Emotional Skills to Learn Before Marriage

Both my husband and I have divorced parents. After a fight several years ago, we each called our mothers. My mother said, "Yeah, well, maybe your relationship has run its course." His mother said, "Relationships end. It's sad, but they do." Divorced people, apparently, are not the right people to go to when you need marriage advice--unless your desire is to end up divorced.

My husband and I wanted to create a conscious, happy, lasting marriage and so we did what we do best--we read, discussed, read some more, studied various ideas, talked to people and found what we believe is the way to do marriage better. It's called Imago.

We started Imago relationship counseling about three years ago, right after we got engaged (we both strongly believe in prevention as the best medicine). Imago counseling is nothing like regular couples counseling. Imago is a skill, a tool, a form of good communication and the sessions you attend would be best described as workouts and just like any muscle, if you workout often enough, good communication will become a reflex.

Learning Imago began as a method of doing marriage better but it has helped my husband and I to reap benefits in every area of our lives. Imago has tremendously benefited both of us at work, with friends and with family.

Our good communication skills have made us much better parents than we would have been. Good communication is a tool that goes hand-in-hand with our parenting philosophy: be the hero you wish to see in your children.

I would also like to note that the style of communication taught at our Imago workouts is the same style that parents are encouraged to learn in most parenting and psychology books. A few that really highlight this style of communication are: How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk, How to Talk so Teens will Listen and Listen so Teens Will Talk, The Happiest Toddler on the Block and 1,2,3... The Toddler Years: A practical Guide for Parents & Caregivers. Reading any of these books in the future--when you have talking kids--would be helpful. Going to Imago therapy work out sessions and practicing this communication skill with your partner before you have children would be far more helpful.

Books to read now to help you on your quest to becoming emotionally heroic:

Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix: this book is about Imago! I actually didn't like this book when I first read it. I even thought Imago was a little silly and unnecessary for two people as rational as my husband and myself. But then we started our classes and we were blown away.

The Psychology of Romantic Love by Nathaniel Branden: this is the natural book for Objectivists to turn to. It's a good book but not as good as--

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden: one my favorite books of all time. This book clarifies how you can be the hero you want to be. It also recommends all parents learn Imago-style communication.

How a Stay at Home Mom Can Get a Fair Deal in Marriage: The Partnership Contract

My husband and I did not make a contract when we got married; we didn't even join our finances, but we did make the following verbal agreement: should one or both of us wish to dissolve our partnership, we must first attend an Imago couples therapy session for six consecutive weeks and then take a vacation together, away from our current lives, for no less than two weeks.

Things got more complicated when we decided to start a family. Breaking up would no longer be as simple as two individuals with separate careers and bank accounts dividing up some furniture. I didn't realize just how much more complicated having children would be, however, until I read Ann Crittenden's book The Price of Motherhood, a very flawed book politically but a crucial read for an independent woman like myself who had totally bought into the dream of taking a few years off and then going back to work.

According to Crittenden, studies have shown that not only is it much harder than women think to return to work, the negative repercussions of taking even three months off from the labor force are still discernible after twenty years. As a mom, your first priority will never be your job, and even if it is, your boss won't think so. Your paycheck will reflect this.

Your husband's paycheck will rise if you stay home, but if you go back to work he will make 20% less for the same reason--a man with a wife at home is like a man with an executive assistant, a man with a working wife is an "involved father" and can't possibly be as focused on his job.

Other important takeaways from Crittenden's book include that a married spouse, in the US, has no legal claim on the other spouse's income and motherhood is the single biggest risk factor in determining how likely you are to end up in poverty in old age.

Armed with this knowledge, how would a Libertarian family do things better? My husband and I created a simple and clear Partnership Contract. Here it is:

1. In marriage all assets are owned by The Partnership--all paychecks, all savings, all real estate, all inheritances, all bonuses, all awards. Both partners have equal ownership of all wealth and possessions.

2. Prior to breaking up, the following must be completed:
-Husband and wife will attend an Imago therapy session for twelve consecutive weeks
-Husband and wife will vacation together, away from the children and their current lives, for a period of no less than two weeks

3. If the breakup is to proceed, the following custody arrangement is non-negotiable (unless both parents wish to negotiate)
-They will share custody of the children 50/50.
-If one parent has been the primary caretaker for more than a year and wishes to remain the primary caretaker, they will share the children as follows Monday-Friday with primary caretaker, Saturday-Sunday with non-primary 2 out of every 3 weekends.

4. The division of stuff will be 50/50. All monies and assets will continue to be seen as property of The Partnership to be divided equally until the youngest child is 18. *The goal is to create two financially equal households so that the standard of living for both partners is the same and neither is penalized for being the primary caretaker. If one partner decides to partner with someone new (defined as cohabitating), his/her standard of living with his/new partner should not be considered a bonus but rather factored into the division of income that will continue to create two equal households for the original partners.

5. After the children are out of the house, the primary caretaker is entitled to alimony for 2 years per year he/she was the primary caretaker. Again, the goal of alimony is that the partners end up with equal standards of living.

6. This contract can be altered or nullified only by mutual consent.

Hopefully, our marriage will last. If it doesn't, I will let you know how the above contract worked out for us.

Either way, for the women (primary caretakers) out there, you are the one with the most to lose. Protect yourself.

You Want a Baby ... But SHOULD You Have One? Would It Be Just?

Wanting something does not make it ethical. No matter how much you want a baby, before you create a life, consider:

Your physical preparedness: contrary to what we were taught in high school biology, our DNA does change. The healthier you are when you conceive, the healthier the DNA you pass on to your offspring will be. In many ancient cultures men and women spent a year or more maximizing their physical health before breeding. This person you want to create will have much of his life determined by how healthy you are when you conceive him. Consider your current state of health and your potential child--would it be kind for you to conceive him now or, out of respect for him and desire to give him the very best you have to offer, would it be better to spend the next year getting healthier? So many children today are born retarded, autistic, emotionally imbalanced, with physical deformities, allergies, eye problems, crooked teeth, infertile... the list goes on and on. Whether or not you have a perfectly healthy child or a mess is not luck, it is a choice.

Your financial preparedness historically, inability to support a child financially was the number one reason people chose to remain childless. Rational people take responsibility for their lives and do not expect the government or their mothers to bail them out. It would be unkind and disrespectful to your child and whomever was forced to take responsibility for your child if you were to have a child for whom you could not provide.

Your emotional preparedness: the world has enough people who suck. It is not ethical to contribute another irrational ass hole to the human population. You will neither make your life happier or your child's life a good one if you are emotionally infantile. Wanting to have a child is a tremendous opportunity for personal growth--have you taken it? Would it be ethical to wait until you have a needy baby wailing and not getting his needs met before you realize you need therapy? Or would the wise decision be going now, growing first and then breeding, respecting your child before you conceive him?

Rational people know that the only thing they should do with their lives is follow their own bliss--as long as it does not negatively impact other people. Your baby is an "other." If you know you suck in a way not mentioned above, your choice to force your suckiness onto that innocent child is not ethical.

Do You REALLY Want a Baby?

Rational people have the best lives because they choose them consciously. They don't pretend there is a man living in the sky who has decreed they must have ten children even if they would really rather dedicate their lives to something else. They don't get lazy with their birth control and let an accident make the decision for them. They don't look for a sign. They don't do anything just because it is the custom. They make a choice.

There are many good and rational reasons to have a child. There are many good and rational reasons to remain childless. There are even good and rational reasons to postpone making the decision. Not making the decision is the only irrational choice. 

In The Baby Decision, Merle Bombardieri wrote, "When we decide to have a child, we cut ourselves off from the freedom and other satisfactions of child-free living. Similarly, the decision to remain child-free means that we must give up the intimacy and joys of parenting. By not deciding, we hold onto the illusion that we can have it both ways--that we don't have to give up anything. Nor do we face the risk of discovering that we've made the wrong decision."

Bombardieri goes on to explain that making decisions is how we take responsibility for our lives; it's how we grow up. People who avoid the decision miss out on the growth opporttunity, the chance to learn about themselves and the chance to live a life they designed, a life more ikely to lead to happiness and satisfaction than a life accidentally lived or a life lived by the decrees of others.

Bombardieri's book, though extremely helpful, has a major flaw in that Bombardieri does not know how you plan to raise your kids nor does she have any opinions about how kids ought to be raised. In order to properly weigh the decision, the significant financial, emotional and physical costs of having children versus pursuing a career and various personal pleasures like world travel, mastering languages, instruments or particular sports, climbing Mount Everest, etc. Without knowing a great deal about the realities of how YOU would raise your children, this decision is very hard to make.

I also read somewhere--I cannot remember where--that people raised in consumerist societies like ours will find raising children unrewarding. From a young age, we are trained to consume things and experiences. Our only goal is our own personal happiness. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the future (how education is sold to us) but otherwise all of our decisions are based around whether or not something will bring us pleasure or pain. Raising children in America today cannot be called "fun".

To solve the problem of consumers not finding the consumption of the Children Experience fun enough, the government and media have done a wonderful job of convincing the masses that one must have children, no matter how miserable it makes them, in order to feel fulfilled. We are also plummeted with images of people who "have it all": the career, the family, the social life and world travel! When many people think about the choice to have children, they are not able to make an accurate one--all they can see are visions of movie stars strolling a street in Paris with their tot in tow.

In many countries in Europe, so many people thought about it and decided that having kids just wasn't worth it that the result was a negative population growth. Instead of seeing this as the reality of consumers making the best choice for their lives or even possibly a good thing considering the world population, governments stepped in to convince people to have kids. Taxes were levied up to 80% in some countries so that the government could dangle free health care, day care, nannies, maids, and more to people to get them to procreate.

The US, full of religious people who think Santa will only love them if they have kids, has not had to do this yet but from the number of comments in the media about how lucky those Europeans are, I am not sure we are far behind.

Unfortunately, not enough people are asking: why is having kids so undesirable these days? Why is it so hard and expensive? Does it have to be? Is there a way to make raising kids today in America fun?

I spent my twenties contemplating this question while I worked for the uber-rich and often famous families of Los Angeles. From my readings on the history of childrearing and methods of child rearing around the world and my experiments with family life over the last decade I have come to the conclusion that it can be fun. But only if you think for yourself, properly prepare and buck the mainstream model.

To help you make a wise decision:

The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life by Merle Bombardieri

Raising Children is an Act of Philosophy blog -- there is no single more important thing for you to read (according to me:) if you hope to make parenting a fun and worthwhile way to spend decades of your life

Rational Women Don't Use Birth Control?!

"Many people maintain total and unquestioning trust in modern medicine. They get advice and treatments from only one school of thought and willingly surrender their personal health responsibilities to the hands of their doctor. This approach is not sensible. Educate yourself before you follow anyone else's advice, including your physician's. Health is the responsibility of the individual." Raymond Francis, Never Be Sick Again: Health Is a Choice, Learn How to Choose It.

That is the health philosophy of a Libertarian.

I don't blindly follow the mystics in government, economics or education--why would I blindly follow the mystics in medicine? They are not a special breed of mystic. They are human, capable of error and most have been through an educational bootcamp that indoctrinates its students into a life of establishment-following almost as well as the military.

Luckily for me, my grandfather was a doctor who was very confident in the human body's ability to heal itself and very suspicious of the "benign" side-effects of most modern medicine. He raised four daughters and wouldn't allow any of them to go on the pill which he knew was a very dangerous drug. Most people couldn't handle trusting their four daughters to not get pregnant without the pill--yet none of his daughters had unwanted pregnancies.

My stepmother is also a doctor. At least once a month she attends a fancy dinner thrown by a drug company introducing their latest drug. After being wined and dined over snazzy power point presentations complete with flawlessly spun science and polished jokes she is usually gung ho to prescribe whatever it is they're selling. I attended a few of these dinners with her when I was a teenager and even then they made me a little sick. My stepmother pushes birth control on every teenage girl she encounters like she is saving the world.

Some of the short term side effects of the pill include: nausea, morning sickness, irregular menstrual cycles, loose bowels, bloating, mood swings, heart palpitations, depression, irregular vaginal discharge, increased susceptibility to infections, breast tenderness, loss of libido, hypertension, weight gain, decreased calcium retention (which leads to osteoporosis) and hair changes.

Some long term side effects of the pill include: depression, optical problems, increased susceptibility for cataracts, increased number of gallstones, cardiac failure, decreased resistance to colds, exponentially higher risk of having an ectopic pregnancy, increased susceptibility to endometrial and cervical cancer and jaundice.

On a philosophical level--why would I want to trick my hard-working body into believing that it's pregnant? The road to health and happiness does not begin with rejection of reality.

And on a rational level--the pill isn't worth the risks. Nothing is. My number one value is my health. Without my health, all my other values--love, family, work, adventures, philosophy--would be less enjoyable and harder to achieve.

There is something seriously crazy about the 63% of American women who think that the best way to prevent pregnancy involves putting themselves at risk for cancer. All I can conclude is that these women are not actually thinking. They aren't reading the fine print, doing their homework or thinking for themselves. It's like when people think about government in terms of "bad" and "less bad." They aren't aware that "good" exists and so they never bother to look for it.

I always make a point of looking for the Good before I settle for the Less Bad. When I researched birth control, I found something Great: The LadyComp machine--a small computer that looks like an alarm clock with a thermometer attached. You take your temperature every morning and the machine gives you a red light (if you have sex today you will probably get pregnant), a green light (you are not fertile today) or a yellow light (better safe than sorry). Used correctly, this machine will prevent pregnancy 99.3% of the time, comparable with the pill which prevents pregnancy 95 to 99.5% of the time depending on your source. The LadyComp machine has no side effects whatsoever. It has the added bonus of getting you in tune with your body and its cycles. It's used all over Europe but is unheard of in the US. It is not included in any of the birth control information given to teenagers in health classes or students in medical school. It is also not listed on Planned Parenthood's website. It sounds like an anarchists birth control already, doesn't it?

http://www.amazon.com/VE-Valley-Electronics-GmbH-Germany-LCF1001/dp/B000NOKX4Q

My stepmother told me that using the LadyComp machine was the "calendar" method of birth control, also called the "fertility awareness method," which has an abysmal 75-91% success rate. I tried to explain to her that using a computer was far better than using graph paper but she said, "Nope. You'll be pregnant before the year is out." I wasn't.

My stepmother told me I was crazy to be so "afraid of the pill." She used the following arguments to get me to sign up for an expensive daily dose of poison: everyone does it, it's fine, the side effects don't really happen and the short term ones go away.

Despite these compelling and rational arguments, I stuck by the LadyComp machine.  But she wasn't the last doctor to discourage my birth control choice. Every OBGYN I saw between the ages of 16 and 26 pushed the pill at me.

The doctor I saw in college told me to go on the pill to clear my acne (which my body cleared on its own after I fixed the imbalance that was causing it). The next doctor I saw in college didn't think it was wise for me to trust myself when it came to getting pregnant. She was convinced that all college students are impulsive morons who throw caution to the wind and cant help but have unprotected sex sometimes. I tried to explain to her that objectivists are rarely impulsive morons but she had no idea what I was talking about. I graduated from college without even one pregnancy scare. 

A doctor shortly after college told me I was a likely candidate for PCOS and should go on the pill as a precaution. This terrified me and I did a lot of research on PCOS. I learned that the pill is the worst thing someone with PCOS can do--PCOS is a symptom of something you need to fix, an imbalance in your body. The pill hides your imbalance from you until you stop taking it and then your imbalance is back, worse than ever since you were able to totally ignore whatever was causing it for the last decade. Not to mention--if my reproductive organs were struggling, why would I dose them with poison? The natural state of our bodies is health. Our bodies were designed to fix every natural problem they encounter. If I truly were a candidate for PCOS and I wanted to have children one day, I needed to take even better care of my body, help it get into balance and stay in balance. For the record, I never did develop PCOS but if I had, I would have read and religiously followed The Natural Diet Solution for PCOS and Infertility. 

One OBGYN I saw when I was 26, a famous OBGYN, considered one of the best in LA, told I me I had a hormone imbalance (all women did pretty much) and should go on the pill to control that imbalance. I submitted myself to a month of blood tests so the doctor could prove to me that I was actually hormonally imbalanced. It turned out I wasn't. 

I stayed childfree using the LadyComp machine until I was 29 and my husband and I decided it was a good time to have children.

Recently I have also heard of another form of birth control that sounds promising, call the Fertile Focus. It's less expensive than the LadyComp machine but is only 98% effective.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000S2O1CI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_10?ie=UTF8&m=A3KFUTM88PIIM7

A close friend of mine used the book Honoring Our Cycles to use the charting method. She has been child-free for ten years on this method.

Some more anecdotes:
1) I have a friend who went on the pill as a teenager to "regulate her hormones". A few years later she started suffering from debilitating migrane headaches that came like clockwork twice a month. She took some pretty terrible drugs to get through the migraines. After a few years they stopped working and she switched to even more terrible drugs. Then, two years ago, those drugs stopped working. Instead of switching to the really serious drugs, she decided to go off birth control for a while and give the LadyComp a try. After a year off the pill, she no longer got migraines.

2) Two of my friends were told to go on the pill to regulate their PCOS. Ten years later they are struggling with infertility. Infertility is expensive and the treatments are uncomfortable and painful. One of my friends, after two years of unsuccessful medical treatments is trying to get healthy with the book I  mentioned above. The other isn't quite there yet. She has only had six months of unsuccessful, expensive and painful medical treatments and still hopes that she can get pregnant that way.

3) Another one of my friends, on the pill for only 5 years, was just diagnosed with pre-cervical cancer. In three months she will find out if she needs an operation that could leave her infertile. She is only 21. It takes ten years of being off the pill for your risk of cervical cancer to decrease to the levels of the non-pill popping population.

So to conclude:

-No doctor with whom I have spoken has even heard of the LadyComp machine

-Doctors attend fancy dinners with schwag bags where they are romanced by pill companies--it's possible they have on rose colored glasses when it comes to the meds they recommend

-Doctors never study nutrition or preventative medicine in medical school so though they know how to help once you are diagnosed with cervical cancer, they don't know how to help you never get cervical cancer in the first place

-Doctors make money from the meds they sell and would make very little from a one-time sale of a machine that doesn't require any monthly payments

-Doctors believe women can't be trusted to know when they are fertile and chose to abstain or chose to use a condom

-Doctors don't worry very much about side effects, perhaps because all of those side effects bring them business

-For a fascinating look at why doctors were motivated to keep their patients healthy a hundred years ago (before the government got in bed with the medical industry) read about "friendly societies" in Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility by David Schmidtz and Robert Goodin. Wikipedia's explanation is pretty unsatisfactory and different from how the societies are described in the book
-My stepmother is not a bad person and I don't even dislike her

Recommended reading:
http://theamericanscholar.org/flacking-for-big-pharma/

Sources used in this post:
http://www.health.com/
http://birthcontrolsideeffects.biz/
http://www.webmd.com/
http://www.medicinenet.com/
http://www.guttmacher.org
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
http://www.epigee.org/