Blog \ Archive for November, 2009

“I hate him!”
Kids can’t stand your boyfriend? Relationship expert Dr. Wendy Walsh suggests some simple ground rules to keep everyone happy
So, you’ve finally found Mr. Right. He’s romantic, respectful, and even remembers to put the seat down—but there’s one problem. Your children call him Mr. Noway-
no-how. If your little angels are suddenly acting like little devils around your new
man, the first step is to find out why. Could he really be as awful as they say? Listen to your child; you might be surprised by a kid’s perspective. Once, when I pressed my 5-year-old daughter on why she didn’t like my new boyfriend, she very seriously declared that his chin was too big. She was right. This very tall man had never gone
down to her level for her to even see that he had a pleasing face above his imposing jaw line. Luckily that was an easy fix. I simply asked him to sit down more and engage my little one at her eye level. And he did.

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Not so long ago there were two groups of people: single people who wanted to find the right mate and married people who may or may not have been working on their relationship. Today, virtually every American, no matter their age is in one of three relationship stages: 1. finding and building a relationship, 2. maintaining a relationship, or 3. destroying one. Look at these stats:

• 50% of first marriages divorce

• Up to 80% of second marriages divorce

• Sexual taboos have all but disappeared

• 40% of American babies are born out of wedlock

• More women than men are in the workforce

• Less than 30% of children have one stay-at-home parent

• Hooking up is replacing dating

• It is estimated that instead of til-death-do-us-part, we’ll have three long-term relationships in our lives

Today there is a shopping mall of relationship choices. Some couples marry. Some live together. Some do neither and still maintain committed relationships.  Others live without any kind of commitments yet children pop out of these unions. It is a relationship revolution where rules have yet to be established. It is a place where sexting, hooking up, and expensive white weddings walk side by side.  It is a place where divorce has become a rite of passage, where cougar women enjoy their sexual freedoms, divorced men scramble to figure out what went wrong and young adults try to make sense of their parent’s relationship model. The relationship revolution is affecting everyone.

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In light of yesterday’s tragic and horrific shooting at a base in Fort Hood, Texas — at the hand of a military Psychiatrist — mental dis-ease among our troops is a more timely topic than ever. One army chaplain sheds light on combat stress and mental health.

Carlos Ruiz is an army chaplain. He is a youthful forty-year-old whose pumped and imposing physique belies many hours worshiping at the alter we call “the gym.” Before he became a Pentecostal chaplain, he served as a traditional army soldier for eighteen years, and he saw first-hand the horrors of war. I met Carlos yesterday at Miami International Airport when he approached my friend, actor Joey Pantoliano (The Sopranos, Memento) to thank Joey for coming to Iraq on behalf of “No Kidding! Me 2,” an organization founded by Joey to erase the stigma against mental dis-ease and get the world talking about feelings. Joey, who recovered from clinical depression, spouts horrifying statistics about the urgent need for better mental health care for our troops — according to Pantoliano, six suicides occur a day over seas, and 18 a day upon return home. More American service personnel are dying from their own bullet than from enemy fire!

Ruiz has just returned from a one-year tour in Iraq himself, and administered to the spiritual and emotional needs of more than 1100 soldiers. I asked him what was the most common problem presented by our countries bravest. This man did not know who I was. He did not know what I talk about everyday. Yet to a perfect stranger, Captain Carlos Ruiz, army chaplain, did not hesitate as he blurted out the word “relationships.”

I asked him to repeat it as I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly. I mean, these courageous young men and women were witnessing their compadres heads blown off and they seek help for the head trip that their lover back home was putting them through? But indeed it is true. Because, according to this front-line chaplain, relationships provide the emotional support that gets our fighters through the horrors of war. And if relationships are failing, there’s not much else to live for.

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To your brain, there are many similarities between gambling and love. They are both an exciting chemical high with a mixture of hope, profits, and potential for loss. Both love and Las Vegas can be intoxicating. But there is another secret way that gambling resembles certain kinds of love attachment — both are based on a behavioral learning theory called random interval reward system.

Learning theorists like Pavlov (and his dog,) Watson, and Skinner spent their professional lives attempting to figure out what motivates animal and human behavior. One of the things that was discovered is that the most effective way to get an organism (that’s you) addicted to a behavior was to administer the reward in a random way. The recipient of the reward doesn’t know when or what is coming but the very the fact that it is random and pleasurable makes them glued to the behavior. This is the basic principle behind a slot machine. Say you were given a consistent, small reward with every fifth pull of the level. You would probably quickly become bored and move on. And if the reward was exactly one-dollar each time, even though it was given at random intervals, still you would eventually become bored.

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The Caribbean is a sober snapshot of the world as a place of plenty and poverty. It’s a clear picture here because the two extremes rub shoulders at opulent resorts. There is much meta-communication in the rehersed sing-song “Good Morning!” of staff in the corridors. Just the sheer numbers of young, bright people employed by tourism (often far more staff than guests) makes me suspect a low hourly wage.

I’m in Jamaica as a Television Host, the guest of Marjoe Gortner, former child evangelist turned adult event-planner extraordinaire. Marjoe is an alchemist who is equal parts showman and philanthropist and his Celebrity Sports Invitationals draw an eclectic crowd of celebrities, capitalists, and activists where money is raised for one good cause after another. This event will benefit Robert Kennedy’s Waterkeeper Alliance, an ecological group that provides support to small community leaders who protect American waterways by standing up to polluting corporations.

But the backdrop of Jamaica and a growing global awareness of disparity in so many places weighs like a heavy fog in this glorious sunshine. Hunkered under this fog the goodwill and compassion at this event is creating many positive relationships. Last night, I bonded with Geneive Brown, the Jamaica Consul General in New York. Our two spirits united and while we sipped red-wine and munched gourmet food, we hatched a plan to fill empty hotel rooms in Jamaica with compassionate travelers who will work as teachers and drivers to get more kids to school. Although the Jamaican government offers public education, many children still grow up illiterate because of silly barriers — lack of transportation, no lunch money, and no money for uniforms.

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