1. Explain or paraphrase the following:

1. My husband's thoughtlessness gets me down.

2. We have endless rows.

3. They must have been alarmingly ill-equipped to handle their conflicts.

4. Conflict can turn the whole relationship into a battleground.

5. When the heat is turned up and things get a little mean, some people become focused on self-preservation.

6. Panic builds, and they start throwing verbal punches.

7. They become obsessed with winning.

8. After the dust has settled and peace is restored, take your lover in your arms and say, “We did it, Honey.”

9. We were totally at odds.

10. But we overcame the hurdle.

11. premarital counselling

12. corporate identity

13. an emotion-laden comment

2. Join the words and expressions from column A with their synonyms from column B.

KEY

A	B
to turn up	to appear
row au	quarrel
to rule out all conflict	to manage conflict
learnable skill	something that you can learn
the required level of proficiency	necessary amount of knowledge
to head for trouble	to be likely to quarrel
to make a marriage work	to have a successful marriage
to face a challenge	to take up the glove — принять вызов
entrenched conflict	long-standing conflict
conflict avoiders	those who avoid conflict resolution
unequivocal [`ani'kwivek(e)l]	unambiguous
to earn after	to crave for

3. Choose from the texts above what you can do

to resolve conflict?	to aggravate conflict?
rule out all conflict	let conflict rage

4. Finish the sentence giving each time a new recommendation from the text eight secrets of conflict resolution and how do you fight?: To resolve conflict:

Don’t	Do
make an emotion-laden comment that is totally unrelated to the subject at hand.	Recognize marriage as a “we” business.

Reading 8

TEXT FOUR

What’s wrong with marrying for love?

Falling in love is the expected and proper prelude to marriage. (9) As presently interpreted, this means that you marry for love and that you work at it after marriage. A successful marriage is the final realization of a romantic attraction.

(1) A good marriage is one that contributes freely and fully to personality development; a poor marriage is one that hinders it. (2) Getting married is primarily a romantic adventure with an emphasis upon individual rights and freedom from parental control, rather than a carefully reasoned choice involving a prudent weighing of other factors important for a lifelong union. Passionate attachment and anticipated happiness outweigh such considerations as companionship, cultural similarities and common social experience. We proudly announce that (2) we no longer marry for convenience, to promote a career or to please our families but to establish a personally desirable relationship that is voluntary, rests on personal choice, and aims at individual happiness and personality development.

Ro`mance is beautiful. Wonderful. But as the primary basis for selection of matrimonial mates? On which to build a lifelong union? Many things must be considered. This is the verdict of other centuries. Young people need the counsel of their elders.

(3) Parents do know something about the nature and needs of their own children. They can judge their mates through the eyes of their greater age and experience. And they do seek the happiness of their children.

Does modern research throw any light on the validity of romance as a basis for mate selection? What are the findings of recent studies of marital problems? (4) Romance according to some researchers is a process of fantasy formation, usually adolescent [edou`lesnt] юношеский, подростковый when one idealizes another person, ignoring the faults and magnifying the virtues of the loved one. (5) After marriage there is usually an emotional return to reality. Other students of the problem see it as a striving for emotional security, so lacking in casual relations of our everyday life.

Whatever the facts may be in each of these interpretations, it should be noted that (6) all see romantic love as some form of compensating emotion, personally satisfying, idealizing someone else but unrelated to reality.

(8) Studies of marital failure and success show quite clearly that the longer the period of acquaintance before marriage, the greater the chances of marital success.

Perhaps most essential is the importance of similarity of social background for marital success. This means that like should marry like. "Marriage," writes a well-known family sociologist, "involves living with a person, not merely loving him." It is this prosaic fact that places romantic love in its proper proportions as a basis for marriage. (7) Romance must be termed the prelude to the more sober and realistic consideration of a mate, but romance alone is not enough.

From Charm

Answer the questions:

1. How does marriage influence a personality?

2. Is marriage to be regarded as a carefully reasoned choice of a matrimonial mate? Do people marry to promote their careers nowadays? What does marriage rest on today?

3. Why does the narrator think that young people need their parents' counsel to select their matrimonial mate?

4. What are the findings of modern research of romance and marital problems?

5. Do people live in a fool's paradise after marriage?

6. Is romantic love based on reality?

7. What is romantic love as the author himself sees it?

8. Which is more reliable according to the studies of marital problems: marriages based on romantic attraction or on similarity of social background?

9. What does the author mean by "the proper prelude to marriage"?