The following program is an ICU
television production.
On Campus with Dr. Gary McCaleb,
tonight's guest is very much a marriage
and family therapist.
Here's Dr. McCaleb.
On campus today is Mrs. Betty, Berryman's
wife, mother of four children
and a marriage and family therapist.
Betty, how did you get into this kind of
work as a therapist for marriage
and families?
Well, Gary, it was really
not a plan kind of situation.
I have four children, and
when my youngest child, John,
started the first grade, I
really needed something.
And I really also needed to help him
because he was having trouble with math
and the new math had just come in.
I didn't know how to do the new math,
so I went to North Texas to learn
to take a course so that I could help him
in school.
And I liked it.
I needed it.
And so I ended up getting a master's
degree in psychology and
in education.
Now you have four children and they've
all, since that first grade year,
graduated from college.
They're all married
as you've watched them meet their mates
and marry and start their own homes.
Have you been able to perceive anything
that's different about
the problems and the kinds of things they
face in today's time from, say,
20 or 30 years ago?
I guess marriages are
always hard.
When you deal with two individuals,
there's going to be problems.
There's no perfect marriage.
But in today's society, there are new
problems that have to be faced
in marriages and
couples are perhaps
marrying later.
They are pursuing careers.
We live in an economy where they have
to have more than one
salary and many of the women are working.
Sixty eight percent of our women
in a marriage or in our society or
working.
So we have new problems
in who's going to do the household
chores, who's going to tend to the
children.
Roles have changed.
And I think that these kinds of
problems have become
very difficult for today's marriages.
I was reading something the other day
that a woman
was writing and she said the chances
are you can either stay at home
and not work and be frustrated or
go to work and be frustrated.
And as if to say, either way, you've got
problems.
But I guess the
the working woman today,
being such a common thing in our
society, has added an extra dimension
to the pressures
of holding a marriage together.
It seems that
with the women working as much as they
are in their lives,
that to come home
there would be more sharing of
responsibility.
But research tells us that that's not the
case, that after a full day, full
day's work, she comes home and she does
the same thing that she would have done
had she stayed in the home.
Now, there are many families that are
sharing, but in most
of our families, they're having double
duty. And it makes it very difficult for
young women today to try to be
a mother and to be a career woman and to
be all of the things that we expect
of women today.
But as far as
being a working mother
and being a good mother, it can be done.
One interesting study that was done on
working women showed
that.
The women that worked
and complained about it and didn't like
it and wish they were home with their
children, and we're always feeling
negative and guilty about that,
their children seem to suffer more
than the mothers that worked and were
happy about it and passed on that
kind of an attitude to their children.
So the children seem to do better
when the mother feels good about
what she does.
You know, one thing, it's always been,
I think,
a little unfair, at least in my thinking,
is that we talk about
a working mother,
but all of them in.
So you don't hear the term a working
father.
And yet it seems like
at the same time they have
responsibilities at work.
They also have responsibilities as a
father in the home.
Does that become is that
when you were talking while ago about the
mother still doing double duty is
the perspective other than ever that the
father is doing double duty as well?
I think that fathers today are doing
a much better job than fathers
of yesterday, fathers that lived
and raised their children.
And when I was raising my children,
they do participate more and
probably have to participate more.
And I think that we're just now looking
at the research on fathers and finding
out they're very important people.
Fathers play a very strong
role in the identity of the child,
the sex identity of the child,
the self-esteem of the child.
And we're finding out the more involved
the father is in the home.
The child seems to have a better identity
in life about himself.
However, not too many fathers
fit that kind of description.
They may come home and sit in front of
the television and I know the around.
And as far as that goes,
I guess that just adds to the frustration
for the wife because she knows she's been
out working all day.
There was a time when, you know,
he could say, I've had a hard day at
work,
but now she can say I've had a hard day
at work, too. Of course, she could have
always said that.
But now with them both working out of the
home.
Another interesting thing about
the phenomenon of today.
You used to hear about a man
that would just take off and leave their
families, desert their families.
Today, we're hearing of a lot of women
that are deserting their families.
And I think it is because of the
pressures that they feel.
And they it is because of the workload
that they have and perhaps the stress
that they have at home, too.
And I think that if a family
can work as a team and
I'm talking about sharing roles
and I see more couples today doing that
sharing and I think it's a healthier
family.
What about the, uh, the additional
violence that seems to be coming into the
home and family?
I don't know whether there's that much
more of it or whether we're just hearing
more about it. But the idea of
children being battered and wives
being beaten and things like that is,
is there anything
behind that that's a
function of today's society that's
causing this increased violence?
Well, I think we live in a world of great
stress. I think the 80s
have been termed the age of stress.
And I think stresses in life causes
sometimes to be more violent,
reactive to
the stresses that are around us.
But I think that we see a lot of
violence.
We are a society that enjoys
violence.
We see it on television.
And there was there's numbers of studies
done on showing
children
pictures of violent acts
and then watching them perform those
violent acts right afterwards.
So we know it has an effect
and I'm sure that it does on adults
as well.
Now back to your own situation.
You live in the Dallas area, I believe
in Plano. Right.
Right. And so I suppose most
of the people that you
counsel with are people from the Dallas
area or do
sometimes people come from even wider
areas.
And then I have a lot
of clients that are from the Dallas area,
but I have clients also that come quite
a distance. I have people that are
coming from Tyler and Longview and
in Denver City, several different
places over the state of Texas.
And as they come to you, are you able to
see any particular
common threads that keep running through
these cases?
In other words, what are the things
that seem to be
the most common problems
or the most common things that
are coming?
Are you where are you
talking about families, marriages,
OK? Yes,
in marriages, I think
the most common problem that I
see are couples
who have a struggle with
themselves,
people that have to maybe fight
their own egos, people
that want what they want
and really are not sensitive to the
other person's selfishness.
We used to call the 70s the ME society,
and I think it still really is.
We want what we want.
And if we can't get it, then
we'll discard a wife or we'll discard
a job, or will we really live
in a very elusive
society in which
if we don't see what we like, if
we live in a marriage, that's not
what we want.
We get out of it.
We just drop it. That's the way we're
coping today.
And so I see that that commitment
to each other is missing
in our marriages today.
That reminds me of something I read in
Tof future shock when he can't
call this era or this age the
throwaway society.
Right. And that we get accustomed to
throwing away paper cups and paper
plates. And before long we're throwing
away relationships and everything else as
well, even babies.
Well, I guess that's right.
Well, what what happens
to the children
when a mother and father decide
to separate
or divorce? It seems to me that
following your your line of thought
there, that
the ME society says I deserve
to be happy or
whatever it is. And if that's the husband
or the wife saying that, what about the
children?
It's really sad. They're the ones that
pay the price.
It's also sad because
you're right, that statement I hear all
the time. Well, you know, I deserve
better than this. If I'm going to live a
life, I want to be happy in it.
And it's sad to know that when
they dump someone
that they're not any happier.
They carry those problems with them
and they may meet someone else or they
may get involved with someone else, but
they still have the same personality and
they still have the same problems.
But to answer your question, the children
pay
a healthy, happy,
productive child, needs two
parents that love them
and that are there and support
them and not all children
have.
That
seems to me that one of the biggest
dilemmas for a person in
your role as a counselor,
when a husband and wife come to you,
they probably don't come to you saying
everything's great and we just want to
stop by and visit. They already come to
you because they've got a problem.
Probably
they don't come to you until the problem
is extremely serious,
which may be
that it means it's too late to really be
able to do much about it. Do you ever do
you see that?
I get so frustrated with that.
I really do.
Sometimes the couple really want help,
both of them.
And when I get a couple like that, it's
really exciting for me because I don't
like to have failures, too.
And I feel like that we can make progress
if they both want that marriage to work.
That's that commitment again.
But too often I find a couple
that comes in. One may want it to work,
the other wants and they may have one
foot out the door and they're just doing
this as a last resort just to please
the wife or a lawyer or something.
And when that happens, there's not
anything I can do.
And I tell that and
I tell them very straight on that if you
want this marriage to work super,
but if either one of you are not willing
to pay the price, then
let's do this.
Don't waste your time or mine.
Do you ever get a feeling that they've
just one of them is wanting to make it
work? And the other one said, OK, I'll go
with you, but they really don't
want to make it work.
Then when that happens,
what what else can be done?
In other words, what can that person who
really wants to make it work do at
that?
You really can't force anyone.
I try to confront the partner
that is not willing.
There's not wanting to work on it.
Even though he's in my office or she's in
my office.
I confront that partner as soon as
I realize that that's the case
and try to help them
to come to either a commitment to
do something or to
seek some other alternative.
We're going to take a break right here
for just a minute and then we'll be back.
And I want to talk to Mrs. Berryman's
further about marriage and family
and especially see if we can identify
something.
That meant that married
couples can be doing to keep their
marriages strong,
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If you agree that people really matter,
you love Abilene Christian University.
We're back on campus with Mrs. Betty,
mom's been visiting with her about
the difficulties of
marriages today and how
can they be made stronger.
One of the things you mentioned in the
first half was the fact that
while you were a marriage and family
therapist, you also mentioned the idea
that you were a sex therapist.
Exactly. What is that?
Well, of course, there are a lot of
problems in marriages that have to do
with the sexual problems of
a couple.
There are a lot of problems in marriage
that are symptomatic.
Sometimes it's a matter of communication.
Sometimes it's a matter of power
struggle. Sometimes it's a matter of in
laws.
And there's also sometimes a matter of
sexual dysfunction or incompatibility.
And, of course, getting training with
Masters and Johnson in that area.
I feel like that a lot of what I do has
to do with sex therapy with couples.
When you have a couple come
to you today, how have they
usually been?
Have they been referred to you by
someone? Have they found you?
Well, it can come from different ways.
I think a lot of my referrals
are from people who I have seen before
and they heard about it or someone heard
that that person was having difficulty
and referred that way.
Minister sometimes
will refer couples to me or individuals
to me or families,
sometimes yellow pages.
I have call sometimes that
they said I wanted a woman
and I saw your name in
the Yellow Pages and you were close to my
work. And so various
ways.
Well, if the if a family
today or a couple
began having trouble and decided they
wanted to see someone, would you have
any advice to them about the best way
to find someone, to give
them the kind of help they need?
How do they know if they're really
talking to someone who can help them
after talking to somebody who may not
be as much help as they need?
Well, I think that it all depends
on what kind of problem that they are
having.
If they're having a personality
disorder, they need to see a
psychiatrist.
If they're having trouble in their
marriage, they need to look and
find someone
who knows someone that they have
confidence in or let's
say in my case, I have
a Christian background and I base
a lot of my own therapy on
religious grounding.
They know that when they call me, they
know that because somebody has told them
that I don't push that in therapy,
but they know that about me.
Or you certainly want to go to someone
that has accreditation.
American Association of Marriage and
Family Therapists or
American Association of Sex Therapist
and Educators or some
of the associations
that, you know, had been fully trained
and have gone to a program, gone
through a program of training.
I did my doctoral work at
Texas Women's University, and
they have a training in marriage and
family therapy, as well as other schools
over the state and over the nation.
And I think you would certainly want
someone that had the proper training for
the problems that you were experiencing.
And I was curious if
a couple comes to you, can you tell the
difference between when a
couple wants to come to you and they're
really wanting you to tell them that they
need to get a divorce?
Or in other words, they're really wanting
you to tell them that what they've made
up their mind to do is they're looking
for somebody else. I think you've decided
that. That's right. And that's what you
are doing and someone who really
wants to hear what you've got to say.
It seems to me that sometimes when
when people get to the point we were
talking about a while ago, they
really aren't interested in hearing very
much as they are. They just want somebody
to agree with them.
Right.
We call that resistance.
Yeah. Now, I may not catch that
the first time we're together, they may
really be able to convince
me that they they want help.
But eventually, after I began
to give them assignments or
suggestions or
asked them to do certain things together,
and they don't do them,
they don't come to appointments
or some kind of resistance appears,
then I have to confront are you really
wanting this marriage to work?
And yes, I will eventually find that out.
OK, let's go to the other thing now.
What about couples who
things are going great?
What could they do
to just make sure their marriage
keeps on being a strong
marriage and one that can be a
basis for a happy home?
Dr. Nexen.
Has probably been most
outstanding in his work on healthy
families, you know, for years we looked
at all these sick families to try to find
out, you know, what was going on.
He began to look at healthy families.
Why are families making it?
Why we hear the statistics, 50
percent get divorced.
Well, that means 50 percent stay
together. What's happening in those
families.
So he started looking at those families
to see if there was any
qualities, variables that
were consistent with these families.
And he found a number of things.
Dr. Jerry Lewis in Dallas also
and Robert Beavers also did a study
on the health of family. And it's a very
interesting study.
And he he saw a a
thread going through these families
that was consistent.
And some of the things that they found
were that that
commitment, again, couples
seemingly must have
a dedicated commitment
to that marriage.
It can't be one of those throwaway things
that just if it doesn't go right, hey,
I'll just get rid of it.
They have to be committed.
Kind of like those vows that we said
till death do us part in sickness and
health, no matter what, they
also have to spend time together.
You know, in our society, people are
going so hard and so fast and
trying to get ahead.
And sometimes in the process, they lose
the very most important thing that they
have their family.
And these man said these families
spend time together,
good time together.
We hear these statements of, well,
it's not the quantity,
it's a quality at times, the
rubbish.
They got to spend some time together,
quality and quantity.
It's got to be some quite right.
And then another thing that was very
significant in these families, what it
was that they showed appreciation
to one another. You know, they were kind,
they were considerate.
They built each other up.
And this is where my doctrine
comes in. There's such a beautiful
pattern there that talks about being kind
to one another and building one or one
another up in love.
That's what has to happen in those
families.
A little while ago, I was talking about
children needing to parents
and parents that love them and told
them how good they were.
That's what it's about.
I need that as a wife.
You need that as a husband.
We need to be built up.
These families did that.
Another thing was communication.
And we you know, we know that we've got
to talk to each other, but some families
don't.
These families have got to learn to
communicate together if they're going
to stay together now.
I mean, they have to tell everything
like, you know, the ugly things
about each other. But they have to be
able to be open and honest
and communicate and share
each other's feelings.
Most people that I say do not
communicate.
And when I see a lack of communication
and I see that in all the dysfunctional
families, communication breaks down.
Another thing is that
these families, when tragedy
comes and
crisis and tragedy comes to everybody
at some time or another, when the tragedy
comes in, the good, healthy families,
they draw closer together.
When it comes in, unhealthy families,
they fragment.
So these these healthy
families, we're finding out, have certain
elements that are consistent.
The other one, I think I'm trying to
remember, but I think there's one more
and I and as I recall, it's priorities
that family is important
above all else.
You know, today you find
the kids on the soccer team, on the
ballet, on Girl Scouts,
football, all kinds of activities.
But if those activities
take priority or the family being
together, these families
cut them out.
Maybe it was some of father's
commitments, maybe with some of mother's
commitments, but they committed
and put a priority on
the family.
And these are healthy families.
And this has to happen
to make a family strong and stay
together. This is what's happening to
that other 50 percent.
Well, it's you know, it's so easy to
spend our time talking about the
problems. And I guess we do that every
area of society, we talk about all
the problems that you have with
with delinquency and problems
with murder and theft
and all burglaries, everything like that.
But we
forget about all the people that are
really making it and
doing it.
James and I have my husband has been in
and I have been married for thirty one
years. And we've you
know, we're different is we can be you
know, I don't even like the same TV shows
and.
But I know I love him
more now than I have ever loved him
before, and the
strong marriages work at it,
they they continually
work ahead and I never stop.
You know that that raises another
question in my mind, because it seems to
me that
sometimes you hear about people getting a
divorce very
well just within a year or two after
they've been married.
But then other times you hear about
people who've been married for twenty or
twenty five years and now they get a
divorce and say, we really just aren't
compatible.
And you have to wonder if they've been
living together for 20 years, what all
of a sudden happened that they became
incompatible? Oh, it doesn't all of a
sudden happen, Gary.
I think there are three periods that are
very dangerous times.
You've heard of the seven year itch.
Well, that's really about right.
The first year is probably the most
difficult year in a marriage.
The seventh through the 10th is also a
very difficult time.
But there are as many divorces
in the 20 year marriages
as there are in the seven year,
10 year problem marriages.
And I think they stay together for the
children. And then when they have
invested so much in the children and
not on each other, that
when the children are out of the nest,
they say, hey, who are you?
OK.
So that's what happens to the 20 year
falls apart.
The first the one or two year marriage
that falls apart.
What happened there?
The lack of commitment to try to work
out the problems here is this throw away
that, hey, it's not working.
We just won't really work on
it. Try hard, right?
Yeah, right.
And it does take work.
And then what about the seven, 10 year
period in there? What happened?
What happens is there's something
peculiar that happens at that particular
time.
I think it's a time when maybe the
children come on the scene.
Children are supposed to be a blessing
and they are truly are.
But on the other hand, they
are difficult on the marriage.
And there is a cycle
where happiness, satisfaction
of marriages at the beginning kind of go
up and then there's dissatisfaction is
the children come along and when they're
teenagers, that is a very trying
time on a marriage.
But things get better after
the children need the nest.
And if that marriage has been worked on
all the way through the developmental
cycle of a marriage, then
the marriage is going to be good.
If it hasn't been worked through, then
it's not. One of the things that
I tell couples when they
come to me is spend time together
without the children, without another
couple, spend time together,
reestablish that relationship,
because long after the children are going
to be gone, you're going to face each
other.
You know, that sounds so simple.
And yet I'm guessing that means
you find some people and they aren't
doing that, I suppose that just aren't
spending any time together.
That's right.
Couples will say to me, I'll ask
them, you know, how long has it been
since you've had a vacation?
How long has it been since you all have
gone out together and all just kind of
shrug their shoulders?
They don't even remember when that's
true.
Let me ask you this.
If you were
one of your sons or daughter
or daughters were
getting married tomorrow
and you could just give them one
word of advice or something
to tell them, would there be any
particular thing you tell them as far as
making that marriage work?
And the last
I think I would tell them to love their
mate with their life.
And I think I've read that before.
I think you'll find that in the Bible.
I've really enjoyed talking with you.
Thanks so much.
I've enjoyed being by and being with us.
And it's been my pleasure. Thank you for
being with us on campus with Mrs
Berryman's and
come back and see us again next week.
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