Ramblings of an Anonymous Coward

Reflections, but which way?

it struck me, perhaps a week ago, that there sure are a lot of television shows on now that try and deal with people's relationships. aside from the oprah and dr. phils of the programming world there is:

• shalom in the home where rabbi shmuley provides his insight and advice. not only does the title have a nice ring, shmuley seems like a genuinely nice person and unlike some shows he doesn't (imho) put himself above those he is trying to help.
  
  
• 1 week to save your marriage is hosted by renowned psychotherapist dr. robi ludwig. ok, i copied that from their site, i have no idea who this woman is. oddly she looks a little like a woman that works at my company which is a little creepy for some reason. that said, this host has "exercises" for couples to do to see where some of their relationship strengths and weaknesses are. it has it's own shtick where the couple spend a night apart without their rings and then decide at the end whether to remain married or not. to me, that is a little too "made for tv/entertainment" for my tastes and not even done well enough to where i (as a viewer) am rooting one way or another.
  
  
• sexual healing is a showtime series whose tag line is "real couples take their private lives public". sounds a lot like a video blog then. heh. the show is hosted by -- again their words not mine -- world renowned sex educator and therapist dr. laura berman. i haven't watched this show yet, i simply stumbled across it when i was looking for some late night veg-out time. so i guess there isn't much i can say other than this is yet another "deal with relationships" show.
  
  
• design therapy is a new show on hgtv that doesn't seem to have a web page yet. essentially it combines one of those room redesign shows (e.g. trading spaces, ...) with a little relationship therapy thus combining two types of shows women seem to like to watch and men generally avoid. yeah, yeah, some of those shows can be interesting, but i'd much prefer the espn-ish highlight version of them.
  
  

i've shared this observation with a couple people and while it can make for some interesting conversation, i'm always left wondering why these shows are on. sure, people like to see the lives of other people (real or fantasy) and certainly like to see when their lives are more fucked up than our own, but why this trend and why now? are relationships having more trouble now than they did 10, 20, 30 years ago? are we just more public about it? are people today more willing to air their proverbial dirty laundry for a few minutes of tv-time? there are certainly a lot of blogs that do that, but they are often far more anonymous or at least can be.

a friend that recently got married told me about his new father-in-law being at the wedding and brought his 4th wife. my first thought was everyone can mess up once. hell, even twice. but by the 3rd time you should have a clue that something needs work. of course we all probably think we aren't the problem. maybe these shows are showing us that w e are the problem?!?

divorce rates are up and the prospect of successful second marriages is also pretty bleak especially when drugs, booze, and infidelity are thrown into the mix. maybe it is our growingly ocd culture of needing instant gratification. the i want happiness now and it isn't there roaming around to find it. and of course when found it is sucked up and we want more or better. i think i've been guilty of that at times.

i work with a number of people from other countries and when discussing how marriage works in india i found it quite interesting. why? well, at least i would have expected arranged marriages to have a greater failure rate than ones where we pick our own spouses. maybe our families have a better sense of who would be a better mate for us than we know for ourselves?!? while talking about these things a bit i remarked to one fellow that it seems like a lot of the marriages are more like "business relationships". i honestly expected him to agree, but he did not. "no, not at all", he said. what struck me as a bit odd was that these relationships were built on the idea of simply making what they have work. i'm sure some pine for romance, undying love, and all the impractical things we think of with a "perfect relationship", but in the end that isn't what they are working towards. it is building the family and making life good (or at least acceptable) for themselves.

after the discussion, the pessimist in me figured that you would never seen an indian man (or woman) be completly distraught should their spouse pass away. sad, sure, but not in the throw yourself off a cliff sort of way. no hollywood bollywood romances there i suppose. the humorist in me figures that they are ok with that since there is always the next life.

so it all loops back. are these televison shows a reflection of how our society is today -- a lot of people with a lot of fucked up relationships and now comfortable enough with it that we can show it to the world -- or are these shows and others simply providing fuel to make us think our lives are fucked up?

maybe it is a conspiracy? maybe there are a bunch of out of work therapists that have decided to put on shows to generate more work for themselves? i be the whole home decorating show trend has improved home depot's bottom line. people see interesting ideas and try to do them too or are simply envious of the homes of others and find the need to improve theirs. in the end, i'd bet the bottom line of anything home improvement wise has gotten better since these shows aired. of course one can argue that the homes have improved too, but that is a matter of taste... 'cause damn some of those improvements simply aren't.

maybe therapists and shrinks have caught on to this and have decided that once enough people start seeing the problems of others and that they are getting help (if you can call it that), that viewers, too, will flock to therapists to aid them in their relationship woes. it's a theory. *grin*

men. the time of the strong pimp hand has gone. run for your lives.

and for the record, the pimp hand comment is a joke. violence in a relationship is simply wrong and can not and should not be tolerated. period.

Posted by ac at September 1, 2006 05:45 PM