CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: "How Will You Know When the Honeymoon is Over?"
  by Ann Bales
• "Parenting with Fear and Trembling in an Age of 'No Fear'"
  (Part 7)
  "Enabling: A Disabling Proposition"
  by Mikal Frazier

I'm going to give you a break today. I'm going to defer to the ladies. Ann Bales and Mikal Frazier wrote our two essays. However, if you're looking for a softer approach to family issues, you're probably going to be disappointed. Both ladies are known for speaking directly and their contributions here are not out of character for either one of them.

Ann's article is a digest of some of the material we use in our marriage seminars. Ann identifies some of the signs that help a married couple understand when the initial romance has worn off and reality sets in. Her article is titled, "How Will You Know When the Honeymoon is Over?" Don't cast it aside if you've been married a long time. She's really dealing with patterns of dissatisfaction.

Mikal offers the 7th installment of her ongoing series on "Parenting with Fear and Trembling in an Age of 'No Fear'." The pattern of enabling is often easy to spot in others, but very difficult to see in ourselves. I urge you to read her thoughts in a spirit of self-examination.

I'm amazed at how much thought is given to making sure the ceremony is just right and how little thought is given to planning for the marriage itself. Recently, Ann and I completed premarital counseling with two different couples. In both cases, we are not involved in the ceremony. In fact, we didn't even attend one of the weddings. It has been a delightful experience because we didn't concern ourselves with the ceremony. That freed us up to help these couples explore the nature of their relationship. I'm absolutely convinced that every couple contemplating marriage will profit from the experience of reviewing their attitudes toward marriage with an objective third party.

Norman

by Ann Bales

How many of you have a favorite robe and slippers or a favorite knock-about outfit that you put on in the evening or those days when you don't feel well? I have three such outfits and it depends on which one is clean at the time as to what I wear on those occasions. But I've always had something that felt good, like an old shoe, and it was very comforting and relaxing to put it on and just relax. When they were new, they didn't have that comfortable, relaxed feeling. It took us a while to break them in. Perhaps our old ones fell apart or your special someone gave you a new outfit for Christmas and you felt obliged to wear it. After a few months and a few washings, they began to feel like old friends and we just took them for granted.

Marriage is like that, too. In the beginning everything is new and exciting. The day drags as we wait for five o'clock to come so that we can rush home and be together with our loved one. But after a few days, months, maybe even a year, the new wears off. We settle into a routine and the honeymoon is over. But how will we know? There are many different signs.

1. Perhaps you recognize loss of communication. He studies the newspaper at breakfast instead of looking into your eyes. You come home from work and instead of asking, "Did you have a hard day at work," you'll ask if he remembered to pick up a gallon of milk at the store.

2. You discover a lot of disagreements. You have conversations that end by saying, "I won't take this off anybody and certainly not you." One of our early disagreements had to do with who carries out the trash. I said, "It's a man's duty to take out the trash." Norman asked for "book, chapter and verse."

3. Money becomes an issue. Suddenly, you discover that two cannot live as cheaply as one. A man discovers that he must pay for panty hose. He's shocked at the price and he soon realizes that when his wife talks about runners, she's not discussing Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson and that a pair of panty hose may not outlast one trip to church. On the other hand, she doesn't know what a quart of oil costs or even why the car needs it and can't figure out why it needs to be changed every three thousand miles. In premarital counseling, we give couples a shopping list. The man's list consists of items that a woman usually buys. The woman's list consists of items that a man usually buys. We ask them to put a price by the side of each item. Quite often when an engaged couple tells us "we don't disagree on anything," we burst that bubble when we get to the price list.

4. In law troubles. It's a rare couple who has the very same view of the kind of relationship they will have with in-laws. Where are we going to spend "Thanksgiving and Christmas?" Then there are opinions about in-laws and all of a sudden you wake up and find out your spouse really doesn't view your father and mother the same way you do. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this person and she/he doesn't like my Mom?" Or it could come from the direction of the in-laws themselves. Do you remember Trisha Yearwood's song, I'm in Love With the Boy? - "My Daddy said that he ain't worth a lick; when it comes to brains, he got the short end of the stick." And this character is the man Dad gives her hand to at the wedding.

5. Then there's the biggest issue of all - self centered agendas. I am a very self-centered person. Many of us are selfish and we don't even see it. Who controls the "remote" for the TV in your house? How do you select a restaurant when you go out to eat? Can you identify things you expect your spouse to do and take for granted that it's going to be that way?

I'm not suggesting that you have to resolve marital dissatisfaction in the way that I recommend, but in some way you have to recognize that a marriage problem exists and address it. We have some friends who faced a serious marriage problem, so serious that they talked of ending their marriage of more than twenty years. We talked with both partners separately. It looked like an impasse. Neither partner wanted to make the changes the other one wanted. But they didn't divorce. They are still married today and from all appearances, it is a stable marriage. Here's what happened. Each individual decided that there were some undesirable traits in the other person that would never change. So they made the decision to stop demanding change, to stop being offended by the behavior, to accept the behavior as part of the personality of the other person (Fortunately, the behavior did not involve substance abuse or immorality or anything of that nature). Once they decided to accept that behavior and proved their sincerity by quitting the habit of complaining, cold turkey, remarkable changes in their relationship began to take place. They have been married a long time and their relationship appears to be stable. They dealt with their problem, even though they did not negotiate change.

There are undesirable personality traits that will never change. The more we make the demand, the more the other person rebels. When this occurs, the decision must be made whether or not fighting over this behavior problem is more important than strengthening your relationship. I can assure you that if you decide to call a truce, quit complaining and finding fault, and start looking for all the good things you mate does, your relationship will flourish. You will soon wonder why you waited so long to deal with the problem.

He ducked his head. He grasped the handles with all his might. He took dead aim for my child, first his left foot, then his right foot. Round and round the wheels turned as his tricycle rolled toward my own toddler. My child was able to dodge the "runaway machine." This was my perspective and I believe to this day it was correct. But the other child's mother had another idea. She said, "Oh Johnny, did you get to going too fast and couldn't stop?" Thus another enabling pattern was born. Little Johnny was enabled to avoid consequences for his behavior and had one more lesson in irresponsibility.

As parents, one of our most important responsibilities is to protect our children. But enabling is protection gone awry. In enabling, a parent takes responsibility for a child's behavior with the goal of protecting the child from the consequences of his/her behavior. In Parenting for Prevention David Wilmes lists four common ways in which we as parents unwittingly do this. They are:

• We change the rules or the expectations in our household just to satisfy our children.

• We buy our children something to make them feel better or to change how they feel.

• We solve a problem for our children rather than let them work through the problem themselves and reach a solution that makes sense for them.

• We change our behavior, our standards, or our values to accommodate our children's whims, even though we really feel that we shouldn't.

If our children remained toddlers, enabling would not be such a serious matter. It would only create more work for us parents and we would have to forsake being genuine with ourselves. But enabling is progressive. It gets worse and we become more and more devoted to protecting our children from the consequences of their behavior and rationalizing their choices. In some way our own values get all mixed up in defending our children. And as our children get older, the cost of enabling becomes perilous.

David Treadway, Ph.D., in his book on substance abuse in the family, Before It's Too Late, gives a frightening example of the escalating behavior of a an out-of-control son at the age of 25. The parents finally realized they could no longer rescue and protect him, enable him. Finally, for the first time in his life, the parents made the decision to hold firm. The young man, in fear and desperation, went to various subway stations and would call his parents from a phone close to the tracks. When they answered he simply held the phone toward the tracks "so that the parents could hear the rumble of the trains going by. Then he would say into the phone in a harsh whisper, 'I'm going to throw myself in front of the next train that comes in because that's what you want. You want to get rid of me. Thanks.' Then he would hang up before the parents could say anything."

Because of his parents' courage, Treadway says, "...he signed himself into detox and for the first time took responsibility for his own recovery." But Treadway and the parents knew the son could have followed through on his threat. Sometimes they do.

Substance abuse is just one outcome of enabling behavior. There are many areas in which our enabled children can demonstrate their irresponsibility. Other areas are relationships, money, and power, just to name a few.

Another very grave outcome of enabling our children is they get the message that we believe they cannot handle the situation. We give them the idea we have no faith in them. Therefore we must rescue them by one of the above moves because we believe they are incompetent, a serious blow to their self- esteem. What they really hear is, "You aren't able."

Mom and Dad, enabling your child to be irresponsible can not only result in ending his life, it can result in spiritual death. As Godly parents we must muster the courage to raise responsible children. Eternity depends on it.

(Mikal Frazier is a licensed family therapist with a private practice in Minden and Bossier City, Louisiana. She and her husband, Jim have three adult children and two grandchildren, whom they will gladly tell you about if you ask. Actually you don't even have to ask.)

If you have questions about marriage and family relationships, you can "ASK THE COUNSELOR." Address your questions to Mikal Frazier. Her address is mikalfraz@aol.com

Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org