I don’t think there is a simple yes/no answer, as technology can BOTH enrich and deplete real relationships. We stay in touch with people who live far way through Facebook, phone, e-mail or skype. We can communicate instantly with anybody, just at the touch of a finger. Yet, this same technology can prevent us from being face-to-face with people, as one phone call can just do it. We can “defriend” people we no longer want to associate with just by pressing a key on our keyboard. No second thoughts. No guilt. No embarrassment. We don’t even have to provide long explanations for our decisions. We can maintain more superficial contacts, avoiding getting too personal.

The most important consequence of being hooked on technology, however, is the fragmentation of our time. We cannot go through a meal without checking our Blackberries; we cannot go through a whole conversation without being distracted by our phone ringing, or by texting. Often our attention is spread between more than one focus. This is what I mean by fragmentation. We function in bits: one moment here, one moment there, and back to the first focus, and so on. Children complain their parents don’t give them full attention, as they listen to their days in school while checking their e-mails or texting. The reality is that most of us cannot do more than one thing at a time WELL. When we jump back and forth between different areas, we end up by being fully nowhere. Children, when they notice their parents not paying them full attention as they talk, may believe it’s their fault. Perhaps they are disappointing to the parents, or not interesting enough, or parents don’t love them, they may wonder. Sooner or later they will disconnect as well, creating a rift that won’t be repaired as they grow older. Eventually they, too, will get hooked to technology s they saw their parents do, and fragment their attention between different areas, people and activities.

Another insidious aspect of technology is that it is always available, and responds to our commands without complaining, without throwing a tantrum or disliking us, unlike real people who may do all these things and more. We get used giving commands and be immediately and consistently obeyed. We thus become more impatient with our partners in real life, and expect them to respond to us just like our technological devices do. Some of us may seek refuge in technology altogether, limiting human contact and deluding ourselves that we are “connected” through the use of social media and phone and e-mail interactions.

What can we do to maintain a healthy balance between technology and real life and relationships? The answer is:  MAINTAIN HEALTHY BOUNDARIES. Turn your phone off when your child comes home from school, or when you are having a meal with your spouse, family or a friend. Give the person in front of you your FULL attention when they talk, rather than moving back and forth between the person and the machine that is demanding your attention. Disconnect when you are outside, taking a walk, watering your flowers and, in general, being in contact with nature, or whenever you need a space to think, reflect and enjoy your solitude in order to feel replenished and restored.

Having a purpose

As you plan your retirement, think of what purpose you want your days to have: do you want to learn new skills? Or do you want to volunteer and give back to your community? Do you want to travel, and share with your local school the slides and experiences from your trips? Do you want to get more involved in your neighborhood? Do you want to do philanthropic work? Or do you finally want to learn to play the piano? Whatever you do, think of what purpose your choice will provide in your life and then ask yourself if this is what you want.

Retirement without any planning may lead at best to boredom and disorganization, and at worst to isolation, depression, excessive drinking and disconnection.

Being connected to loved ones is another important element that needs to be included in any retirement plan worth exploring. Being surrounded by loved ones keeps us involved, a part of a group. Loved ones, however, don’t necessarily have to be members of your biological family. They could be good friends, neighbors, fellows in the church or synagogue you attend. They can be people with similar interests to yours, with whom you resonate and feel close. Choosing a community where you can find the kind of neighborhood spirit that makes you feel ‘at home’ is very important, as isolation is dreadful, particularly as we age. So, stay involved in their lives. Ask what’s going on with them. Be interested.

If you plan your retirement right, you will get up each morning looking forward to a new day. You will be active, but not overwhelmingly so. You will feel positive. You will be better able to stay in the present and enjoy it, rather than worrying about what the future will be like for you.

After all, these are the “golden Years.” So, make sure that they are as golden as possible!

Gone seem to be the times when people retired and stayed home, played bingo, and gradually reduced their activities as their physical conditions deteriorated and their energy waned. Up until as recently as twenty to thirty years ago, when people retired they were OLD, often sick with multiple ailments, not interested in travelling and developing new interests and lifestyles. Often they lived close to family, their main activity being involvement with grandchildren and partaking of family life. A few of them, the adventurous and those who could afford it, moved to states like Arizona and Florida to live in retirement communities. These, however, were the exception, not the norm.

The idea of retirement today is quite different. A whole new industry has sprung out to cater to this growing segment of the population. A lot of people, at retirement, are still vibrant, healthy and full of energy, so this new industry is busy offering new housing facilities, new amenities, new opportunities to explore and be active in, and new medical care.

The new retirees tend to regard retirement as the time when they finally can do all the things they had to put aside when they were too busy working at their jobs and raising a family. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the ideas, plans and expectations of retirement are now quite different than what they used to be.

Because of all these differences – and because people live longer, hence they have more retirement years ahead of them – planning for retirement is an extremely important part of reaching this stage in life.

In most studies that address what makes people happy two elements are constantly reported as fundamental: having a purpose and being connected to loved ones. So, whatever you plan for your retirement, these two elements need to play a central role in it.

Having a purpose is an important driving force in selecting what we want to do and how to do it. When we work, whether we are professionals, have a trade or are stay-home parents, we like to feel that our work makes a difference. Perhaps we help people in need, or raise organic vegetables in our garden and sell them to the local farmer’s market. Or, we work in an office, or answer the phones, or clean houses, or do surgery. Or, we choose to raise our kids and spend many years involved in PTOs, immersed in after school activities and teenage angst. Whatever we do, we have a purpose, and this drives us to continue to do what we are doing …or change it, if we feel we don’t contribute enough.

As you plan your retirement, think of what purpose you want your days to have: do you want to learn new skills? Or, do you want to volunteer and give back to your community? Do you want to travel, and share with your local school the slides and experiences from your trips? Do you want to get more involved in your neighborhood? Do you want to do philanthropic work? Whatever you do, think of what purpose your choice will provide in your life and then ask yourself if this is what you want.

Retirement without any planning may lead to boredom, disorganization, and at times isolation and depression.

Being connected to loved ones is another important element that needs to be included in any retirement plan worth exploring. Isolation, particularly as we age, is a very hard thing to tolerate. Loved ones don’t necessarily have to be members of your biological family. They could be good friends, neighbors, fellows in the church or synagogue you attend. They can be people with similar interests to yours, with whom you resonate and feel close. Choosing a community where you can find the kind of neighborhood spirit that makes you feel ‘at home’ is very important, as isolation is dreadful, particularly as we age. Stay involved in their lives. Ask what’s going on with them. Be interested.

If you have planned your retirement right, you will get up each morning looking forward to a new day. You will be active, but not overwhelmingly so. You will feel positive. You will be better able to stay in the present and enjoy it, rather than worrying about what the future will be like for you.

Women who hold this position focus on how much busier married women are compared to single women, juggling many roles simultaneously, and often doing it solo or with little help. And, while they acknowledge and appreciate the fact that a larger number of men are getting more involved in child rearing and household chores, they think what men do is still not comparable to what they do.

In a book published in 1982, The Future of Marriage, that author, Jessie Bernard utilizes to the concept of “benefit unbalance” to describe these gender differences in marriage. In fact, for this author, the gender unbalance goes further than claiming an unfair share of responsibilities in marriage, pointing to the various areas where married women are worse off: they have more mental health problems; their labor is unappreciated and taken for granted, and they have many more stresses than single women, having to constantly multi-task and often putting their own personal goals on hold to take care of others’.

In a study conducted in England – http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/oct2006/marriage2.html – one out of three women interviewed felt marriage is no longer relevant in today’s society. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the younger the age of the women interviewed, the more likely they were to think this way. Older women, on the other hand, were more likely to still hold marriage as having an important place in society and in women’s lives and expectations.

In another book, A Little Bit married, author Hanna Seligson argues that the problem with marriage today has to do with the different level of maturity between men and women. Men, she claims, grow up more slowly than in the past and women, becoming increasingly more independent and successful in their own rights, surpass men of same age in maturity and ability to take on responsibilities. Consequently, marriage is not as balanced and equal as they would like, and thus they may not pursue it as much as they did in the past.

In the next and final blog of this series on June brides, I will discuss how these diverging views coexist, and hat they tell us about the state of marriage in today’s society.

As we watch the current media mega hoopla about the upcoming wedding of Prince William of England and Kate Middleton,  there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the current anticipation and excitement and what happened when Prince William’s parents – Charles and Diana – got married almost thirty years ago or, indeed, when Queen Elizabeth got married almost seventy years ago.

Kate Middleton was on the cover of Newsweek on 4/11/11. The caption said: “Kate the Great. In a world gone to hell – thank God, a wedding.” The reporter who wrote the story, Allison Pearson, claims that “…this is one royal marriage that simply has to work… (If not) The breakup of Prince Williams and Princess Catherine could herald the end of the monarchy itself.” So, how is this different than what marriages used to be in the past, business arrangements that strengthened families, assures succession and brought peace to quarreling parties? And, at the same time, romantic events young women looked forward to?

Indeed, young women all over the world are tuned into this royal affair and seem to vicariously see their dreams of spring weddings and love forever become reality. Conversations about the wedding gown, the guest list, the wedding menu, the proper etiquette and other topics of relevance to this wedding abound in newspapers and magazines. Several websites are exclusively dedicated to them, with chat rooms and widespread interest. The British prime Minister has declared the day of the wedding, the 29^th of April, a Bank Holiday for the country. This will allow British citizens and tourists alike – one million of them are expected! – to line up the streets and be entertained and awed by the royal procession.

This wedding captures the very essence and allure of spring weddings, today as always. As Kate Middleton herself, a lot of young women may be independent, educated and successful in their own right and free from previously restrictive social and sexual mores that offered very few choices to them. So, one would expect these women to be less in awe about this wedding. And yet getting married with pump and circumstance seems to maintain, for most of them as for young women of previous generations, the attraction it always had.

What these reactions to the upcoming royal wedding seem to tell us is that women today still want to get married, by and large, despite all the societal changes in marriage. They claim marriage provides a level of commitment and security that is not possible in other arrangements. As a psychotherapist I encounter many situations where women insist on getting married while men seem not to totally grasp why this is so important.

Marriage is still an important rite of passage for women more than for men. It is a symbol of shedding the image of being young girls and assuming the role of women. The name change, the wedding band, the ceremony all attest to this changed status. A wedding also legalize reproduction, as marriage, conception and children still seem to be connected in a lot of women’s minds, though less so than in the past. This seems to be true even if many children today are born out of wedlock and this trend is less stigmatized and more accepted than in the past. I was surprised by a friend of mine, in her fifties, who after having lived with her boyfriend for several years, finally was proposed by him. While she announced her marriage to her friends and her community, she was ecstatic, as excited as a young girl, even though little changed in her day to day life after the wedding.

In the next blog I will discuss some of the reasons why this is so. As always, I hope you will want to join the discussion on this topic with your comments and experiences.

During the 1400 and 1500, June was considered the time when people came outdoors after a long winter and bathed communally. I guess to marry when one is clean seemed to them to be a good beginning… It is quite possible that the use of flowers at weddings was also, initially, a way of masking body odor… June weddings also come from the Celtic calendar. Even the term “honeymoon” has a historical origin, referring to the first moon after the summer solstice – June 21 – which was called the “honey moon.”

Getting married in June, in pre-contraceptives times, meant that children conceived from these unions would be born the following spring, increasing their chances of survival after the long – and often very lean – winter months. Also, spring births would not interfere with the fall harvest, which was the busiest time of the year for most people.

Let’s not forget that, until quite recently, there was nothing romantic about weddings. These were business contracts between the bride’s father and the family of the groom, with bride and groom having very little to say about them! Women were considered their fathers’ property. And, as such, they would be ‘given away’ by their fathers to the groom’s family during the wedding ceremony. In most cultures, the father also had to pay a dowry to the groom’s family. In a minority of cultures, it was the groom who had to pay a ‘bridewealth’ (the male counterpart of the dowry) to the bride’s family in order to be able to marry her.

Weddings could also be dangerous events, as a wealthy bride could be kidnapped, in order to get a handsome dowry, on her way to the ceremony, or during the ceremony itself. Bridesmaids were dressed just like the bride to confuse possible captors, and the groom’s place was on the right of the bride in order to provide him with easy access to his sword, if the situation required it…

All these examples indicate how traditions get established by a mixture of pragmatic reasons and emotional ones. On these, new traditions are superimposed, reflecting specific times and beliefs. So, today, the father often is no longer the only one who walks the bride down the isle. It is more likely that both parents walk with the bride, or the bride walks by herself. The say, “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue” attests to the human tendency to value continuity and new beginnings, unity and separation.

With marriages becoming more a reflection of romantic love rather than business contracts, these traditions are reinforced in ways more in step with changed times and beliefs. The 1948 movie “June Bride,” starring Bette Davis and Montgomery Clift, reinforced the connection of weddings and the month of June in ways more reflective of these new romantic ideals, and the 1954 musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” continued to reinforce this tradition, with the song “June bride.” The upcoming royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at this time of the year is a clear indication that this tradition is alive and well.

So, how can this long tradition of June weddings continue to be so popular at a time when the institution of marriage is undergoing major changes?

We will explore this in the next blog, when we will discuss in details some of transformations and permutations marriage is undergoing in this and other countries. Please stay with us and continue to share your thoughts on this subject.

This last statement is actually the one that gets us at the deepest level, as we tend to look up to public figures to model proper behaviors for us. The Gores, in their public life, always reflected an image of solidity, mutual care, reciprocal respect and resiliency. In a world where things can change faster than we can process them, the Gores reflected our needs for consistency and predictability, and our belief that love can indeed be eternal and immutable. With their announcement to get divorced, all this seems to crumble. But is it really crumbling? Or is it merely changing? Is it them or us?

We tend to project onto people, particularly public figures, emotions we feel about ourselves. Our assessments about their behaviors, actions and decisions, therefore, tell more about who WE are than who THEY are. So, our reactions to the Gores’ announcement tell us more about how WE feel about marriage and divorce, than what THEY think.

And what do we think? We want to believe that, if we make it through the tough years of our relationships, we will reach a place where we won’t have to worry about problems any more, where we don’t have to work on the relationship any longer, but just coast. We want to believe that if people like the Gores can stay together for 40 years and still be happy, so can we. Their decision to divorce, therefore, is a huge threat to these fantasies, raising our anxieties about the future of our intimate relationship and challenging our needs for security and predictability.

And what do the Gores think? They tell us that they want to remain friends. That this was a consensual decision they reached after careful thinking and discussing with one another. If that is the case, perhaps their decision is not a negative one but one that may offer them new opportunities, new options at this point in their lives. Or perhaps they just gave up, believing there was nothing more they could or wanted to do to save their love.

It is true that couples who have been married for ten years or less are more likely to get divorced than couples who are older and have been together for many years. However, new trends indicate that the fastest growing segment of the population seeking divorce are people in middle age and older and that women are as likely to initiate divorce as men are. (Deirdre Bair, The 40-Year Itch, New York Times, 6/2/10.)

Perhaps the Gores’ announcement to divorce is a sign of the times, where older people see life as full of opportunities they don’t want to miss? Could it be a reflection of seeing middle and old age not as an end, but as a new stage they want to live as fully as the previous ones?

Middle aged and older people today are more vigorous, open to new experiences, healthy and curious about life than ever. For some of them this new view of middle and old age means better quality in intimate relationships, whether this means staying with a partner of many years and continue to improve these relationships, or moving their separate ways.

The baby boomers are the “me” generation, focused in taking care of their needs and feeling they deserve everything life has to offer. Perhaps this new divorce increase among them is yet another indication of this self-absorption?

Whatever the reasons behind the Gores’ decision, it challenges us to rethink what we want in life and what we want and need to do to achieve and preserve it.

We welcome your comments on this timely story. Click the comment button below to make your comment.

What are the underlying causes of this dismal situation?

Of course there are multiple reasons why people develop problems with weight, ranging from genetic, to emotional, psychological, environmental and cultural. Neuroscientists are studying brain chemistry to determine what if any are the connections between neurotransmitters and appetite.

Emotionally, food is associated with different meanings that go beyond its dietary value. Food can be company, comfort, love, acceptance and, always, immediate gratification, as most of us look forward to eating and enjoy food. We eat when we are sad; we eat when we are lonely; we eat when we are bored; we eat when we are nervous, excited and so on. Because of the central role weight plays in most of our lives, however, often food intake is associated with shame and or guilt. We sneak food in our bedroom because we don’t want anybody else in the family to see what we are doing. We gulp things down quickly while at work, again because we don’t want our colleagues and friends to see us eating and see what we are eating.  We eat and feel bad at the same time because we know what we eat is often not what we SHOULD eat. We give ourselves rationalizations to justify why we eat what we eat; we make promises about changing our patterns, we make commitments… but we often fail them.

80% of American women are dissatisfied with their bodies and their shape, and 50% are, at any time, on some kind of diet. No wonder why eating is such a conflictual issue for most people, and for women in particular!

From a cultural point of view, we are constantly bombarded with mixed messages about food and body shape. Models are all ultra-thin, some of them borderline anorexic, and these are the models young girls look up to and want to emulate. Most women, however, will never have models’ bodies no matter how hard they try. So, we set ourselves up for disappointment because we set goals that are impossible to achieve and sustain. At the same time, however, we cannot watch television for more than half an hour without being bombarded with food ads. Food is all around us, all the time, so we are constantly tempted by it

Fortunately, there are things that can be done to reduce the problem and create healthy ways of dealing with food.

In the next post we will discuss how we can get better control over our eating patterns and how our families and support systems can help us achieve that goal.

Give us your thoughts by clicking on the comments button below.

As a psychotherapist, I see this situation often when women come to me for help with their emotional problems. Most of them come to psychotherapy and counseling not because they are angry at a system that may demand too much of them, but because they want help to become strong, so they can, once again, fill their care-giving roles. These roles are, for most of us, our identity, and we are willing to do whatever we can to preserve who we are.

Another reason why often women come to counseling is to have a place where they don’t need to be “on’ at all times; where they can verbalize their feelings without being judged. In real life, women have to be strong for the people who depend on them; they have to be reliable, consistent, empathic, understanding and compassionate. In the counseling room, on the other hand, they can be themselves. They can voice their frustrations, their exhaustion, their insecurities and the negative feelings they harbor about themselves. They don’t have to please me. They don’t have to worry about my opinion of them.

Being in psychotherapy creates a safe haven where women can look at their own needs. From struggling with different parts of themselves that pull them in opposite directions, they often come to a place where they accept these parts and are sensitive to all of them. It takes time and work, and listening to themselves, and be empathic with how they feel. When I talk to them about the need to be a good parent to themselves, at first they admit this is a foreign concept, even though they spend a good part of their lives parenting others.

In conclusion, I don’t believe, as Buckingham states, that choice itself is inherently stressful and thus the cause of women’s increasing unhappiness. If this were the case men, who had many choices open to them all along, would be much more unhappy than they actually report feeling. Rather, I claim it is still largely lack of support together with the multiple responsibilities placed on women, now as in the past, which keeps us from developing the self confidence that comes from a job well done, and prevents us from feeling happy about ourselves and our lives.

My perspective is based on my clinical work with women, my understanding of feminine psychology and being a woman myself. 

What do you believe? I would love to hear your perspective based on your particular experiences. Please share your thoughts with us by making a comment. Simply click on the “comment” button.

Relationships, as many studies have shown, are barometers for women’s happiness. If relationships don’t go well, women’s feelings of unhappiness increase. And, because women to a great extent are still made to feel responsible for the quality and longevity of relationships, when there are problems, women feel heavily burdened and often feel personally responsible for them. Worst of all are women’s responsibilities when it comes to children, as who children are and who they will become as adults is assumed to be affected by how well or how badly they were mothered.  To these enormous responsibilities, I would add that, because women are spread much thinner today than in the past – they often work outside the home or go to school, for instance, – they may not be as omnipresent as they used to be, increasing chances of problems developing.

So, how different is the current situation for women compared to the past?

The French have a say: “the more things change, the more they remain the same”, which relates to changes that are more apparent than real. I think this say aptly applies to women’s changes in the last forty years or so.

Let’s explore in detail what’s different and what’s the same in women’s lives.

In the preceding post, I argued that the positive changes we see in today society – more school and career opportunities for women, an upward trend in men’s involvement in family and housework, some improvement in remuneration for women’s work  – are good but, in my opinion, more superficial than substantial.

This is so because, while these changes occurred, expectations, responsibilities and pressures on women continue to be very much the same as they used to be in more traditional times. In fact, demands on women have increased from all directions. And women are not getting more help in this.

Buckingham “disputes the idea that women are more unhappy than men because they carry a heavier burden of work.” I suggest that it is not the number of hours per se that creates unhappiness, but the heavy burden of responsibility and the fact that women often operate in emotional isolation and without much support. Isolation and lack of support prevent women from sharing and spreading responsibilities, which in turn makes what they do more burdensome and emotionally and physically overwhelming. There seems to be little time for women to take care of their needs; there is little precious time for relaxation and recreation.

Let’s see how this picture looks from the women’s viewpoint. Because we have internalized the notion that we are responsible for a lot of people we love, we can never tune things out, even when we are not actively working. We feel unhappy when we do not meet other people’s expectations, which have become ours as well. Unhappiness also comes from being disappointed that life is not what we expected it to be. Alone and overwhelmed, we realize often there is no one at home who feels the same responsibilities as we do. We feel everybody’s pain, we carry everybody’s burden and feel alone in this role. We may resist asking for help, because this would be a further indication of failure.

This sense of responsibility also prevents us from getting in touch with our anger, which is turned inwards and reinforces our feelings of helplessness, inadequacy and failure.

Can you identify with this picture? Or is your experience as a woman in today’s society different than the one I described?

Please share your thoughts with us. Make a comment below….