Marital Strife--You Have To Work At It

By Heidi Julavits

"We need to get the message out now and tell people before they get married that it's O.K. to fight. Right now we're sending people out onto the football field and not telling them the rules." --Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, quoted by the Associated Press

AMMO WEEKEND WORKSHOPS

Sharing the fate of all health "trends," the harmonious marriage has gone the way of oat bran and the Atkins diet. What was once regarded as beneficial has proved to be less helpful than advertised or even potentially harmful to your health. Across the country, counselors are being forced to recall "happy" couples who have learned to see beyond their differences because, if you're not fighting, research suggests, your marriage is probably in trouble.

The American Marital Munitions Organization was founded on the principle that a robust marriage is a rocky one. But just as quarreling couples once struggled to achieve harmony, teaching harmonious couples to embrace discord can be equally challenging. Fortunately, ammo recently opened its first "Fight Club" to serve America's untroubled yet troubled marital population. Our series of weekend-vacation workshops not only touches on the Big Five--money, sex, children, time and in-laws--but, more important, teaches couples to unearth the antagonistic possibilities buried within their most banal interactions. ammo's workshops are limited to an enrollment of eight. The following fall 2000 sessions are currently open for enrollment:

Where Is Jim Morrison's Grave? Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris; Sept. 8-10 (No French Required)

Couples will be abandoned in distant corners of the 100-acre cemetery and instructed to find Jim Morrison's grave in time to shower before their 6 o'clock dinner reservations. This workshop aims to release women's deep lack of respect for men's poor sense of direction, as well as for men's overconfidence in their ability to get lucky and their unwillingness to ask for help in any language. Couples will dine that evening at a three-star Michelin restaurant, where, no matter what they order, they will be served six courses of variously prepared offal, and their credit cards, when they attempt to pay, will be denied.

Blackie Hates the Way You Laugh The Colonial Hunting Resort and Spa, Hot Springs, W.Va.; Sept. 22-24

Each couple is given a dog and a small lunch and is instructed to hike up a nearby mountain of moderate difficulty. They are forbidden to speak to each other directly and must instead communicate through the dog, Blackie, a standard poodle. By attributing feelings to a poodle, many people (especially women) are freed from the guilt and responsibility of claiming emotions as their own. Many years' worth of complaints, injustices and dissatisfactions can be called to the surface through the use of a canine medium.

Who Will Cook the Lobster? Acadia National Park, Isle au Haut, Maine; Oct. 6-8

The couple should not have eaten for 24 hr. before this workshop. The lobster is invisibly wired with a heat-sensitive sound device so that the creature "screams" each time it is touched. One claw is left unpegged, guaranteeing that both partners are pinched repeatedly. This workshop effectively exposes a couple's divergent moral compasses and the discrepancies in their survival instincts and, by extrapolation, the future incompatibility of their parenting skills, attitudes toward capital punishment and openness to unusual foods.

"They're Not Real!" An Aegean Cruise with Elderly Shipping Tycoon Dmitri Asoukapolis and His Much Younger Trophy Wife; Aegean Sea, Greece; Oct. 20-22

Each couple will be assigned its own stateroom aboard the 200-ft. luxury liner D Cup. All meals will be enjoyed with the host and his 22-year-old wife Annika, a former swimsuit model from Sweden. Annika will wear less and less clothing as the weekend progresses. All other women on board will be required to wear sack dresses sewed of a natural hemp material. Feelings of discomfort, inadequacy and envy should be stirred in both partners, leading to many arguments that promise to plague each couple at home in America.

AMMO guarantees that all couples participating in the vacation workshops will learn to flip their "quick switch," so they can access their natural reserves of discord. For those seriously endangered couples who can weather even the most awkward, uncomfortable or humiliating scenario without a hitch, AMMO will provide an in-house, highly trained marital-combat couple. These surrogate aggressors will perform demonstrations on such topics as "Did You Throw Out That Little Yellow Scrap of Paper with the Very Important Phone Number on It?" and "You Know I Prefer Merlot," and work individually with both members of the couple, helping them channel their rage and irritation toward the hard-fought-for state of nuptial bliss.

Heidi Julavits is a writer whose first novel, The Mineral Palace, is being published this month by Putnam