In a recent column, I talked about professor Jack Gesino’s views on how to learn to be happy. Since then, several other articles and books on the subject have come across my desk; perhaps it is as a result of wars, natural disasters and the economy, but it seems that research on, and advice about, being happy, is the new hot topic.
A federally financed study is following about 200 couples who will take part in a yearly marriage “checkup” ... similar to your preventative dental exam, it will attempt to discover any weak spots in the relationship.
The hope is that couples can make changes in the way they communicate so that problems can be solved before they sabotage the marriage. Since this is a computer-savvy generation, it should come as no surprise to learn that there are also several online programs that offer help to couples.
One online study is based on “acceptance therapy,” which focuses on better understanding of a partner’s flaws ... a skill which I long ago acquired and at which, any of the long-married couples pictured in the pages of this paper, must surely excel.
Perhaps this should be a skill learned in pre-marriage counseling; if we were aware of all of our partner’s flaws in advance, many ill-advised marriages might never take place. As a matter of fact, perhaps it would be the final blow to marriage as an institution.
According to author and lecturer, Maggie Scarf, marriage as an institution, has changed dramatically. I had the pleasure of personally chatting with Maggie, a research specialist on senior marriages, following her talk at the Institute for Learning in Retirement’s annual luncheon.
Scarf says, “since the social ferment of the 1960s, a number of alternatives to old-fashioned marriages have emerged: sexual partners living together; out-of-wedlock births; and single-parent child-rearing. All are now more commonplace and acceptable.
“Couples enter wedlock with a more light-hearted attitude (if it doesn’t work out, I can move on) and there is now little social stigma in the wake of a divorce. Paradoxically, it seems that the only people putting up a desperate fight for the right to get married are members of the gay community.”
What Scarf did find when she revisited the couples she had interviewed 20 years previously for her “Intimate Partners” book, was that for most of these senior couples, this was the happiest period of their lives. Career and child-rearing issues were over, their emotional processing and control was improved and since they were now more fully aware of the value of time, older adults arranged their days in ways that made them happier. She has reported on these senior couples in her book, “September Songs.”
I questioned what effect the current economy and loss of work opportunities for some older couples had on the marriages and she did admit that the majority of her happy couples were professionals from the New England area and were financially well off.
One interesting physical change as we age may also be responsible for why we feel happier. According to the Lifespan Laboratory in Stanford, Calif., the stress area of aging brains loses cells while there are positive changes in the frontal area of older brains that increase our sense of well being.
If you’ve gotten this far and still wonder how your marriage is doing, Brigham Young University offers an extensive online martial assessment called Relate. It reveals a couple’s communication and conflict styles and costs less than $50. For information, go to www.relate-institute.org.
As for me, assuming the unlikely luck of finding another compatible companion, after 56 years of ups and downs, I’m sticking with what I’ve got. The thought of re-adjusting to anyone else is simply too exhausting.
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