Q: My son got married this past summer. It was a beautiful wedding and his father and I are proud. But we are also a little uneasy. A couple of years ago, his cousin got married. It, too, was a great wedding, but the marriage did not last. His cousin is in the final stages of a divorce. We know that the divorce rate is high these days. Do you have any suggestions that we could pass on to the newlyweds to help them through the first stage of married life together?
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A: I get a little sad when I have to admit that despite all of our hopes and intentions, marriages these days are not as secure as they used to be. Statistics tell us that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of them will end in divorce.
When grandmother married grandfather, she fell into a reasonably well defined set of expectations that she was encouraged to follow. In all probability, she took the lead in ensuring that the house was well maintained, that meals were prepared on time and that children were properly nurtured and disciplined. Grandfather also had expectations that he was supposed to fulfil. He was the primary breadwinner and he was in charge of the family finances.
All of this is different for your son and his wife. Chances are both of them are generating income and with working out of the home, they have to come to some kind of an agreement over who is responsible for what to keep the home going.
Your son is probably not going to be married for long if he expects his new wife to rush home after work and prepare a meal for him while he checks the latest news on television. Social expectations for both your son and his wife are changed.
If they are going to have a successful marriage, they are going to have to learn to negotiate with each other, just to make sure that things get done around the house. Just about everything they do will likely have to be negotiated, including who makes the bed, how meals are prepared, who does what in cleanup and how the two of them are going to handle their family finances.
Negotiation is hard work. It depends on how well your son and his wife know and understand each other, how much they respect and honour each other and how much they are willing to compromise to make things work.
The difficulty is that the stage of the marriage when they are most likely to negotiate with the most fervour, namely the beginning of the marriage, is also the time when they are learning the most about each other.
My experience in counselling couples is that no matter how much they think they know each other before they marry, couples are always in for surprises once they take the marital vows. That makes the negotiations difficult but not impossible. If your son and his wife continue to respect each other, they should be able to negotiate their way through even the most difficult issues.
Your job is to recognize that the negotiation has to happen between your son and his wife. If either of them comes to you complaining about the other, you would do well to send him or her back home to talk to the other. The less you get involved, the better are their chances for a successful marriage.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
