Love, Pain, the Whole Damn Thing PDF Print E-mail
Written by Kathleen Kevany   
Saturday, 22 July 2006
Love, pain, the whole damn thing! Is marriage obsolete?

Observations by GRIP reader Kathleen Kevany on “Is Marriage Obsolete?” GRIP magazine issue #2, June 2006

Editors: We read your comments with interest, Kathleen, and we thank you for contributing and continuing the dialogue. Our thoughts in response to some of your questions are inserted in italics.


I have read the first and second part of this article with interest. I have some process comments first then some responses to your very engaging dialogue.


I delight in how well you dialogue together. You take tremendous risks to expose your views, and in doing so, allow yourselves to be vulnerable not only to each other, but the rest of – the whole world! I love your honesty, candor, your ability to openly and carefully challenge one another while you clearly illustrate your kind regard and mutual respect. You are leaders in the field of human and gender relations. You are champions in your own right. Others, that is most of us, may not be where you are at.


You touch on so many profound issues in this piece that make the reading was very engaging. Weaving in many issues makes it more complex while addressing a central question. Part of me wants to give high marks for pulling in of relevant materials and citing superb references, yet another part wants to suggest that the question was only partially answered. Clearly marriage is garnering less and less favour in Western communities, which by definition indicates it is becoming obsolete. I don’t think either of you used the word ‘obsolete’ after it was placed in the title.



Through discourse you get into other questions that take much of the conversation away from the key question. This is of course, a true style of dialogue and this is how we communicate. We do not communicate through intellectual and academic papers, so I welcome your style as it broadens and narrows and broadens again. At times, I found that you might in fact be answering other questions than the one posed in the title. For example, ‘Is subordination ever a good thing?’ Or maybe, “Does individual wholeness provide fulfillment and how does it contribute to ‘couple hood’?” Or perhaps, “Is it possible to ‘marry’ masculine and feminine energies in a healthy way that does not deny one for the other?” In any case, you provide us readers and learners and fellow journey people, with much to consider.


I will now embark on offering, in my humble opinion, some reflections on the content and the impact of your comments.


I would concur that we have added expectations, entitlements, and demands to marriage. We have done so in volume. A generation or two before we did not think of our work as fulfilling or our passion; we do so today. All relationships, work life and family relations, are now assessed through the prism of: how healthy or functional is this relationship? How much am I putting into and getting out of it? Is there a suitable balance?


Seeking peace and joy and many answers outside of ourselves is the crux of many of our personal and societal troubles. Perhaps we could use our sense of smell to determine how suitable a partner may be for us. This may seem absurd but it is not much more absurd than the logic that is used, like ‘how they make me feel,’ or ‘how good they look on my arm.’ We may let chemicals drive our choice. We may let ourselves be unduly influenced by Love Potion Number 9 or alcohol or pheromones.


I noted Maureen, a contradiction in one proposed outcome of marriage, “And yes, we have grown in our capacity to love and care for each other because of it [marriage]” (p. 6). But then on page 7, I see, “…monogamous dyad relationships as the foundation of our social structure) may be actually holding us back from growing our capacity to love.” Indeed marriage may have served many in the past, and through it, through ‘first acting the part then feeling it’ some have grown in their capacity to love their partners. Yet it may also be true that for some (many?) that being bound in a singular relationship may hold us back from growing further. I believe this to be inevitably true. It can also be considered as ‘opportunity cost’. For everything we say “yes” to we have many, many more things that we must say “no” to. We must forfeit to purposefully include other things or persons in our lives.

Maureen: I see the paradox you point out here, Kathleen. What I was actually thinking of, though, was a chronological growth, where marriage served a historical purpose when more people were focused on survival needs. With the advent of significant affluence in the western world, people have been able to experience more forms of love, beyond that related to gratification of mutual need.


I think the question you raise Maureen about whether David can reframe the role interdependent couples play to include relationships that individuals have with all who cross their paths, is not a prime question for this paper. Indeed, it is an excellent issue to consider, but I believe it is very big and to answer it effectively would take you away from this paper’s primary purpose.

Maureen: Au contraire pour moi! My precise point with this dialogue is this: Is our obsessive focus on dyads holding us back from evolving to where we need to be to develop a sustainable world? If we let go of such obsessive attachment to form in how we love, and we follow our hearts and give it full expression – what are we afraid of? How many times must we replay Romeo and Juliet before we realize that our possibility is to ‘arise’ in love, not ‘fall’’ in love – and require the false security of the marriage net to catch us?


Also, you suggest that the car manufacturers probably did not talk with the buggy guys as their ways were considered obsolete. But in fact, I expect there was overlap, not only of ideas and manufacturing facilities, but some of the same families funded the projects and shared institutional memory. There is some wisdom to be gleaned from previous examples and experiences. While the model may not pertain today, there may be some good to be captured, thus not throwing out the baby with the bath water. [Rather an ironic metaphor for a paper that concentrates on loving relations and the inherent, if chosen, obligation to care for children.]


I love the quote, “Growing our capacity for love and care of all persons may be an outcome of successful spiritual partnerships, and indeed the partnership may contribute to that growth.” Whatever the method, be it ‘spiritual partnerships’ or through some other mechanisms or experiences, if we learn to grow our capacity for love and caring and accomplishing and acting… what more is there?


BTW – Maureen, how do you arrive at the possibility that “…monogamous dyad relationships as the foundation of our social structure) may be actually holding us back from growing our capacity to love?” Jumping further ahead in your paper, Maureen you state: “In my experience, you need to stand alone to fully comprehend and live to your capacity - and beyond” (p.50). Are you living to your capacity and beyond? How do you know it is to its’ height? Could it be higher with help, with input, support, challenge, and love from an equal, respectful partner?

Maureen: Absolutely possible. When I have felt most ‘on path’, I feel loved and supported and challenged, often all at the same time. Sometimes by one significant other, but more often by the energy of a group or team united in common purpose – or both. Loving partnership is all good – it is the attempt to mortgage it with a marriage contract that introduces the element of fear of the future.


Another good quote I liked, but found a bit removed from the core question is, “…what matters most is how you are doing what you are doing in the world, and growing your capacity for life and love.”


Much of your discourse is around the break up rather than the benefits of a ‘formalized’ or publicized partnership. Not all relationships end in a hostile divorce or separation. Not all are insensitive. Many humans that I have met are able to transition respectfully. So while there can be pain in the change of an intimate relationship, the change may be negotiated mutually.

Maureen: Yes, a few do. I am suggesting that more might focus in this healthy direction if they did not have marriage “rights” to fight with.


I have a comment and question about the sentence, “Some will be immature enough to need their children, and will do anything to control that relationship.” Does having children not come out of a ‘need’ to do so? We might also ask, ‘If I ‘need’ to fulfill myself without children, is that immature?’ I am not certain that parents who attach themselves to their children, and truly ‘need’ them can be labeled as immature. Your point, I believe, is that some ‘need’ to control or to be fulfilled through the children. But I do sense that all parents need to be parents to some degree and that is not an immature state to assume; our existence relies on it.

David: Well, one could argue that anything a person does must come out of a “need” to do it, but that would be to miss the distinction I was trying to make. Most people these days are familiar with the language of want and need, and the concept that wanting something is healthy; needing it is addictive and unhealthy. The difference is easy to discern by applying this test: how do you react to the removal of the thing from your life? To the extent that you are distressed, you are addicted.


Now, it is not common to apply this thinking to our children, because it feels so “natural” to be distressed by loss of our children. Indeed, addiction is our natural state, and has been selected for by evolution: so that just about all of us are addicted to our children to some degree. However, being natural and universal doesn't remove its toxic effect, and I think it important to point this out, however challenging it may be to contemplate it. When we consider a person's aptitude for a social power role, for instance, we can embrace the notion that a great attachment to power may disqualify one from being able to wield it well and honourably. But when it comes to children we are, it seems to me, still entirely stuck in the addictive mindset: we see need (particularly a mother's need) as love, when it is nothing of the kind. The wisdom of Solomon, in the famous example where he offered to divide a disputed child in two and give a half to each mother, was in finding a way to separate love and need. One woman, faced with this judgment, yielded the child to the other rather than see it die, and the king awarded the child to this one. I could wish that we might bring the same wisdom to family court!


While I share your view that external resources applied to putting co-parenting plans into place indeed would be helpful, and are insufficient, what about the internal resources to do so? Are our mature abilities, to the power of 2, not sufficient to co-design such a plan? And how could they become so? Most have learned to parent without formal external supports. Most of the parenting knowledge has been observed, modeled and handed down from generations. In fact, it is like most of the knowledge of civilization. We like what we see, we try it, we adapt it slightly for our needs and our times, and viola, parenting is practiced. Now the extent to which it is healthy, that is the fodder for a whole other series of papers.

David:Yes indeed. This is a broadening of the question at issue between Maureen and I in this dialogue: i.e., the extent to which traditional ideas and knowledge (in this case marriage) are still useful and valuable for us as we grow and move ahead. It would seem that you, like I, think and feel that there remains important relevance in what we have received from our ancestors.


I like what I heard you say later in the paper Maureen, about the context and qualifying many of the comments to the Western world. When you stated that today children are not an economic asset or marriage not essential for survival, this, of course, does not hold true in less privileged parts of the world.


I smiled at the irony in the statement, “…to release anyone’s ability to hold power over another…” How much power over us do we take part in, how much is self-imposed and externally imposed on us without our will? These are key issues about an evolving society, an expanding democracy, a globalizing world.


David, you and Maureen seem to agree that equal access by both parents will be most healthy. You speak about ‘what is best for children’ and I wonder how this is determined. I know we have tremendous research but I wondered your foundation.


David, why do you read fear into Maureen’s proposal that marriage be dissolved as a legal institution? It may be because I share this view that I do not see why or how you sensed fear in this notion.

David: I don't know exactly how I sensed fear from Maureen around the abolition of marriage: it was an intuition, I think. In general, I have found that maturing leads one to a greater versatility, but that no behaviour form is entirely abandoned by the enlightened. Something about Maureen's seeing little positive value in marriage struck me as reactive, fearful.


Maureen, I share David’s questions to you about your comment, “…that a man couldn’t handle a fully self-actualized woman – an androgynous being, fully capable and competent, who can love him and appreciate him and want him, but not need him. A woman who may hold each person’s spirit and purpose as a higher priority than his or her comfort. A woman who expects to live to her highest purpose and to be held accountable in all her close relationships to same. And who therefore, might ‘leave’ to pursue a different direction.” I dare say we have inadequate data to determine 1) if sufficient men could handle it or 2) if women can sufficiently achieve self-actualization. But I do sense that we know enough that being thought of as a, ‘fiercely independent woman’ is not generally a socially acceptable way to be. (And this may also apply to men, but a bit less so.) Firstly, ‘fierce’ is something more often left to men (as we will come to later in David’s comments) and ‘independent’ is too darn big for a woman’s own britches (who does she think she is anyway???). As for ‘woman’, well that in itself has much wrapped up in it related to social expectations and roles to be chosen and then fulfilled. I am up for the experiment. I say, let us genuinely try it out. Gather more data. Scientifically study and uncover great success stories that we can rise above. Let us not be left to the norm – for we all know that normal is far from stellar and from the healthiest we can be!


So what of a woman and marriage? What of a man and marriage? What are the goals of marriage? Are they incompatible with individual goals? These are some of the minor questions I would have anticipated being covered in a paper entitled, ‘Is marriage obsolete?’ But that may just be me.


Maureen, you argue that ‘…marriage could become a cage of duty and subordination to his comfort or his vision rather than mine’ (p.8). But this need not be the case. And because it could happen, would not be sufficient grounds or high enough standard to not support marriage, in and of itself. (M: Agreed, it is just a fear.) If we let it happen. If we become subsumed into the wishes, dreams of another, we can do so willingly and honestly co-create the dream. Or we do so reluctantly, saying that this dream path may be better than the one I had dreamed of. Or we may join in, unconsciously and unwillingly and later resentfully, as we become alert to the fact that we have lost our dream to another. But in all cases, it is our doing and not that of marriage itself. (M: Really? Does not the weight of societal or religious or cultural characterization of divorce as a ‘failure’ influence the average person’s capacity to choose it, or to jeopardize the marriage by even considering a ‘separate’ path? We are not always the separate, independent-of-our-history-and-community individuals we like to think we are. I say our institutions do have mighty influence.) (D: Is this not an argument for victimhood? Kathleen is holding up people's power in their lives, Maureen, and you are arguing for their powerlessness. Argue for your powerlessness, it is rightly said, and voila, you are powerless.) David brings this point up later by rightly saying, ‘a man can subordinate you only with your own complicity.’ Yes. We are responsible for our own vision. Our own work in bringing this to fruition. We can not blame others for letting it erode, for their standing firm on their own needs to bring theirs to fruition. But we have to wisely acknowledge that when we choose to partner, we consciously choose to support the ‘common,’ the shared experience, and this may mean letting the individual goals take a lesser role. We might want to ask ourselves why we partner in the first place. What are we willing to give? And how much are we willing to give up? What do we anticipate receiving? How much of this have we voiced to our partner? How much of our partner’s views can we support? And then, what do we do with new information, with the changing selves that make up the relationship, as we all evolve? How will we reintegrate different versions of ourselves? How does this contrast with independence? What are the goals of independence? Are they eroded through interdependence? Are they compatible? Is what is lost made up for with what is gained in a loving, respectful, playful relationship? Are there synergies that have been overlooked and gains that have been undervalued or overvalued?

Maureen: Excellent conscious questions to ask on a regular basis in any important relationship. I suggest the presence of a marriage contract lends itself more to “Whew, I can relax now, I answered those…”.


From my professional and personal experience, I have come to realize that the more we are cognizant of our expectations of ourselves, our lives, our partners, and the more this aligns with our reality, the more we will reduce frustration and conflict. Largely we are in control of or can manage our own conflict if we are alert to our needs, able to read our partner and throw in a handy dandy crystal ball. When what we want or expect is not there, we feel cheated. So we need to grow up a bit in our abilities to assess our desires and to gauge reality. While we might have the right (and perhaps the duty) to dream big about ourselves, we might be well advised to scale it down when imposing this on another.


It resonates for me Maureen, when you write, “…for a spiritual union to work for me, it must by definition hold each person’s highest self or have a mutual higher purpose that is being served: to raise a child, to take some action for peace…or to change the systems and structures and thought patterns that keep us locked in what does not bring us joy and does not serve.” We all are the guardians or stewards of our dreams. But I also concurrently hold that it is good to change and grow. Which means, we cannot know at the outset what all our dreams will be and how radically we might evolve and change. This would, in all truthfulness, make most relationship insecure at the very best, if not volatile. This does not mean that change and growth needs to be disruptive to relationships or create disharmony for partners or children, but it is a huge challenge facing any growing, thinking partnership.


You pose a most interesting question David when asking, ‘do children block our achieving our dreams?’ Indeed this is another dance that we must learn to master while co-creating our lives together, with a partner and others who are central to our lives’ fulfillment. Later David you say that the world is indifferent to us. I must respectfully disagree. The world is in relation with us as we are with it. Through energy and power and by way of being in this ‘place,’ the world co-creates us and we co-create it. This becomes more acute as we more often glocalize. Each impacting the other and each modifying itself because of interactions with others, some more profound than others. The more conscious and purposeful our relations with others, the healthier for all.


On page 8, in Part II, you get at the heart of the question and really answer that marriage is not the deal we need. Really what mature adults who want to partner and have children may require is a co-parenting contract that speaks about health, schooling, living circumstances, disciplining practices, etc, rather than a marriage contract specifying standards for sex or finances or the roles extended family or friends will play. Of course the dynamics between a couple play out on the children and in fact provide a model for the children to learn and replicate. The degree to which co-parenting and partnering are modeled in healthy ways has much to do with pressures we are coping with and what standards we have established for our lives. (Our ‘growth tolerance’, for example!)


David later argues that some marriages have eroded into endless democratic negotiations. That can’t be much fun. Some also believe there are limits to personal growth. Some in our lives may question, ‘when is this person ever going to stay still, stop moving and changing so much?’ Children may be asking these questions as the growth and change may be upsetting for them. And if we are concentrating and focusing on ‘what is best for the kids’, than perhaps there are levels to which growth needs to be delayed.


I think you both are correct that the issues of obligation, entitlement, subordination, discipline, commitment, surrendering all have been used in the context of marriage and some have more of a healthy role today than do others. Some of these concepts, like marriage, may be becoming obsolete, at least as used in reference to marriage relationships.


I think Maureen is talking about something significant in differentiating discipline and commitment from obligation and subordination. I hear Maureen talking about higher standards. The base level would be the law. For our standards of conduct we ought not to look to the law but for higher levels of engagement. Most importantly for our most intimate relationships we ought to go beyond obligations, beyond ‘oughting’. The law affords us only the minimal requirements. It protects the public and largely, the physical well-being of individuals. It does not speak to matters of the heart or spirit or high personal standards. As I stated earlier, healthy relationships occur from internal motivations and desires, not as a result of outside pressures.


You suggest David, that there may be fear in not being in control of which one chooses to love and partner with. That is the reality of many women (and men) in the world. The choice is removed or never theirs to begin with. But in Western relationships, we like to think we can choose freely. But clearly this is not something that an individual can have power over. We can choose who we love but not whether we will partner. This takes two baby, it takes two.


David, as you say on page 10, you have confidence in your partner around your joint care of children if a separation should occur. As you are powerful, influential, and effective in choosing your partner and co-parent of your children, it would stand to reason that you also would have the influence, outside of needing the courts, to co-determine appropriate behaviour regarding children.


Further David, your comment about a woman, in this case, Maureen, fearing giving herself away to a man, speaks also to me. It is a challenge to be a full being and bring that evolving being into a relationship where both parties hold each others’ dreams carefully and nurture the full growth of the other. Yet it is doable and many successes I have seen. I am learning about how to bring this to fruition. This dialogue has been a helpful place to consider some of my own views and what fears and impositions I bring to a committed relationship.


It is an important question you ask David, “… is there no room in your world for obligation between marriage partners?” Yet a loving relationship is not, and ought not to be called, a contract. It is a relationship of willing hearts and minds. How can we obligate moral, emotional or sexual support? These are dynamic elements of the full human experience. In my opinion, they do not lend themselves to be contractible.

David: In my opinion, this is the heart of the issue, and interestingly, it seems to me to reveal a gendered nature. We have concluded as a society (and rightly so, in my opinion) that we can obligate financial support: what is so different about moral or emotional support? Is it a coincidence that in the traditional exchange between a man and a woman (he provides financial support, she provides moral and emotional support), you suggest that only his contribution is contractible? If you are arguing that moral and emotional support that is given under obligation is tainted by resentment – why don't we care about that in the case of financial support?


I think that what is actually in play here is a cultural stricture, and cultural differences express themselves primarily through our feelings about things. Most of us currently have very strong feelings about the sanctity of feelings, such that the notion of providing moral and emotional support under obligation seems wrong, reprehensible even. And indeed it can be. But always, as a form, as a rule? Can you contemplate it in regard to children? Should you morally and emotionally support your children because you should, because you owe it to them? Is acknowledging such an obligation a form of love? Or should you only provide the support that you feel spontaneously, as if we were pure victims of our feelings?


When masculine and feminine archetypes come back into balance, I think that we will take feelings off the pedestal and recognize that there is sometimes wisdom in expressing ourselves out of obligation, and not just out of the unconstrained feelings of the moment.


I would like to challenge your notion David, that the current outcomes of divorce reveal a massive inequality. It is not so massive. The systems we have in place are largely established as such, over the centuries by males, wishing to have smooth running societies, that in most cases, included women subordinate to men. Men, historically and currently, earn more and thus ought to pay more. In the very least, if they choose to partner and have children, and their partner becomes engrossed in the obligations of raising the children, then they ought to know that a disproportionate amount of the financial burden will fall to them. It makes sense. If however, as a couple, other plans are made, that is equal partnering and equal time off work to care for the growing child or children, then there may be a higher likelihood that less of the financial burden will be assumed by the male in the partnership. All sorts of options are out there but largely it is the females who do most of the child rearing and usually at the expense of their own income. It seems like a sensible way to proceed, to have the dads who have more money, support the moms who have less.

David: How would you feel, Kathleen, if I were to make the same arguments against women's equal access to the workplace, men's area of historical dominance? If I were to argue that largely it is men who do most of the paid work, at the expense of their time with their families, and therefore women should EXPECT men to get preferential treatment in a job competition? It's only fair, it just makes sense. Would you see through that argument instantly, as I feel I see through yours above?


But access and custody are truly imbalanced in favour of women. I would agree with you that we would not want to see one historical injustice replaced by another. The swinging of the pendulum in favour of women while doing an injustice to men would not be justice.


I concur with Maureen’s comment that “…I hold myself fully responsible and accountable as an independent person. I cannot contract myself out of either that right or that responsibility.” Our responsibility for our power cannot be overstated on these key issues. We choose to be in relationship, to stay in the relationship, to work at the relationship. We do so consciously, in most instances. We are not obliged out of social, religious, nor legal obligation. This critical life choice is internally driven not imposed upon us by external demands.


I do so like your inclusion of Jewel’s words,

“Fill your lives

With love and bravery

And we shall lead

A life uncommon.”


These are the words of higher standards, or greater visions, of self-directed love, not obligation.


I would have to agree with you David that we do not “…have a balance between striving and surrendering, between rights and responsibilities…” (p. 49). Part of this is because we consider ourselves disassociated from one another and from the world. As Albert Einstein wrote, “Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison (of separateness) by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and foundation for inner security.”


What does ‘marrying feminine and masculine wisdom’ become? If it were on a cocktail drink list, what would it be called? Can we concurrently maintain and celebrate the sacredness of the feminine separate from but along with the masculine and vice versa? I would have liked your article to speak more about what would success, harmony look like in relationships rather than the particularly heavy emphasis on what happens in the breakup of a relationship. With your collective wisdom, we would benefit from reading more on what peaceful relations sound like and what respectful relations feel like.


The statement that “We have the opportunity to hold our two different energies in tension, and seek the creative integration, the transcendent solution,” is poetic but unclear to those like me who have not done so much of the gender work that you two have done. What are signs of success of this transcendence?

David: Yes, I wish we had opened this up more, too. It is the key to the process. Unfortunately, it's not linear, as I understand it, not formulaic. This is where faith comes in. If we each hold strongly to what we believe for as long as we believe it (i.e., while being willing to be shown to be wrong), I think this is the best we can do in general, and I think it is a great deal. It is in the intensity of our passion, in the engagement, that we reveal ourselves to ourselves and to the other. And out of that, new insights can flow, as did mine about my fear of being overwhelmed by feminine “love” (see my editorial “Reflections on Dialogue” elsewhere in this issue.) How will this healthy transcendence manifest in general? I really don't know. One aspect of health that makes it difficult to define is that it is asymptomatic – symptoms are aspects of disease, not of health.


And by the way, David, how does your determination to ‘hold to that {masculine} wisdom’ impact your goal of marrying the feminine and masculine (p. 49)? I don’t disagree that there are synergies to be gained, but I am also interested in the distinctiveness and sacredness of the genders and how these are respectfully maintained while negotiating and cooperating on an integrated and loving androgynous approach. For example, I was challenged also in my thinking by David’s pronouncement about the benefits of masculine style (although not exclusively male). For example, there is value to society in being able to be fierce or even violent. I was thinking of this yesterday as I was driving and considering that in many countries, the share of the wealth by a small number of families and firms is growing while those living in poverty constitute a larger part. The gap is great. The affluence enjoyed by these families has not been achieved without the labour and support of the poorer families, if not in their own communities, in other parts of the glocalizing world! The aggravation of this injustice may sufficiently arouse the poor to take violent actions. They would clearly outnumber those maintaining order and peace in any society. We have general order in the Western world due to the mechanisms – law enforcement, armed guards, and a presumed, fair judicial system. But if those who felt wronged, like many fathers, would rise up in number, we could have chaos. It is the willingness of some to show or put on a ‘face of violence’ that helps, in some measure, to maintain relative peace and harmony in our communities.


I very much appreciate the last remarks in your dialogue. To have trust is the foundation on which to build much. Without it healthy relations cannot grow. “To move to a new place, we need to trust the other, which really means trusting ourselves that we won’t lose ourselves if we let the other in.” “The sacredness of marriage is that people trust each other before they know each other and that is a beautiful thing about it. For we can never know another fully, but we can trust another fully, as a choice.” The choice is ours. I had never heard it put that way before. I thank you Maureen and David for sharing your dialogue so openly and courageously with us. After reading this piece and thinking about my own thinking, I am better prepared to love more freely and trust more willingly. Marriage is not totally out of favour or obsolete as many choose it to pronounce and frame their loving relationships. But what is terribly out of date is our lack of taking individual responsibility for ourselves, our actions, inactions, dreams, and most importantly, our ability to choose and maintain a loving relationship. ‘Tis up to each of us to become more sophisticated and capable and caring in our relationships to make this journey into fuller ‘humanhood’ a most enjoyable one.

Maureen: Well said, Kathleen.

David: Thank you so much, Kathleen, for a stimulating and provocative engagement with our dialogue.


Is there more to be said here? If so, let's hear from you!


Dr. Kathleen Kevany is the Director of Research and Education at the International Leadership and Stewardship Institute. She can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Last Updated ( Thursday, 10 August 2006 )
 
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