Saying I Do!

Marriage is not something we just decide to do on a whim, at least I hope not. The decision to marry is part of a long process. There are four distinct steps in the marriage process and each step has a specific purpose. Notice I said distinct not vague or abstract. Those steps are:

1. Date -

• Date a variety of people and do a variety of activities to see what you like and what you don't like. In other words think of those you date as ice cream flavors. You must try all the flavors to decide which is your favorite.

2. Courtship -

• Most people now-a-days don't court someone as was done years ago. But this time can be considered your "trial run." You are dating this person but you continue to do a variety of activities to get to know one another to see if you mesh.

 3. Engagement -

• You now have a ring on her finger and a date set. You are both saying, "We will marry!" During this time you and your fiance should be making decisions together, practicing sacrificing for and with each other, establishing boundaries around your new relationship and family system, solving problems, and relying on each other.
• An important thing to remember during this time is that you should spend more time planning your marriage than planning your wedding. Your wedding will be one day, but your marriage will last forever.

4. Marriage -

• Finally you are married and as such your first priority is one another. During this time you each should be attentive to one another. Go on a honey moon away from everyone else. Take this time to be husband and wife and to become a new family distinct from all others.

Finding Your Knight in Shining Armor

How do you find a life partner? Where in the world is the person that you'll spend the rest of your life with? They are most likely right out your front door. Literally! People tend to date those people that are close to them. It's called propinquity. Funny word right?! That's why most long distant relationships don't work out so well - your not close so you can't be as involved with each other. Your life mate will obviously be the most attractive person on the Earth! and you will have the same interests and hobbies. These 3 things, propinquity, physical attractiveness, and similarities, are how people tend to find dates and ultimately a life partner. Then once you've found someone to date you may be asking, "is it love?"

What is love? How do you describe such a strong, deep emotion? I think love is a strong feeling you have that draws you to a person and motivates you to be better. The Greeks defined 4 different kinds of love. They are:

• Agape - love that is independent of feelings; you are more concerned about their well-being. This can be called charity.
• Eros - sexual and romantic love. It is most often associated with passionate love.
• Philia - love between friends. It is like a brotherly love.
• Storge - love between parents and children. There is a connection, a commitment, and a responsibility with this type of love.

Which kind of love is most important when dating or in a marriage? I believe that you need all 4 kinds of love, especially in a marriage.  Love starts out as Eros, the passionate love. The honeymoon stage of dating and marriage is all about passion - you can't get enough of each other. However, as time passes and you get to know one another more and more the love starts to evolve into varying degrees of all the other kinds of love. You love your spouse so much - there is a connection, you are committed, and you feel responsible for them and their well-being. Your love has gone from being on the surface to a deep and abiding love of passion and friendship. This is the most valuable kind of love, I believe, because this deep, abiding, companionate love creates unity - you and your spouse become one. I have only been married for about 10 months now, but I have seen and felt the love I have for my husband grow and deepen. I have loved getting to know more about him and I love that I will be able to get to know him more and grow closer to him in the years to come. I love you babe! :)

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better!

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

 -The Family: A Proclamation to the World

         Men and women are different! Those are the cold hard facts! We each have a divine nature about us. Men were created to fill a different role than women. Men are to provide and protect their families while women are to nurture and care for children. The nature of men makes them better suited to provide for and protect. While the nature of women makes them better suited to nurture and care for children. Now this does not mean that men can't nurture and that women can't provide. They can! There are many stay-at-home dads and working mothers! I just said better suited not the only one who can do the job. Men are generally (usually but not always) better able to focus on one thing at a time and are better at spacial orientation. (That's why they're so good at sports and video games.) Women generally (usually but not always) are more emotional and are better at articulating words for communicating. (That's why they can respond to a baby's needs automatically.) This is mostly due to the fact that our brains are run by different hormones. Men have more testosterone and women have more estrogen. These are different hormones/chemicals so it makes sense that we would think differently because they operate differently. If we can just accept the fact that we are different and embrace it we can better help each other out. The differences between men and women are meant to complement one another not compete against each other. They are meant to help us work together to achieve a common goal! We each have a divine nature about us. Gender is important and so are the roles associated with being a male or a female. I know that as we each fulfill our different roles as men and women we will be a happier and healthier people.

Righteous Judgement

If you watched this episode of Boy Meets World I shouldn't have to say anything else, you would understand the purpose of this post. However, I will put my two cents in anyway. :)
     
          Think back to your high school days. Who were the cool kids? Who were the nerdy kids? Who were the rebels? We all knew then and can even remember now who belonged to what group. In high school those groups were called cliques. In the real world they're called social classes and are based off money instead of coolness. Some people have nice paying jobs that allow them to live comfortably while others are constantly working and struggle to make ends meet. We are all just people trying to make a living and create a name and life for ourselves. Whether or not we achieve this and how easily we achieve this depends on our different  backgrounds. We are all different and are born into different circumstances.  Having money doesn't make you important and being poor doesn't make you dirt. We are all people and we are all God's children. He loves us all the same no matter what our paycheck is. After all, we can't buy our way into Heaven! In the Holy Bible in John 7:24 we are reminded not to judge according to appearance, but to make righteous judgements. And in 1 Samuel 16:7 we are told that men look on the outward appearance of others, but that the Lord looketh upon the heart. This is what righteous judgement is - looking on the heart, having charity, and loving all of God's children for who they are, not for their money. Remember, the love of money is the root of all evil (1Timothy 6:10). So why are we, as humans, so quick to judge one another? I know I have been guilty many times of making unrighteous judgments about people. I think she's ugly or he's short or she's stuck up, etc. I always have to keep reminding myself that whoever I judge is a child of God and that I should love them as He does. The above episode of Boy Meets World shows us that it really doesn't matter what social class you belong to or how much money you have, it's the people that matter. I think this is an important lesson for all of us, especially myself, to learn and to remember.

What Did You Say?!

This week we've been talking about 4 different theories used in family studies. They are: Family Systems Theory (analyze the whole not just the individual parts), Exchange Theory (you at least get back what you put in), Symbolic Interaction Theory (our perspective/how we interpret the symbols/signals we receive), and Conflict Theory (power struggles between genders or social classes).  The one I've been thinking about most is the Symbolic Interaction Theory. We all use symbols to communicate with one another whether it's words, how we say something, our body language, if we roll our eyes, or fold our arms etc. All of these are symbols and as we all have experienced these symbols are often times misunderstood or misinterpreted. So why do we misunderstand people so often? Why is our communication deficient between one another? It all has to do with the different experiences we have all had. For example, I can say something to my husband and he takes it a completely different way then I meant it because he might have a certain experience attached to that certain phrase. I may have a positive experience attached to the phrase, but perhaps he doesn't. It made me realize the importance of communication! If we don't communicate with one another no one can understand us or our feelings or what we're doing and why we're doing it. There needs to be a certain amount of communication so that the symbols we're sending and receiving don't get mixed up as much. This is especially important in a marriage and in a family. People get their feelings hurt all the time or get upset because of something a spouse/sibling does. We naturally think that they do it on purpose, but really they have a reason for feeling how they feel or for doing something. I, myself, am horrible at communicating. I never say why I'm doing something or why or what I'm feeling. I need to do better at explaining things to my husband, in particular, so that he understands me and where I’m coming from so we can be on the same page with each other.

Babies! Babies! BABIES!

I recently watched a broadcast called The New Economic Reality: A Demographic Winter. It talks about the worldwide drop in fertility rates and the effects of a declining population on the family, society, and even the economy. It was very interesting to see the affects of the current world trend to have smaller families.

            We’ve all heard the saying that family is the fundamental unit of society. The word fundamental means serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis; basic; underlying. It also means of, pertaining to, or affecting the foundation. Therefore, the family is the foundation of society. The pyramid of society goes like this: first, family is at the foundation. The families create cultures which creates a society which creates a nation (see picture right). If you take out the foundation or the families from a society or nation it all comes crumbling down.

            People have many different reasons for not marrying and having children. The 2 most common reasons are that children are too expensive in today’s economy and that they don't want a child to get in the way of their career. It is true that to have a child or children is expensive, but it is better in the long run to have children than to opt out. We can look to Japan and Italy for an example. Their fertility rates are below what is needed to at least replace their current populations. Their economies have “tanked” and they are struggling to survive because of their declining populations. The economy decline comes as a direct result of fewer children being born because there are fewer people contributing to the economy. This is also why the housing market is so bad because there is no one to buy existing houses. As for people who choose to have a career over having children, I’ll just say this; women have forgotten their role as women as they have tried to complete with men. You can have children and still have a career. People do it all the time! Having the opportunity to have and raise children is the most important career that someone can have, in my opinion, because they are literally giving back to society by making sure there is a future generation to carry on the society. I think C.S. Lewis puts it all in perspective:

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only…to support the ultimate career.”

From a gospel viewpoint, the Lord has said that the family is central to His plan (see The Proclamation attached to previous post). God’s eternal plan is built around families. We are literally the spirit sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father and there are more of His children that want to have the opportunity to come to earth just like us. President Brigham Young said this about our duty to provide tabernacles (bodies) for those spirit children:

“There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?—To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.”

The world we live in today has lost all concept of family and what it means to be a family. Elder Boyd K. Packer, of the quorum of the twelve apostles, has said “True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior.” If people understood the doctrine behind families and the importance of them they would stop delaying marriage and have a desire to have a family and children. They would understand the relationship between having children and their own overall well being. So what is the doctrine behind family? Here it is in a non-religious way.

Doctrine (Why): Family is the fundamental unit of society.

Principle (What): Have a family – get married and have babies!

Application (How): Stop delaying marriage and postponing having children.

If you remember anything from this post I hope it is this: 

If we fail to create a future generation our quality of life will surely decline.

Marriage is Ordained of God

          Today I was reading in Marriage & Family: The Quest for Intimacy about Marriage & Family in America. It begins by saying that we are social creatures because we all want and need intimate relationships - we want close, personal relationships with others. It's just in our nature. It goes on to talk about marriage and the happiness and satisfaction that can come from it. Research has shown that married people live longer, are happier, and better off overall than those who have casual dating relationships, cohabitate, or don’t date all. These are the cold hard facts! Yet it amazes me how so many people today decide to remain unmarried or to have casual dating relationships. Do they not want to be happy? It just testifies to me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true and that Satan is real! He so desperately wants to destroy families and the plan of God! Satan has stolen the hearts of men with his counterfeit happiness and has lead people to believe that they can develop those intimate relationships they need in other ways than God has set forth. God has sent us here to live in families so that we can have those intimate relationships that we inherently seek for. He has done this so that we can learn to create more intimate relationships with friends and through dating, marrying and having children. There is a purpose to God’s plan and if we follow it I know that we will be truly happy and satisfied in life. Marriage is ordained of God! There may be ups and downs in marriage, but as we keep the Lord’s commandments He will bless us tremendously and we will know true happiness.

For further study of the purposes of marriage and family refer to The Family: A Proclamation to the World. It can be found here.