Week 12: Transitions in Marriage: Power Relations and Children

          I found a quote online that says, “A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together.  It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.”  I’m not sure who said that, but I appreciated this quote.  After the honeymoon phase is over, which to be honest, happens to most people, you start to not see your spouse through those rose-colored glasses.  You tend to realize that, hey, they may not be as perfect as we initially thought. ☹


            When we get married, we are no longer focused on ourselves.  In order to have a successful marriage we need to have a partnership and work as a team.  You know the saying, there is no “I” in TEAM.  Sure, you can take the letters ME out of it, but to work together, it isn’t one sided.  You are working and learning about one another and are finding out differences that you never even realized, perhaps this will come as a challenge in your marriage.  As a couple, you must work together and express your feelings to one another.  Simply assuming the other person knows what you are thinking or playing the silent game, will not help anything.  You must express yourself to one another and what you feel you should do as partners and parents, once you have children.  I know this is something that we still struggle with—after 12 years of marriage (and having a blended family).  Communication is key in marriages and trying to move forward.


            I love the wisdom of Elder M. Russell Ballard, who spoke about councils not only within church but by having councils within our family.  I will say this is something that I feel my parents did well.  Often, we had family councils on Sunday’s, when our entire family was home.  We discussed things as a family and often would plan upcoming events or vacations.  We counseled with one another and learned from each other.  This is something that we need to do with our spouse—couple councils.  How much better would our families be, if we took part of this?  I’ve tried this with my husband, and while, at first, it seems odd (especially when you aren’t in the habit), it is something that has benefited us.  We can talk about our hopes, dreams, goals in life.  We can talk about things we disagree about and how to solve problems that are happening.  One thing I’ve noticed is if we start and end with a prayer, the Spirit tends to reside more often within them.  Elder Ballard said, “Inviting the Spirit of the Lord to be part of your family council brings blessings beyond description”.


            Weekly councils with my husband are something we struggle with.  Often, when we have councils, they are when we have issues.  I feel that if we focus on trying to do them sooner rather than when things are going to burst, we can save ourselves a lot of frustration and miscommunication down the road.  If we truly can focus on what we can work on and work together, than it will benefit our family greatly.  Councils are there for us to learn and grow from and to be closer to our spouse and to the Lord.

Week 11: Transitions in marriage: Fidelity and Physical Intimacy

I feel that we need to protect not only our husbands and wives in marriage, but also our children from the damaging influence of pornography.  However, since this is a marriage class I will talk about things we can do to help protect ourselves.

I feel that the first step that we must do is to is first make sure that we are not personally viewing pornography.  These days, there are so many things that are sexually explicit in nature.  While perhaps your intent was not to view pornography, you may fall into a grey area of "soft porn".  Satan tries to gives us these grey areas, which will then turn into black areas.  In the grey areas, you initially don't think there is an issue and often it isn't a problem until you are far into it.  Just yesterday, my stepdaughter was scrolling on Facebook.  She freaked out and I asked her what the problem was.  In her newsfeed, showed a very sexually explicit video of a woman with hardly any clothes on.  We were both shocked that this was allowed on to this page.  While she didn't actively reach out, since she did have this person as a friend, it showed up in her feed.  She quickly hid and blocked the content.  This just proves how even unsuspecting people can be caught into the web of pornography.

In our home, my husband and I both know the passwords to each others phones.  On our cable, we ensure that even teen rated shows are blocked.  Our internet is blocked by most everyone, so that most can't access it.  Yes, there are always ways around thing--but we do what we can to protect not only our marriage--but our children.

President Howard W. Hunter said, "Pornography, flirtations and unwholesome fantasies erode one's character and strike at the foundation of a happy marriage. Unity and trust within a marriage are thereby destroyed.  If we want to do anything for our marriage, we need to have a happy marriage.  That can come by following the counsel of prophets and by limiting those sources which can lead us to stray and into grey areas.

As we safeguard our family, we must also recognize that we must be respectful, be positive and appropriate when we speak to our spouse.  Our children learn by examples.  If we are being degrading and disrespectful, this doesn't give them a good example of healthy relationships.  The best thing we can offer our spouse and children is to show them kindness, respect, love and by being appropriate.  I love when I see happily married couples, who show the kind of love that others dream of.  This is how we should be with our spouse.

I like the quote from President Howard W. Hunter from the October 1994 General Conference address  "Tenderness and respect- never selfishness-must be the guiding principles in the intimate relationship between husband and wife. Each partner must be considerate and sensitive to the other's needs, and desires. Any domineering, indecent or uncontrolled behavior in the intimate relationship between husband and wife is condemned by the Lord.  What better advice could we have been given?  Being tender with one another and respectful, sensitive to what our spouse needs."

Week 10: Seeking to Understand

The marital poop detector, as defined by Gottman in our reading is very important and vital to marriages.  What exactly is this?  It is when you are able tell the other spouse that something isn't right.  Just like when you can smell "poop” you can tell when something isn't right.  There was a study that spoke about being unhappy in your marriage and how this can be tied directly to the expectations that we share with our spouses.  While this ended up being proven wrong, Gottman speaks of other studies which share opposite opinions on this subject.  As Gottman stated, "really people with the greatest expectations for their marriage usually wind up with the highest quality marriages," (Gottman, 2015).  I feel this is true.  That isn't to say that their marriage won't have problems or won't end in divorce, but I feel that if you have goals and expectations you have a vision of the future.

 How might one try to incorporate this into their daily married lives?  You must make sure that you don't dwell on negativity.  We must not hold onto grudges and let the negativity stay.  We need to make sure we recognize when it is there, call it out (poop detector) when it does come in.  We need to focus if and when it comes on making sure it leaves, so it doesn't leave any lingering effects or "smells" in our marriage.

 If I had to choose the one thing I learned the most from this book, it would be to treat my spouse with more respect than anyone else.  Treat them as if they are visiting your house, how you treat guests.  You tend to be overly kind and nice and give guests the benefit of the doubt.  However, how often we find ourselves being nit picky with our spouses, and getting irritated for minor infractions.  When if they were a guest, we would probably just let it go off of our back and give them the benefit of the doubt.

 I was just thinking about how my husband and I address each other and it makes me sad.  It isn't that I'm making a conscious effort to be mean or rude, but its almost like you put your guard down and have no filters.  This isn't good.  We need to always have these "filters" on, so that we might be able to give our spouse our best self.  Not the worn down, irritated spouse who nags them about every little thing.  If a guest spilled something, we wouldn't flip out.  We would offer to help clean it up.  That is how we need to be towards our spouse.  Treat them how we want to be treated.  Treat them as if they are the most important and precious thing in the word.  They are, and they should be treated as such.  Why would we treat them in a way we don't want others to treat them or even ourselves?  When we think about things this way, we take a step back and realize that we have room for improvement.  When we focus on kindness and serving others, there is a change that takes over in the relationship.

Week 9: Managing Conflict; Consecrating Ourselves

            In our readings this week, we read a talk from Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the 70.  Elder Robbins was speaking to the world, at the April 1998 General Conference.  Elder Robbins said, “The family is also Satan’s primary target. He is waging war on the family. One of his schemes is the subtle and cunning way he has of sneaking behind enemy lines and entering our very homes and lives. He damages and often destroys families within the walls of their own homes. His strategy is to stir up anger between family members.”  Oh, how I feel that this is even more prevalent—almost 20 years later!  While I can see similarities and differences in my family compared to when I was a kid, I feel sorry for the contention that Satan is causing.  He wants families to fall apart and fail.  Before Satan works on children, he works on causing issues within the marriage.

            Of course, what is the best thing we can do to help our marriages?  Perhaps speaking kindly and not getting upset and angry with them.  Elder Robbins stated, “Becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision; therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose! To those who say, “But I can’t help myself,” author William Wilbanks responds: “Nonsense.”

            In the end, we control our own actions.  If we can contain ourselves and not go off on co-workers, employers, students, store workers, etc—then we can work on containing our anger towards our spouse and children.  Unfortunately, you can see the world we live in and how people have no control anymore.  They are fighting, getting angry with others and resorting to violence, instead of resolving issues they have.

            Goddard stated that “the vast majority of relationships can survive and flourish if each of us brings our whole sole as an offering…We enter marriage expecting our needs to be met.  No partner on the face of the earth can meet all our needs."  We need to understand that most people will never have a fairy tail life.  I would love to meet the person who is never met with someone saying an unkind word or opposition and trials in their marriage

            My husband often jokes when he does something wrong, “well, you are perfect, so that wouldn’t have happened”.  In all honesty, we know we aren’t perfect and know just what it takes to push each others buttons.

            How can we get past the not-so-happily ever after? First, we need to realize that marriage is not a fairy tale. Life is not always full of happy endings, nor do most people get swept up from a prince riding a horse. Goddard helps us understand how we can communicate with our spouses: "When we have unmet needs, we humbly invite: 'I could sure use a hand with putting the kids to bed tonight. Is this something you could help me with?' We give gladly and we receive graciously."  Quite simply, we need to be kind with one another.  We need to focus on how we can serve those we are married to and love them, unconditionally.  We need to understand others have faults—as do we—and that’s what makes us human.  We are all part of this game of Life.  We all want to end the game and be happy.  We can, but it takes effort.  We know that there will be bumps and detours along the way.  But, in the end, we can be happy if we follow the Savior and his teachings.