Irene and I have been married 47 years

Why does one get married? I am sure there are many books on the subject. In reflecting back to before my first marriage I remember feeling lost, confused and depressed at the thought of the future. I was going to school and still feeling the fears of going to jail. I had no idea of tomorrow or sense of purpose or what life was about. I was in a limbo. I had dated sporadically and never gave woman much thought. I was to busy showing the world how tough I was. Yet, when I thought about it, I did not know diddle squat about women. My only real experience with a women was when I was in the 8th grade at the Immaculate Conception, a catholic school, and became friendly with a woman who lived across the street from the school. I used to do some chores for her to pick up a little money. I was not sure what she did for a living except that there used to be a lot, I mean a lot, of merchant marine seaman who visited at all hours of the day and night. One day she asked if I knew anything about women and I told her that I spent twelve years in an orphanage and only saw women sporadically. This response must have triggered her female instincts, so she went about teaching me about women. (but that is another story). The bottom line was that although I had an academic understanding of the physical side of the female, I did not have the foggiest idea of how their brain worked. In fact, when confronted with having to deal, on a social level with a woman, I felt like an ice cube in a hot oven, I sweated a lot. I guess my subconscious decided that I was incapable of handling the decision making process of dealing with woman, so the best thing was to get married. My first wife was married, but getting a divorce at the time. She had two children, a job and the burden that comes from a husband who, drinks, gambles and accuses her of having children that were not his. He was a dirt bag. She dreamed of a knight in shining armor that would sweep her, and the kids, up onto his horse and ride off into a future of happiness.
Well, she had to settle for a guy who did not own any armor, drove around in a 49 ford, went to school and thought that a steady job was anything over two weeks. Back to the question…Why did I get married? Although there must be many reasons, a few stand out. I was lonely and desperate to find some stability in my life. She was lonely, frustrated and afraid of facing an uncertain future. I did not realize that I was falling off the mountain and was reaching out for someone who was also falling off the mountain. She needed someone and I needed someone, so we got married. I settled down, continued school, got a decent job and became a husband and a father. I adopted her children and we had two more. While studying psychology I became very interested in Hypnosis and took a couple of course in induction procedure. I later opened an office called the “Hypno-Cybernetic Institute” and specialized in teaching Self Hypnosis. Everything seemed to be OK, life was good. It took ten years before we hit bottom. Why, I will explain in a later chapter. All the dreams we had talked about, all the plans, the future, suddenly became a blank screen. Time suddenly reversed itself and I was back in the same vortex of loneliness and confusion. Desperate to escape the dark cloud that followed me everywhere, I took my meager belongings and fled to Hawaii.
“Enlightenment” there’s that word again. Shock, disillusionment, fear, failure, anger, depression and other dark emotions still clouded my days as I sat on the beach and tried to make sense of the insanity of life as well as the last ten years. . For one year, everyday, I sat at the beach and thought and thought and thought. Why, why, why preceded every thought. At first I felt like an ant trying to crawl out of the bathtub. No matter how hard you try you keep sliding back. But suddenly I see a path, a thread of thought. Narrow and steep, but yet it goes upward. And then a weird thing happened. It was as if clouds parted and there was the sun. The fears, confusion frustration, anger and guilt began to take on a form I could understand. Instead of a boiling cauldron of dark emotions I began to see a series of events that were like pieces of a puzzle and the longer I studied them the more a picture began to form. Once again I realized that luck was on my side. The divorce, like my arrest, was to force me to dig deeper into myself and discover the insights that only “Enlightenment” can bring. I realized, up to this point, I had just been just a passenger on a train in the journey through life.
I had not been using my life experiences as signposts to follow, but was just looking out the window as life past me by, guided by other peoples thoughts and beliefs and events that molded my daily existence. I suddenly realized that my emotions had acted like bumper cars at the carnival, knocking me in every direction, but forward. They had been in control of my life and my intellect had just been a bystander. My sub-conscious emotions filtered up feelings of insecurity, inferiority and frustration, yet my conscious intellect said I was OK and was as good as anyone else. But regardless of my positive thoughts, I was still overwhelmed with negative emotions. It was like going in a circle of positive to negative, positive to negative. Then, the answer appeared like an oasis in the desert.
The “secret to understanding the mystery of life”, was to have the emotions and intellect work together, as a team, bringing the power of emotions and the depth of the intellect into a single harmonious flow. How? By designing a method for the conscious and subconscious to communicate and resolve the confusion of mixed signals. This new communication would simplify my search for answers.
The emotions would act as references in establishing clear goals, a happy marriage, self confidence and success and then the intellect would devise a way to achieve it. A simple concept that would not work if it were too complicated The next question was how were the emotions and intellect going to develop this balanced relationship in a simple and practical way?. The solution was actually fairly apparent. The answer came very quickly. The methods I developed are simple, efficient and practical and can be applied in any area of concern. I will use marriage one of the way’s to describe the method since the qualities that make up marriage also contain elements that are applied in other areas of life.
One thing I knew without a doubt, I enjoyed sharing my days, nights and life with someone. I liked marriage. The problem was, who to marry and how to make it work. This was a perfect opportunity to test my moment of enlightenment. So I set about to create the ideal wife. Not perfect (impossible), but ideal. I had minimum but no maximum requirements. And that is why I married Irene. I created a picture of Irene, long before I met her and when she walked into my life she was a near perfect image. We met on October 7th and were married on December 31st. And 47 years later, here we are, sharing our thoughts on what has made our marriage, not only successful, but very successful. Some luck, yes, but mostly it has been working together, being honest and having specific tools to overcome the problems that are always a part of the passage of time and a growing relationship.
It is in the developmental program, that I will share discoveries about marriage. I will minimize the philosophical and focus on specific applied techniques. I will deal with tried and true methods to insure an excellent chance of a successful marriage. Two factors are critical to make the program work. First, you must truly care for your mate and you must always be honest. Deeply caring for someone is a strong motivation to overcome diversity. Being honest with yourself will determine the end results of your efforts. This is a chance to create moments of “enlightenment”, rather than wait for luck to give you the answers. It is time to seek answers.