I appreciate how people have come to such conclusions regarding the decline in the marriage rate. The bases as to why cultures have continued to encourage marriage world-wide have changed. Over-population, world-wide unemployment, a high divorce rate, and a distrust of leaders and institutions who promote marriage seems to have soured young adults on marrying at all.

Distrust in intimate relating and in the institution of marriage has led some young adults to value sex over intimacy, fun over seriousness, and sexual hookup without emotional attachment. Serious relationships are unnecessary to happiness, many of them claim (http://theminaretonline.com/2011/03/24/articel17337; http://www.npr.org/tablet#story/?storyId=105008712).

I see this conclusion as an expression of our youth's despair, rather than of uselessness of intimate relating to their happiness. Perhaps, the decline in marriage rate results more from young adults' growing inablity to cope with life's failing ideals and difficulties. It seems that a growing number of young adults have lowered their expectations of being able to cope effectively with an ever-increasingly insecure world. They've reduced themselves to the lowest common denominator in coping ability, and in vision and meaning.

I'm reminded of a dialogue between the Emperor Commodus and his sister Lucilla from the Dreamworks movie, Gladiator (2000). They are debating the usefulness of the Senate, a long-standing Roman institution, to Roman life. The Emperor Commodus believes that all you have to do to keep people happy is to appeal to their lower natures, to give them "bread and circuses". "Tell me", Commodus says rhetorically to Lucilla, "What is the greatness of Rome?", to which she replies, "It's a vision".

It takes vision to forge a deeply meaningful connection to another human being, especially to celebrate that connection through an institution, like marriage. Our youth has lost a positive vision of themselves as being able to forge such connections and to cope effectively with problems that arise from participating within them.

Today's young people are saying that they plan to follow a different path to fulfillment. They want more than a job, they want to be happy, be creative, and they want to define relationships as they wish. I am all for the younger generation's desire for true happiness, deeper meaning, authentic being, and for creating the world through their vision. This is their right.

I'm perplexed however that they would treat intimacy so casually and throw-away marriage as a relationship option, as relationships, not sex, promises the depth of happiness and quality of meaning and fulfillment that they crave and that makes life so worthwhile. More so, I'm struck at what the no relationship commitment trend says about today's young adults' casual relationship to themselves.

HardiCoping: Meaningful Engagement in Life

The most dangerous thing to treat casually is-yourself.

Meaningful connection to self, others and the world enriches us. To approach oneself and life as important and worthwhile is a psychological strength that motivates you to engage in whatever it is that you are doing. Casual, fun relationships with no emotional attachment are in contrast to meaningful engagement as a strength of being.

To engage fully, you have to express yourself emotionally and spiritually. To disregard these areas of being that most make you, or, even worse, to ignore these areas of experience as non-existent, is a sickness of being.

Take for example, my patient Sara. I first met Sara when she was twenty-four years old. Upon her parent's instruction, she reluctantly came to me to deal with being pregnant.  In Sara's mind, the answer to her problem was quite easy. Give the baby up for adoption. It wasn't my job to tell Sara to give away or to keep the child. I was not her moral arbiter. I was however a type of arbiter of her psychological health. I had to model a level of seriousness toward her, to engage with her in such a way that she could not do for herself.

Sara didn't appreciate the seriousness of having to decide to give up or to keep the child, to her whole life. She was completely disengaged from her needs, feelings, and desires.

Sara's parents wanted me to get Sara to keep the child. Sara wanted me to support her decision to give the baby up for adoption. My job was to help Sara to engage with the problem with her heart, mind and spirit, so that the decision came from her authentic self.

My work was cut out for me. Sara's HardiAttitudes were low to non-existent. She didn't think she was important and worthwhile enough to consider the meaning of giving up or keeping the child. To her, the baby was an object that made it easy to give away. This was the extent to which Sara would let herself engage with the baby inside of her.

Sara treated herself like an object, rather than a person. She had what the existentialists call a problem of being; a failure to act from her whole self. I began to challenge Sara's disengagement with herself, by questioning the psychological and spiritual parts of herself that she failed to entertain.

I asked Sara what was the best and worst case scenarios of giving up the child or keeping and raising the child herself. She of course began with the best case scenario, as giving up the child, in her mind, would make it seem as if the pregnancy never happened. Sara's worst case scenario was keeping the child. Her young adult life would be over, she said. She couldn't pursue her goals, and no one would want to date her. Here is our interaction over this:

D: Is there anything negative to giving up the child for adoption? S: What do you mean? D: What are your feelings about giving up the child? S: Badly, I guess.  D: You guess? You don't know? S: Does that mean I should raise the baby? D: What do you think? S: I don't know.  

I couldn't take Sara further in the HardiCoping process, until she was better able to consider all the ways that giving up or keeping the child might affect her in all areas of her life, today and tomorrow. Sara did give up the child for adoption. Later in the treatment, however, she began to realize more deeply the importance of intimate relationships in her development and the significance of having given up the child. Sara started to take herself and life more seriously. She was on her way to a deeply meaningful life.

Conclusion

My ideas extend beyond today's young adults. We are all at risk of short-sighted reactions to the things that happen to us. It is easy for all of us to mistakenly think we are proactively solving problems, rather than simply expressing our despair through avoiding the very experiences that have the power to enrich us deeply.

If you like my post today, please say so by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. I welcome your thoughts and comments. Happy Holidays, Deborah