Fondness and Admiration (aka The Grocery Store)

I recently ran into a friend I had not seen in a few years at the grocery store. We hugged, laughed and spent time catching up. I remembered, with fondness, some of the kindnesses she has done for me over the years. I remembered, with admiration, the challenges she has gone through and the strength and determination she showed. My feelings towards her were of love and kindness even though it has been quite awhile since I saw her. We left with hugs and promises to see each other more often. I then walked over to where my husband was shopping and chastised him for picking out items he knows he cannot eat. I did not admire him for starting the shopping while I chatted and I did not think of him with fondness when I looked in the grocery cart.

Why would fondness and admiration be so easy to see in a friend you haven’t seen in years but not your spouse that you see daily? Probably because you see them daily! But wouldn’t that be the person that you should look on with the most admiration and fondness?

Of course! With our spouses we need to take the time to remember, with fondness, what brought us together. We need to look around and see, with admiration, what our spouses do for us daily. According to Dr Gottman, the masters of marriage have a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions during conflict and 20 to 1 when there is no conflict. He says, “For a relationship to really feel good, people have to be kind to each other and be affectionate. If that doesn’t happen then it feels like you’re living in a desert.”

I have found that when I am thinking of my husband with fondness and remembering how we met and what brought us together that I am happier and tend to be less critical of him.  We fight and argue less. When I am grateful to him and admire him for who he is, then we fight and argue less.  It also seems that when I am nurturing our relationship with fondness and admiration, he tends to reciprocate as well.  Showing fondness and admiration towards me.  It is harder with your spouse, whose faults you have to see daily, to think of them with fondness and admiration but they should be the most important person that you do this with. In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Dr. Gottman has some activities for “Fanning the flames” and “Learning to Cherish your partner" (Pages 74-86).  These activities have helped me and will continue to help me to see my husband with fondness and admiration.  If your argument positive to negative ratios are less than 5 to 1, check out these activities and apply them in your marriage.  Doing all we can to build our positive interactions will do nothing but bless our marriages. 

References:

Drs John and Julie Gottman radio interview, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zVzTD22fQM4%C2%A0 (Links to an external site.)

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work. New York: Harmony Books.

Friendship and Marriage

Have you ever been in the middle of an argument with your spouse and wondered how you even got here?  What brought you two together if all you do is argue and nag?  When you first met, I bet there were common interests, goals, and ideas. Over forty years of research by Dr. Gottman he has boiled down the most important aspect of marriage satisfaction as friendship. He says “At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company (pg. 21).”

Why would friendship be so important in marriage? 

My husband and I were neighbors.  He had recently moved back to North Carolina from Texas and I had also moved from Texas to North Carolina in the previous couple of years. His tags on his car were still Texas and one day I asked him about it.  We had a short conversation but found something we had in common.  Another time when he was out walking his dog, I asked if I could go for a walk with him.  We talked for over an hour about the things we liked and disliked.  We found that we had a lot in common in our interests but also numerous differences.  We spent time together and got to know one another.  We were engaged about three months later but waited a year to get married in the temple.  Over that next year I learned a lot about my future husband and how he handles problems and disappointments in life.  I am sure he learned a lot about me as well.  Over the years we have both changed and grown, lost interest in some hobbies and picked up new ones.  We have found hobbies that we enjoy doing together and we try out new things to see what else we might like. Sometimes these changes have caused issues in our marriage and there have been times when we have not liked each other at all but at the end of the day, we know the core of the other person and do our best to remember that. I want more than anything for my husband to want to spend time with me.  I enjoy his company and doing things with him.

Think about your relationships outside of your marriage. We often treat our friends with more kindness and love then we do our spouses.  I have found myself putting on a smiling face for a friend when I had just been treating my husband with contempt. We tend to see the flaws in our friends but accept them for who they are whereas a spouse’s flaws grate on us more.  Maybe this is because we don’t live with our friends or because we want them to be friends with us and we don’t want to lose that friendship.  We should not want to lose our spouses friendship even more?  I know that I need to treat my husband as my best friend and do everything I can for him in this capacity.  I know that with a strengthened and renewed friendship we can have a stronger marriage.

Contract vs. Covenant

A marriage is a marriage, right? You get up in front of a preacher, a judge or a civil servant and pledge “I do” to your future spouse. You apply for and sign a marriage license saying that you will be this person’s spouse. You contracted with your spouse to be married to them.  What if I told you that marriage is not just a contract, but also a covenant? A covenant is an agreement between God and the other parties involved. Elder Bruce C. Hafen said, “Marriage is by nature a covenant, not just a private contract one may cancel at will….Contract companions each give 50 percent; covenant companions each give 100 percent.” How do we treat our own marriages?  Do we covenant with our spouse and God or do we only give 50 percent and are ready to bail at the first sign of discontent?

Marriage is hard work.  Elder Hafen uses a parable of the hireling and the good shepherd that Jesus spoke of and compares it to how we can view marriage.  A contract marriage like the hireling that Jesus describes in John 10:12-15.  The hireling will leave the sheep when the wolves come.  The hireling is not willing to sacrifice for the sheep and has no vested interest in their well-being. On the other hand, the good shepherd will lay down his life for his sheep. We have many wolves in our lives and these can bring challenges that can affect our marriage if we let them.

In order to be like the good shepherd and not run away at the wolves, I have to remember the covenant that I made.  I need to be better about thinking of this covenant and putting God into our lives, when we have God at the center, we tend handle things much better.  The things we need to do are simple answers but tend to take a backseat to the busyness of life. We need to pray and study the scriptures together, go to the temple together, we need to have regular date nights and put each other first (even over the kids!). When we have family counsels to discuss matters rather than just talking about them and when we address our issues in a positive manner and look to the Lord for assistance life is calmer.  If we are individually doing all of these things ourselves and a have a strong relationship with the Lord.

What do I need to do now, right now, to make my marriage a covenant one?  I need to pray. I need to read my scriptures. I need to invite my husband to pray and read with me. I need to go to the temple. I need to plan date nights and make them happen every Saturday night, even when it is hard. I need to get up when my husband comes in the door and greet him with a smile (even when its hard). I need to be more positive and look for the blessings in my daily life.  There are a lot of things to do but my marriage is important to me and I want to treat it as the covenant that it is, so these changes will make a big difference in how I see it.

Who are we hurting?

Some people may say that same-sex marriage is no big deal. That we should let the people do as they wish if they are not hurting anyone else by their personal decisions.  It is kind of like the use of alcohol or drugs, it’s okay culturally, until it hurts someone else.  We can see the victims of alcohol and drug abuse in the car accidents and other abuses that happen while people are high or drunk.  The people that are hurt in same-sex marriage are not as easily to spot as an accident victim or abused spouse.  They are also the ones that do not have a voice or a say in the matter. My concern is for the innocent children in same-sex households. What we do as adults affects our children.  When children grow up in a same-sex household they miss out on the experience of having both a mother and a father.  A man, no matter how feminine, will never be a woman; and a woman, no matter how masculine, will never be a man. We are born as male and female with innate characteristics and abilities that our children need. Our Heavenly Father has clearly specified that marriage is to be between a man and a woman.  In Genesis 2:24, he says, “A man shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”

A man and a woman as husband and wife should procreate and bring children into the world.  When same-sex couples have children, they are not biologically one or more of the partners children. Whether by adoption, or donor conceived the outcomes are not as bright for parents of same-sex couples. Katy Faust is the daughter of divorced parents. Her mother had a same-sex partner that she grew up with. She talks in an open letter to Justice Kennedy, before the Supreme Court decision, about how same-sex marriages affect children.  She says, “When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.” Ms. Faust expresses exactly why we cannot and should not take a nonchalant approach towards same-sex marriage and that is that there are innocent children that will suffer the most. She goes on to say, “Redefining marriage redefines parenthood. It moves us well beyond our “live and let live” philosophy into the land where our society promotes a family structure where children will always suffer loss. It will be our policy, stamped and sealed by the most powerful of governmental institutions, that these children will have their right to be known and loved by their mother and/or father stripped from them in every instance. In same-sex-headed households, the desires of the adults trump the rights of the child.”

When we let our adult desires rule our culture instead of the rights of innocent children, we have lost.  We have implemented laws about drugs and alcohol to prevent the use and/or abuse of such and problems that can result from them.  Why cannot we then enact laws to prevent innocent children from having to deal with the repercussions of being raised in a same-sex household? I know that we can, and it is something that we will have to continue to fight for.

Even with the Supreme Court decision granting the right of same-sex marriage to all states, we cannot sit by and stay silent.  We still need to fight for the rights of the children in same-sex marriages.  We need to continue to maintain our right to speak openly about marriage between a man and a woman. We need to continue to share our beliefs with those around us and with the future generations of this world.  You never know, they may just change the culture of marriage to what God has intended.

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