ALTERNATIVE CENTERS
Covey notes that each of us has a center, though we usually don’t recognize it as such. He briefly examines several centers or core paradigms people typically have for a better understanding of how they affect these four fundamental dimensions and, ultimately, the sum of life that flows from them. SPOUSE CENTEREDNESS. For these people, marriage can be the most intimate, the most satisfying, the most enduring, growth-producing of human relationships. It might seem natural and proper to be centered on one’s husband or wife. Covey says experience and observation tells a different story. If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we become highly dependent upon that relationship. When responsibilities increase and stresses come into the marriage, we tend to revert to the scripts we were given as we were growing up. But so does our spouse. And those scripts are usually different. When these deep-seated tendencies combine with the emotional dependency in the marriage, the spouse-centered relationship reveals all its vulnerability, he writes. FAMILY CENTEREDNESS is where the common center is the family. As an area of focus and deep investment, it provides great opportunities for deep relationships, for loving, for sharing, for much that makes life worthwhile. But when it is the center, it does not work well with the very elements that are necessary for family success. Covey says people who are family-centered get their sense of secur