What To Do When You Have No Positive Role Models

In response to Friday's post, "Did You Marry Your Father (or Mother?)", my friend, Judy, so rightfully mentioned that in addition to gravitating towards mates that emulate behaviors similar to that of your parents, it's not uncommon, once in that relationship, to model your union after your parent's interactions in their marriage. Which got me thinking...what do you do when you don't have a good role model for what a marriage should be?

I think it starts by noting what you think a good marriage should be. And then looking around at friends, co-workers, relatives, celebrities, etc. to see who emulates those behaviors and whom you might be able to adopt as your "marriage guides", per se. It's probably better if you're involved with these people personally, as you'll get face time to ask questions. But, I don't think it's necessary. The point is simply to aspire to share certain qualities that your "marriage guides" demonstrate in interacting with their partner.

A good example of an outside the family-friend network "marriage guide" might be Michelle and Barack Obama. They seem to have a strong and egalitarian relationship, as Newsweek reported this weekend. This is a quality that Adriano and I aspire to and generally do pretty well at accomplishing I think.

Another outside the family-friend network "marriage guide" that Adriano and I reference frequently is Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. At least in their earlier years (before their kids were of school age), you rarely found these two separated. They toured together, recorded together, etc. When Adriano and I worked so intimately together at Sylver Consulting we used to joke that we were the Faith Hill and Tim McGraw couple of the design research and planning strategy world. Now that Sylver Consulting has grown, we don't get to travel together for work quite as frequently. I miss this about us, as does Adriano. I guess maybe this should be a renewed goal for us for 2009-10. © 2009 - Brianna Sylver - All rights reserved