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Transcription: How Arlene works with couples and what you may expect from a session

(37:27)

Bill Simpson and Arlene Foreman

(Music Introduction Upbeat)

Bill: My guest this morning is Arlene Foreman. She’s a mental health counselor and she specializes in marriage counseling. She writes ‘’I’ve had the great privilege to be invited into the lives of struggling couples all over the Philadelphia area to help them re-unify as one, reinforce their love towards one another, and repair and tighten the strings of love tying these couples together.’’ That’s beautiful! Welcome to Pathways to Health.

Arlene: Thank you.

Bill: So my first question for you Arlene is what usually brings couples in to see you?

Arlene: Probably pain – that they’re really hurt and are afraid that they’re going to lose the marriage.

Bill: Hmm. And is this usually spawned by one person, or the couple, or both?

Arlene: Sometimes it’s one just literally dragging the other one in, and sometimes two people who are just really mutually deciding that what they’ve tried is not working and that they need outside help. What I would like to add is that studies show that it takes the average couple 7 years from the time they decide that they need help until they call a therapist.

Bill: The term ‘’the 7 year itch’’, is that it?

Arlene: (laughs) Could be!

Bill: It’s that 7-year mark that couples really see that they need serious help. They come to a point where it’s late at that point, or that’s when they start to realize that they need help?

Arlene: Well, my work is never too late. When two people want a marriage to work, usually we can save it. If there’s one of them with a hidden agenda that they want out, then we’ve got a difficult time making it work, or if they have an affair on the side and then they’re not telling, it makes it difficult. Or if they just really made up their mind and the other one is dragging them in and they’re like ‘’Alright!’’. But if two people come and they say they’re hurting and that they’re afraid the marriage is going to break and they really want to say this marriage, usually (I can’t say always, but usually) it’s just really a matter of learning the skills that they need to make it work.

Bill: So do you see yourself as saving marriages or even if you may see that it’s headed for disaster?

Arlene: Um, I don’t save marriages, and I don’t promise anybody I’m going to save marriages. But if you work with me, I save people. I give you skills and you do whatever you do with them. You two may decide that the best thing is to save the marriage, then you two may decide the best thing is to split up, that’s not for me to decide. But I might add that a lot of the studies show that people unhappy in marriage are unhappy when they get divorced. So don’t look for happiness after the divorce (laughs). 

Bill: Well that sounds like there’s a lot of people going into a marriage to achieve happiness and everything.

Arlene: Well, it’s more to compliment your life and your happiness, but if you’re unhappy and you’re going to look for your mate to make you happy, you’re looking in the wrong place. We’re better off looking for a way to make your partner happy, and you’ve got a better chance of happiness. 

Bill: Hmmm, giving to the other as opposed to expecting from them.

Arlene: Exactly. What do I need to do to change so that my partner will be happy. And again, when they look at research on what makes stable marriages or happy marriages, if I decide to marry you, Bill, then you and I would make a contract that you’re going to meet my affection and sexual needs in this marriage, and I’m going to meet yours. This can’t go anyplace else for. This kind of puts me in a bind that’s like if you’re not going to meet my needs, I mean, you’re going to meet these affection needs by buying stuff or being overprotective to a child, or nagging you, or whatever way it’s going to manifest itself. Or an affair, or just playing unhappy unhappiness. Unhappy women have more heart disease than women in happy marriages. 

Bill: How do you think that’s the case?

Arlene: You know it’s a metaphor for the heart. I love you with my heart, and clients will tell me that their heart hurts. They’ll say it. That they want their partner to be holding them, touching them and loving them, and they go to bed at night and he rolls over and goes to sleep and her heart hurts. And as I said before, she’s not allowed to sleep with anybody else, she made a deal. She can only sleep with him and he rolls over and she can’t get her affection needs met. 

Bill: Therefore a lot of pain.

Arlene: Exactly a lot of pain. For me, it’s important to say ‘’You know, if you’re in this marriage contract, you’ve got to own up to what you’ve agreed to, that if you don’t want me to get affection somewhere else, then you can’t say ‘’Well I’m not an affectionate kind of guy’’. It’s like a therapist needs to be helping you, then I’ll help you to be an affectionate kind of guy and you have to want to learn it. You can’t put me in a position to say ‘’Well, I don’t need affection, it’s not my thing, and I don’t want to learn it.’’ Then where does that leave your partner? 

Bill: Let me quickly re-introduce you. I’m speaking to Arlene Foreman, she’s a mental health counselor specializing in marriage counseling. You’ve mentioned earlier Arlene about the possibility of one person coming in and you say the wife is feeling a lot of pain and she’s unhappy, and she comes in to see you, and her husband does not want to come into the therapy. Can you help with that?

Arlene: The metaphor that I describe to my clients is that when you have a can of white paint and red paint, and you put some red paint on the white paint, it’s no longer white – it’s forever changed. It’s got a little bit of red in it. So if you and I are communicating and I changed the way I communicate, you have to change your response because the way I spoke to you is different. So if I’m learning a way to respond that makes you like yourself and makes you like me, some of the research is showing that when I want something from you and I want to confront you because you hurt me, if I can start in a soft way, then you’re more likely to listen. Well when I teach just one partner to come in, I teach them to respond in a soft way. I teach them to ask for things or say how you’re hurt in a way that the other person’s dignity is still intact. When I sincerely wanna give you what you need instead of a tit for tat game, and then what I tell my clients is “Watch. I need to focus on myself and to be the best wife I can be, and then watch.’’ And you’re really gonna change or you’re not, and my experience is, most of the time… I’m gonna interrupt myself because I can think of a client I had and I worked with her for two years and I never met her husband. Then I ran into her ten years later in a supermarket and she ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug and she said “We are so happy!’’ – just with her changing herself. He did not believe in therapy, he never wanted to come, it started out when she came to me from an abusive relationship where she was terrified of him. 

Bill: So just by changing her own behavior saved the marriage?

Arlene: Yeah, and I can tell you that, you know, in an abusive relationship if she changes then he’ll change. I can tell you that if I change, and you don’t or you get worse, then at least if I need to end the marriage, I know that I had good skills, that I can lay my head down in the pillow a year from now and say ‘’I did all I can, and I liked the way I behaved, and I treated you with dignity or respect, and you still did not shift, then I can be done.’’ But most of the time, people want to be married, and they want it to work. When I can be kind to you, then your heart starts to melt. 

Bill: What do you find is the biggest issue facing couples in a marriage or in a relationship?

Arlene: The biggest issue is ‘’needs’’ conflicts. When I wanna go right, and you wanna go left, we sort of have an unconscious balance inside our brains. Not getting my needs met and they can only be met in a marriage. My passion, my love for you starts to die. Often couples don’t know what to do when I wanna go right and you wanna go left, and we have a ‘’needs conflict’’. Couples become very frightened of ‘’every time I give in to you, there’s nothing left of me’’. And they really don’t know how am I gonna get my needs met in the context of what you need, and it makes me very sad because problem-solving techniques should be taught in first grade, and that you need to come to me to learn that. The other big thing facing marriages today that I believe is in the culture is that when you watch TV or in the movies, people are always yelling at each other. We’re not learning about what love needs, and it needs softness. And when I can approach you in a soft, caring way you’ll melt and you really wanna hear me. 

Bill: And we really don’t see that in our society?

Arlene: No. It’s not an exciting movie if I speak to you softly. We gotta yell and carry on like Virginia Wolfe and then, wow, it becomes like a box office hit and then we think that’s what we have to do, and there’s conflict.

Bill: And in reality, we need the softness?

Arlene: Well I got married because I love you. How are we gonna keep love going if I keep yelling at you?

Bill: Well let me ask you this. Is a good argument good for marriage?

Arlene: Ironically the research that I read says that if you and I are fighters, that’s okay, as it will stabilize the marriage if you and I have good skills, but if you’re a fighter and I’m passive, this marriage won’t last. So those are the marriages that need marriage counseling. 

Bill: Well let’s go back to the ‘’needs conflict’’. Can you give me an example of that in a relationship?

Arlene: The biggest needs are usually not always because I see the opposite. The biggest needs are guys need sex and women need affection. Those are the biggest needs and women have headaches, they’re tired and they just put the kids to bed. What’s real is men have sexual needs and he made a bargain with you, and if you won’t allow him, then he can get it outside of the marriage. And once he’s not getting his sexual needs met, and he’s getting really frustrated, he starts getting irritated, and things about you that didn’t bother him before would now become very upsetting to him. Couples come to me fighting about the color of the car they’re gonna buy, and the real problem is they did not have sex the night before because she was too tired. And affection is the core of what holds the marriage together – that women will wanna be more sexual if men are more affectionate, and affection is not like ‘’You know honey, before we go to bed, we’ll sit and watch TV and I’ll hug and kiss you, and then we’ll go to bed.’’ because it does not work that way. Affection is when she’s doing the dishes and he puts his arms around her, gives her a kiss when he’s just inspired to do it. And I wanna add one point here, and that’s appreciation – I gave a couple a homework assignment, 5 appreciations a day, and I wanna tell you, with just that simple thing, they came back a week later with a totally different energy. We are so busy telling people what’s wrong with them. You know the children, by the time they’re five years old have had 40,000 No’s and 5,000 Yes’s, and when I can keep appreciating you, then you’ll feel closer to me. I can make a choice: I can either appreciate that you called me that you’re gonna be late for dinner, or I can yell at you that you’re gonna get late. Well I’ve gotta ask myself ‘’What do I want from you? I wanna yell at you when you’re mad at me, or I wanna appreciate you, and when you come at me, and wanna hug me.’’ Those are the tiny decisions, hour after hour after hour that build a relationship into the satisfying sexual affection it needs, or make people angrier and angrier and fight anything and think that’s the problem. 

Bill: It sounds like the foreplay starts in the morning, where ‘’Good morning, dear. I appreciate you.’’ or ‘’I’m showing you affection throughout the day, what have you.’’ So instead of ‘’It’s bed time and I want sex!’’. 

Arlene: You know when you say ‘’in the morning’’ there’s even a technique where as soon as the couple gets up, for 10 minutes she talks and he doesn’t interrupt, and for 10 minutes he talks and she doesn’t interrupt. Then you know, couples, in their busy lives, just have 10 minutes first thing in the morning where they really listen to each other, and it can change the tone in the whole day.

Bill: We’ve been discussing some of the big issues facing couples in relationships, a big one we mentioned was wherein couples that have ‘’needs conflicts’’. As a man, how would I go about showing you affection even though I think I may be affectionate towards you but you may be taking it as I want sex, and what I really want to do is just be affectionate. How can I do that as a guy?

Arlene: Again, John Gottman, who did research on what works with marriages, says that when they study couples who are making it, they’re responding to bids.

Bill: Like cues, or…?

Arlene: Well you and I are sitting and having breakfast, and I’m reading the paper, and I say ‘’Look Bill, look what happened in Russia, what Putin is doing after that terrorist attack.’’ and you say ‘’Would you please pass me the butter?’’. 

Bill: So she was putting up a bid to discuss or have an interaction with you? 

Arlene: Right. It’s not about what happened in Russia. It’s about having breakfast and I want to connect with you. I’ll talk about anything and I thought I know that you’re interested in political situations and you would wanna know. Well, when you say ‘’pass the butter’’, it’s like my heart breaks.

Bill: So it sounds like listening is a part of understanding these bids as well.

Arlene: Well it’s more that you start hearing it as that I’m reaching out to you and that I want you, and I want you to respond.

Bill: Not just the content of the issue of what’s in the newspaper but this is her attempt to try and interact with me.

Arlene: Right. If I walk by you and I touch your shoulder, well, I need you to touch me back, for you to just, you know, I touch your shoulder and you keep walking. You know what, I’m not gonna touch your shoulder again, what’s the use?

Bill: So what do I do if I touch you and you don’t wanna touch me? I mean, what’s the use? What do I do at that point to get what I need?

Arlene: If I’m not responding to your bids?

Bill: Yes.

Arlene: Then I would talk about it. I would sit down with my partner and I would say ‘’I need you to respond to my bids.’’ And I would remind my partner again, I would remind you again, I would give bids to anybody else, and if you’re not responding to my bids, then I’d feel empty. Bill, I can’t tell you how many couples – the husband or the wife – if I’m talking to them alone, married for 20 years, tell me how lonely they are, sleeping with somebody, having breakfast with somebody, and they’ll tell me ‘’my heart is like empty and lonely.’’ 

Bill: Hmmm, and that’s the pain you’re referring to at the beginning of the show?

Arlene: Right. You know it sounds like no big deal that I wanted to talk to you about the newspaper and you did not answer. But when that’s played over and over, day after day, year after year, if you’ve looked at breast cancer personalities, they’re women who give and give and give and give, and they’re not getting back, and again research on women with heart disease, happily married women have less arterial blocks, less heart problems than women in unhappy marriages. And one of the reasons I believe (especially when couples fight), adrenaline goes up, cortisol goes up, well these are hormones that make you age faster. 

Bill: They’re on the body?

Arlene: Yeah. You need a little bit… you need the right amount of adrenaline and cortisol. But when cortisol is going up, adrenaline goes up, insulin goes up, and there’s too much of it in the body. It’s like the beginning of a disease. Well people that are empty, lonely, fighting… they’re pumped with adrenaline and cortisol. 

Bill: Right.

Arlene: Psycho-immunology and there’s just more and more and more research seeing the relationship between hurting, psychological problems.

Bill: So after hearing that, I’m thinking of the person out there suffering right now. What’s the first step?

Arlene: First step for me is to take care of myself first. I can’t look at you and say it’s your fault and I need you to blah, blah… first I need to learn to be more relaxed if I’m tense. I need to learn how to eat better. I need to learn how to exercise. And I need to learn how to speak to you in a softer way. I need to learn that when you and I are fighting, instead of having an energy to tell you what’s wrong with you and how you have to change, I need to have an energy that says ‘’Bill, where is my part in it? Tell me because God did not give me a rear view mirror. I can’t see myself. I can’t experience myself. What do you see me doing that’s making you hurt or angry? I wanna know my part. Because what’s real? I’m the only one that can change the situation, and I cannot change it by telling you what’s wrong with you.’’ I never saw research that shows that you change people by putting them down and telling them what’s wrong and they’re gonna feel bad about themselves. I never saw it. 

Bill: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, who would wanna change if someone’s coming at them that way?

Arlene: Yeah, and I’m not promising you that when I do all of this, that there’s going to be a miracle and the marriage is going to get better. I can only promise you that I did my part, and then you will do what you’ll do and the marriage will do what it will do.

Bill: So that’s where people have to start – it is with themselves?

Arlene: Absolutely. When clients sit in front of me, I don’t start looking at him and telling him he has to change for her because that’s never gonna work. If he does not want to make the change for himself, it will not sustain itself. He has to turn to her and say ‘’I love you’’ and ‘’I don’t wanna be hurting you’’ and ‘’I wanna make that change’’. 

Bill: No matter what, I have to determine myself that I don’t want this to happen anymore. I wanna change myself. You can’t change another person. 

Arlene: You know Bill, I wanna share with you a story that happened with one of my couples. She was like hurting and then crying because she loved him, and the marriage is good, and she understands that he doesn’t like to be touched, and that he’s just not one for affection. But she’s hurting, and she started to cry, and he turned to her and he said, “I don’t wanna do that to you. That was me as a little kid – crying and empty and hurting, because my family did not give me that affection, and I don’t wanna be doing that. Let’s start one step at a time. You give me bids when you need them, and show me what you need, and let me give you a little… I’m not gonna promise you, but I’m gonna go home today and be this affectionate guy. If you’re gonna have pain, I do not want to be the one that causes it. I want you to feel good with me and I want to change.’’ And I tell you, her heart just swelled, like what more loving thing could this man say to her?  

Bill: Exactly. It’s like I can’t promise you I can change overnight, but the awareness that I am hurting you and not showing you affection – I wanna do something about that. My guest this morning is Arlene Foreman. She’s a marriage counselor, located in Ardmore. Arlene, I don’t need a phD to realize that divorce is out of control in this country. What are the recent statistics on divorce?

Arlene: The people getting married today have a 50 percent chance of getting a divorce, and the highest rate is within 7 years. But believe me, senior citizens are getting divorces, and the divorce rate for second marriages is 60 percent.

Bill: Why do you think it’s more the second time around than the first?

Arlene: Well my guess is not that they make worse choices, but once you’ve been through all the agony of a divorce, it’s like the second time around. You’re better at it. And it’s like I stay 20 years in this marriage and I’m not going to do another 20 years. Five years of this and I see that I need out. And what I see is people don’t think of calling marriage counselors. A vast majority of people don’t think that, and a vast majority of people think that I have to get a divorce because of you. 

Bill: So they always wanna put that on the other person?

Arlene: Well that’s what we’re taught. That’s what’s in the culture. It’s everywhere.

Bill: So how can a couple determine that their marriage is headed for a divorce? Are there some signs, or is there research that shows that there’s real trouble here?

Arlene: Well again, it’s the style of fighting that will show marriages have a better chance of making it, and they found that when one couple is supporting the other couple’s goals, whether they’re hobby goals, or business goals, or whatever it is they need. And if they’re not supporting their goals, but the biggest, biggest indicator is I’m not getting my needs met. If once in a while, you’re not getting my needs met, there’s enough money in the bank from all the times you’ve met my needs, it’s no big deal. But if over and over and over I’m not getting my needs met, and especially in today’s culture wherein if I’m getting a divorce, nobody’s shocked. It’s like ‘’Oh, okay, that’s what people do.’’ 

Bill: As opposed to 20 years ago or 30 years ago, and it’s taboo that you’re divorced.

Arlene: Yeah, like, ‘’Oh, you’re gonna marry a divorced man.’’ Today, just go on Match.com, it really does not mean anything. Right. And also today, women are more independent. People today see marriage as an opportunity for self-actualization for pleasure, for getting any needs met. We’re not talking about survival needs like 50 years ago. So today when people are getting their needs met, and it’s repeated year after year after year, it’s like they burn out, and they’re either looking elsewhere and ending up with an affair, or they just burn out and they just are not happy and they end it. And to me, what’s so sad is that there are skills for people, I mean, what I ask couples when they come in is ‘’Do you remember when you got married? Why did you get married?’’ 

Bill: Well, I thought we were so in love, and we had sex all the time, and now it’s gone.

Arlene: Well, you can get that back! 

Bill: And how do they do that?

Arlene: You get it back… it’s strange okay? But couples or families treat each other differently than they treat anybody else. They treat them worse. 

Bill: Exactly. (laughs)

Arlene: Sad, but that’s what’s real.

Bill: You’d be in the middle of an argument and then the phone rings and you’re really nice together again. (laughs)

Arlene: Right! (laughs)

Bill: Well, before we got married, that’s how we were. We weren’t family, we were friends. So you really met my affection and it means you met my needs, even if you were not an affectionate person and you know, I knew you wanted sex, and I knew I wanted to marry you. So we had sex. Well, we gotta go back to that place. We gotta go back to that place where I can appreciate that. Again, I’m the only one who is allowed to give that to you, and I’ve gotta be more sensitive to what you need. The paradox is that the more I’m sensitive to what you need, the less you need, and the less I give you, the more you need. So it feels like a bottomless pit. And especially guys with affection, it’s like ‘’Oh my God! If I start giving you your affection, I’m gonna kiss her every five minutes.’’ (laughs)

Bill: God forbid! (laughs)

Arlene: Yeah, right, God forbid! (laughs) The more affectionate he becomes, the more full she becomes, and the less she needs. 

Bill: From what I see in your information, there’s kind of almost a spiritual aspect to this as well. Would you describe some of that to us?

Arlene: Well I don’t know if you’d call it spiritual, it depends on who you are and how you look. But I want to quote the HeartMath Institute in California who study the heart and you remember I said that women that are in unhappy marriages have more heart disease. Well what the research shows when they have cardiologists, psychologists, computer programmers coming up with something to help the heart. They came up with something spiritual out of science, not religion.

Bill: And what did they come up with?

Arlene: An acronym that I call ‘’LACE’’. L – the heart needs love. A – the heart needs appreciation. C – the heart needs compassion. E – the heart needs empathy. But the strange part of it is, the heart does not heal so much because you give me love, appreciation, compassion and empathy. The heart heals when I give it – when I give love, when I give appreciation, when I give compassion, when I give empathy. Well, you know, that’s the foundation of every religion!

Bill: That’s right.

Arlene: Also there’s something called an ‘’inner smile’’. When some yogis meditate, they meditate with an inner smile. And I try . . .

Bill: Inner peace kind of thing?

Arlene: No, it’s not. And I tried it. What you do is you just imagine that the corners of your mouth are going up a little bit, and also the corners of your eyes, you can keep your eyes open, the outside corners of your eyes go up a little bit. Well try having a negative thought – you can’t do it. (laughs)

Bill: (Laughs) That’s true.

Arlene: So anytime I get upset, I say to myself ‘’Inner smile!’’ to try to keep that consciousness. So when I put together Inner Smile and LACE, it’s an energy that I wanna walk around with and if you’re my partner, then I wanna bring it to you.

Bill: Can you repeat LACE again one more time?

Arlene: Sure. Love, Appreciation (remember when I told you about the couple with 5 appreciations a day?), Compassion, and Empathy. And it’s giving it, it’s giving it. It’s imagining that my heart is sort of like a fire hydrant, and we opened up the hydrant, and the water’s gushing out. Well love, appreciation, well you know what, anyone is good, and the easiest one to conjure up really is appreciation. Sometimes I’m so mad I can’t conjure up love. But I can even appreciate that the floorboards are holding me up so I don’t fall on to the basement. Brain, heart, don’t care. Just appreciation.

Bill: As long as there’s something to appreciate. 

Arlene: Yes. And when I put together that with an inner smile, it’s kinda hard to come up with negative things. 

Bill: But I can imagine that you mentioned sometimes you’re so angry at that moment, you can’t love or you’re not loving at that moment. I could just see someone fighting that very hard to go into LACE. You know, to go into appreciation. But when I’m hearing you say the moment you do, you begin to soften and you are able to do all of those things.

Arlene: Well, if I’m in a big fight with you, I gotta take a time out because my brain is so flooded with cortisol and adrenaline and I can’t process information to make it a legitimate argument and anyhow, all I can do is put you down. And then when I take a break, I’m not doing LACE for you. It’s my heart – it’s me that’s hurting and it’s me that’s unhappy, and it’s me that’s headed for a heart disease. So I wanna do LACE for me, I wanna appreciate you for me, because it shifts me. You’ll do whatever you’ll do with it, maybe you don’t even want my love or appreciation. I don’t know. But I know that I’m the one that needs to give it to heal me.

Bill: And what happens is that as you heal, as you calm down, as you feel that love inside of you, giving it to someone then you’re taking care of yourself. And whatever that person does, it’s on them.

Arlene: Well again, the HeartMath Institute did some research where they had this sophisticated equipment and they found out that they could pick up energy from the heart nine feet away. Well if you’re my partner, you’re not a computer who picks up energy, you’re a person, and you’re much more sensitive. And if I’m giving off LACE energy to you, your heart picks that up and your heart synchronizes and resonates to that. And again, no miracles, but I feel a lot better putting that out just putting it out to the universe. There’s enough bad energy out there, and I don’t need to contribute to that pool of energy.

Bill: Yes. And chances are by doing that, you’ll create a better energy with your partner or with the universe as well.

Arlene: Exactly. 

Bill: That’s great. Well before we leave Arlene, can you give me maybe your most rewarding experience in being a marriage counselor? 

Arlene: You can probably tell I love my work, and what’s rewarding for me is healing people. Again I don’t save marriages, I save people, and I found that when people have clarity and they have good skills, they do what’s for their best higher need and when I see that I work with people and I’m shifting energies of what they’re giving to people is good energy that’s passing onto other people is for me the most rewarding thing about my work.

Bill: It’s like almost healing the work because they’re taking out what you give and sharing with everyone else.

Arlene: Well Bill I worked with over 4000 people, and in 4000 people, with each person there’s 250 people. Could there anything be more rewarding?

Bill: That’s a lot of folks. (laughs) Well Arlene, if someone wants to get in touch with you, do you have a number or a website they can reach out to?

Arlene: They can call 610-896-1990, that’s 610-896-1990 for an appointment. I’m at Verizon super pages, and I have a website. My website is A CenterForMarriageCounseling.com. 

Bill: I did notice on your website you have a quiz that couples can take especially if their partner does not love them anymore.

Arlene: Right, and the reason I have that quiz is when you get the answers to that quiz, what you begin to see is when you feel you’re losing a partner, people do all the wrong things. They beg, they promise they’re gonna change, they promise they’re gonna do anything, and what they do is put pressure on the other person and the other person pulls away even more, and what the person really needs is if I don’t like you anymore, I need to know that you’re taking care of yourself and that you wanna grow for yourself, and that you’re not promising me any changes, you’re doing it. And when you can understand that I don’t want you anymore, you can make demands on me that are meaningless. You can plug in the things that are here that you just want to meet my needs. 

Bill: Well Arlene Foreman, I appreciate you being here, and I think the word is a better place because of what you’re putting out. And I wish you continued success.

Arlene: Thank you. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you Bill, and to share what I have to say, and if I help one person out there, it’s my job.

Bill: Thank you. 

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