Your arms around me is home

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...

“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...

Marriage is such a lovely institution, yet it is such a hard thing to keep in balance. John Gottman says that in a balanced marriage that for every negative comment one spouse says to the other, they must say 5 positive things. He continues on to say that in marriages that lead to divorce that the balance of positive to negative comments are way off balance with it being 8 negative comments to every 1 positive comment. He talks about a “set point” that every marriage has. If the marriage is continually filled with positive comments, then the set point is fairly high and a negative comment will not set the marriage off balance very easily. If the marriages “set point” is very low because it normally has negative comments, then a negative comment can set the marriage off balance quite easily. Gottman has done some very interesting research into what makes marriages work and what tears them apart. He can tell within 15 minutes of listening to a couple talk if their marriage will be o...

There are 2 types of marriages that I’d like to talk about today. There are contract marriages and covenant marriages. Contract marriages would also be referred to as civil marriages and covenant marriages would also be referred to Temple sealing’s. There are many differences between these types of marriages. This chart gives a basic overview of these 2 types of marriages.   Contract Marriage Covenant Marriage When trouble arises they Walk away Work it out In marriage for personal benefits to give and grow Reason for marriage receive benefits they bargained for bound to each other, community & God Each partner gives 50% 100% When times get hard they: cancel at will Stay Sheep "Hireling"-leave the flock Shepard-lay down their life Bondage Valuable ties th...