When Marriage Counseling Fails

In case you were wondering why marriage counseling is so ineffective, Time Magazine has the answer. Most marriage counselors believe, as an article of faith, that conflict should be addressed, not avoided.

Thus, they promote and encourage dramatic conflict. Since these conflicts tend to undermine martial harmony, the results are often not very good.

Obviously, the problem is not limited to people who undergo marriage counseling. The media has promoted this idea, thereby infecting the ambient culture. People who have never seen the inside of a counselor’s office  are likely to believe that when you have conflicts with your spouse, you must talk them out.

Time Magazine explains the conventional approach:

It’s a familiar mantra that marriage counselors rely upon in advising their couples — talk about conflicts and try to resolve them, rather than letting suppressed feelings fester until they poison a relationship beyond repair.

This implies that a spouse who does not want to have a serious conversation about a conflict is not doing his or her part to heal the marriage.

As you might imagine, the conventional wisdom is wrong. New research has shown that in the best and long-lasting marriages, couples ignore their conflicts. They put them aside, unresolved, and move their conversation to more neutral ground: they discuss what they are going to have for dinner.

Researcher Sarah Holley examined the conversational patters of couples who were over 60 years of age and who had been married for a long time. She discovered that these couples avoid contentious discussions, see arguments as less important and try to engage in positive experiences.

Other studies have shown similar results. Some attribute it to the wisdom that comes from age and experience. A successful marriage builds on harmonious communication; it does not found itself on endless arguments. It is not based on resolving conflict, but on managing differences.

Naturally, these studies have not persuaded the marriage counselors who still adhere to the conflict resolution, talk-it-out model. Some have suggested that when a couple is not fighting their marriage must be dead.

Besides, if marriage counselors were not provoking or directing drama, they would not know what to do with their clients.

An Egyptian View of Obama

Doug Ross is right to say that you will not be seeing these pictures in the American media.

Taken during the recent demonstrations in Egypt, they are a testimony to the ineptitude of the Obama foreign policy.

For those who think that Barack Obama taught the world to respect America again, here are a couple of samples from Ross's file:

 

Shunning a Rape Victim

In October of 2010, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Gina Tron was raped.

Recently, she wrote about the rape and the ensuing ordeals for a magazine called Vice. Since she is more than aware of the foolish decisions that put her in danger we will not repeat them here.

In her article Tron details her ultimately fruitless quest for justice and makes mention of the failure of her friends and family to provide moral support.

Everyone knows that the American criminal justice system is ill-suited to prosecute rape. Amanda Marcotte explains that:

The way that the justice system puts victims on trial instead of rapists means that far too many rapists go free.

Tron’s experience with the police and the ADAs was harrowing, and one would prefer a system that, by meting out swift justice, could function as a deterrent.

Unfortunately, the criminal justice system works  poorly in these cases because it presumes the accused to be innocent and affords him the rights to competent legal representation and to a trial where he will be able to confront his accuser.

As everyone knows, such a system is ill-suited to prosecuting and convicting rapists.

Some college campuses have tried to remedy the problem by convoking administrative tribunals to adjudge accusations of sexual abuse. Since these seem to deprive the accused of his rights, they are also subject to a different kind of abuse.

Tron’s experience with the criminal justice system was, in some ways, predictable. Rape victims often refuse to testify or even to report rape because they know the indignity that awaits them.

And yet, a woman ought to be able to count on her friends and family for moral support. Right?

In Tron’s case, not right. In two harrowing paragraphs Tron described the reactions of those near and dear to her:

Meanwhile I had to deal with the ramifications of my rape that didn’t have anything to do with the cops or the courts. I initially only told a few people I trusted about what happened—I wanted to keep the situation on the down-low, since I was worried people would react in all kinds of ways that would make me uncomfortable. Well, that didn’t work out. Within a few days 60 or 70 people knew, and nobody wanted to hang out with me, out of fear that as a “rape victim” I’d burst into tears unpredictably or whatever. One of my best friends at the time told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore and wouldn’t even listen to me when I told her details about the assault. She said it was too heavy to hear, and claimed that what happened to me had given her post-traumatic stress disorder.

A few family members told me that they were grieving over me, because rape is a “fate worse than death.” Another told me that they were not shocked this happened to me because I was a victim by nature. “Some people are victims and some are predators,” they said. “You are a victim.” Some people actually seemed straight-up jealous because apparently I now had a “valid reason” to be depressed. These were acquaintances who were generally unhappy and they probably felt insecure that they only had minor relationship hassles and shitty bosses to blame their ennui on.

I have no doubt but that Tron’s Park Slope and Williamsburg friends are living breathing feminists. Without knowing any of them, I guarantee you, they all voted for Obama. I promise, not one of them is a Tea Party patriot.

Apparently, none of these enlightened women has any sense of decency at all. They are incapable of provide any moral comfort to a friend who was raped. Instead, they shunned her.

Whatever you think of Marcotte’s chronic inveighing against slut-shaming, what do you think of a group of feminists that shuns a rape victim?

The criminal justice system has an excuse. It is designed to avoid wrongful convictions.

Tron’s friends and family do not.

John Kerry's Alternate Universe

Yesterday Jonathan Tobin offered a cogent analysis of Obama-Kerry Middle East policy ineptitude on the Commentary blog.

Tobin explained:

Egypt is coming apart at the seams. The Syrian civil war has taken the lives of over 100,000 people and the Assad regime—which President Obama has demanded give up power—appears to be winning with the help of Russian and Iranian arms and Hezbollah ground forces. Iran has vowed to continue enriching uranium, as it gets closer to amassing enough to build a nuclear weapon. And the Putin government in Russia continues to thumb its nose at the United States by refusing—as did China—to hand over NSA leaker/spy Edward Snowden.

With all that on its plate, you’d think America’s foreign policy chief would be up to his neck dealing with these crises. But in case you hadn’t heard, Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t paying much attention to any of that in the last few days. Instead, Kerry was shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah like a low-level functionary attempting to craft an agreement that would finally bring the Palestinians back to the Middle East peace talks they’ve been boycotting for four and a half years. But at the end of his fifth such effort since taking office in February, Kerry left the region empty-handed again having failed to convince the Palestinians to talk while claiming that he is getting closer to success. He says just a little more effort will put him over the top, so expect him to be back again in the near future hoping to finally achieve his long-sought photo opportunity–though there is little reason to believe such an event would actually bring the conflict closer to resolution.

But then, this morning’s New York Times brings us this piece of analysis from Mark Landler and Judi Rudoren. Perhaps it will sound vaguely familiar. Surely, it is correct:

In Damascus, the Syrian government’s forces are digging in against rebels in a bloody civil war that is swiftly approaching the grim milestone of 100,000 dead. In Cairo, an angry tide of protesters again threatens an Egyptian president.

At the same time, in tranquil Tel Aviv, Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a busy round of shuttle diplomacy, laboring to revive a three-decade-old attempt at peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He insisted on Sunday that he had made “real progress.”

The new secretary of state’s exertions — reminiscent of predecessors like Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III — have been met with the usual mix of hope and skepticism. But with so much of the Middle East still convulsing from the effects of the Arab Spring, Mr. Kerry’s efforts raise questions about the Obama administration’s priorities at a time of renewed regional unrest.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once a stark symbol and source of grievance in the Arab world, is now almost a sideshow in a Middle East consumed by sectarian strife, economic misery and, in Egypt, a democratically elected leader fighting for legitimacy with many of his people.

Administration officials no longer argue, as they did early in President Obama’s first term, that ending the Israeli occupation and creating a Palestinian state is the key to improving the standing of the United States in the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now just one headache among a multitude.

And yet Mr. Kerry, backed by Mr. Obama, still believes that tackling the problem is worth the effort: five visits to the region in the last three months. The most recent trip involved nearly 20 hours of talks, stretching almost until dawn, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

One is slightly surprised to see Commentary and the New York Times on the same page, but perhaps we should just be thankful for little things.

Both have noticed, because it’s impossible not to notice, that John Kerry is living in an alternate universe where people still believe that the way to solve all of the world’s problems is to negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.

All the while, the Middle East burns.

One cannot help but second Barry Rubin’s analysis. The Arab Spring has been the major foreign policy challenge of the Obama administration. In particular, Obama chose Cairo for a major speech in 2009 where he laid down his foreign policy markers.

As of today, the Obama reset has been such a colossal failure that it is impossible to ignore the fact.

Rubin wrote:

Let us remember that four years ago Obama gave his Cairo speech sitting the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the front row. President Husni Mubarak was insulted and it was the first hint that the Obama Administration would support Islamist regimes in the Arab world. Then Obama vetoed the State Department plan for a continuation of the old regime without Mubarak. Then Obama publicly announced–before anyone asked him–that the United States would not mind if the Brotherhood was in government. Then Obama did not give disproportionate help to the moderates. Then Obama pressed the army to get out of power quickly, which the moderates opposed since they needed more time than the Islamists to organize.

Many will say that the president of the United States cannot of course control events in Egypt. That’s true.’ But he did everything possible to lead to this crisis.

Science is Hard

It’s a burning issue: why aren’t more college students majoring in science?

It’s not for lack of desire. It’s not because they don’t know where the jobs are.

The real reason, according to a study performed by Ralph Stinebrickner and Todd Stinebrickner  is that science is hard. (Via Matthew Yglesias)

Students fall back into Humanities and Social Sciences courses because those are easy.

The Stinebrickners write:

We find that students enter school quite optimistic/interested about obtaining a science degree, but that relatively few students end up graduating with a science degree. The substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science.

It appears that the rampant self-esteemism that infects America’s schools has produced students who cannot do college level work in any discipline where they will be subjected to objective evaluation. Better yet, their self-esteem has been inflated to the point where they do not even know how little they know.

Let's not forget, if you want to major in science you really have to do the work. Apparently, these students did not learn a work ethic in high school.

Can schoolteachers be sued for malpractice?

Andrew Pochter: Murdered in Cairo

Last week, while out photographing the demonstrations in Egypt, a Jewish American college student, Andrew Pochter was stabbed to death.

Apparently, his assailant figured out that Pochter was American and delivered the punishment that Islamists reserve for infidels. We do not know whether Pochter identified himself as Jewish.

The death of someone so young and so idealistic is especially sad. If you can’t be idealistic when you are young, when can you?

And yet, Andrew Bostom suggests, Pochter bore all of the hopes and delusions that the American educational system had taught him. According to his mother, he had become a true believing multiculturalist.

One can feel somewhat bemused that a mere college student could be filled with so much missionary zeal that he believed that he could solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Imagining young Andrew reading poems about it to his girlfriend feels more like the theatre of the absurd.

Pochter had set out to save the world. He did it by learning Arabic and by absorbing everything there was to know about Egyptian culture. He had already lived in Morocco and had thrilled when the Arab Spring arrived in that nation. Now, he had decided to move to Egypt and to teach Egyptian schoolchildren.

Either he was fearless or deluded. He seems not to have had any real sense that Cairo might be a dangerous place for an American Jew.

Perhaps he told himself that he was invulnerable because he was standing on the moral high ground. Apparently, no one told him that people who stand on the moral high ground become easy targets.

Pochter was active in the Kenyon College Jewish student group, Hillel. Do you think that anyone associated with Hillel told him how many Jews were living in Egypt today? The answer: around 20.

Did anyone teach him what happened to the rest of Egypt’s Jews? Probably not.

One doubts that he learned about the millions of Jews who had been expelled from Arab and Muslim Middle Eastern nations in the past six decades.

Did he believe that once the Israeli-Palestinian problem was solved by his missionary work these Jews would be granted a right to return to their native countries?

Pochter was doing as he had been taught to do. He was reaching out to people who had a slightly different culture, offering love and empathy, caring and concern. He must have believed that increased understanding could solve the world’s problems and that a compassionate American Jew could show Egypt how to overcome its Islamist hatred.

Our culture being what it is, men who study at prestigious universities like Kenyon College often distinguish themselves with their charity work. Many of them start during high school. It is known to improve their chances of being accepted in elite institutions.

American university culture is in the business of producing and rewarding a certain kind of man: loving, caring compassionate, nurturing...  in touch with his feminine sides.

Sun Tzu recommended that warriors know their enemies and know themselves. Young people like Andrew Pochter know neither their enemies nor themselves.

Pochter did not understand what being an American Jew meant in today’s Egypt. He had no apparent appreciation for the virulent anti-Semitism that exists in Egypt. Perhaps he thought that Egyptians were not anti-Semitic but were just anti-Zionists.

But Pochter was not a warrior, either. Having been trained in American multiculturalism he was surely taught to disparage military virtues in favor of soft values, like caring for children.

In fact, multicultural Americans do not even believe that there is a war going on. The president said that the War on Terror is over. Who are we to think otherwise?

One dislikes having to say that certain people should avoid certain places. Two years ago CBS correspondent Lara Logan was gang raped in Tahrir Square. At the time, I, among other retro types, suggested that it was probably a bad idea to send a woman into such a place. Didn’t the CBS producers understand that Egyptian men are notoriously abusive and aggressive toward women?

The usual suspects were appalled by the notion that a woman should not risk life and limb to do her job. They insisted that a professional woman has every right to go where she wanted to do her job. True enough, she does. That does not mean that she should. Making her a martyr for a cause does not undo the trauma of being gang raped.

A few days ago another female reporter, this one from the Netherlands was gang raped in Tahrir Square, Cairo. She has been hospitalizedin “severe” condition.

“When will they ever learn….”

[Addendum: Jezebel has an article about the rape and about sexual violence against women in Egypt. It's a good column, and it's good that a feminist publication starts talking about the oppression of women in Muslim countries.]

Textaholics

Regardless of whether these pictures prove, as Buzzfeed suggests, that society is doomed, they are not good news.

Others more savvy than I have bemoaned the fact that Americans of all ages, but especially the young, are so hooked up to their iPhones that they have lost touch with their fellow humans.

I posted about it here. Sherry Turkle wrote a book about it here.

By all appearances, these people are hooked on texting. For today I am calling them textaholics. They do it to the exclusion of all else, and especially, of everyone else.

Here are a few samples.

Girl's lunch: 

School's out:

Family dinner:

For the rest, check out the link to Buzzfeed.