Dreams or your marriage? Why not both?

       My husband and I are recently married. When we were dating, it was easy for me to set me aside and focus on his dreams because they seemed so exciting. When we talked, he seemed to have such a clear picture of how his life was going to look like. It was one of the reasons I fell for him; he is so driven and motivated. A couple of months ago, I realized that we weren't working toward my dreams. 

     Many of us come into a relationship with separate goals and ambitions in life. Many times these goals get pushed to the side. When this happens, it is easy to come into what Gottman calls a Gridlock. This is when couples come across a problem that they think there is no solution. This week I would like to share an event of how my husband and I worked a situation that could've quickly become a Gridlock.

      One example is I have always dreamed of adopting some children. It has been a dream of my ever since I was a little girl. My husband Kevin never really thought about it, and to me, it seemed he pushed it aside. Now, this could become a gridlock we could fight about this for years. I could use his distance from my dream as an excuse to think that he doesn't listen to me or he doesn't care about how I think our life should go. How do we stop a dream from becoming something that we fight about? Respect John Gottman mentions that respect is how we can make sure that dreams don't come in between our spouse and us.

      Kevin has always been very respectful to me so to help solve this, Kevin and I sat down and talked. Once he realized that adopting has been a dream for me and that I can't imagine being in a world with no family, and I want to help as many kids have a family. Kevin didn't realize that this wasn't just a fun "what if" idea it was a dream that I wanted to achieve. He was all in! We are now planning on having children and adopting when we can. After hours and hours of talking my husband and I have come up with OUR dreams. Now something that could've been a problem. Respect and communication fixed it, and we now know where we want to go as a family. I have found myself way more happy knowing that I am not just helping my husband fulfill his dreams, but we are fulfilling our goals together

Is Marriage Worth It?

Is Marriage worth it?

Have you ever been walking around the store, and hear couples arguing about something that happened years ago?  Or have you been that couple? These type of conversations are what John Gottman calls perpetual arguments. These conflicts are things that you and your husband haven't resolved and are shelved to be used as weapons later. John Gottman's study led him to find out that 69 percent of the arguments that we have with our spouse ar perpetual. How can we avoid being stuck in this vicious cycle? 

John Gottman has given us steps on how to do this.

1. Soften your start-up

- Be sensitive to how we bring up something that bothers us.

2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts.

- Listen to your partner and be aware of the ways they try are trying to fix the situation.

3. Soothe yourself and each other

- Keep yourself calm and help your partner stay calm (Ice cream is always good, one bowl two spoons)

4. Compromise

- Be open to solutions that you didn't originally come up with.

5. Process any grievances so that they don't linger.

- MAKE SURE THAT YOU TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING! Pay attention to details. Do not let anything related to that issue remain un-heard or unresolved.

Do these steps take work, patience, and time? Yes, but It's worth the effort to allow hurt feelings and sad memories to be resolved the situation. 

The world today has a weird view on marriage and questions if being committed in a marriage relationship is worth the effort. From the book Drawing Heaven into your marriage, he quotes Micheal Novak who says,

"Marriage is an assault upon the lonely, atomic ego. Marriage is a
threat to the solitary individual. Marriage does impose grueling,
humbling, baffling, and frustrating responsibilities. 
Yet, marriage is not the enemy of moral development in adults. Quite the opposite.
Being married and having children has impressed on my mind
certain lessons, for whose learning I cannot help being grateful. My
bonds to [my family] are, I know, my liberation. They force me to
be a different sort of human being, in a way in which I want and
need to be forced."

Novak is reminding us that marriage can help us grow and be stretched that we couldn't do outside of marriage.  Without someone to see and love us with all of our faults or someone to help lift us when we fall, we cannot grow into a loving, compassionate, stalwart person.

Making sure Pride isn't in your Marriage

Growing up, I always had a hard time with the many definitions of pride. We are supposed to have pride in our school and pride in our homework, but we should never have pride in our hearts.  This quote by President Ezra Taft Benson and C.S Lewis has helped me understand the type of pride that the scriptures talk about "The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents or any other worldly measuring device against others. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, pp. 109–10.)" 

Pride by this definition, is judging others and putting them below yourself. This type of pride has no place in our lives.  We all grew up with the story of the Cinderella.  Cinderella's stepmother is the perfect example of a prideful person. No matter how hard Cinderella tried,  He stepmother viewed her as a servant girl. Even when she worked hard to get to the Prince's ball and she did everything that her Stepmother had asked her to do. Her stepmother didn't her perfect image ruined by having a servant girl with her, so she left Cinderella home in a ruin dressed.

Luckily, Cinderella had a great ending to her story full of love and happily ever after, but do we sometimes hurt the people we should love the most? Do we make the things they love important to us? Marriage should be a place where we feel the safest, where dreams can come true with our best friend by our side.

Are we creating an atmosphere where our spouse can come home and feel loved? My husband and I have just recently moved into a new apartment in Utah. A new place can bring so many new joys! New walls to decorate, new areas to explore and new ideas of where things should go. My husband's goal when we first got there was to make our house organized before he had to go to work. We decided that we would work hard our first days in our new place, putting everything away to make it feel like a home. We spent several hours to do this, and we still aren't done. However, our apartment is everything we hoped it would be! If I didn't share my husband's dream to have a beautiful home and he came home every day to an ugly un-organized apartment? He wouldn't be as excited to come home after a long day at work.

I believe the best way of removing pride out of any marriage relationship is both spouses working together on common goals. Here are some questions to ponder. What are some goals that your spouse has that you are actively working towards? What are some of yours that you haven't talked to your spouse about yet? Do have a bad attitude about something your spouse loves?

If you and your spouse can have shared goals and are actively working towards them, it can help prevent pride from coming into your marriage. Remember, the best time to fix a relationship is now.

Staying Connected as a Couple

My husband, Kevin and I have always been pretty good at creating things to keep us close. When we were dating, we came up with what we consider now as our family logos. The first one is " Forever with Faith," and the second is "Making Memories." While we were dating, it was tough to see if we would ever make it past the dating stage because of my desire to go on a mission. Forever with Faith was a reminder that if we made it, it was because we did it with faith. What I love about these is that they helped us then and they continue to help us. When we come to a hard time, we remember that we can make it to eternity if we did it with faith and right now, we are focusing on making memories.

 We have also created actions and symbols to help us look towards one another. The first action/symbol is three squeezes to the hand, which means "I love you." No matter the situation, Kevin and I can grab each other's hand and remind each other that we are thinking about them. It also can help us break awkward tension in the room. This one works even if we can't talk to each other. The other thing that we have developed over this past year of marriage is a circle that we make connecting our pointer finger with our thumb. This is a reminder that our love is eternal never-ending.

Now, these symbols and phrases are essential to my husband and my relationship. They may not seem like much, or even a little corny to some of those who know us, but they work for us. We know that the other one has our back no matter the situation, anywhere we are. 

One thing that my husband and I have done several times is a personality test. Our favorite is five love languages if you haven't taken it, I highly suggest it. Single or married, it is good to know how you receive love and how those around you receive love. 

Here's the link if you want to try it: https://www.5lovelanguages.com/ 

Giving 100 percent so you can receive 100 percent.

Marriage. I love the idea that each spouse gives 100 percent of their effort into maintaining a marriage.  When we first met my husband, Kevin, he realized that I had a strong desire to serve a mission, and it wasn't something that I was going to give up.  Right at the beginning, he knew if he wanted to have a relationship with me, it was going to be a while before we would be able to create something that would last forever. After a couple of dates, we knew that we wanted to have a lasting relationship, so we started dating, and in a few months, I left on my mission.  While on my mission, I had severe headaches; however, I continued to serve with them. Eventually, I had to return home and find out why I had severe headaches.

On the plane ride home, Heavenly Father opened an idea to my heart.  I had two paths to choose from that would shape the course of my life. I could heal and go back on my mission, or I could stay home and start an eternal family with my sweetheart.  When I first got home from my mission, I didn't want to see both paths that Heavenly Father had placed in front of me. I wanted to finish my mission.  I still had so much of the gospel I wanted to share, and so many more people I knew I could touch.

I called Kevin and talked to him.  Kevin was so excited for me to be home!  As we spoke, it seemed that no time had passed, we talked about how hard it was to be apart.  I realized that Kevin had done most of the compromising in our relationship thus far.  After praying to Heavenly Father, I realized that we had both done what we needed to do. Now it was time for us to grow and learn together instead of being apart. We were married a few months later, and I have never regretted my decision.

To me, this type of compromise is what keeps relationships growing! Both putting 100 percent in making sure that everything is best for the other person.

Friendship is the key for a marriage that last

We all know that some marriages end because of something that went wrong in the relationship but, do we talk about the ones that last?

 I love John Gottman's idea about making friendship the foundation of your marriage. I love his quote from John Gottman's book seven principles for making marriage work " Friendship fuels the flames of romances because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse."

I think Gottman definition of friendship means working on your relationship by making new memories by doing things you love doing and trying new things that you haven't done before.

I have six brothers, and four of them are married. They have shown me how marriages come in all shapes and sizes. My oldest brother Jeremy and his wife, love hiking and photography. My second oldest brother Tyler and his wife, just love adventures, nothing in specific just adventures. Then my brother Aaron and his wife love to play video games so much so that their little son can beat me at Mario Cart. All of my brothers have wonderful marriages, but none of them are similar except for one thing. They were friends before they were married, and they continue to kindle their friendships. My brothers are wonderful examples for me.

My husband and started our relationship off with adventures and doing things that both of us love. One thing that we loved doing was taking quizzes to see what we had in common and then do something with that common interest. 

Covenant Marriages, a thing of the past?

Are we living in a world where we give up on things when they get hard? Divorces in the world are common, and children are used to living in two different places because their families are separated. This not only breaks my heart, but I am sure that it breaks Heavenly Fathers heart to see so many of His beloved children hurting.

As I was doing my genogram, I was so surprised by how many divorces have been in my family. On my mother side, they don't have the gospel or don't follow the gospel standards ( except one brother), so I was expecting the number of divorces that were on her side but what surprised me was on my father side of the family. All of them grew up with the Gospel, so it surprised me that there were several divorces not only with my cousins but also my aunts. You would think growing up with the gospel and always learning about temple marriages and covenants that divorces would be less often. What made all of these marriages fail? What made all of the other marriages work?

As I was reading Elder Bruce C. Hafen gave a talk on Covenant marriage, some of my questions were answered. One story that helped me understand maybe why some of these marriages failed was the story he shared about three kinds of wolves that test marriages. The first wolf is natural adversity, things like your car tires go flat on you, or you break your leg. The next wolf is the imperfections of people.  In short, this wolf is in imperfections that we don't grow out of. If we are quick to anger or quick to judge these type of things cannot only test a marriage but could destroy them altogether. The third wolf is excessive individualism. The Idea of what is in it for me? Or how can I get what I want? 

One wolf that I have seen from a couple that has lived in my ward boundaries that were affected by the last wolf. This couple had been married for several years kids moved out grandkids and the whole shebang but, there was a disconnect in the marriage. The husband started getting caught up in the world and looking at different people and slowly they got a divorce because of his own selfish desires. All three of these wolfs can hurt or destroy our marriages if we are not careful

Now, how important is a covenant marriage to you? How are you going to keep your marriage sacred?