The Dreaded Topic: Divorce

 Divorce is not a fun topic by any means.  It usually entails resentment, anger, hurt, and long-lasting effects that will bother the divorced spouses and the children.  Today, we learned the importance of being educated about the predictors for divorce.  By understanding what can predict divorce, we can prepare ourselves before the word is mentioned in a marriage.  Some common make divorce appear to be an option to an unhappy marriage if: they grew up seeing their parents' unhealthy relationship, follow their parents' destructive patterns, recreating their parents' patterns (this is usually habitual and some may not even recognize it), and cohabitation.  We can break these harmful patterns and predictors by becoming conscious and aware of our own situations.  There are some qualities children love about their parents' techniques for parenting and some we would hope we can avoid in our future.  Recognition of those patterns is crucial, once we can recognize them, we can follow the 3 P's: preparing, planning, and practicing.  The 3 P's will help us redefine our situation and future.  In a talk given by Bruce R. Hafen, he discusses the percent each spouse should give in a marriage.  I'll paraphrase, but he says that if each spouse gives 100%, when one falls short, there is always enough between the two spouses to make up the difference, thus there is a safety net to guard the marriage!  However, if each spouse only gives 50%, then when one falls short, there is nothing to make up the difference.  I ask each reader out there, please safe guard your marriage (whether it is now or in your future).  Marriage is a beautiful and unifying gift, troubles will come and go, some more difficult than others.  However, if two people are giving 100% and helping their spouse when one falls short, you can get through just about any problem.  Divorce is so harmful for all parties involved (children, in laws, the divorcing spouses, friends of the couple, etc). 

Parents with Respect

This week we watched a great video that listed four qualities that are important to parenting: responsibility, cooperation, respect, and courage.  It will help them to learn how to respond to opportunities and challenges, work with others, reciprocate respect, and to "have a willingness or ability to face challenges/experiences to an unknown problem" (Brother Williams).  To use an active parenting style, the parents must choose to be a team with the children, while upholding authority respectively.  We should want to become parents because they will be the ones who take care of the world, we want the best for our future generations even if it does not influence us directly.  We learned that children cooperate with parents much better when they are given choices, included in decision making (such as consequences of disobeying the commitments made to the parents), and are treated in all situations with love instead of anger and hostility.  We hope the best for our children, that they may have even better lives than the ones we lived.  In parenting as a loving and respectful team, the children will be better prepared to "survive and thrive in the world they are going to live in". What I hope some people understand is that parenting can be just as rewarding for the parents as it can for the children.  Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?  Parents can learn how to live unselfishly and more wholesome by raising children because they want to be a good example.  When parenting, you gain a greater understanding of unconditional love and commitment. You are refined as a person with guided with love from your Heavenly Father and spouse.  An old saying my elementary school overused is, "there is no I in team".  I think it most certainly can be applied to the family because it requires that we work together and must put our family's needs above our own selfish needs.  A wonderful blessing from parenting with respect comes from the reciprocated love and enjoyment of spending time together, which ironically gives every parent what they really want- greater cooperation from their children. 

The Importance of a Homemaker

The term homemaker has become a bit "outdated".  But the importance of the role has since remained, although becoming covered up by the feminist's protests for equality.  Women really began entering the work force during WWII as a means to produce the goods and services need in war needed by the men serving in the war.  After the men came home, some women fought to keep their jobs and fought returning back to being a homemaker.  This was a damaging stepping stone for families because it took mom's out of the home and left the children to return home to an empty house or seek care outside of the home.  Some of the disruptions of families from moms not being home with the kids after school are:  siblings coming home to each other, more arguing because mom is not there to mediate, older children having to take on more responsibilities to watch over the younger siblings, schedules are disrupted since the parents get home later and have to fulfill all the responsibilities during what used to be "family time".  Now "family time" after homework time is filled with trips to the grocery stores, chores, homework, cooking dinner, and if there is time left over, managing to squeeze in some time to discuss each other's days.  This is leading to and has led to families becoming more distant with one another and families not knowing each other as well because they are not able to spend as much time with family.  It is heartbreaking to see how many families are putting family time as a low priority because of work, school, and all of the other activities that distract families from being together.  This is one of Satan's ploys in destroying families and has covered it well to make it appear like the world suddenly does not have enough hours in the day to include family time.  Ideally, homemakers are important because it gives families more time to talk about each other's days, having dinner together, kids helping the mom cook, and mom being able to teach valuable lessons to the children.

Effects of Miscommunication

Are you partaking in casual conversation in your text message or are you MAKING A POINT?!  This week we discussed the Feedback Loop.  It was really interesting to understand how thoughts and feelings are portrayed and received/interpreted.  The Feedback Loop describes the communication process in which one person expresses or says something is with meaning, is then aided by or through the media to be decoded through interpretation by the listener, and finally, the listener reacts with their thoughts and feelings in regards to the topic.  The media (words, tones, or non-verbal cues) can help us decipher what the speaker is actually trying to say.  As the listener, we combine the words with the tone in which the words were said or with non-verbal cues, such as eye rolling or a smiling.  If the speaker has a lot on their mind and is absentmindedly partaking in the conversation, the media cues they use may be in reaction to what is on their mind or what they are talking about.  For instance, the speaker just got off the phone after a frustrating phone conversation in which their voice was loud.  If the speaker says something to the listener right after, his tone may still match that from the heated argument instead of being in reference to the new interaction with the listener.  Misinterpreting thoughts or feelings from someone is especially easy to do through some form of text communication, whether it is text messages, Facebook, email, etc.  If the sender of the message adds too many exclamation marks, the reader may think the sender was portraying anger or harsh emotions.  If the sender said, "I thought you said you vacuumed!!!!!!" the reader may be quite appalled and may even snap back with a rude comment.  But if the sender said, "I thought you vacuumed."  The reader might be more apt to replying in a kind manner that he was going to, but got stuck at campus longer than anticipated, and perhaps they he will get to it when he gets home.  In more serious scenarios, things can escalate real quickly if the sender and the reader are not careful to encode or decode the messages effectively.  It is important, as communication via text becomes increasingly popular, that the messages sent and received are taken with precaution.  What could easily be interpreted as someone smiling during a conversation face-to-face, but a smiley face emoticon that is sent through a text message instead can be mistaken as someone flirting.  If a third party then sees that message, they could misinterpret how it was meant and all sorts of miscommunication problems come into play.  Text communication can be beneficial to a relationship, friendship, etc. or it can be severely damaging.  I loved the quote that was shared in the class by Harold B. Lee, "[w]e should communicate so clearly, not only that we can be understood, but that we can not be misunderstood".  I think it is important to strive to live by this quote every time we are involved in text communications because it can prevent a lot of unnecessary tensions/problems or damaging miscommunication.  

Crises - Helpful or Harmful?

 In class we defined crises as "danger + opportunity".  No one can be lucky enough to go through life without facing the trials of crises.  But even if it were possible, would we want to?  Would we purposely choose to live without crises?  It might sound nice, but what good would it do for us?  It is like asking Heavenly Father why we couldn't all just stay in the pre-Earth life if we were already converted, what is the purpose of coming to Earth.  The purpose is to face these trials and crises and to stretch and grow.  We are given families for special purposes to teach and learn from each other, to learn how to become closer.  Experience helps us to learn how to handle crises in the future.  Crises can do one of two things - it can build a family up or it can tear it apart.  It is all in how a family chooses to handle the crises.  Losing loved ones, finding out about a terminal illness, etc.  those are all difficult scenarios to handle.  But do we stick our head in the sand and pretend nothing is happening - limiting our growth from the crisis - OR do we choose to pull together as a family, depend on each other, comfort one another?  The right choice is obvious, but it is not always easy to accomplish.  It is my sincerest hope that every person chooses the right way of handling crises, that our future families will be stronger than our generation of families were.  Hold your families close and dear, go to them before anyone else when you are going through a difficult time, and cherish those moments of unity.  A happier, healthier cohesive family handles conflict better than those families who are more centrifugal or "off-balanced" families.  

Importance of Waiting for the One

It is so important to wait until marriage to have sex because the effects are more than temporal pleasure.  It reduces the risk of regrets later on, but also it has to do with the chemicals in the brain.  During sex, three chemicals are secreted in the brain: serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin.  Serotonin is responsible for the feel good sensations or what makes you happy.  Dopamine is responsible for causing the feelings of excitement.  Lastly, oxytocin is the main reason to wait because it is a bonding chemical.  By having sex with partners, you become bonded to an individual, which is in part what makes those break ups even more difficult.  God created this bonding agent to help keep families together for eternity, it is a blessing and should not be misused because of the serious effects from the bonding chemical.  

Too quick to divorce?

We are growing up in a "throw away" society.  Everything seems to either be disposable or easier/more desirable to buy new than to fix these days: paper plates, iPods, clothes, you name it!  Why must marriage be one of them?  Of course, you don't necessarily buy marriage, unless you're talking mail order brides, but some consider it to be easier to divorce and remarry than it is to fix the problems faced.  Easy is not a descriptive word of marriage; in fact, it can be rather difficult if the marriage is troubled.  Some of the happiest times in a marriage are at the beginning and after the last child moves away.  This is not to be confused to think that marriage is miserable after children are brought into the picture, but it does change the marital relationship significantly.  Marital satisfaction tends to decrease with the birth of each child, but if the marital relationship is nurtured throughout the children's lives, it can still be great and will increase as each child grows up and leaves the home. The problem is that too many couples do not want to wait long enough or put enough effort into fixing the marriage, it's much "easier" to divorce and start over looking for love else where.  Marriage enrichment is vital to marital satisfaction!