Positive Thinking Radio 4
A helping of positive thinking may be what the doctor ordered given the time we’re living in.
But romance and divorce seem worlds apart .. or maybe they’re just different faces of the same coin.
Then along comes Positive Thinking - a series that poses a set of difficult questions and gets you thinking.
It’s certainly not happy clappy.
Take the first episode … the question posed was: Is thinking about divorce the secret to a happy marriage?
Presenter Sangita Myska was posing the question and in the chair was Harvard Law Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen.
She lectures in family law and, like many gifted teachers, feels she learns a lot from her students.
Years after they’ve taken her course, she gets emails from past students telling her how what they learned changed their lives.
Nobody wants to think about divorce when they fall in love… that raging ball of happy hormones, that bubble of happiness really doesn’t want to be burst by grim reality.
But Gersen believes that pre-marriage mediation is a solid foundation for a happy marriage.
If you want to make it work, you should think about how it ends, she says.
Get a mediator on board before you marry and this will weather proof your relationship.
Gersen believes that you need to learn the tacit rules in a marriage.
These could include that there’s no such thing as free child care and what’s yours before marriage probably becomes ours afterwards.
If a mediator sits down with a couple before their marriage and asks what are you going to own, what are you going to give and what are you going to give up, then the important conversations are being had.
“I would say it is one of the most romantic things you can do,” Gersen said. “It would help you to make space for the romance … not have it cluttered and weighed down by these unspoken burdens.”
The idea doesn’t divorce-proof a marriage but it helps strengthen it for the hard times ahead.
Gersen’s idea was then put to a panel of experts for their response.
It makes for lively and interesting radio… time well spent.
Past episodes include topics like improving outcomes for children in care and ending poverty.
There was also the intriguing idea of searching for lasting happiness. Now where did I leave it?
A fresh viewpoint from someone with a big idea can take the argument in a whole different direction.
Radio to make you pause, think and perhaps even draw up a pre-nup.
