Marriage: Attending God’s Graduate School

H. Wallace Goddard stated in his book, Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, "Marriage is God's graduate school for advanced training in Christian character.”  My husband attended graduate school to become a dentist.  One of the most characteristic things I discovered about his teachers and the administrators was that they did not want anyone to fail.  They helped, tutored, and encouraged each student along, seeking anyway to help that person succeed at being a dentist.  Likewise, God invites each of us into his graduate school through marriage.  The first couple we gain knowledge of is Adam and Eve.  They are set as an example for us to learn from. As we look to Adam and Eve, we gain several lessons from them. 

1.     How to “Turn Towards” each other. 

·      When Eve first partook of the fruit, she went and asked Adam to partake.  She did not turn away from him, even though she knew what she had done.  Adam likewise did not turn from Eve and remain in the Garden of Eden with out her.  They took struggles and issues that were presented before them and worked through them together.  John Gottman said, “A tendency to turn toward your partner is the basis of trust.”  Being able to trust our spouse and turn to them with our trials and struggles strengthens our bond. 

2.     How to look towards Christ

·      “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36).  As Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they encountered many trials and much sorrow.  It was not an easy path that they chose.  Nor is marriage for anyone.  The way to eternal life isn’t easy either.  However, in all of their struggles, “Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters” (Moses 5:12). Teaching of and looking towards God gave them an eternal prospective.

3.     We are not alone; we have a pattern to follow.

·      Adam and Eve, at first may have felt alone in their new surroundings.  But God did not leave them alone long.  He sent angels to minister unto them.  Bruce C. Hafen said, “The story of Adam and Eve is the pattern for our own marriage, our lives, and the personal meaning of the Atonement.  The story of Christ’s life is the story of giving the Atonement.  But the life story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement.  Especially in that sense, their lives and their marriage set the pattern for our own. 

Using these three lessons from Adam and Eve can help us through our own graduate school of marriage.  Working hard and attending graduate school have blessed my husband.  He has never regretted it.  Our marriages can be the same way; we will be blessed by working hard and attending to our marriages. 

Cherish: Love Mapping your Way to Happiness...

Most people want the best from their marriages and relationships.  We want to be our best and we want to help our partner become better. We truly want to cherish each other.  D&C 121: 41-43 reads, “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile— Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy.”

Over time, looking for ways to help improve our partner can turn from cherishing and develop into criticism.  This happens when “reproving betimes with sharpness” becomes ‘reproving all the time with sharpness.’  Reproving with sharpness in a sense means, pointing a very small pin at something that needs changing, not at the whole person.  However, if we do this enough it becomes pinpricking.  Joe J. Christensen said “Avoid ‘ceaseless pinpricking.’ Don’t be too critical of each other’s faults. Recognize that none of us is perfect. We all have a long way to go to become as Christ-like as our leaders have urged us to become. ‘Ceaseless pinpricking,’ as President Spencer W. Kimball called it, can deflate almost any marriage.” 

To avoid endless pinpricking we need to show ‘forth…an increase of love’ towards our spouse.  We need to remember how to cherish each other.  In Dr. John Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he gives suggestions for working on ways to show our spouse more love.  He does this through love mapping.  A love map is “that part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner’s life” (Gottman).  Love maps protect relationships when times of trouble come.  It is like building your love house on a solid foundation.  Dr. Gottman calls love maps the “foundation of friendship and intimacy.”

My husband and I had an opportunity to begin doing love maps.  It has helped us see that we always need to check in with each other emotionally.  We recently attended my father-in-law's funeral.  Being able to check in at a time of transition such as this has helped each of us appreciate the other more fully. 

Here are some suggestions for how to check in with your spouse and build an emotionally strong foundation:

• Set a weekly check in or date night without distractions
• Take inventory of emotional situations
• Talk for 10 minutes a day, uninterrupted
• Hug it out for 20 seconds—It releases oxytocin (which helps with bonding)
• Find a hobby together—Try curling, geocaching, dancing, and more 

How do you cherish an emotional connection with your partner?  While you are thinking about this, enjoy this little song...

The Four Horsemen

“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”  

~Michel De Mongaigne

Friendship is defined as the over arching focus of a good marriage.  According to John Gottman, “happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.”  Reflecting upon marriages, I have had examples of good and bad relationships.  My father-in-law passed away this past weekend.  As my husband and I have pondered his life there is much to say about marriage.  My in-law’s divorced after 37 years of marriage.  It was a difficult time for the family.  We all knew that the marriage was unhappy, we were just unaware of how desperately unhappy my mother-in-law was.  John Gottman lays out the four horsemen as the second sign that a marriage is headed for divorce.  The four horsemen are as follows:

1.     Criticism—Google defines criticism as “The expression of disapproval of someone…based on perceived faults or mistakes.”  Criticism often leads to negative interactions in a relationship.  The Gottman institute recommends that married couples experience 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

2.     Contempt—This can come in many forms, such as feelings of superiority, worthlessness, or disregard for another’s thoughts, feelings or actions.  Pride is a strong form of contempt. Contempt doesn’t just come from the “top” down; it can also come form the bottom looking up.  Ezra Taft Benson said of pride, “There is, however, a far more common ailment among us—and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous.”

3.     Defensiveness—In his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman says that defensiveness “is really a way of blaming your partner.” When we use defensiveness we are really saying that the problem is another person and that we are blameless or innocent.  It is the victim scenario. 

4.     Stonewalling—Stonewalling is a form of refusing to answer questions or giving evasive replies (Google definitions).  Stonewalling actually comes from England, when people would build stonewalls that were difficult to surmount and they were a way of blocking any interaction with the outside.  Stonewalls in relationships make in difficult for our partner to climb over, penetrate or interact. 

Using the four horsemen, I am able to see that they were all present in my in-laws relationship prior to their divorce.  They didn’t argue, instead they stonewalled like master masons.  Brad Wilcox and Jerrick Robbins discuss how to tear down the brick walls in relationships in their book, How to Hug a Hedgehog.  Brad Wilcox said, “Sometimes [people] build invisible walls around themselves. They may build them for protection, or perhaps because of feelings of insecurity, distrust, fear, or misunderstanding.”  To help stop the stonewalling Brad Wilcox said, “We must first see beyond the wall and then find the loose brick.” 

How do we find loose bricks?  That is where Dr. Gottman’s repair attempts and friendships come in.  We need to be willing to repair the first three horsemen and to become friends again. 

Here are some ideas to help find loose bricks and start to repair relationships with those in your life:

1.     What are my partner’s/family member’s hobbies?  What can I do to be interested in those hobbies?
2.     Use the Love Dare method from the movie, Fire Proof.
3.     Build a love map with those you are trying to create a relationship with.
 

Dr. Gottman said, “Instead of criticizing your partner, remind yourself of all of the things you appreciate about them, and share those things with them. Be genuinely interested in learning about why they see or do something differently than you, and be open to respecting and even celebrating what makes each of you unique…Instead of trying to change your partner, be the change you wish to see in your relationship.”

The Wolf is at the Door...

Pres. Russell M. Nelson stated in his first public address as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Begin with the end in mind.”  When we begin with the end in mind, we have a better vision of how to get where we want to go.  Marriage is a great example of beginning with the end in mind. By asking a few simple questions, such as the ones below, a couple is better able to strive for the same goal and achieve it. 

·      “What kind of couple/family do we want to be?” 

·      “What is the goal for our marriage?” 

·      “What is our life plan?” 

·      “Do we want to be a forever family?”

·       “How can we help each other be our best selves?” 

Regardless of how well we plan for the future each marriage is riddled with struggles.  Bruce C. Hafen calls these struggles— ‘wolves’.  He said, “Every marriage is tested repeatedly by three kinds of wolves. The first wolf is natural adversity…Second, the wolf of their own imperfections…[and] the third wolf is the excessive individualism that has spawned today’s contractual attitudes.”  As each couple begins to view where they want their marriage to go, watching for the wolves becomes more important.  The first place to watch for the wolves is inside you. 

An old Native American parable credited to the Cherokee People is related…

A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us, which are always at war with each other.   One of them is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.  The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”  The grandfather quietly replies, “The one you feed.”

As a spouse we can feed one of the two wolves inside of us, the good and kind one or the mean and unkind one.  By feeding the unkind wolf we invite in the three wolves Elder Hafen discusses, the wolves of adversity, imperfections, and selfishness. 

How do we feed the good wolf?  How can we change and start to focus on the positive? Here are three ways to help feed your marriage and soul, to bring about good in your marriage relationship. 

11.  View your marriage as a covenant marriage instead of a contractual marriage.

·      “When troubles come, the parties to a contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away. They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they’re receiving what they bargained for. But when troubles come to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through. They marry to give and to grow, bound by covenants to each other, to the community, and to God. Contract companions each give 50 percent; covenant companions each give 100 percent.  Marriage is by nature a covenant, not just a private contract one may cancel at will” (Bruce C. Hafen).

22.     Find ways to highlight the good your spouse brings to the relationship.

·      Because of their distinctive temperaments and capacities, males and females each bring to a marriage relationship unique perspectives and experiences. The man and the woman contribute differently but equally to a oneness and a unity that can be achieved in no other way. The man completes and perfects the woman and the woman completes and perfects the man as they learn from and mutually strengthen and bless each other” (Elder David A. Bednar). 

33.     Focus on what unifies instead of what divides.