Ways Your Wedding Videographer Can Tell If Your Marriage Will Last

In a perfect world, everyone would find their soul mate, recite a set of heartfelt vows, and ride away into the sunset on the path to happily ever after. In the real world, however, the numbers tell us that around 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. What gives? How is it that so many people could be so wrong about something so important? The truth is, there are definite warning signs to whether or not your relationship is destined for marital bliss or for divorce court. And the fact of the matter is that while you may not be able to recognize trouble, the people you've brought in to help with your big day can often see it loud and clear.  I'm talking about your hair stylist, your florist, and yes - your wedding videographer. Not only have they watched you interact before, during, and sometimes after your "I do's," but they also see countless successful and failed couples go through the same ritual every year. Here are ten ways that your wedding videographer can predict whether you and your beau are headed for happiness or for headaches.

The Bad Signs...
1. You Argue Over the Small Stuff
 Chances are you're going to hit some rocky patches in your marriage - managing financial issues, raising hellacious teenagers, or caring after each other's elderly parents. If you can't agree on what song plays in the background of your wedding video while you're putting on your tux, you're probably going to have serious problems managing your lives together.

2. You're Trash Talkers
 "When brides come in a few days before the wedding to hash out final details, it's never good when she arrives sans groom," says Tim Canter, owner of Artistic Video Creations, a wedding videography company in Ohio. "But when she comes in with her mom or a bridesmaid and can't stop throwing her fiancé under the bus, it's an even bigger red flag. It probably isn't a fairy tale wedding when you're already so annoyed with someone that you're trashing them to a total stranger."

3. You Leave Your Wedding to Watch the Game (Seriously)
You can't know whether Michigan will make it to the playoffs the year you decide to get hitched, but spending your reception at the lobby bar watching the game DURING YOUR WEDDING is never a good sign.                              Don't think it happens? "It happens all too often," says Canter. "At one wedding, the groom disappeared right after dinner and missed all of the big moments - the bridal dance, the mother/son dance, and the bouquet and garter toss. He finally arrived with 45 minutes left in the night, but the damage was done." If a game is more important than your wife on the biggest night of your life, it's pretty easy to think she'll be much easier to ignore on an average day.

4. You Don't Spend Time Together on Your Wedding Day
Sure, your family and best friends have all gathered around to celebrate your special day, so it's only natural to devote a large portion of your time and energy to them. But when you barely see your new partner post-ceremony or actively spend your time pre-occupied with everyone else, it makes your videographer wonder why you wanted to marry that person to begin with.

5. You Haven't Accepted Your Relationship Roles
 Often in relationships, one person takes on a dominant role while the other partner steps back a bit. What's necessary for a happy union is to learn this give-and-take early on - you know when he/she is going to want to take the lead, and vice versa, and you're both fine with it. Generally Canter says he thinks this works out fairly well, but when a bride or groom hasn't accepted the relationship's dynamic, it's a sign they're headed for trouble.
"I see a lot of controlling partners," he says. "If a bride or groom is barking orders or rolling their eyes at their partner's mistakes, it's a big red flag. Believe it or not, I've seen brides yell at their new husbands for not striking a good enough pose for a shot."

6. You're Not Compatible
 Real compatibility can get masked in everyday life as a couple moves through their routines. But an event like a wedding can bring out incompatibilities faster than it takes to cut the cake.
Canter says he can spot differing personalities from a mile away - like when one person wants an elegant black tie affair and the other just wants a backyard party. Or when the bride values perfect makeup/hair/photos and the groom insists on smashing cake in her face."It's one thing if they can work out the differences and come to a happy conclusion, but sometimes you can tell that they're just very different people and probably won't make it too far in their marriage," he adds. 

7. You Get (REALLY) Cold Feet
If you opt for a wedding video, there's something important you should consider: you'll be wearing a microphone for most of the evening, so whatever you say could end up on tape. "I taped a wedding once where the groom was watching his mother-in-law light the candles while simultaneously telling his best man that he was making a big mistake. He ended up going through with it, but both he and his new wife got so drunk at the reception that they had to separately go sleep it off in the hotel room before the night even ended. If you need to get smashed to be around one another, it's probably not the best sign of a lifelong bond."

The Good Signs...
1. Your Interests are Synced
Maybe you met at a Giants game and the bride wants to surprise the groom by wearing a blue and red garter. Or perhaps you both have a soft spot for Chuck Taylors and want to walk down the aisle rocking your favorite kicks. Building similar interests -- and making it a priority to feature them in your wedding video -- is a pretty good indication that you're tuned into one another, and a good sign for long-term compatibility.

2. Your Nerves Get the Best of You - In a Good Way
There's something to be said for nerves, but Canter says it still makes him happy to see someone get crazy nervous for the right reasons - like wanting everything to go perfectly for their partner, or because they simply can't wait to see the other person. "When you see so many people that are more concerned with the centerpieces than the actual ceremony, it makes it that much more special to see someone who looks like they're waiting in line to cash in a winning lottery ticket," he says. "They're almost dizzy with anticipation and positive energy. That's a pretty good sign they're not going to take each other for granted later."   

3. You Break Out the Dancing Shoes
I'm not talking about taking lessons or choreographing some elaborate first dance. Instead, this one's about getting lost in each other's presence. Along with slow dancing - it's always a good sign when a couple can close their eyes and really absorb the moment, even in front of 200 guests - busting out crazy moves together is another great indicator of success. The couples that have the most fun aren't forcing anything - instead you can tell that they're best friends and want to be partying together all night long.

The Good Fight: Soft Start-ups and Smooth Repairs

Keep your fights from spiraling out of control with these simple, proven tips.

Do you know John Gottman? Well, I don’t mean personally, but do you know of John Gottman? Perhaps you’ve heard his name mentioned or seen him on TV. Dr. John Gottman, a relationship guru, is a psychologist who studies marriage and writes excellent books on improving your relationship. 

What makes Gottman so special is that his ideas are based on over 30 years of scientific research.

In this month’s column, I’d like to translate some of that research for you. I will introduce two relatively simple ideas based on Gottman’s work: the soft start-up and the smooth repair. Both can help you fight more constructively (or avoid a fight altogether).

With these ideas in mind, I hope to launch you on a journey of improving your relationship with your partner.

 1. The Soft Start-up.

One of Gottman’s main findings is that wives are more likely than husbands to start a conversation with criticism.

When Gottman recorded couples interacting, he often saw this in very distressed couples. In fact, he found that he could predict future divorce with a high degree of accuracy based on how critical wives were of their husbands in the first three minutes of the interaction.

A harsh start-up often causes one partner to retreat, which only makes the other more upset. That cycle is a fast track to divorce. 

For example, imagine a married couple: Jane and John. Jane says, “Why are you treating me like I am invisible?” John looks at her, then just walks toward the bedroom. Jane pursues, standing at the bedroom door, almost yelling, “I want an answer! It’s like I am not even here!”

To counteract this dynamic, we need to move to a softer start-up. For example, Jane might say something like, “I love when you talk to me—about anything. Sometimes, it seems so hard for us to just talk. Tell me something. I’d love to hear what you did at work today.” This doesn’t get at the problem directly, but it begins from a position of valuing the other person, not putting him/her on the defensive.

Let’s switch the genders now because this can go both ways. John picks both kids up from school, feeds them and starts the nighttime routine. Jane is trying to get home from a late work meeting. When she finally arrives, John blurts out, “Where the hell were you?! It’s a madhouse here, and you’re out to dinner enjoying yourself.” Jane responds sarcastically, “Oh, poor John, it’s so tough watching the kids for two hours—like I don’t do this all of the time.” And we’re off to the races. 

The softer start-up in this situation is clear. Any number of less accusatory and angry statements would work. John: “Thank God you’re home! It’s a madhouse here.” Or, John: “What happened? It’s getting late and I was beginning to worry.”

Softer start-ups lead to better conversations. Try it, and see if it improves your relationship.

2. The Smooth Repair.

All couples fight, and all people in a relationship criticize and get defensive with each other. The question is not about ending these behaviors per se (although decreasing their frequency can be important in many cases), but about building better repair strategies. 

Gottman has found that one of the key elements of successful relationships is high quality repair. By repair, Gottman means any tactic that deescalates a conflict as it unfolds. Good repair strategies are how successful couples prevent their conflicts from getting out of control.

What does repair look like? It’s soothing yourself or your partner; it’s using humor to deescalate tensions; it’s acknowledging that things are getting overwhelming; it’s allowing your partner to be right; it’s recognizing and stating that you’re wrong; and, it’s often a comment on the communication itself.

This last idea is important. Meta-communication means talking about how the discussion is going in general. Consider: “I think we’re getting off track here, and I don’t want this to turn into a big fight.” Or, this: “Wait. I’ve lost focus. I am so angry, but I don’t know what exactly we’re fighting about right now.”

In happy couples, the meta-communication opens the possibility of deescalation; in unhappy couples, however, the meta-communication can be just another “thing” to fight about.

Consider Jane’s effort to deescalate: “I think we’ve gotten off track here—we need to just calm down.” John’s response: “Who are you telling to calm down?! YOU need to calm down. I have a right to be angry because you’re being obnoxious.” 

This example is a clear repair failure. John didn’t accept Jane’s meta-communication bid to slow things down. From this example, we see that repair depends more on the receiver side than on the initiator side. You can be humorous, affectionate, or meta-communicative, but it’s not going anywhere if your partner doesn’t see the bid and respond in kind.

When we think about having “good fights” with our partners, we need to think about noticing repair bids and accepting them when they’re thrown out there.

If your partner simply pounds on you when you try to repair, why not talk with him/her about the importance of learning to put the brakes on during a fight? If you talk about repair in advance, then you can both notice the bids when they’re being thrown out there.

Grown-Up Love 

Love is (a) champagne and high heels; (b) a passionate, china-shattering fight, followed by an all-night tango; (c) a constant, nagging feeling of insecurity; (d) none of the above. Joan Konner explores the crucial difference between romance and the L word. I have been researching the subject of love all my life. First, unsystematically, as a girl, trying to follow the programmed prescription—seeking "the one" and living happily ever after. Next I divorced and researched love as a woman, more systematically, confronting fantasies and failures, possibilities and disappointments, false starts, and at last, beginning 24 years ago, a love that's enduring and nourishing—at least for the moment (I've learned never to take the gift of love for granted).
Now I am on the case as a professional, a journalist who rebels against almost everything I see, hear, and read about love in the popular media. Every story insults my experience of love. Every story offers a ridiculous scenario that results in half-baked romance and scorched lives. There's the tragic version: Love, Obstacle, Separation, Loss (Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Erich Segal's Love Story). And there's the fairy-tale version: Love, Obstacle, Triumph, Happily Ever After (Cinderella, My Big Fat Greek Wedding). The obstacles—class, clan, race, work, conflicting dreams—provide the dramatic tension. In America we live in a culture that glorifies passionate, romantic love. Our friends are in love, dreaming or daydreaming of it, waiting and dating to fall into it. Women and men begin new lives in love. Romantic love is our inspiration, our motivation—our reason to be. Romance is a cultural obsession, an imperial ideal. We believe that love can be found, here and now and forever, in an instant, across a crowded room—or tomorrow, just around the corner.
It can—but rarely. In reality, romance is more fleeting and more dangerous than we are told, more complicated than we could have imagined, more elusive than we've been led to believe. Love is a promise made every day only to be broken tomorrow. As the Jungian analyst Robert Johnson wrote in We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, "The fact that we say 'romance' when we mean 'love' shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle. We are confusing two great psychological systems within us, and this has a devastating effect on our lives and our relationships."
In a documentary I'm researching and developing for television, I want to distinguish love from romance, to explore the ideal of true love, or real love, as Johnson describes it. Talking to Johnson, I told him that it seems to me that love, not romance, is the love we seek, the love we need, the love that enriches life and has the potential to make us happy. "That's the story I want to tell," I said—a different story of love—and show its appeal to our deeper desires and nature. "Good luck!" Johnson said. "In this society, nobody wants to hear about it. Even if it is the truth." He may be right. Even our language undermines that story. We use words like settle and settle down when we marry or accept a more stable relationship. We "compromise" for a mate who is flesh and blood if not quite the prince we imagined. Johnson calls the love he's talking about oatmeal love. Isn't there a tastier image? The very vocabulary advertises that the champagne of true love is flat. If we care or dare to look at what those who have thought deeply about love have written, we could learn that romance is potentially transformational but never lasting. Research conducted by social scientists suggests that "Romance" lasts 18 months to three years. (Isolde's love potion worked for three years before it wore off.) We could learn that sexual union is only one expression of transcendent passion and human connection. More often sex is neither. We could learn that although the chemistry of connection can occur in an instant, the passage of time—along with friendship and respect—is a crucial element of grown-up love, what might be called enlightened love.
"The passion of romance is always directed at our own projections, our own expectations, our own fantasies," Johnson writes. "It is a love not of another person, but of ourselves."
On the other hand, "Love is the one power that awakens the ego to the existence of something outside itself, outside its empire, outside its security."
Love, in other words, is transcending the ego to connect with another. Johnson writes: "The task of salvaging love from the swamps of romance begins with a shift of vision—. Real relatedness between two people is experienced in the small tasks they do together: the quiet conversation when the day's upheavals are at rest, the soft word of understanding, the daily companionship, the encouragement offered in a difficult moment, the small gift when least expected, the spontaneous gesture of love."
Enlightened love is the connective tissue of existence—a state of being that exists regardless of our opinions of what it ought to be. We live for this kind of love. We work for this kind of?love.
The noted psychoanalyst Ethel Person wrote in Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: "Love is an act of the imagination." She says, "Most of us are not originators of stories. Most of us pull our ideas of love from the culture, from the poets and artists who bring this form of desire and gratification together into one script, one scenario. Only then does the average individual try to change the imaginary act into a lived life." In other words: Me, Meg Ryan; you, Tom Hanks—even in New Jersey, maybe especially in New Jersey.
So love is a story we tell ourselves. Except the familiar love stories have gone stale. Today Cinderella's sisters hold jobs, and her stepmother has a support group. The prince buys Viagra on the Internet, and the king opens his castle to the public to make ends meet, if he's not trafficking in insider trading. Romance has been degraded into a sexual how-to. We need a new story or a new telling of the old story. We need a Star Wars of the heart—an epic, with heroes and heroines, huge challenges and glorious victories.

Here's a personal story:
It was our first vacation together, now 24 years ago. We were rafting on the Rio Grande in central Colorado. Just the two of us, in a small rubber raft. No guide, as two inexperienced rafters probably should have had. The gray water was swift and turbulent. Rocks jutted out everywhere, jagged knives, sentries of slime, poised to rip our flimsy float. We twisted and spun in the flow. Now I was in front, then he, then I. Hoarse with fear, I shouted over the roar of the river: Paddle this way! Paddle that! I resurrected strokes from long-gone memories of summer camp. Pull the paddle! Push the paddle! (No time for feathering now.) We traveled like smoke in a breeze, for miles it seemed, when abruptly the river veered right and a tall wall of rock appeared directly in our path. "Back, back," I screamed. "Stroke! Back!" Though he must have heard, he did not heed me. He'd gone to camp, too—Boy Scout camp. He did what he had to do, issued orders of his own—not that I could see or hear beyond myself at that moment. Miraculously, we cleared the wall and headed into a lull in the river. In frustration and fatigue, I announced: "We have conceptual differences!" To which he answered: "Shut up and paddle." Not exactly what I might have dreamed of. But we were safe after all, and in relief and disillusion, we laughed and kept paddling down the canyon.
What is a story if not a metaphor, a myth in the making?
Love is a raft in a swiftly moving river, scant protection against rapids and rocks, a private place of smells and tastes, eloquent looks and intimate touch, a cache of common dreams and accumulated history. We seek its secret, but it is as individual as one's own face, hidden even from ourselves. Me, Joan; you, Al. We have conceptual differences. We are conceptual differences. We don't even pull into the driveway the same way. But isn't that where love begins, in the difference—the otherness—that makes love possible, and necessary?
Love is the mystery of union, the distance to be transcended, the fuel to cross an infinity. It's another kind of math. Two times Love equals One. We are One and not One, a paradox in being. And that's only the half of it, maybe only half of the half—my half. We shout and we shut up. We laugh, we paddle. The fuel is a flame that flickers. We give it air, and we trust the flame will not go out. The dramatic tension is internal.
As Robert Heinlein told us in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land: "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." So simple—the happiness of the other is essential to our own. Practice it for homework. That's a how-to that bears repeating, on a daily basis. As one wise woman, who outlived three happy husbands, advised: "Find out what he doesn't like, and don't do it."
That's a love story I'd like to report, a story missing in the popular media. As Johnson said: It takes a shift of vision.

The Moment When Love Clicks

 There is a moment.

Of course there are infinite moments, but there is one particular kind that is especially difficult to pinpoint once it has passed. It is the moment when love clicks. It’s hard to pinpoint simply because the sensation it renders quickly leaks and spreads into the moments to follow, whether that be days, months, or years. In that instant, love is all you know and that clarity is all you need. But as time goes on, love may resurface with new rationale or grow in new and unexpected ways, so how could one possibly remember when love initially clicked?

It might be the moment when they remind you about a piece of yourself that you’d buried deep for some time, and it resurfaces because they recognize it as beautiful. It might be the moment when they make you laugh so hard that you taste the salt of your tears and glance at them with blurry overflowing eyes. It might be the moment they surprise you.

It is definitely the moment when the person you are staring at means more to you than you could or should have ever realistically anticipated. It is usually a moment when your heart feels like a hummingbird that is trapped in your ribcage because the words “I love you” are tearing around somewhere deep in your abdominal cavity, begging to be released from within. It is probably the moment when you realize that you want to, or rather, need to be better because this person exists in your world.

It is the moment that startles you because you are sure.

And it might seem easy for some to recall, but perhaps those people are missing the fact that love creeps up on us like thunderstorms in the Northwest. We recognize the rain until suddenly, there is thunder and lightning – and it is so much more than we could ever have forecasted.

Every Mistake You Make In Your 20s Has Consequences

“I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it.” — “Goodbye To All That” by Joan Didion

Your worst fear is suddenly realizing that it all counted for something. Your mistakes did have consequences. The people you dated and quickly disposed of all added up to something; they all kept you away from really figuring out how to really love someone else. “There are so many other fishes in the sea,” you tell yourself. “I can keep dating nobodies until I find a somebody. I’m young, My heart can take it.”

Time moves slowly until it doesn’t, until all of a sudden you realize that it’s been years since you’ve had something real and you’re moving farther and farther away from where you want to be. Are you becoming damaged goods? Are you becoming someone you would’ve pitied five years ago? Tick tock, tick tock.

People think nothing matters and nothing sticks when you’re young. You’re entitled to spend your weekends hungover in bed and watching the television. You’re entitled to spend your Sunday drifting from one place to the next in a sleep-like state. You’re still a baby. You don’t need to be awake yet.

When I first moved to New York, I was 21. This was almost five years ago, a time when my face looked thinner and I could still spend my days with people who didn’t make a whole lot of sense and who I didn’t even really like. My energy was high and I would go to anything I was invited to. A house party in Sunset Park that’s being thrown by some lesbian in my Gender Studies class? Be there in five, babe! Sneaking into a random rooftop party? I’m game! Today I have trouble showing up to my own friends’ birthday parties.

You are a cliche. Things will change without your permission and you will find yourself becoming someone you promised yourself you would never be. The quicker you come to terms with this, the sooner you can move on and learn to be comfortable in your new skin.

Sometimes I feel like an asshole for thinking that I can’t relate to people who are 21, 22, or 23. I’m a week shy of my 26th birthday. I’m not ancient. But I think of who I was at 21, 22, and 23, and I think of a stranger. I think of someone who dated men he knew he would never care about but did it anyway out of fear, out of some bizarre obligation to experience different types of lovers. I hurt people because I didn’t want to sleep alone, because I would’ve rather been with someone I had no feelings for than no one at all. I thought none of these men mattered but, in fact, they did. In a way, they matter now more than ever.

I think of someone who puked in a bucket on his 23rd birthday. I think of someone whose ups and downs were so severe, he learned to never trust his feelings. I think of someone who had more friends than he knew what to do with and never imagined it ever being any other way. I think of someone who never imagined anything to be different or to ever change.

This past year, I’ve realized that the mistakes have added up. I’m paying for everything now. Life has come to collect and I’ve been charged major interest. This is okay. This is fine. This is life. Just another thing to figure out and deal with to the best of your ability.

I do miss it though. I miss not knowing that it all matters. I miss thinking that nothing would ever stick and I had no limit on the mistakes that I could make. The naïveté may have been secretly hurting me in the long run but damn it if it didn’t feel good at the time.