Relationships Talk

In the Parenting Reddit, there’s a rich, archived subreddit titled “Parents who stayed together for the kids, how’d that work out for you? (and for the kids?) [serious].” While Reddit is usually a jokester’s paradise, this particular thread is deep and thoughtful, more of an advice column from those who are looking back through the lens of experience. There’s discourse between parents who’ve found therapy to help a strained marriage and there are confessions of those who tired of battling and gave up, told from the perspective of partners and children of tense households.

“I’ve found that the worst times were when they did not communicate with each other,” user ghenne04 wrote. “Someone would be mad about something, bothered by something, unhappy about something, and would not talk it through with the other person. My dad would just simmer until he blew up in a rage, and my mom would sulk into depression and say everything was fine.’”

“At one point, my mom was so mad at my dad she tore up their marriage license and flushed it,” wrote another user, Ktlyn41. But, “[a]fter ten years of this they looked at each other and realized that they needed to fix this. They went to counseling and got help.”

Comb through these posts and you’ll notice a common theme: However frayed the dynamics, however close to the edge of divorce they stood, those who stuck it out through the worst survived and even thrived into their twilight years. It’s not about whether they fought; it’s how they did it — or learned how to do it correctly.

Fights happen. Big, real, I wanna-tear-my-hair-out spats can be a regular occurrence in a relationship. But working through them and staying together for the kids is, without a doubt, always the right move, says E. Mark Cummings, a professor of psychology and head of the Family Studies Center at Notre Dame. Learn how to handle conflict properly and your marriage — and your kids’ social development — will benefit. 

“Conflict is very much normal in relationships and marriages, and constructive conflict is good,” says Cummings. Disagreeing about everyday problems, he adds, is completely normal. And, even those couples who say that they “never fight” — always have conflict. As a society, Cummings adds, we’re prone to thinking about conflict as a negative thing. “But it’s actually really healthy.”

What’s key, says Cummings, is that the conflict is constructive and works towards a solution. By constructive, he means a conflict that involves no yelling, and shows respect. And while it can get heated and awkward and perhaps even passive-aggressive, it ultimately arrives at a compromise or solution that allows the couple to move forward.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Conflict is necessary for a marriage to thrive, and being able to discuss your disagreement openly is much more psychologically preferable to shutting it in. “There’s this misconception that not talking about [conflict] is actually beneficial,” Cummings says. “But it’s wrong. It’s actually not okay if you haven’t worked things out.”

And there’s another benefit to proper conflict: When a child witnesses their parents duke it out and arrive at an agreement, it’s vital for their social development.

Here’s why: Kids are smart and most have a surprisingly adept and sophisticated sense of what’s wrong and right with their little worlds. Most are more than capable of feeling the tectonic shift within a couple’s relationship when they’re fighting. And sure, Cummings admits, arguments make them feel uncomfortable. But observing an argument can be a valuable experience for kids.

“They look for meaning in a conflict in figuring out how parents feel about each other,” Cummings explains. “Children care about parental happiness and want to feel secure that their parents will protect them. If parents are working things out with verbal and physical affection, then this is positive — and makes kids breathe a huge sigh of relief that their emotional connection with their parents remains strong.

This doesn’t mean you have to solve the conflict once and for all, Cummings stresses: Just that you’re actively working to find a solution. And the silent treatment? Cummings cautions against that as well. “Kids find that when parents just stop talking it’s actually more upsetting than if they just continued to fight,” he said.

Now, of course, yelling and screaming is counterproductive. Cummings points to the catharsis hypothesis, which suggests that people in a conflict should be able to scream and “let it all out.” The theory is that being able to vocally express your anger and frustration by screeching your vocal cords into oblivion is helpful in wrenching your negative emotions out. But Cummings says that’s a backward way to deal with conflict.

“Put yourself in the other person’s shoes,” he says. “How would you feel if someone came up to you and just screamed? You’re going to feel insulted and won’t just let it go, you’ll scream back.” A screaming match in front of the kids can be emotionally scarring and devastating — you and your spouse are teaching them that disrespecting each other and shouting horrible things, true or not, is a way to solve conflict.

Rather, Cummings suggests keeping voices as level as possible; if you need to go to a room during a heated moment, go for it, but remember that the kids are always watching and listening and discussing amongst themselves, too. The key is to maintain civility, remember, no matter what, that your spouse is a human being, and work through what the disagreement is and what it might represent. 

The psychological benefits of arguing in front of the kids extend beyond having a healthier marriage, Cummings says; kids are always learning. When they see that their parents are actively figuring out their problems and talking them through, even if they disagree, it helps to create a healthy foundation for their own relationships in the future — friendly and romantic. Kids, per Cummings, are copycats when it comes to mimicking how to handle conflict, and they often parrot that same behavior in daily life, not understanding what’s healthy or moral until much later — by which time, it might require a therapist to step in and sort out the way they handle conflict.

Cummings points out that psychology is also countering attachment theory — the prevailing parenting notion that mothers form the ultimate bond with their child — and its ignorance of the role of the father. Cummings’ own research has shown that children look up to not just their mom but their dad too for a sense of security. If a parental relationship is breaking down in front of their eyes and their own parents can’t handle a fight, it frightens children into thinking that their security with their parents — including their dad — is threatened.

Of course in extreme cases, divorce might be the only solution. If there is physical and/or emotional abuse, some long-standing issue within the couple’s own dynamic that shows that the relationship is beyond repair, a failure for couple’s therapy to help solve the issues within a marriage, or if a couple has tried to figure out what’s wrong but are on fundamentally separate footing, it might be time for the couple to call it quits in the best interest of their children. “When things get so out of hand that it’s hard to backtrack and your emotions and thoughts get all distorted, so you track negativity with your partner, then yes, the marriage should end, for your sake and the sake of your kids.”

Ultimately, per Cummings, “if you’re not feeling good about things one day, and you think, ‘We should get a divorce,’ well, that’s not helpful. Marriage has benefits for children and parents, and the threshold for not staying together should be high.” That’s an argument worth fighting for.

Are steam rooms still a ‘thing?’ I ask because I have only encountered them in movies, television shows, and a very interesting production of Verdi’s Rigoletto many years ago. As anyone who has met me can tell by my physique, I also do not frequent urban health clubs or fancy gyms, which is where one might still encounter a men’s steam room. 

BLOWIN’ OFF STEAM is pretty much what it claims to be: six or so guys sitting around jawing at each other in a steam room. With a script and direction by Chuck Delong, not much happens, dramatically speaking, for the hour plus running time. Some gents lounge around in nothing but towels, spouting sarcastic remarks, sex  jokes, political drivel, and marriage advice. It might be of interest to some as examples of a character study of males, but the characters would have had to be drawn with more complexity, from what I saw on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Click image for tickets to BLOWIN’ OFF STEAM at Capital Fringe

The actors, for the most part, work hard to make the most of the material, which alternates from stilted dialogue to what sounded to me like improvised lines. The improv also might have stemmed from the shaky time some of the cast members had recalling lines or whose turn it was to speak. When the main cast was sharp and on top of their banter, the play moved along at a decent pace and was entertaining – as locker room talk littered with some cliched philosophy thrown in for good measure.

Most of the advice was aimed at Clayton, (Troy Weymouth,) a 30-something about to be married for the first time. His wedding two weeks away and his bride-zilla calling most of the shots, Troy is flustered and unsure of the whole marriage venture. Four other steam room buddies offer mostly useless advice and chit-chat to Troy from their towel-togged torsos. Best friends and frenemies – due to opposite political sides, Jonathan and Dan, are joined by Italian-American bachelor Mario, and middle-aged Alan in dispensing life advice, and barbed comments, all of no help to Clayton at all until the last few minutes of their manly conference time together. The second biggest surprise comes when the oft-divorced and marriage cynical Alan (Don Myers) lets down his guard and gets real with Clayton.

What’s the first surprise? The wisest pundit in the bunch ends up being mama’s boy bachelor Mario. Strangely, Mario comes off as the most rounded and real character among the steaming male specimens, and is played with skill by Scott Stofko.

Unfortunately, the dynamic duo of Jonathan (Ernest Rose) and Dan (Richard Senkbile) are given the task of making a liberal Democrat and a right wing Republican, respectively, interesting in these times when most of us would pay good money for such political junkie talk to cease. Although I am certain men on opposing ends of the political spectrum openly argue about Trump and the economy, their chatter dominated the overall play a little too much.

Among the banter there was plenty of salty language, sexual innuendo, and even talk of which celebrity made for the best man-crush. (For the record it was the cinema’s new Superman, Henry Cavill, although George Clooney received an honorable mention.) I mention the general tenor of the dialogue to point out that if the aim was to show a group of heterosexual men in a slice of life look at manly talk, then Delong and company nailed it (even if the presentation was rough around the edges). You will need to look elsewhere at this year’s Capital Fringe for enlightened men, feminist viewpoints, or support for #MeToo instead of this steam room.

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Blowin’ Off Steam . Written and directed by Chuck Delong . Featuring: Troy Weymouth, Scott Stofko, Ernest Rose, Don Myers, Richard Senbiler, Chad Thomas . Produced by Steamworks Productions . Reviewed by Jeff Walker.

Related

A plus-size fashion and beauty YouTube star has shut down critics who told her ‘‘No one will marry you if you don’t lose weight”, and the internet has exploded with support.

In a post to her Twitter and Instagram pages, Nabela Noor shared a stunning photo of her and her husband with the caption: “Aunties: ‘no one will marry you if you don’t lose weight!!’ Me:’bet’.”

The Instagram post received over 200,000 likes while her Twitter photo racked up support from close to 79,000 people.

While Noor’s activism around body positivity has garnered her a strong fan base, even she didn’t expect her posts to go viral, saying it’s disappointing that “it’s not very often that you find a plus-size girl — especially a plus-size woman of colour — in the public eye,” and that “People are thirsty for inclusion in a time when there’s so much division.”

(Instagram)

“It was really fascinating to see how many people struggle with others enforcing their definitions of beautiful and their definitions of what makes someone worthy of love or marriage,” Noor told Insider of the overwhelming response she received from her posts.

“That was my truth growing up and my whole life was just always being told that no one would marry me if I didn’t lose weight, no one would marry me if I didn’t have lighter skin, no one would marry me if I didn’t know how to cook, blah, blah, blah,” she said.

(Instagram)

And that’s why Noor decided to start using YouTube as a means of spreading awareness about the normality of diversity.

“I started making videos because I didn’t see girls like me on television or in movies or in ads and magazines. So I wanted to create what I wished I could see growing up and that was just the original reason for why I started making videos.

(Instagram)

“Then I began to realise that my platform could be used for social good as I grew and my platform grew, and then there was a moment where I was just like, ‘I want to … create content on the internet but I also really, really, really want to elevate voices of people in communities that I belong in and just be an ally everywhere that I can,” she said.

Noor said it is “crazy” that the average size of a woman in America is not represented in the media.

(Instagram)

“Often times as a society we forget that the average size of a woman in America today is 14/16. But we’re not seeing that average size represented in television, movies, advertisements, magazines — you name it … We’re not seeing the average size of 14/16 represented around us.”

However, Noor said she is excited for the future as she feels society is at a turning point.

“I think a lot of people are ready. They’re just ready to be seen; they’re ready to be heard,” she said.

(Instagram)