A shared email from Christine generated more response than we might have ever anticipated. Clearly this is an important subject. Here is her original piece.
This
subject of relationship/family success and the question of 'couple centered'
or 'child centered' has obviously touched upon something very important
in many people's lives. The response has been huge and has included
an incredibly rich array of thoughts, observations and experiences!
At times it seemed to me that perhaps there was a particular slant in an
individual response depending upon age; being single, married, or divorced;
which carried emotions ranging from some bitterness to joyful celebration
... or perhaps long term 'work' being rewarded.
Welcome
to the human condition with all of its challenges and opportunities.
Here are some of the responses. While there are a few 'different'
responses, I am always impressed with the wisdom which can be found or
generated when people are courageous enough to share themselves openly!
You can click on either a Name in the list below ...
or click on some of the Subject matter brought up in various people's responses.
Click on the alphabetically
listed name to see the person's thoughts.
Unfortunately, I believe my husband felt unloved often because of this, and ultimately left the marriage. He said he felt he came "third" in the family, after my child and me. Of course, from my viewpoint, I barely took care of any of my own needs, only what was essential to keep me sane, and I barely managed that, gaining weight and suffering from depression for years.
It was truly unfortunate that neither of us knew how to create and then be on the same team in our child-raising. And I guess my daughter's father and I did not really have a partnership, and therefore it did not survive the stresses of parenthood.
Thanks for asking. It's an excellent question to ponder.
Beatrice
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Casandra
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aloha
darinka
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David1
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I believe that the fundamental distinction of making sure that the actual relationship between the couple is healthy and well-grounded is of paramount importance to the overall well-being of the child. The issue of the child's needs and wants, and what is in the child's best interest do need to be given at least equal consideration to that of the couples. Most importantly, I feel very strongly that the relationship with SELF is the single most important thing that must be given absolute priority over all else, and at the same time holding our close, intimate relationships in the highest regard for our attention, love and stewardship.
It has been my personal experience as a participant in intimate relationships, as a witness/observer of many others and as a coach/guide doing work around relationship issues that if we do not know what is best for ourselves, then our ability to be whole and to give the best to those who we love and care for is compromised. This is the way it is with most systems in society. The health of the one is as important to that of the whole, as the health of the whole is important to that of the one. We only need look around us to see the blatant evidence of this reality across a broad range of areas in modern society.
Your Dedicated and Loving Servant Leader,
David Johnstone
President, Cornerstone Strategies
Personal Leadership and
Mastery Guide and Facilitator
"I Stand For The Best In
You."
Developer Ph.D.of Life Personal
Mastery Program
P:(403)543-5588
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Dick
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Universal solutions hardly ever work universally. I've seen some child-centered couples that did quite well over time, and i've also run across people who didn't seem to do good in ANY couple, child-centered or otherwise. I expect Christine's proposed relationship strategy might work well for her, given her belief system and current mindset. She should give it a go and then evaluate to see if she learned yet another most important lesson ...
Which brings me around to one of my all-time favorite quotes: "Anyone who generalizes is a fool."
Cheers, ;-)
Geoph
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Best, Jackie
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How did I get on your email list? Who is the Mariposa Group? Please answer !!!
Janice
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Cheers, Jean
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Your quote from Christine indicates she is not in relationship, she is in entanglement. The real losers will be, are, the children. Having a kid is one point along the string of futile attempts to fix a non functioning relationship. Others are have sex, get married, buy a house together, get tattooed with each others names, etc. following this, are threats to leave, violence, suicide threats, and suicide.
John1
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John2
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K
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My first thought when reading Christine's message was that a couple needs to put "God" first, be God-centered, make God the most important thing in their lives, then Couple-Centered. I remember the saying, "The couple who prays together stays together." I think that if a couple is truly living their life in harmony with the Universe, listening to their inner-voice, seeking spiritual guidance and so forth, that "All good things will come to those who love the Lord." Keeping in mind that I am not of a specific faith (just reared in Christian upbringing, God forbid, ha,ha), when I refer to God I am referring to whatever form that takes for the particular individual. I also think that we sometimes are "called" to be married, other times to be "divorced," other times to "parent," other times to "work", etc., etc. It's only when we allow our judgments, our right-wrong thinking, of what we are "called to do" that we find ourselves in pain.
Kay
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Since my wife and I are childless by choice I may be disqualified from
this conversation, however, that does not mean I don't have an opinion
on the subject!
The short answer for me is: depends. I have found in my life that nearly all of the decisions I make are contextual, and in my marriage the context has shifted from originally being self-centered to being couple-centered, evolving now to relationship-centered. Is this a standard developmental path? Who knows?! And because our relationship (we're within a month of completing 13 years together) continues to change and evolve over time, the way in which we approach major decisions affecting our relationship today is probably not the same as it was five or ten years ago. It is sort of like deferring to an elder in a way. Our relationship has its own wisdom and if we consciously check in with it, we usually make good decisions.
I know for example that I can pretty much "do anything I want" AND there is a price to pay if I choose to work a lot of hours and schedule activities in to my evenings so that my wife and I don't have as much time together as usual. The price is not that she gets angry or resentful, but rather that the quality of our relationship is diminished in a way. When we have less time together the resonance in the relationship suffers. I think this gives the lie to the old "quality time" myth. There is a lot to be said for just hanging out with no agenda, not necessarily even speaking,or being in the same room with each other, but just spending time together at home is nourishing us on more levels than we know. There are ryhthms and frequencies in being with someone that scientists have yet to discern, but poets seem to know rather intimately.
So when making decisions about what I want or what we want, we tend to consider how it will affect our relationship. Will it turn us toward or away from each other? Everything comes with an opportunity cost attached, so we check in to see if we are willing to bear that cost. Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes no, again it depends on a host of factors, nearly all of them contextual.
I suspect that your friend Christine, may be suffering a little from hindsight oversimplification with a touch of monocausalism. I am always suspicous when someone says "The most important" anything, because the most important anything always changes over time. At 45 the most important lessons in my life are very different from what they were 20 years ago (thank god!) and I suspect that if I am lucky enough to see 65, that the most important lessons of that age will be very different from what is happening today. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about this type of thing. There are guiding principles that have their exceptions and each instance requires careful attention and sometimes more conversation than most of us are willing to engage in if we are to make the best choices.
Anyway there's my two cents worth off the top of my sleeply head.
Peace, Ken
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Laird
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Lorraine
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Marcia
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Margaret2
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Max & Barry
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Miki
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However, I can not agree with Christine's final statement that you should
make the partner the most important person in your life. For me,
the most important person in my life must be me, not my partner.
After all, I live with me 24/7. I came into this world alone, and
so too will I leave it. This is not to say that I only make decisions
based on my needs alone. I want relationship. I even "need"
it to better know and understand myself. And my partner will be the
most important "other" in my life.
I say this because, part of the reason for the dissolution of my 20 year
marriage, was because I put my partners needs ahead of my own for the sake
of family unity. I thought we were making decisions together, but
in the end, he was not being truthful....often by what was left unsaid.
If I had taken into myself as much trust as I afforded him, I might have
been more available to "see" what was actually going on underneath the
surface. I "knew" something was amiss in my life, but because my
faith/trust etc. in him was greater than that of my own intuitive sense...I
thought the sadness and confusion I felt must be because there was something
"wrong" with me. I never even considered that the relationship might
be a cause of my confusion. As you probably have gathered, my partner
and I lived amicably together with very little conflict.
Nancy
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Newt
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Paul
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I've always believed--and still do--that our primary relationship is that with Self, as all others are colored, affected and defined through our subjective lens. To generalize in the way she has does not take into account that people have different and varying lessons, and we learn progressively, usually by experiencing first what love is NOT. I get the feeling that the writer is feeling as though she has failed in this relationship. I understand her reasoning and her belief that perhaps she did not focus on her partner enough. But the reasons why relationships end are myriad, rarely attributable to one particular thing. We have karma with many people, and everything does not hang on a romantic involvement, however much we wish to believe it does. Relationships are assignments, and we may require a few or many.
Such is life on Bus Station Earth!
Randy
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Ray
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--S
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The woman make the child the center, the man make the couple the center. As the child of a Partner centered woman, not only did she loose alot, but so did her children.
Sharon
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For example, to some people, being child-centered means that they give into the tyranny of what society or the child hirself thinks is needful. Either of these views isn't likely to serve the child or the couple, but they are popular interpretations of "child-centered."
In addition, so much depends on the couple. If, for example, both parents are wise and secure parents who "get" kids, of course the decisions they make will naturally involve their right-relationship to their children, as they make the decisions for themselves. There will be no conflict. In this sense, yes, a couple-centered relationship is always the most healthy -- if it really means parent-centered...;)
However, if one or both parents is damaged, selfish, or otherwise needy in ways that make parenting an insecure thing, they can feel their needs strongly competing egoically with the needs of the child(ren). This can cloud the parent's and as a result the couple's idea of what is good for them, and what is good for the children. If child-centered means neurotically focussing on the needs of the child to the neglect of the co-parent, then of course, it is a problem.
Thinking of the children *first* may be a tool or sanity check for immature parents who might be more likely to go off on weird tacks that do not serve the family as a whole. However, immature parents are probably also those most likely to have relationship issues with their spouse.
But thinking of the couple first may lead to self-involved parents who see the children as a sort of proper social add-on, burden, impediment, regrettable, and so on. It's another form of ego-bound neurosis.
If there is an issue of survival and crisis, by all means the adults should "put on their oxygen masks first," and see to the kids after they know they are in shape to care for them. If the parents are not able to care for themselves, they can not care for their children.
So in that sense, the couple comes first -- because without the couple, the family dissolves.
However, if the parents not caring for themselves is a chronic, rather than acute/circumstantial/crisis event, then the entire family is in danger, and community or counseling or extended family help should be called in!
I suppose my best thought is that relationships should be FAMILY centered. The family is a "holon" -- it doesn't consist of a couple and their children, but of the many balanced relationships of one-to-one, and some-to-one, and many-to-many -- and all of those relationships as modified by outside influences. In an ideal situation, the dynamic should flow in focus from couple-centered to child-centered, perhaps sometimes other-to-child-centered, sometimes father-to-child-centered, and so on organically, by circumstance. It's a dance.
That being easier said than done, I think there is no one answer except to see why things are not working for the family, and use introspection and honesty to try to make things better.
My son knows that his needs come into play in all family decisions, but ultimately it is the parents' decisions on his behalf, which he may not always understand, that take preference over his wishes. A sample decision involves bedtime -- it's very clear to him that one of the reasons he can't just stay up late, even if it were ok for him in terms of sleep, is that late evening is Big People Time, and we need our own time for our own activities. Beyond a point, this is simply not negotiable, and we have good boundaries set.
As a counter example, his biological father and I divorced when he was
very small, because he had a birth defect that required either lots of
nursing care, or abdominal surgery. I wanted to avoid surgery, but
his father felt that the extra time with an ailing baby was taking time
away from him. In that crisis, I still believe that spending time
with the child was the correct answer, however, my ex's need led him to
find another woman to
spend couple-time with,
rather than helping me care for his son. In his case, he just wasn't
cut out for fatherhood, and couldn't know until he was there. My
son has since grown into an uncoddled, secure, independent (sometimes
cussedly so...;) gifted 9 year old, in a household that gives profound
consideration to childrens' needs, but considers them only part of the
needs of the household.
To my mind, the biggest conflict can be work-centered vs family-centered dynamics, which to me seem far harder to resolve. I have a possibly irrational belief that adults of good will can resolve conflicts within a couple, but it seems hard to insulate our relationships from the demands of the outside world.
I personally grew up with a stay-at-home mom, and now as a single mother, I have a small intentional community helping me raise my son -- yet it still seems that so much of the adult time goes into working, paying bills, and various activities that are hard to integrate kids into -- it seems my child hardly gets any adult time, compared to what I got as a child!
Good luck in your investigations into this question!
Shava
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We feel that God/Goddess/Spirit is the center of our relationship, then
our own selves, then each other, then our child. Now, I have to say that
we were very child focused during the first two to three years of our child's
life because it is what felt most right and appropriate. For it is during
that time that she was forming her image, awareness and relationship with
God/Goddess/Spirit.
Thanks for asking.
Susan and Chris
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Susan D P
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-- regards, Upgeya Return to top Return to Names Return to Subjects
I don't know how I came to be on this list, but I rarely shrink from offering
an opinion when invited. Sometimes, believe it or not, I opine even
without being asked! :)
I'm sympathetic to Christine's feelings about losing her marriage, but
I don't think it's wise to deliberately try to prioritize any family
relationships. That's like favoring one leg of a three-legged stool.
Marriage partners bring their individual characteristics to the family,
and not all individuals thrive in an intimate environment of more than
two. Trying to make these folks fit requires increasingly bigger hammers,
and hammering doesn't help anyone.
This isn't to say that every family is a perfect whole, of course. Core
families are artificial systems--as opposed to natural ones--because we
didn't evolve as a monogamous species. Our simian forebears relied
on the group to rear children, and we have inherited their DNA--and their
instincts.
The one instinct we have in common with many other animals is the primacy
of the mother-child relationship. Without the nurturing of the mothers,
no species could survive.
Instinctive father-child relationships are quite different. Indeed, the
competition between father and child for the attention of the mother is
prominent, not only in humans, but in many other species. The instinctual
role of the father is to strengthen the species, not to nurture the individual
child.
Cheers!
Don W.
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