W11 Intimacy in Marriage

“In summary, sex should be a celebration. It comes from God. He created our sexual appetites and natures. He has ordained us to make love both physically and spiritually. He is pleased when He sees us bonded together sexually, in love, for this is the plan of creation. And this plan permits the husband and wife to jointly participate in creating new life and, in a sense, perpetuate part of themselves into eternity through their children. The sexual embrace should never be a chore or a duty, but a loving part of a larger relationship. Of giving to our partner, cherishing, respecting, protecting each other. It won't always be easy. But the rewards can be incredibly great if we choose to make them so.” (How to Make a Good Marriage Great, 1987, p. 39) 
 

In the LDS culture we are taught the law of chastity and more often than not, only the part about how we need to abstain from having sexual relationships until we are married. There is usually not much talk about how once you are married sex is a good, and important thing. This quote really stuck out to me, especially the first line, “sex should be a celebration”. How often are we taught that sex should be a celebration? This week I really appreciated all of our readings about the importance of intimacy in marriage and the good it brings.

“Sex is for procreation and expression of love. It is the destiny of men and women to join together to make eternal family units. In the context of lawful marriage, the intimacy of sexual relations is right and divinely approved. There is nothing unholy or degrading about sexuality in itself, for by that means men and women join in a process of creation and in an expression of love.”—Spencer W. Kimball

Intimacy in marriage is a good thing! This is one quote that I want to remember, there is nothing “unholy or degrading about sexuality in itself”. When done in the right setting, with a husband and wife, sexual relations are meant to show love and bring the couple closer together.

Of course, with the good also comes the bad. There are many ways that intimacy is tainted, infidelity and pornography, to name a few. As a mother of a son, it is something that I have thought a lot about. How will I protect my son? My husband? My household? How will I teach my children that sex is not a bad thing, it just has to be done within the boundaries the Lord has set. I believe this starts with me and my spouse. If together we can show our children, what a happy, healthy relationship looks and acts like we can help protect them from what the world portrays as acceptable. In my marriage there are boundaries we have set, if one of us texts someone of the opposite sex who is not family, we inform the other. It doesn’t happen often, but the few times it has we are open and the other always reads the messages. There are no secrets. We are open with our phones and passwords. Not that either one of us has reason to worry or even a real reason to not trust the other, we have those boundaries to protect ourselves. We do this to be overcautious because when it comes to Satan and technology, I believe you can never be too safe. We learned in Goddards book that there is a pattern to infidelity. I was surprised at how quickly innocent and even good behaviors can turn to cheating on your spouse.

W10 Gridlock

 

This week we learned about overcoming gridlock and how we can get past something that seems impossible to overcome. Gridlock is a problem in a marriage that is impossible to overcome, it’s one that every time you talk about it, it gets worse. The best-case scenario for a marriage is that they can avoid gridlock at all costs, but that does not always happen. The majority of the time when gridlock occurs it is because of a hidden dream that one of the spouses has, when you can get to the deep-rooted meaning of the gridlock and figure out the dream, that is when you can learn to overcome it. Gottman gives us four steps to get over gridlock which are:

1. Explore the dream- in order to explore the dream, you must both speak, and listen, without criticizing or judging your spouse. Both spouses need to explain why they feel the way they do about this issue. Learn to respect your partners dream, even if you don’t understand this dream.
2. Soothe- make sure during this conversation that neither of you are feeling flooded, and if you are, take a break to calm down.
3. Reach a temporary compromise (the two-circle method)- in a gridlock situation you aren’t going to be able to just solve the issue, but if you both write down your nonnegotiable areas and your areas of flexibility, you might be able to come up with a compromise. Try this out for a while, and then come back to the issue and see how it’s working.
4. Say “thank you”- always show gratitude for your spouse after these sessions. Talking about your gridlock issues is never an easy thing, show appreciation for your spouse.

Gottman also talks about a “marital poop detector” and how once a week we should check in with ourselves and ask certain questions to make sure we are feelings alright. If we do this check in and find that there is a lot of negativity or irritability then we should set aside time to talk to our spouse about what is going on. This can help us resolve problems before they get to an overwhelming point. There have been a couple times in my marriage where I have noticed I’ve been grumpier than usual, or irritable for seemingly small things. When I have taken the time to step back and figure out why, and talk to my spouse we have been able to work through it without it blowing up into an argument.

W09 Consecration in Marriage

“Consecration is a covenant that moves us from asking how we can get our needs met to asking how we can bless and serve. We become more grateful.”- Goddard (Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage)

I found it interesting that this week everything we read was slightly different, but all tied in so beautifully. We read about an array of things which included:

• Marital conflict and the importance of solving our solvable problems 
• Consecration
• Agency and anger
• Forgiveness

As I was reading I was thinking about how all of those are so important in a marriage. No matter the marriage there will be marriage problems, but if we are consecrated, and give everything we have to our spouse we can surmount those problems.

When we take the advice from Elder L.G. Robbins and apply that to our marriage we will be able to work through our problems, even perpetual ones. He says, “A cunning part of [Satan’s] strategy is to dissociate anger from agency, making us believe that we are victims of an emotion that we cannot control. . .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.” And he does such a good job! It is amazing to see how easy it is for us to become angry with those we love most. If we can learn to control our anger starting with our families we can win that fight against Satan!

One of the best ways to recover from anger is to forgive. I never realized how important forgiveness is in marriage, until I got married. In a way learning to change our way of arguing into soft start-ups rather than harsh start-ups we are teaching ourselves to push aside the anger, be humble, and forgive.

Week 8 Pride and Humility

 

When I got married I quickly realized how important humility is in a marriage! Humility is the opposite of pride and because pride seems to play at least a little part in every marriage, there needs to be humility. In his book “Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage” Goddard said, “In fact any time we feel irritated with our spouses, that invitation is not an invitation to call our spouses to repentance but an invitation to call ourselves to repent. We are irritated because of our own lack of faith and humility.” I have noticed whenever I am irritated with my spouse if I take time to sit there and think, I can ALWAYS think of something I did that either made the matter worse, or cause the irritation. There have been times when pride has gotten in my way and all I can see are my husband’s mistakes. But early on in my marriage I decided to try and find something to apologize for in every argument. Even if I don’t think I’m in the wrong, or my husband hurt my feelings, every time I’ve made the effort to humble myself and apologize for something I’ve always found something, and the fight ends pretty quick. My husband is really good at doing this as well, not to say pride doesn’t play a role in our marriage, because it does, but it is something we are always actively working on.

In President Bensons talk, “Beware of Pride” he says “God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble.” This quote really stood out to me! One way or another we have to be humbled! I would much rather choose to be humbled than compelled! There is another quote by Goddard that says, “When we humbly turn our minds, our lives, and our purposes over to God, He will refund us. We begin to see with new eyes. We feel with new warmth and goodness. We gladly give our time and energy to bless those around us- especially those with whom we have made covenants.” When we are humble everything in our life gets better, including our marriage!

Marriage is not a walk in the park always and sometimes it can feel like we don’t have the tools to fix it but Goddard said, “Rather than depend on our own limited abilities, we can have the humility to ask God for help. And he is mighty to save- both souls and marriages.” God will help us, especially in our marriages. He knows we are not perfect, he knows that the natural man will sneak in at times, but when we do our best to work on it he will help. One quote from Goddard that really hit home with me was, “Appreciating is more powerful than correcting. Appreciation inflates the tires in which we travel. Criticism is a slow leak in those tires.” This is like anything, when we look for the good we see it, when we look for the good in our partner we see the good.

 “Love is not a happy accident; it is a choice.” – Goddard. As we choose to be humble and overcome our pride our love will blossom and grow.