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TOP STORY _

LOVE & MARRIA

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ne in three Canadian mar-

riages fail. An estimated

five per cent of the Canadi-

an population is in a live-
in relationship. There are tales of
moral decline, of a torn social fabric.
But ironically, experts say that we are
becoming more commited to quality
relationships.

“Life expectancy has increased so
much that we now have a chance to
do this really unusual thing — live,
and get to know people really well,”
Quinby points out. “When people
come to me, theyre in crisis because
they're not getting along, their values
are conflicting. But they're interested
in getting to know each other, in
working out the troubles.”

And the interest isn’t limited to the
legally wed. Pat Brown operates the
Vancouver branch of Singles Today, a
franchised introduction service, and
insists that most of her clients want
more than a hot date followed by a
different hot date.

“People recognize they have a void
and they're doing something about it.
Instead of waiting for a relationship
to happen by acccident, they're look-
ing for someone with something in
common,” she says.

Customers pay $349 for 10 chances

to meet other people interested in

“meaningful relationships’ and the
service is so popular that branches
have opened across the nation.

FRANK QUINBY

“I’m not talking about losers. A lot
of these people are professional and
they're very busy, very goal oriented.
They want to share their lives. They
don’t want to go through the time and
difficulty of being in a bad situation
that isn’t going to lead them any-
where. They're very specific about
what they want.”

During a typical week, Brown
usually deals with 15-20 prospective
clients: each love-lorn individual is
subjected to a personal interview
which determines values, interests,
and, ultimately, the chances of com-
patibility with other listed clients.

“We find out what's really import-
ant, what a person’s perception of a
relationship is. And sometimes we
have to help them be a bit more
realistic, learn to compromise. I asked
one guy to come by for coffee because I
had to talk to him — he was a nice

LOVE AND MARRIAGE once went together like a horse and carriage. And
while the mode of transportation may be quaint, Kelly and Shannon Nyhan
became one of many modern couples to affirm a belief in commitment
when they wed on April 27, 1990.(Photo by Chuck Groot at Old Masters
Portrait Studio)

guy, but he scared away the women
wed set him up with. On the first
date, he’d be talking about how he
had to get married by a certain time
in his life. He calmed down and found
a relationship, ’says Brown.

She believes that having an objec-
tive third party act as a go-between
may help people to recognize their
priorities.

“I had a woman who swore up and
down she wouldn’t go out with a
smoker. But she’s marrying one. It
was a matter of reminding her about
the questions she’d answered when
she came to us, pointing out that this
guy met all the other requirements
she’d thought about and listed,”
Brown recalls. “You're not going to
find perfection. She was going to miss
out because this wonderful guy fell a
little short of her idea of a great
match. Sometimes, you have to teach
people about having reasonable ex-
pectations.”

Teach — it’s a word that conjures
up images of six year olds lisping the
alphabet song but, increasingly, it’s
used when talking about relations
between modern men and women.
Counsellors claim that roles learned
in childhood affect our actions in
adult relationships and that people
must be taught how to find satisfying
relationships. Love is no longer about
financial security or base sexual in-
stinct, its about learning to achieve
emotional closeness and a deep-
rooted sense of well-being.

Some people never find such fulfill-
ment, some are fortunate enough to
reach it without formal education.
Others seek professional help.
But does the fact that it is becoming
More acceptable to hire matchmakers
or that more people pay for counsel-
ling when matchmaking fails to kin-
dle the desired satisfaction, really
indicate that lovers want different
sorts of relationships than their
grandparents wanted? If past genera-
tions didn’t have Singles Today, they
had tightly knit communities of peo-
ple who shared their values and back-
grounds. When they selected mates
from those communities, there wer-
ent hordes of counsellors to consult
but there were, undoubtedly, family
and friends who offered advice and
support.

“Maybe modern society hasn’t com-
pletely changed the kinds of relation-
ships people want, but we have a
more transient lifestyle,”"says Justis
Chase, who counsels couples and also
leads seminars on how to find a

compatible partner. “If a person grew
up in a small place and married
someone from that place, there’s a
pretty good chance the couple will
similar values and similar ways of
thinking. Now, you might get one
person from Africa and another from
Omaha, And people aren’t used to
eliciting values — it hasn’t always
been neccessary, some things were
assumed.”

“So people have to learn how to find
out whether or not they share values.
And it’s not enough to say that both
people believe in respect or equality.
They might be using the same words
but, because of different back-
grounds, not attaching the same
meanings to the words.”

Chase advises couples to ask ques-
tions about the past, and to ask early
in a relationship. As well, he suggests

that compatibility can be assessed by

having each partner picture a time
when he or she felt especially happy.
If one person’s mental picture is large
and bright but the other person’s is
small and dark, the partners have
different thinking styles and may
encounter difficulties.

“Qur society emphasizes success
and a poor relationship turns ener-
gies away from other aspects of life.
So a greater cross section of people
are wanting a good relationship. But
they don’t have the knowledge of their
partners that people once thought
was an instinct: really, it wasn’t an
instinct, it was just easier to meet
someone who shared your values.”

For $59, a person can attend one of
Chase’s seminars and learn how to
assess the chances of developing a
good relationship with any particular
person. And while Chase admits that
his last Victoria seminar wasn't sold-
out, his workshops have attracted
full-houses across North America.

He attributes his success to the fact
that: “People don’t know where else to
go. Not very many people offer a
systematic, mechanical kind of way of
looking at relationships.”

“Tf you can ascertain a person’s
values in the first 20 minutes of
conversation you can . . . well, it
sounds almost crass. You can deter-
mine whether or not it’s worth your
while to continue with that person,”
he says.

But how do people find each other
for the initial 20 minutes? Do they pin
signs to their chests: “I’m Alice, ’'m
single and I grew up in Burnaby”? Do
they, as is the fad in some larger
American cities, fax photographs and

GE

personal messages to offices in the
faint — but sometimes rewarded —
hope that someone passing by the fax
machine will also be single? Do they
sign up for automotive and/ or needle-
point classes, hoping to meet eligible
members of the opposite sex? Should
they spend agonizing hours trying to
capture, in 25 words or less, the
essence of their personality — so the
attempt can be published in the thick-
est Friday paper? There are dozens of
possibilities.

Locals can join the People Meeting

People Club, a social group which
holds Sunday night dances and tries
to offer, as executive board member
Phyllis Vanderbyl says, support for
people who may be on their own for
the first time ever.
- “It’s informal. We get together for
the dancing and sometimes for pot-
luck dinners. If people like each other,
they might become couples. But that’s
not the only point of PMP. We're just a
fun bunch of friends,” she says of the
group, which is geared towards the
over-30 crowd.

“There are those who'd like to get
Married again and those who
wouldn’t dream of it. There’s no pres-
sure to find anybody,” she say.

In fact, many PMP members have
‘graduated’ from other groups, such
as a former group for single parents,
Parents Without Partners, or may
eventually drift off to other groups,
such as Dress To Impress (a dinner
and dance group) or clubs which bring

together single people with common
interests (cooking or athletics).

“T'qd advise avoiding bars and I
wouldn’t advise people to get into
mountain-climbing if what they real-
ly like to do is hang out at the UVic
library,” says Steven Slavik. While
completing his Masters degree in
counselling, he offers marital counsel-
ling from a basement office in his
home.

Relationships, he says, should be a
matter of common sense. But there
are four (open) boxes of Kleenex in his
bright, sparsely furnished, office.
“People don’t co-operate. In fact, my
wife and I used to have a joke, only it
wasn’t really a joke, about how the
only thing we could do co-operatively
was put away the groceries. And
people come here to say ‘my partner
isn’t doing it right.’ What happens is
that people don’t bring the same
expectations and perceptions to a
relationship.”

Referring to five stages of relation-

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