There is a new TV show starting here in America called “The Marriage Ref”. Here is what the website says:

“Married life takes center stage as celebrities, comedians and sports stars candidly comment, judge and decide who’s right and who’s wrong in real-life disputes between real-life spouses.”

What do you think, does this sound like a good idea to you? Here are my thoughts.

The idea that there needs to be a winner or a loser in a marital dispute, totally fails to grasp the most important concept of a marriage. When we get married we make a commitment to work together to become one unit. We are now a family who will work together to find solutions where we can all be happy.

In the September 2009 issue of the journal, Psychology and Aging, they reported on the importance of having a sense of “we-ness” in a marriage. A new study suggests that “we” language used between spouses in times of conflict goes along with less negative behavior in lengthy marriages. Studies have indicated that the use of inclusive pronouns such as “we,” “our” and “us” — versus “I,” “me” and “you” — are evidence of marital satisfaction in younger couples. Robert Levenson, the study’s senior researcher, said “we” words over “I” words are “part of this invisible language that can tell scientists what’s going on inside a marriage.”

You don’t need a referee to make peace in your home (Shalom Bayit), you will find it when you are focused on working together as a team to solve your problems. We can only fuse our souls together and live as one flesh (Basar Echad) when we stop caring about who is right and who is wrong and only care about each other.