Video about Love in Marriage

Here is link to a heartwarming video about a couples struggle with a very serious challenge.

http://www.upmoments.com/he-catches-his-wife-crying/

Please share your comments!

Thanks!
Bill and Rika

How We See - The Importance of Paradigms

The year was 1992. I had been living and working in Japan for about 5 years. I had come to Japan directly upon graduating from the university and took on a sales role with an international publishing company in Tokyo. By late spring 1992, we already had two young children and my Rika was expecting our third child that summer.

I had worked hard while in Japan and in a few short years had moved into a management role. I was expected to work long hours. It was hard, but I felt I was doing my best to balance my many roles between work and family. My success at work was satisfying. My income had increased substantially and I was proud of the fact that we were eventually able to move our little family from a small Japanese apartment into a larger house with less of a commute to my office. Rika appreciated me working hard. She knew that was expected of business people in Japan. Although life was not easy for her with two small children, one on the way and a busy husband, she never complained. I was getting tired, but felt that sacrifice now would benefit my career and family in the future. I kept telling myself, the long hours are so I can provide better for my family. I believed what people said about quality time vs. quantity time.

My role at work included regular monthly trips to several Asian countries. These business trips took me out of the home for weeks on end. I would miss my family dearly on these long trips. They became times for me to think about what was really important to me.

In fact, one particular trip I took stands out in my mind as a turning point in my life. It caused me to see myself, family and career in a new way. It brought on a paradigm shift.

I was attending a major management and executive meeting for my company. The meetings were held at a resort in the mountainous jungle outside of Manila in the Philippines. Rika was only a few weeks away from having our third child. I felt bad leaving on a trip with her in that condition, even though I was scheduled to be back before her due date. But this was an important conference and meetings, critical to my career. After all I am working and doing all this for them, I told myself.

A few days into my trip, I received a phone call from Rika. She told me she was having some problems with the pregnancy and had been to the doctor. She said she was worried and wanted me to come home.

Many things ran through my mind. How can I tell my company president that I need to leave? It will surely hurt my future career. Should I wait a day and see how she is before making a decision? I now shutter at the fact that I wondered if I should go or not and that I even hesitated. What did I value more? My job or my wife and children? It was at that point that I began to realize I was not working for my family. I was working for my own career, satisfaction and ego. I fooling myself when I claimed my work was for them. I was not seeing myself correctly.

I thought about my situation and after a few hours decided to go to my boss and tell him I needed to leave due to my wife’s situation back in Japan. While I am sure he wanted me to stay, he agreed I needed to get home. It was already late afternoon and I called to arrange a flight and for transportation back to the airport in Manila. To my surprise, I was told I could not leave the resort until the next morning. They told me that being an American it was not safe to drive through the jungle after dark. The outlying areas were known to have extremist rebels that would not hesitate to rob or kidnap someone like me in hopes of gaining publicity and a ransom. This caused me great frustration and pain. I now had made the decision to get home as soon as I could, but was prevented from doing so. The ensuing hours waiting to get home gave me a lot of time to reflect on what really mattered to me. And it helped me see more clearly. I had the beginnings of new paradigm about myself and my family.

I eventually made it home. Rika had our third child, our son Eric, on July 4^th. Both were healthy and there were no complications. But the feelings I had while being separated from my loved ones at a time when they really needed me, and not being able to be there, caused me to change my paradigm. I had felt so helpless. Never again would I put my career above my family. And today I can look back and say, I do not think my career has suffered one bit from this change in my thinking and seeing. That experience changed in the way I view or see my family and career and has molded my behavior ever since. How we see, influences how we act and what we do or say. And what we do and say, determines the results we get in life.

If we want a stronger family, a happier marriage, better behaved children, etc. we need to start seeing our family relationships differently.

As I have thought about this paradigm shift I had many years ago, I thought about some other common paradigms people often have regarding families and related roles. Take a look at this list of paradigms. They are listed in pairs each representing an extreme. As you look at these, think about your own paradigms related to your family, marriage and raising your children. Do you have any of these paradigms? What are your paradigms? Could there be value in adopting a new paradigm in your life as it relates to your family relationships?

Opposite Family and Marriage Paradigms

• Raising the children is the responsibility of the wife
• Raising the children is a shared responsibility of husband and wife

•  Teaching morals is the responsibility of the schools
•  Morals and values should primarily be taught in the home

•  My job and career are the focus of my life and time. This is how I take care of my family.
• My job and career are important to me and my family, but my family and their well-being is more important.

• We each have our own separate lives
• We are individuals and respect that, but we are a team and united as husband and wife and parents

• Housework/yard work is her/his responsibility.
• We can share chores.

• The family is a convenient and necessary social structure.
• The family is an organization that requires leadership, management, a sense of purpose, vision, and clear values to guide behavior. It is the most important unit in society.

 

• The home is place for us to live, eat, and sleep.
• The home is a sanctuary, a safe haven where all members of the family can feel safe, secure and loved.

What are your paradigms about marriage or your spouse and children? Are they correct ways of seeing them? Would a new way of seeing improve your relationships?

Why is it important how we see others?

Our paradigms (or how we see) affect our actions and behaviors. How we see others influences how we treat others. How we treat others influences how they act and to some extent how they end up seeing themselves. And how people act determines who they ultimately become and in turn how they treat others themselves. People treat others how they see them which is often a reflection of how they see themselves.

SEE – TREAT – ACT – BECOME

If you want people to act or behave differently, you must see them and treat them differently. And sometimes, in order to see others differently, you need to start seeing yourself differently. This is what we mean when we talk about change starts with you! It starts with your way of seeing everything.

Here is the principle:

Behavior change, your own and others', begins with a new paradigm. How you see yourself and others.

Think of how this can apply to a marriage or raising children. Many problems families encounter are based on how we see others and our expectations around that paradigm. When we tell a child he is not very smart because he is behind in his class, we are only reinforcing the low self esteem the child may already be developing. Simply put, if you want to change behavior, treat people as you want and expect them to be. You will be amazed how people, especially children respond to this. A wife who only complains that her husband cannot get a better job, is taking the wrong approach. She should focus on building him up and helping him develop the confidence that will help him see himself differently and may enable him to take the necessary steps to get a better job.

This well known Quote by Goethe sums this up wonderfully:

“If you treat a man as he is, he will remain as he is, but if you treat him as he ought to be, and could be, he will become what he ought to be and should be.”

                                                                                    - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To bring about personal change and change in others, lasting change that can help build strong relationships and great families, work on seeing them and yourself differently. See the good and the positive and building on that.

Thanks for Reading! 

Bill and Rika

Becoming a US Citizen

After nearly 30 years of marriage and holding a US Green Card, Rika applied for and obtained US citizenship.

Early in our marriage we lived in Japan for several years as Bill's first job after college was located there. In order to live in Japan it was always easy for Bill to obtained Japan permanent residency as the spouse of a Japanese national. Living outside the US off and on for several years at a time, however, made it difficult for Rika to qualify for citizenship and maintain valid permanent residence status. We were always very careful to obtain re-entry permits, returning to the US often, to maintain permanent US residency status. And for many years, the "Green Card" worked fine.

If you add it all up, for the nearly 30 years we have been married, we have lived about half of the life in the US and half in Japan. This has had several advantages:

• Our children are truly bi-cultural and for the most part bi-lingual.
• We have been able to (or attempted to) adopt the good, and things we like and enjoy, from each culture into our family traditions and culture.
• We have gained a true appreciation for each others' families, backgrounds, languages and cultures.
• We have developed a global awareness and understanding that we don't think we could have obtained if we did not experience both worlds for such extended parts of our lives.

And there are many more.

In the end, since we own property and now spend most our time in the US, we concluded our life would be simpler if Rika had US citizenship.

One aspect of an international marriage that people often don't think about is the fact that at least one of you (in the marriage) will have to live outside your home country. While living in a third country (a country neither of you are from is also an option), we have found that ultimately couples like us usually end up settling in one or the others' home country.

This can lead to a happy and content life, but for many this can, especially in later years, turn out to be a point of contention or frustration for the couple. We would like to address that topic in a future post.

In the mean time, welcome to one of the U.S.'s newest citizens!

Thanks for reading!
Bill and Rika