Week 10 - Fondness and Admiration

     I learned a few important things from the reading this week. I like what Gottman had to say about “gridlocking”. I had never heard this term before this reading, however, I learned that my husband and I are really good at it (should I admit that?). Both of us are strong-willed, hard-headed people, and that causes a lot of issues sometimes. The term “gridlocking” is when partners cannot find a way to accommodate perpetual disagreements. Sometimes we get so caught up in what we want that we I think sometimes we forget that we have to worry about what each other wants.

Gottman said:

“If either of you is feeling a lot of hurt over seemingly minor slights, you may want to spend some extra time on strengthening your fondness and admiration and practice turning toward each other. Not acknowledging and talking out these small moments can make a relationship more vulnerable to gridlock over significant issues.”

     I love that he said that if I am feeling hurt, then I need to think about what I can do strengthen my admiration toward my husband. I think a lot of times when we get hurt in our relationships, we want to blame the other person and make them do the work to make things right. I have definitely noticed that in my marriage, as I take the initiative to make things better and try to strengthen my admiration toward my husband, things are a lot better. I think it helps each of us realize what we love about our spouse, and then we get over those hurt feelings. One thing that helps me is to think about how I felt about him on our wedding day. That was the happiest that I have ever been. When I think about how I felt toward my husband on our wedding day that fondness and admiration comes back.

Goddard said something that I feel really goes along with this. He said:

“Of course we can divorce the disappointing spouse and marry someone different – someone who doesn’t irritate us in the way our spouse does. And we may be happy…for a time. However, every relationship comes with irresolvable differences.”

     Marriage is hard, but no matter who we are married too, we are going to have our own set of challenges and struggles. If we focus on our spouse’s good qualities and try every day to strengthen that fondness and admiration toward one another then we will be able to get through any challenge, together! That is the true beauty of marriage. Working together toward mutual goals, no matter how hard it may be.

I love my husband and I am so excited to continue this crazy journey of life with him. I love that we can be nerdy together, and I strive every day to keep that admiration alive because that is what is going to get us through the hard times.

Week 9 - Forgiveness in Marriage

This week, I really wanted to focus on forgiveness. In his talk, “The Healing Power of Forgiveness”, Elder Faust talks about why we need to forgive. He said something that really hit me deep. He said:

“If we can find forgiveness in our hearts for those who have caused us hurt and injury, we will ride to a higher level of self-esteem and well-being.”

I feel like I sometimes we have a hard time forgiving people when they wrong us. This quote really hit me hard because I want to be a confident person, and the only way to become one is to be forgiving of those that wrong us. I know that it’s hard sometimes, but if we rely on the spirit, then we can learn to have forgiveness better than without Him. Elder Faust also said

“People who are taught to forgive become ‘less angry, more hopeful, less depressed, less anxious and less stressed,’ which leads us to greater physical well-being”

I love that not only does forgiveness help me to have more self-esteem, but it helps me all-around physically. I think it’s important to do things that help you as a person to feel better physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. I know that as we try to forgive our fellow men when they wrong us, we will be able to gain a deeper testimony of forgiveness. 

Forgiveness does not come easy, it has always been one of the hardest attributes for me to develop, but as I forgive those little things in my life, the easier it is to forgive the bigger things. I have found that when I practice this with my husband, I feel so much better about myself, just like Elder Faust said. Sometimes I am super prideful and want him to acknowledge that he did something wrong before I say anything, but as I have been taking this class I have tried to implement the things that I am learning into my life. I have found that when I put that pride aside and try to focus on forgiving my husband we don’t fight as hard, and our feelings of love return so much faster. Learning to forgive may be hard, but it is worth it!

I love this quote from Mother Teresa. I feel like the more we forgive our spouses for the little things that bother us, the easier it will be to forgive the bigger things. The more that we forgive the bigger things, the more we will love. If we want to be closer to our spouse and love them better, let us forgive them. 

Week 8 - Pride in Marriage

This week was definitely a lesson that I needed to hear. I really needed to talk about pride. There have been so many times that my husband and I have let pride get in the way of us trying to make peace.

In a talk by Elder Benson "Beware of Pride", he says, 

“The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. They pit their perceptions of truth against God’s great knowledge, their abilities against his mighty works.” 

I never thought of pride in that way before. I always thought of it as being conceited, arrogant, or thinking you were better than someone else. I didn’t realize that when you are prideful you are also pitting yourself against God. I thought that this was such a valuable truth to learn. Elder Benson also touched on something else that I though was important 

“The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other worldly measuring device against others.” 

In other words, not only are you pitting yourself against God when you are prideful, but a lot of people pit themselves against each other. Pride is such a terrible quality and if we recognize that we are being prideful we need to take a step back and figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with the people in our lives, because pride will ruin all of them.

In my marriage I have noticed that pride is one of those things that can make an argument turn into a fight in under 3 seconds. We are both experts on the silent treatment, however as we get older and we are married longer we have found ways to turn our fights back around and both calm down so that we can actually have a good conversation. I believe that every marriage, no matter how much you love each other, will suffer from pride. However, I also believe that the way you handle it says a lot about you and your spouse. If you can learn to recognize when you are being prideful then you can also learn how to stop it so that it doesn’t ruin your relationship.

Here are some things that are considered elements of pride:

• Ignore spouse, or give spouse the "cold shoulder"
• Impatient with impatience
• Caught up in who' right and who's wrong
• Blaming, defensiveness
• Attack, counterattack
• Scorekeeping, with intentions of noting who is winning or losing
• Refusal to apologize first
• Holding the other hostage by refusing to forgive
• Proving superiority by bringing up spouse’s faults
• Holding grudges
• The " silent treatment"
• Sharing spouse's weaknesses with others
• Intentionally trying to create jealousies in spouse
• Get others to create an alliance with you against your spouse
• Putting words in spouse's mouth to manipulate
• Displaying an attitude of entitlement in the marriage
• Stubbornness or unwillingness to change
• Selfishness, thinking only of your needs
• Unwillingness to learn from spouse
• Fault finding
• Withholding love and affection

In every relationship, some of these things are going to happen because we are only human. We all need to take a good look at ourselves and if we see any of these qualities then we need to take a step back and make some changes. It's not going to be easy. Some days you are going to fall, but if you keep pushing yourself to be better then it will be easier for your spouse to do the same thing.