Posts

Unity in Marriage

Image
Unity in marriage is very important to have and can be very tricky to keep because both partners have different ideas of what the marriage should look like. This can bring about sticky situations and sometimes can lead to hurt feelings. How do you keep you and your spouse on the same page? Do you have a weekly time to sit down and have a family council or meeting to talk about things going on in the family, does one of you make the decisions and the other just follows along, do you take turns making the decisions, or do you negotiate until you come to a consensus? However you make decisions in your marriage, its best that it’s done in a healthy, positive and kind way that keeps your marriage unified and brings you both together. https://i1.wp.com/simplyoneinmarriage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/UNITY-IN-MARRIAGE-Its-about-US.-2.jpg In chapter two of the book ‘Counseling with Our Councils’ by M. Russell Ballard (1997) it reads: “In the spirit under which we labor, men can get...
Post a Comment
Read more

Intimacy & Fidelity in Marriage

Sexuality seems to be a subject that in the LDS culture is taboo to talk about, especially in the youth programs. When it is spoken about you hear mostly about the don’ts and they negative consequences of what will happen if you cross the lines and become sexual active before marriage. These lessons are not meant to scare youth into thinking that sexuality is a bad thing, but unfortunately they tend to do that in many instances and those feelings are held onto into marriage which can negatively affect how one or both partners feel about sexuality in their marriage. If this has occurred then even after a couple is married they may be fighting against negative feeling about being intimate with their spouse. I found an interesting quote in Sean Brotherson talk “Fulfilling the Sexual Stewardship in Marriage” that goes well with my thoughts so far: “President Hugh B. Brown, who served as a counselor in the First Presidency, wrote the following about sexual intimacy in his book You and Yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Overcoming Gridlock in Marriage

Image
In every marriage there comes a time where we get stuck. We hit a wall and we just can’t move forward. Why you might ask. It’s because we have hit a point where our dreams are not matching up. John Gottman in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (page 237) shares the four characteristics that all gridlocked disagreements share: 1.       “You’ve had the same argument again and again with no resolution. 2.       Neither of you can address the issue with humor, empathy, or affection. 3.       The issue is becoming increasingly polarizing as time goes on. 4.       Compromise seems impossible because it would mean selling out-giving up something important and core to your beliefs, values, or sense of self.” The thing is, to move past gridlock you don’t have to solve the problem, and neither of you have to feel like you have lost what you’re dreaming of or given ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Solving Conflicts in Our Marriages

Every marriage is going to have conflict. If you ever find one that doesn’t ever have conflict please send them my way because I’d love to meet them and learn their secret. I’m sure so many couples, marriage therapists and bishops would love to meet them, because they’d be the anomaly. This couple doesn’t exist, because like I said before EVERY marriage has conflict. Just today I was talking with a coworker about her daughter and the struggles she had in college last year with her soccer coach and how well she’s doing on her team and how happy she is this year. She made the comment that: “The flowers grow after the rain falls.” This got me thinking about conflicts and marriage and how in the moment the conflict feels so painful and horrible, but once you come out of it and you can look back you can see the growth that you both experienced and you can see how the painful conflict was really a chance to learn and come together and because of it you’re a closer couple now. There are ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Union of two good forgivers

Image
I want to start by telling you a story told by Wallace Goddard in his book: Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage; “I think of the allegory of a man who had two friends in the manufactured-home business. When he wanted a new house, he asked each friend to send him half a house. He gave no plans. He provided no specifications on size or style. He left them to design as they would. So each friend sent a lovely half-house. When the two halves arrived at the site, they were jarringly different. Rooms did not line up. Utilities did not match up. Roofs and walls between the two halves did not connect.” This story gets me thinking about how different a husband and a wife are in a marriage. They both come to the marriage with their different opinions, beliefs, ways of doing things, likes and dislikes. Neither of them is wrong in the way they do things, they are just different from one another. These differences though can cause some contention in a marriage. It is these difference that I’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Turning toward one another

Image
In marriages there are many things that work to pull us away from our spouses. These can be distractions we bring into our marriages, or distractions brought in by the world around us.  No matter how they get into our marriage we need to be watchful to make sure that they don’t make their way between ourselves and our spouses. When they start to come between spouses, they start to divide us and pull us part. Turning toward each other happens in the moments when we connect with one another. For instance, the other evening my husband was out front doing something and he noticed a large flock of birds in the tree across the street. He knew it was something I’d be interested in seeing, so he stopped what he was doing and came and got me. I in turn stopped what I was doing and came out to see what he found so intriguing. We both stood there watching as dozens of birds flew in and out of the tree knocking the acorns out of it making it sound like the tree was raining. We were bot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Love Maps

Image
“The more you know and understand about each other, the easier it is to keep connected as life swirls around you.”  John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work , page 56 http://nationalmarriageseminars.com/about-us/blog/2014/03/10/love-mapping/ A wonderful way to help keep your marriage strong is to create love maps, which are all the detailed bits of information you know about your spouse. Think of it as a bank where you deposit all the things you know about your spouse, so when you want to do something for them, or you want to show them you love them you know just how to do it because you know them.             Things you store in your love map are things that they like and dislike. Places, things, people, foods, events, sporting teams, favorite times of day/year, treats, colors, etc. Anything that you know about your spouse. If they have something going on in their life you store that informa...
Post a Comment
Read more