Report 2:
My Understanding of the Unity Model of Marriage
By Wing Kin Fan
Instructions for this report are at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy22/409b-g22-report2.htm
I am answering Questions 3, 6, 7, 10, and 12

The Question I am answering is Question 3

This happened may due to many aspects. Personally, I think the major reason of it is because both of them do not have experiences to deal with disagreement. As the passage stated, they were getting along all the time. They were creating the perfect bonding on each other. They had never thought of what is it going to look like when there is a disagreement. They were just like some spoiled children that do not know how to cope with problems and stress.

We all gain experiences from our mistakes. Being too perfect may not necessary is a good thing at all time. When we have a disagreement, it reveals how each other’s way of thinking. For example, of a piece of fried chicken, one may see it as a tasty chicken while the other one may see it as a greasy crap. The first one’s thinking style may be just simple and plain while the second one may be a negative person as well as a vegetarian.

At some certain points, disagreement may lead to anger, and that is obviously what the couple is doing. Anger is from the hell. They made a big mistake by letting something that come from hell to destroy their bond, which may not be easily to build again. If this time they can get over with, they may reveal more about each other. No pain, no gain.

Being too perfect sometimes is equal to being too confident. People with too much confidence may not listen to anybody but themselves. In the passage, both of the man and woman are getting along and popular in their friends. They may think that there should be nobody will ever disagree with them. Actually, they get along maybe because they were born to be complementary to each other. In other words, they did not work to change themselves to be more suitable to each other. They had never strived for what they need.

In order to reverse the situation, they have to see where do they stand in the three-fold-self level first. Apparently, this couple is only in their second sensory-motor level. They have fun, enjoy the same activity, and so on. These are all feelings. The shallowness of their relationship should be one of the reasons why their relationship is so fragile that just one disagreement already turns it over.

Under normal circumstance, the women are already ready to be united. They are just waiting and helping the men to through the three-fold-self. All relationships begin with the sensory-motor level. At this level, we are attracted by our partners’ talking, behaviors, and sometimes appearance.

The second level is called the cognitive self. At this stage, the couple will do some sharing and communicating from their inner parts, such as religions, personal thought, moral sense, philosophy, etc. The third level is the couple has agree and through the second level, and finally come to a level that to determine some long-term goals. This is always the final step of the three-fold-self. However, they may step into the second level of three-fold-self, and start the sub-steps again.

There are three steps to become a unity, and the three-fold-self are only the sub-steps. The three main steps are dominance, equity, and finally, the unity. Once the couple past the first three-fold-self, they enter into equity, which is the level that the couple in the passage should be standing at. Once they step into the next step, there is not very likely to going back. The sub-steps you can go back and forth.

Every relationship is unique. Various psychologists and philosophers always provide some models and suggestions to solve the problems between each relationship, but there is no one true, sure-to-work way or method to guarantee that one’s relationship would be a happy one. No one is born to his/her perfection. All we need to do is strive and try our best to be as complementary to each other as possible.

Moreover, most of the models are nearly impossible to achieve. It seems like that they unity model can be achieved only in heaven. I believe everything that said in the books is true and valuable, but what it is missing and did not take into account is that we are leaving in a material world. Most of us spend 10, 15 hours working outside of the house just for survival. If one cannot survive, one cannot achieve the unity model and eternity.

If we have 48 hours in a day instead of 24, we can be more easily to achieve the unity model. Most of what the core of the unity model is about deal with communication and inspirations of the men by or with the women. Women are always ready and all the unity model is waiting for is for the men to get inspired and conjoint with the women. This can happen only when men have another 24 hours in a day.

Men are in big trouble when they had forgotten something that meant a lot to their women. Birthday, wedding anniversary, her mother’s birthday, her grandmother’s birthday, her sister-in-law’s anniversary, first kiss anniversary…there are just way too much for any man to remember. Men are not designed as an organizer like women, both biologically and psychologically.

Men do not understand why these days are so important to women and women do not understand why these days can be so easily be forgotten by men. If men need to memorize all these special days and surprise their women for every single of these days, maybe men even need 72 hours a day and a couple more of hippocampus. Men are designed to slay the dragon for the family, and women should be men’s assistants that be supplementary to what the men are weak at in order to become a perfect couple.

In these days, the real phenomenon is, somehow women feel tired of waiting and stopped conjoining. Many women are having the same position, ability, and even ambitious to slay the dragon for the family. This makes the unity model even harder to achieve but this is what exactly happening and 100% true in our society. The traditional style couples should be easier to become united because the women’s heavens are always open. They are just waiting for the men to come in.

The Question I am answering is Question 6

The table 6 in the lecture notes consists of two main categories --- the behavioral indicators of one’s relationship model and models that one and one’s partner are in. There are three-sub-categories in the models that one and one’s partner are in, which is the dominance model, the equity model, and the unity model. Each model represents the progress that one and one’s partner have achieved, and the unity model is their goal.

Each behavioral indicator should come with three answers that consist of yes or no. The dominance model, the equity model, and the unity model are the ones to answer yes or no. There are 20 behavioral indicators and therefore 20 sets of yes-no answers along with the indicators. Some of the answers are logical but some of them are not. Some of them are even rather weird.

One of the logical examples will be “partners tolerate role differences, either culturally defined or by personal preference.” In dominance model, if one doesn’t tolerate that, ones will not be together anyway. In the equity model, everybody is equal; therefore, no role differences need to be tolerated. In unity model, the role differences do not even exist because his/her role also becomes his/her role. So the answer for this will be “yes, yes, yes.”

One abnormal example will be “when partners disagree, they negotiate to reach a consensus.” In the dominance model, the male does not have to negotiate because he is the one who controls the relation and situation. However, in the equity model, they have no choice but to negotiate. What is interesting is that when one’s are in the unity model, they do not negotiate again. It is simply because one will not disagree with oneself, since they are conjoined as the whole. So the answer to this behavioral indicator is “no, yes, no.”

Behavioral Indicators of One's Relationship Model	1 Dominance Model	2 Equity Model	3 Unity Model
Partners will be cheating on each other	Yes	Yes	No
Partners discriminate, either ethnicity or religions	No	No	No
Partners believe nothing is inevitable, in terms of disagreement	No	No	Yes
Partners tolerate class difference	Yes	Yes	Yes
Partners allow each other to meet their ex-boy, girlfriend	No	Yes	No
Partners should be together at all time	No	No	Yes
Partners believe life is now and only now	Yes	Yes	No
Partners strive on each other to be his/her perfect model	Yes	Yes	No
The woman is always waiting the man to be inspired	Yes	Yes	No
When there is a problem, partners ignore or even walks out	Yes	Yes	No
Woman should give in rather let the man to do it	No	No	No
Partners are need not to be the best but rather the most loving ones	Yes	Yes	Yes
Partners forgive and forget about each others’ faults	No	No	Yes
Partners allow for boys only or girls only things going on	Yes	Yes	No
Partners feel obligated for each others’ feeling and feeding	No	Yes	Yes
Partners are supposed to be loving each other unconditionally	No	No	Yes
Partners allow different perspectives and voices presence	Yes	Yes	No
Partners feel he has done more than her, or vice versa	Yes	Yes	No
The loving fire burns out little by little	Yes	Yes	No
Partners have no shame of self-disclosure	No	Yes	Yes

My new analysis shows there is 85% of the time that the dominance model and the equity model will be overlapped. This high correlation shows that both of the dominance and equity models are not very much different from each other after all. Actually, they are very similar in a way.

On the other hand, the overlapping rate of the dominance model to the unity model and the equity model to the unity model are relatively low, only 20% and 25 %. This indicates that being in the unity model are very different from any other stage and more restrictions need to be followed. With that, people to achieve the unity model are only having a small percentage of success.

All of my behavioral indicators are not philosophical but rather logical and realistic. Things like cheating on each other, we all know that we should not be doing that but except that we were in the unity model, there are chances that we are going to do it. In other words, selfishness and freedom are held on to us tightly. And they are the ones who prevent us from being a unity. Ideally, if we can get rid of them, we can find eternal, confident, and everlasting love from our partners. But, the truth is, how can we do that?

In order to achieve that, one will need to focus all his attentions to her and only her. No boys only, no seeing ex-girlfriends, no cheating, and the most important thing is, giving in first with any disagreement. Women are always open to become a unity with their men but men are covered with darkness, which is consisted of freedom and selfishness. The women’s job is to enlighten the road to her heaven and guild their men through.

To me, the unity model is rather unrealistic. From the past to now, I believe every couple was trying to be as unity as possible, either to follow the books or wok it out in their own way. However, did anybody ever succeeded? Desire, selfishness, freedom, and dominance are all inborn with men. Can men disregard them, as the children disregard milk, even with the women’s help? Not very likely. Therefore, if we can’t disregard our mother nature, there’s only a tiny percentage of that the unity model is a possible thing to achieve.

The Question I am answering is Question 7

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger is rather a harsh book for the modern American, especially for the women in America. Almost everything of what she says or interprets is to against the women and brings up men’s position once again. Depends on the case, besides the assaulting women part, one can find this book sometimes useful, but sometimes ridiculous.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s philosophy about marriage is very simple --- the male dominance model. It is not very appropriate to use the word traditional because it is too much for traditional. It is rather a Japanese traditional shogun type of philosophy, which is exactly what male dominance is all about. The male slay the dragon outside and when he back to his home, he is the king and his woman is rather a servant. The male dominance represents that the men are supreme, and women should be supportive and understanding unconditionally.

Regardless of the woman is tired, sick, unwilling or whatever the cause is, when her man comes home, she has to be obedient to her husband, including from preparing a warm meal, dressing sexily, to having sex with him anytime he wants. All women should behave as the way their men like, and all women should put away all personal thoughts, their own family, friends, even the babies but only concentrate and pay 100% attention to their one and only one man, according to Dr. Laura.

“Men are simple creature.” stated in the book. Dr. Laura believes that men are as simple as a reward machine. In other words, when a woman treats her man with respect and dignity, the man will do everything for the woman in return. If the man is not treating his wife good, that means the wife is doing something wrong. However, in fact, this is only the basic rule in communication that applies to everybody in every relationship because the way you want other to treat you with is supposed to be the way you treat other people first.

Here are 10 brief quotes that written from husbands:

Xvi --- Gary seems like that his after-work life is somehow not satisfied. He is saying that he has been working hard all day long and when he goes home all he want is a loving and caring wife to coax him. It does not sound too much to me. Obviously, his wife and he are having problem at the very sensory-motor level. It is to swallow for a couple. It is either the wife neglected him, or he is too hard to be satisfied.

5 --- Clifford does not trust his wife very deep. When his wife treated him unusually nice, he thought that she might want something from him. His cognitive level is never at this wife’s level yet. I believe that his relationship is staying at the dominance, cognitive. It he is in equity level, he should know that he deserves the unusual nice since that should be what he is doing to his wife, too.

18 --- Luke has a very clear mind. He knows that his wife is always his number 1, even prior to his career test. His relationship is a pretty successful one, but it is hard to tell because he only got married less than a year. He should be at the affective level since he have committed a long term goal that he rather fails the test but not going to miss their “Friday Date Night.”

30 --- Ken obviously does not satisfy his life with his wife after they had children. As he mentioned, this happens to many women after they gave birth to a child. They become a 24/7 mother, and had a hard to slip back to lover mode. It sounds like that his wife has closed her heaven and stopped guiding his husband through because she paid all attention to the children.

40 --- Jim does not have confidence in him or to his wife. And very obliviously, his wife and he do not have ways of doing thing in common. According to his status right now, he is not very likely to going to achieve the unity since they cannot be very well seeing through each other’s mind. He needs to communicate and express more of himself to his wife.

42 --- Clarence has one of the few wives that the relationship is reciprocal --- the husband is ready to be united but the wife needs to be guided. He is one of the few husbands himself that would like to share his wife’s chore voluntary, with the fact that he can barely stand after 13 hours of work. No one is perfect, but his starting point was good, although he might just make some mess sometimes. It really looks like that the wife is the one needs to be waited for.

78 --- John is a very lucky husband. He has a wife that fully understands a wife’s role and she does it right. He, in return, is very satisfied with the relationship. Obviously, they are very close to the unity model. But one more thing is that how do they handle disagreement. Actually, in the unity model, there should not be any disagreement since they are united. One would not disagree with oneself, to put the word simply. After all, they seem to be a very dream couple.

78 --- Lloyd said out loud what is the burden preventing man to unite with women --- men are not willing to communicate. One cannot achieve the unity model without being transparent to each other. He also suggested very correctly that women should help men to open their mind since only women are only the ones who can do that.

45 --- Charlie faces what many men are facing --- the criticism of not doing chores. According to the lecture notes, men should always listen and help their women in every aspect. However, men are humans, after all. After 10, 12 hours of work and by the time he reached home, his wife asks him to do chores for her; he may wanted but physically he is exhausted.

According to the passage, Charlie lawns the yard. It is a super

heavy labor work. It is incomparable to any sum of the house chores. His wife complains that he does not do any house chores after he has done all these, which makes me think that his wife is not guiding her man but dragging him to stay at the sensory-motor level.

126 --- With beautiful insight, Phil stated that love to have sex is not a crime for men, but rather a biological hormonal effect. In fact, having sex is a loving communication that a man can do to their partner without inspiring, if he is not fornicating. Women are actually the ones that desire more sex than men, but if the men don’t do the right thing, women will not easily to intimate with the men.

Dr. Laura’s approach is too extreme --- no matter what the man does, he is always the winner; and if the woman wants a little democracy, she becomes the criminal. As the matter of fact, her solutions to the callers somewhat useful, if you are a beloved slave to your master. But one thing I have to admit is that she crystal clearly can save millions of families. Modern American women always desire more equality with the men but reserve their beloved wife position from the past. That means, women are willing to control men instead.

Dr. Laura sees that very insightfully and goes straightforward to stop that women’s desire expansion. I think that is very wise of her, and it saves the family. Generally, to me, she is a very effective family problem solver and her “man is simple creature” and “men have feelings” parts are the most admirable. I find 70% of this book is useful and correct, despite the fact that 30% of it is totally inhumane to the women. She surely breaks thousands of women’s hearts but saves millions of families.

The Question I am answering is Question 10

My Ideal Chart:

	Yes = tolerates at times a difference or disagreement about that issue No = never tolerates a difference or disagreement about that issue	1 Dominance Model	2 Equity Model	3 Unity Model
	Which channel to watch	Yes	Yes	No
	What comments on a specific character in a movie	Yes	Yes	No
	What carpet should be using	Yes	Yes	No
	When to go to church	Yes	Yes	No
	What kind of plant should be in the garden	Yes	Yes	No
	Which room is the guest room	No	Yes	No
	Where to go on vacation	No	Yes	No
	What languages should be speaking, if any	No	Yes	No
	What holiday to celebrate if from different religions	No	Yes	No
	What musical instrument and sport should let the children play	No	Yes	No
	Insulting about partner’s background, ethnic group, religion	No	No	No
	Ignoring partner’s talking	No	No	No
	Go on a trip without letting the partner knows	No	No	No
	Confronting with partner’s family and not letting children to see them	No	No	No
Embarrassing partner in front of everybody		No	No	No
Who should be paying the bill		Yes	Yes	Yes
Who should be washing the dishes		Yes	Yes	Yes
What activity should go together		Yes	Yes	Yes
What things to buy for a friend’s birthday		Yes	Yes	Yes
Who should be refilling the gas for the car		Yes	Yes	Yes
What secrets to keep and what secrets to share		Yes	No	No

What My Friends Had Told Me:

	Yes = tolerates at times a difference or disagreement about that issue No = never tolerates a difference or disagreement about that issue	1 Dominance Model	2 Equity Model	3 Unity Model
	Which channel to watch	No	Yes	No
	What comments on a specific character in a movie	No	Yes	No
	What carpet should be using	No	Yes	No
	When to go to church	No	Yes	No
	What kind of plant should be in the garden	Yes	Yes	No
	Which room is the guest room	No	Yes	No
	Where to go on vacation	Yes	Yes	No
	What languages should be speaking, if any	No	Yes	No
	What holiday to celebrate if from different religions	No	Yes	No
	What musical instrument and sport should let the children play	No	Yes	No
	Insulting about partner’s background, ethnic group, religion	No	No	No
	Ignoring partner’s talking	No	No	No
	Go on a trip without letting the partner knows	No	No	No
	Confronting with partner’s family and not letting children to see them	No	No	No
Embarrassing partner in front of everybody		No	No	No
Who should be paying the bill		No	Yes	Yes
Who should be washing the dishes		Yes	Yes	Yes
What activity should go together		Yes	Yes	Yes
What things to buy for a friend’s birthday		Yes	Yes	Yes
Who should be refilling the gas for the car		No	Yes	Yes
What secrets to keep and what secrets to share		Yes	Yes	Yes

I found three of my friends to do this survey for me, including two girls and one boy. Since they are not psychology major, nor are they taking this class now or before, I found some of their answers were bias, based on their culture, gender, and personal thoughts. Moreover, I think I have not been an intelligent writer yet. Some of their answers were contradicted to my predictions 3-in-strike. What most interested me is that girls usually keep a traditional view on something that is beneficial to them but say no to all that are bad to them.

I found the most contradictory results in the “yes, yes, no” part. When my friends saw the word “dominance”, immediately they thought about Asian type of dominance. The concept of Asian type is “husband is supreme, wife always come second or third, if there is an oldest son.” So basically, males are always the higher class, and females are way down below.

Since my friends defined dominance differently from me, they expect full dominance and absolutely no tolerance of others other than what kind of plant should be there in the garden, the choice of channel, comments of the movie character, carpet and days to go to church will all be controlled by the male. But they have all agreed that a couple should and will tolerate some disagreements moderately in the equity model.

Again, in the “no, yes, no” part, they put “no” for most of the dominance column. The only exception is on the choice of where to go on vacation. Usually, the women are the one to choose and men are the one to pay. I guess my friends are not really psychologists because their thoughts are very realistic.

For the “no, no, no” part, I made it simple and straightforward --- I used all inhumane things for testing. Of course, this time their answers are all “no” now. But contradictions once again occurred in the “yes, yes, yes” part. Who takes care of the bill and refills the gas is a “no” in dominance column --- girls think that these are straightly guys’ responsibility. The one who controls some should take care the whole.

Last but no least, I came up with a “yes, no, no” pattern --- what secrets to keep and what secret to share. I believe in the dominance model, there is not too much space to share so we can keep them to ourselves. But when we merge to the equity and unity models, secrets as the one become transparent as the whole. My girls interpret differently again, with no surprise. They said that there will always be some secrets between girls and guys may not want to hear, neither. So on average, the pattern this is “yes, yes, yes.”

I really need to define the word “dominance” better. Even some of the things in the chart, I have a hard time to interpret. My interpretation to no tolerance in dominance model only applies to long-term plan, such as where to live. Dominance with tolerance is short-term plan, such as where to eat and what to order. But I also think which political party to support would be a long-term thing but it said that can be tolerance. It does not make too much sense to me.

The Question I am answering is Question 12

I recall a TV show called “Qualification of Fallen Angel” several years ago. The plot was about a female teacher fell in love with one of her students. She was so tense because her family was forcing her to marry a guy that she didn’t like. Meanwhile, her career and friendship were collapsing, too. Only from that particular student, which turned out to be her lifelong spouse later, she can breathe, talk and relax, and so does the student.

The immoral thing is not the point, but the anti-social implication. It was just like the movie “Melody Fair” tens of years ago, but only now teacher-to-student instead of student-to-student. I think in nowadays American society, this act is fairly acceptable since people have always suggest freedom of this and free of that and “true love is beyond everything” these kind of things.

But, now, this TV violates the anti-unity values, which can promote unstable marriage to everybody who watches it. The first thing it has violated is living together without marrying each other. This loses the dignity of the female by giving in to the man and allows a risky relationship since no commitment is declared. Living together usually leads to having sex, in sequence. If, unfortunately, the female is pregnant and the male is still not going to marry her, the relationship is very likely to only stay at the dominance level.

This happens on TV so often is because there are so many people choosing to cohabitate rather than having a legal certificate. Freedom is still tightly stuck on us. It is the darkness that covers the road to the unity. As the matter of fact, this TV program promotes a negative value, but it is actually just a reflection of what is exactly going on in our society. We made the movie; the director only presents it.

There is also another drama called Hero. This is an imported drama from Japan, so maybe it contains something that seems to be okay in Japan but not in our society. After I have read our lecture notes on the AUVs session, I see there are actually quite a few scenes are promoting the AUVs. The definition of good movie has been changed after I take this class.

The most severe AUV in this drama is the husband beats up her wife without any proper punishment or appropriate reason to do so. I am not saying that we can do that when we have a proper reason, but at least not doing it, as the man is pleased. It becomes kind of a natural and acceptable thing to do when we do that. Beating up one’s wife is absolutely not acceptable in any of the dominance, equity, or unity model.

Beating is usually the result of anger, and anger is from hell. Anything that comes from hell will destroy every good thing that we have built. Destroying is always easier than building.

My father had a couple times beat up my mother years ago. Those were not bad ones, but the experiences stayed in my mind. It is like a scar in my heart that will stay forever. Finally, when I was eleven, they divorced each other. That is the reason why I did not build a strong emotional bond with any of my parents.

Besides these, some of the longest psychology studies also show that people are more likely to commit violence and divorce when their parents were committed violence and divorce. From these, we can see violence does not only prevent a couple to be united, but also have some long-term effect on the offspring.

The last drama that I want to talk about is called Wrong People in the Wrong Place. It talks about a married couple that the woman unusually dominance the family. The woman is a manager of a company and she has no time for her husband, and of course any time to bear a child neither. One day they had a big fight so the husband moved out and opened his own business and the story goes along. There is a scene that we may want to discuss about.

Since the woman was dominating the family, she did almost everything as she pleases, even flirting with her boss in front of her husband. In terms of equality in our society, there is nothing wrong for a woman to work outside of the house and let the man do the housekeeping job. But the woman cannot do such an immoral thing, especially in front of her husband.

Jealousy is come from zeal, not anger, but the intention of doing it on purposely is wrong. A person jealous about you represent that person cares about you. But intended jealousy may be hurtful and betrayal. This is another vice versa story that the woman is actually dominating the family and the road to her heaven is closed. Modern women’s heavens are not always open like before.

Advice to Future Generations

In order to be successful in this class, one needs to fully disregard the view of the role of man and woman, the tradition style, as well as some expectations of man and woman. Otherwise, you’ll be surprised that most of what we believe is almost totally contradicts to what is really true out there.

Class Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy22/classhome-g22.htm

My Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409bs2005/fan/home.htm