You Can’t Have It All! How to Really Succeed With Marriage, Career, and Children
David B. Stein, Ph.D.
         
   
The great American experiment is failing! Since the early 1970s, during the so-called hippie movement or the Counter Cultural Revolution, the institution of marriage has drastically changed, and not for the better. Since then we have tried to juggle having it all: marriage, careers, and children. The result has been a higher than fifty percent divorce rate, excessively stressful lives, and out of control children and teenagers.

 

Psychologists appear on the morning shows blatantly claiming that we can compensate for the job of child rearing by giving children “quality time.”  Bunk! Children do not need quality time, they need lots of time! This talk focuses on remedying the real problem, not diseased kids, but instead on our failing to make the right choices about how to balance marriage, careers, and children in such a way that we indeed meet the needs of our children. 

 

Marriages in America are failing at an alarming rate exceeding fifty percent, while of the remaining fifty percent, half lose spouses to severe illnesses or accidents, and of the remaining group only about six percent report feeling happy in their marriages. In addition, marriage counseling fails to work two thirds of the time. Couples are clamoring for help, but unfortunately the glut of currently popular marriage and relationship books, both trade and professional, are not helping. The trade market is filled with books that offer psychobabble hype, superficial information, and sugar coated, Pollyannaish nonsense that fails the needs of the readers. Divorce is painful for us, and, in spite of what the psycho-experts say, it is horrible for children as well.

 

You Can’t Have it All! is designed to arm couples for making better decisions in order to prevent divorce, to stop making bad choices of partners, to devote much more time and attention to children, and to design sensible careers that will lessen the negative effects on marriages and children. This talk is permeated with numerous case examples that will hold the audience’s attention. 

 

The main topics of this talk include:
1. A visual model, called the upside down omega, which clearly shows the course most relationships follow. This model helps explain the secret of relationships that most couples never learn. The model helps couples understand why one day they wake up feeling disillusioned, confused, defeated and guilty. It helps explain why divorce and/or affairs happen. And, most importantly, it explains how these problems can be prevented.

2. The talk clearly and comprehensively teaches the body’s biochemistry of being in love, and how this chemistry helps initiate a relationship, but also how the chemistry one day dissipates. Couples are not taught to expect this, nor are they taught how to identify this phenomenon when it does happen. A lack of knowledge, and the absence of an easy to understand visual model, can underlie the mistakes made by couples that lead to divorce.

3. Dr. Dave covers the topic of toxic people, who destroy relationships, any where nearly as comprehensively and clearly as this book does. The audience learns about toxic people and how to spot and avoid them. He also explains why attempts at fixing these types of people, after a relationship starts, meets with utter failure and ends in pain and tragedy, not only for the couple but for children as well.

4. You Can’t Have it All!  teaches something missed by all other programs, namely toxic relationships. Toxic relationships involve two good people who are just not suited for each other. Learning what they are, how to spot them, and how to avoid them can also save couples and children from unnecessary pain. Once again, information empowers people.

5. Little mention is made in other talks about the dating process. Dr. Dave covers extensively what is needed in healthy dating, what questions to ask, how to ask the right questions, so that prospective relationships can be entered into not only with loving emotions but with intelligent information necessary for making the best possible choices.

6. Most importantly covered is the concept of marriage contracts. You Can’t Have it All! introduces ten marriage contracts that involve deciding the balance of the three parts of marriages: jobs/careers, children, and time needed to meet the other partner’s needs. This information helps couples plan for and negotiate these three areas before the onslaught of stresses eats away at their relationship and destroys any feelings of love. 

7. Dr. Dave comprehensively discusses the characteristics of people who make the best partners. The material presented in this chapter required years of research in marriage counseling, a deep understanding of the literature on the psychology of love, and deep insights from literary books and the writings of philosophers.

8. Dr. Dave offers a unique approach to the topic of sex. Instead of rehashing the same old material on the physical gymnastics of sex, he discusses what is essential for the most important sexual organ – the brain. He discusses those elements that can help increase a couples desires for each other.

9. The audience will be given numerous written and fun exercises to help know him or herself well before getting into a relationship. Each audience member will extensively explore his or her personal beliefs, values, attitudes, wants and needs in order to make better choices. And, of course, no one else will know what you write or score; this is for you, the audience member, only. 

10. The talk gives specific steps that couples can take to make the years of marriage joyous, peaceful, and fulfilling, while at the same time being able to meet their career aspirations and have plenty of time to devote to the wellbeing and care of their children.

11. Everything in this presentation has been tried and tested before thirty years of audiences, especially at houses of worship and community. In fact, audiences each year request Dr. Stein to come back and speak to more members of the community.   

 

About Dr. Dave:  Dr. David B. Stein is a Professor at Virginia State University, in Virginia.  He is the author of Ritalin Is Not the Answer; The Ritalin Is Not the Answer Action Guide; Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco: Successful Parenting Without Drugs; Stop Medicating, Start Parenting; and Controlling the Difficult Adolescent.