message or an email. Love and other human relationships are fragile and need to be handled with a gentle human touch, even when the love ends.

People who enter into a loving relationship and then value it so little as to dispose of it with a simple text message, have lost their opportunity to learn how to make love last and how to take responsibility for being in love. We can only remind them that some day the same can happen to them. Having the courage to end a relationship face-to-face is the only honest thing to do. To do less is to minimize the value of being in love and in the establishment of an intimate human relationship with another.

There is an old saying – “ What goes around, comes around.”