It's very exciting to see what is happening in the media and online as a result of Mo'Nique's admission that she and husband Sidney have an open relationship. Here's my friend Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, in a Dallas TV interview on the subject which was just posted to the Dallas CW affiliate's website. (The CW network serves younger adults.) And of course included is requisite marriage and family therapist expert, in this case Dr. Ross Stewart, who typically claims that since the marriages of all in open relationships he's counseled have failed, then open marriage is proven not to work. Why does it never occur to these people that theirs is a biased sample?? He doesn't see the people whose open marriages are working well for them. Duh.
If you are reading this on Facebook, you can see the video here.
5 comments:
The quote they choose to show from Dr. Ross Stewart is about the most supportive they could have. He says that open marriages are not accepted in society, and that puts stress on the relationships of people who have them. How... completely true?
Oh, to be sure, quite true. However, what he implies is that people shouldn't try it if they want their marriage to survive. Certainly it poses some risk, but we know many, many people who are making it work and are happy that way. Dr. Stewart says nothing whatsoever about that. Doesn't make him much of an expert to my mind.
Indeed. Well, given that the standard of unbiased reporting for news these days is "find someone who disagrees and film them," it's no great surprise that they came up with someone like Dr. Stewart. On the plus side, however, at least they didn't interview any of those hysterical "save the family" people. I call it progress.
And, oh yeah -- Mo'Nique gets a big "thank you" for her courage.
Y'know, I have never been a fan of her film work but her coming out as part of an open marriage completely piqued my interest HARDCORE. How exciting! How brave of her to use the academies as a forum. I might just have to start paying attention to Mo'Nique and her work.
I'd say that if 100% of the poly clients he's counseled have divorced, that speaks more to his success rate as a counselor. I don't know about anyone else, but *I* don't want to get counseling from a therapist with a 100% failure rate.
Just once I'd like to see one of these shows let the pro-poly side actually point out on air that the reason these counselors don't see successful relationships is because successful relationships don't seek the services of marriage counselors, and to point out that anecdotal evidence has never been accepted as valid scientific evidence to base a conclusion on.
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