WDET News
- Marriage Promotion in Metro Detroit
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Jul 22, 2008General - Link to Audio
Wedding season is in full swing and one of WDET’s own – reporter Rob St. Mary – turns the microphone on himself, his fiancé and a government program promoting marriage as he prepares for his own ceremony.
Normally, you don’t hear things like this on the radio…
“What am I thinking? What am I thinking? I’m supposed to be the reporter asking the questions. (laughs) I just lost it.”
“You’re a hell of an interviewer." "This isn’t an interview… this is casual conversation." You’ve got a microphone in my face...”
That’s my fiancé, Sarah Harris. We were talking a few weeks back… while waiting for my mom. The three of us were taking part in a local charity walk on a sunny, Saturday afternoon.
As I explained to them, I’m putting together a story about a group that promotes marriage education in the Metro Detroit area. So, I figured, why not talk among ourselves since Sarah and I are putting the finishing touches on our August wedding.
“I’m very excited and very happy. I just, I hope that other people, and so far, pretty much everybody has, but I hope that the people who are more concerned with putting on a show kind of back off and just do what we want to do for ourselves.”
To be completely honest with you, I’ve been unsure most of my life about getting married. My parents divorced when I was 21. Sarah’s parents split when she was about eight. So, both of us were kind of soured by our parents’ emotional sparing. Since deciding to marry, we’ve been determined not to have that happen to us. So, we started talking to our families.
I asked my mom – Anne McLeod…
“What things do you think you need to know starting out?” “I think Sarah is right. I think for sure you need to talk to each other because if you don’t do that and you don’t get your feelings out and you harbor all those resentments… that’s not good. In the long run its all gonna come back bite you, right in the bum. You know. It’s just gonna happen that way.”
On Sarah’s side, we decided to talk to her aunt and uncle – Barbara Nelson and Jeff Santini. Barb and Jeff have been together for over 20 years and married for almost 16.
“What’s the great marriage advice?” “Great marriage advice… I don’t know. Marry somebody you really like… A LOT! (laughs)”
Some family members have been telling us that in the past they would avoid conflict. But Sarah’s Aunt Barb says that’s not so for them.
“That’s just it." "We air our grievances. We go a long time kind of not listening to each other, necessarily. (laughs)" "Hey, the airing of grievances. Happy Festivus. (laughs)”
And, as we had been told before, Aunt Barb and Uncle Jeff also agree… it’s the little things that can add up.
“...that becomes representative in your relationship of how much you care for the other person and it shouldn’t but it seems like it does. If you’re not putting a flashlight where I want you somehow you don’t care about me…”
So, as Sarah and I made decisions on flowers, cakes and invitations… advice – some solicited, some not – started to arrive as I caught notice of a group called the Marriage Resource Center of Wayne County.
“We are marriage educators, we are not therapists or do counseling but we are marriage educators and we teach singles, marrieds, step-families and couples who are in crisis relationship skills to strengthen their marriage, strengthen their relationship and, hopefully, reduce divorce.”
Pam Hudson is the marketing director for the Dearborn-based group.
“It is the same five things that people are fighting about. It is money, it is the children, it is the in-laws, it is communication or lack thereof and it is sex.”
The founding and the continuing efforts of the Marriage Resource Center are supported through federal grants approved through a 2004 initiative by the Bush Administration.
“Congratulations, I hear your getting married in August” “Yes, I am.” “That’s great.”
Bill Coffin is Special Assistant for Marriage Education with the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington.
“It’s not government getting involved in marriage… government is very involved when the couple never forms to begin with or when the couple divorces. So then someone is telling you how often you can see your child and maybe even where you can live and all kinds of arraignments on child support payments and you name it. Government is very involved when family doesn’t form and when it breaks up. So, we are saying this is a prevention program, in many respects.”
A year and a half ago, Washington decided to spend some of its savings under welfare reform. With $100 million, Coffin says the Federal Healthy Marriage Initiative was born with a simple philosophy of marketing and dispensing family psychology. Coffin says the federal government believes educating couples how to handle their relationships can keep them together and off the dole.
So, does it work?
“I sympathize with your wish that we actually knew whether it worked… and I mean by working I mean having a measurable impact.”
Alan Hershey is project director with the Building Strong Families Project. That government program relates to low-income couples with out-of-wedlock children. Since mid-2005, over 5,000 couples have taken part. The final results aren’t expected until 2011. But, Hershey says early indicators are that while couples are busy, they find the sessions worthwhile.
“There was a lot of question at the beginning for example if men would welcome this kind of intervention which involves the couple sitting with other couples in a group talking about things… whether the men would welcome that. That was a clear finding that the couples like doing this.”
So, one Saturday in June – Sarah and I decided to take a few of the courses at the Marriage Resource Center of Wayne County under the guidance of the center’s executive director Julie Bock.
“Hello?” “Hello!” “You’re bringing your microphone and everything.” “Be careful, he has it on.” “Oh, my goodness.”
After discussing how Sarah and I met, our families and our goals for the future… we sat down to a test called a FOCCUS inventory.
“To take the survey…"
Communication, intimacy, personal ethics and the place of religion in one’s life as a person and as a couple were covered in the 156 questions.
After the test, we watched “The First Dance” – a video seminar about handling the people stress of planning a wedding.
“A lot of the stuff that they talked about mirrored situations that I can easily picture that we have already run into. So, that was interesting. It’s kind of reassuring to know that we’re not the only weirdos who run into the same family stuff.”
David Popenoe is co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His research team releases the “State of Our Unions” report on marriage in America annually. Popenoe admits there is no long term study to show if marriage education programs actually help to keep couples together, but the early reports look promising. He says this is because marriage has fundamentally changed.
“You’ve got to be close friends with someone of the opposite sex. In times past you were more like work partners or something. So, this means there’s a lot of learning to do given that men and women are quite different in a lot of respects, especially emotionally. That’s the central theme of a lot of these programs.”
But with the divorce rate now around 45%, Popenoe says the statictics concerning marriage between children of divorced parents – which is what Sarah and I are – are even higher. After our four-hour session ended, Sarah and I talked in the car on the way home…
“A lot of it is stuff that you and I have already dealt with… although I have to say it was valuable to me in reminding me of some of the issues that we have already talked about but put on the back burner for whatever reason.”
And so, Sarah and I left armed with a bit more knowledge about how to handle the heated discussions that are bound to happen when you’re busy building a life together. Will it mean 50 years of health and happiness? Only time will tell.
“Your cute." "I know it. (laughs – kiss)" I love you.”
I’m Rob St. Mary – WDET News