From: "Wayne & Tamara Mitchell"
To: "Robert Epstein
Cc: "Gabriela Castillo"
Cc: "Karen S. Peterson"
Sent: February 11, 2003 3:07 PM
Subject: RE: Your hurtful article
Robert, we cited seven sources for our article: three by Karen Peterson of USA Today, three by you, one by your staff, and one a press release from your magazine. Our article is factually correct. We stand by every word.
If you believe Karen Peterson thrice misrepresented the status of your business interests, you should contact her for a retraction.
The article we wrote was mild. We could have commented on many other things, such as your interest in arranged marriages. If you go to our site, you will see letters we actually get about arranged marriage. Our column for the week of January 27, 2003 also contains a representative letter. We have never received a letter favoring this practice.
Nothing interests us more than creating good marriages. But that cause is not advanced by promoting questionable statements and doubtful research. You mention Diane Sollee of Smart Marriages.
This is a polemical, not a scientific, organization. To take just three examples from SmartMarriages.com:
1. Bill Doherty's statement, "Most of us are now free to walk away from our marital commitments more easily than from any other contract in our lives.” Patently ridiculous. You can sell the car or let the bank repossess it. End of story. Get a divorce and you have decades of financial and emotional commitments, and it becomes part of your life story which will be reflected on significant legal documents for the rest of your life.
2. Peggy Vaughan and her Beyond Affairs Network are the first resource mentioned in "getting beyond betrayal." This is the same Peggy who wrote in Beyond Affairs that her husband was still trying to introduce multiple sex partners into their marriage. Out of thousands of letters on this topic, we have never received one which supports the position of Peggy Vaughan, Shirley Glass, and Michele Weiner-Davis.
3. Research is cited saying "We also need to realize that every happy, successful couple has approximately ten areas of disagreement that they will never resolve." Blatantly false. Absolutely untrue of our marriage. It makes as much sense as saying every happy, successful friendship has ten areas of disagreement that they will never resolve.
We won't even get into the rigor of the "research" cited by Smart Marriages.
Robert, spend a day in the library and go through the microfilm of general circulation magazines, especially women's magazines, since 1950. The steady drumbeat is that "people can learn to love each other" and psychologists can show you how. That is a dominant theme in American popular culture. Nothing new here!
There is a basic problem of accountability in this field. On the scientific level, most authors and researchers are good ole boys who pat each other on the back and blurb each other's books. On the commercial level, there are no lemon laws or meaningful guarantees to hold these authors accountable for the human suffering--and lives created--through their unsubstantiated or misrepresented claims.
People believe Diane Sollee's statement that "successful marriage turns out to be a skill-based proposition," and conceive children. When they can't make that work and divorce, they write us.
When people pay $149 for John Gottman's tapes, and divorce, they write us.
People buy Gary Smalley's tapes (promoted on television by his poster children Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford), and they cannot make it work. Then they see Frank caught in bed with another woman, and they write us.
People don't want to feel they have been sold a bill of goods, so they feel they failed to make the technique work for themselves. They don't realize the techniques don't work.
People with PhDs from elite universities need to rigorously examine the claims and self-promotion in this field. They don't need to play the bass drum in the marching band.
Robert, we haven't begun to scratch the surface about how wrong your proposal is.
Wayne & Tamara
