Week Twelve

This week was very different for me and very insightful. I haven't ever been directly affected by divorce and it was interesting to listen to everyone's stories and experiences on how their lives have been changed by divorce. It made me appreciate the nuclear family even more and admire those who have been through divorces and made it out to the other side a better person.
What I took away from the week's discussions were that you shouldn't ever go into a marriage thinking that divorce is an option or expecting that you will get divorced. What I mean by that is that you should go into a marriage with the best of intentions, and if you ever think before being married that you can just divorce them if it doesn't work out, then you just shouldn't get married to that person in the first place. Chances are, if you go into a situation with negative opinions of the person, that marriage isn't going to last.
I think there are a few qualifying reasons for divorcing someone, but a lack of love isn't one of them. Marriage is hard. There are days when you don't like your spouse, and it would be so much easier to just throw in the towel and walk away. However, that isn't how it works. When your relationship is sick, it needs to be worked on and healed. I think the only thing that we can do is work as hard as we can to remember why we love our spouse and then to do everything possible to keep respect within the relationship.

Week Eleven

The discussions and subject matter we talked about in class was very easy for me to understand and be motivated to be involved in class about. Mainly, this was due to the fact that I am taking a parenting class this semester. I feel like a lot of the material we covered in class was kind of a review of my semester in my parenting class, and I really appreciated it!
Something I really enjoyed discussing was the differences in parenting and how different kinds of family living situations can alter the way that parenting styles can affect children. How we choose to parent our children really does affect the way that they view life and interact with others. Out of all of the parenting styles, I would hope that I would be an authoritative parent, but I know that I do have a tendency to be a bit overbearing sometimes. I worry about those I love and want to protect them from any harm. Sometimes its important to let your children make their own mistakes though, and then be there for them when they need to be comforted and picked back up. As always, a strong parenting relationship is based on a strong marriage. Basically everything in the family can be traced back to a strong marriage, and that is why it is so important for us to work as hard as we can to keep our marriages strong.

Week Ten

My father has always been a strong role model in my life. I connect with him and feel like I am a lot like him. I have always been a daddy's girl and have loved having a committed, spiritual, loving father in my life. I know that not everyone is so lucky to have such a strong father figure in their life. I knew that when I got married that I wanted to marry someone who had the qualities of my father in them, such as spirituality, dedication to family, and a love for adventure as well as life. I have been lucky to find those qualities in my husband. I think that in finding a spouse it is important to be looking for those strong qualities you desire and to not stray from them. Its never good to be overly-critical, but when you are choosing your forever someone, you want to make sure you don't just choose the first person you think is amazing.
Talking about finances is something that I usually don't like to do because I get stressed over thinking about how to properly budget. However, this time it was really beneficial for me. I went home and talked to my husband and we made a budget that day. We have had budgets before, but we needed something that was a little bit more forceful or helpful in reminding us if we were on track or not. We found this amazing site called mint.com. I would recommend it to everyone! Through mint.com we were able to create a budget that was reasonable and even create goals for future family vacations! I really appreciated the One For the Money book that we received as well because it helped me to realize what is most important to be looking at when budgeting.

Week Nine

Communication in a marriage is vitally important. I feel like not enough young couples (myself included) talk enough about tough decisions or ideologies with each other. It is so important for the husband and wife to be tightly united in a marriage and to be able to communicate with each other calmly so they can make decisions regarding the whole family together. In order to best communicate with my husband, I have found that it is always best to talk about an issue when it is first presented. If problems arise in our family and we don't immediately address them or acknowledge them, they become a sore spot and source of resentment in the future.
I also think it is really important to include your children in the decision making process of life events that will effect the whole family's integrity. Of course it is always important for the husband and wife to talk together first before bringing the family together, but in dealing with life changing experiences, or even minor family matters, the children's input is important to include so they feel like they are a part of the family. Even the simplest things such as talking to your children about where they would like to go for a family vacation that year is important. I remember my parents would always ask my sister and I if we had anything that we really wanted to do during the summer at the beginning of break each year. They then would make a list and we would do as much on it as we could.
Most importantly, the lines of communication need to be open at all times between husband, wife, and children. When this happens then the family is able to create a more loving and spiritual home environment.

Week Eight

It seems as though no matter how well you are doing in your relationship or life, some crisis seems to always find its way into your life and affect your relationship. Whether it be financial, family related, or indirectly related to you, life throws curve balls at each of us constantly. I have been married for almost a year now, and I feel like for the past two years my husband and I have dealt with crisis after crisis. Family health failing, friends passing away, finances, and the joys of learning how to communicate with each other properly! I loved how in class we talked about how crisis and stressors in our lives change us for the better.
I can honestly say that through all of the hardships we have been through in the past two years have been totally worth it. I agree with the theory we have talked previously before in class about how those who go through tremendous trials come out and eventually are thankful for those trials. I feel that way about all of the life changing trials in my life.
This life isn't easy, in fact it can sometimes be extremely hard and discouraging. The most important thing, I think, is to just never forget that you are not alone and that things will get better. Heavenly Father wants us to grow and be perfected through our trials. I am grateful for the trials in my life and I know that they challenge me to be better and give me strength that I will need later for another trial.

Week Seven

This week was very insightful and I feel like we had a lot of really great class discussions. Something that really stuck with me was when we talked about the differences between men and women and how those differences can lead to problems in communicating what we need from one another in a relationship. When we talked about that in class it was kind of like a light bulb went off in my head and it totally made sense! Men and women are divinely different, so how can we expect to think and require the same things from each other that we think we need? It just makes sense to me that we need to find better ways to talk about difficult issues so we can come to understand each others needs.
I liked the metaphor/ class activity that we did in class to represent trying to talk about difficult issues with your spouse. It was really hard for me to describe to the person who I was working with what the picture looked like so she could draw it. That is definitely how it is in marriage, at least for me, most of the time! Often I know that I feel frustrated about something, but it is hard to explain why I am irritated or why something is so important to me. In my experience, when it seems that you just aren't getting your point across to your spouse it is best to just say to them "Look, I am feeling frustrated right now and I can't really express to you why, so just please be understanding that I am feeling hurt right now". That usually goes over better then yelling at each other or talking in circles.

Week Six

What I really liked this week was when we talked about the transition of having children and how it affects your marriage. I am pregnant with my first child right now, and I can say that it has been quite the challenge to adjust to as a married couple! We are so excited to have a baby, but it is so true that it changes your life. When the baby arrives I know we are going to go through many more changes, and we will have to work hard to stick together during that time.

I feel like the most important thing you can do to survive challenges in marriage is to pray together and stay together. Sometimes you just want to run away because the stress of life seems to be too much with another person there, but it really is important to stick together. When you are together, it allows you both to encourage each other and to work out the issues you face together. If I had to go through life alone, I wouldn't be able to make very good decisions without the advise and help of my husband or family.

Week Five

As a married woman, it was really interesting to hear everyone else's opinions on marriage. I really liked the reading "Hangout Out, Hooking Up and Celestial Marriage" because it shed some light on what the differences are between just hanging out, dating, and marriage. When we talked in class about expectations of a husband or wife, I thought it was interesting on what some people said. I liked how a lot of people focused on how we should be changing ourselves as opposed to trying to change the person we are dating. Also, how we marry who we date, and therefor we should be really careful about the people we select to date.

The application to married people this week in my opinion came when we talked about how you should treat people of the opposite sex in all situations, especially in dating. I think that as someone who is already married, it is important to remember to treat your spouse the same positive way you did when you were dating. When dating, it seems as thought you treat each other wonderfully because you are smitten with each other. Sometimes that fades a bit and when you're married you fall into the habit of trying to correct your spouse all the time. It think that its important for me to remember to love and treat my husband as if we were still dating.

Week Four

Growing up in Northern California, I have had my fair share of exposure to homosexuality and the implications it introduces to the family. I have known a lot of people, including extended family members, who's choice to act on homosexual feelings has caused a lot of turmoil in the family. Their choices have caused my family to change the way that we act around them, and have changed the family dynamics. I love my family so much and we really do accept everyone for who they are, but just like choices affect a family, lifestyle changes affect a family.

I was really impressed by the discussions that we had in class this week. In one particular discussion we talked briefly about educating our children about homosexuality and how schools are taking matters into their own hands and are starting to teach children about these adult issues in elementary school. I think that to teach children these things and not expect some backlash is a little naive. In my experience, with issues that are sensitive like these it is important to teach your children about them in the home, and not in school. Especially at such a young age! I just think that as we adults are forming our own opinions on homosexuality, we have decided as a nation that it is important to impart these views on our children. Children are innocent, and I just think that some matters like these can wait to be taught until a little later in life when it actually will be relevant to them.

Week Three

Cultural and social diversity was the main focus of this week's discussions. This week, I really appreciated the discussion that we had on the case study we were supposed to read. The study entitled "The Cost of Getting Ahead" focused on a family that was moving from Mexico to the United States for job opportunities.

In our discussion, we talked about how the parents made the decision to move because they believed that doing so would bring great opportunities to themselves and, more importantly, to their children. The decision couldn't have been made lightly, and I'm sure they worried about leaving their support system behind. However, the family couldn't have realized the effect that moving would have on their family. After the family moved away from their support system, they started to fall apart.

What I found to be most interesting was that the family truly did have the best intentions on moving, but doing so basically destroyed their family system. What I took away from the discussion was that if big life changing experiences are going to take place in your family, you need to do the best that you can to make sure that a sense of normalcy resides in your family. Also, each family member needs to continue to keep the same roles that they had before.

Week Two

This week we focused on family dynamics and how family systems are specific to each family. What I thought was most interesting, was when we were asked to evaluate what kind of family we belong to now and the one that we grew up in.

It was interesting, as I thought about the dynamics and roles of each family member of my family growing up, I realized that my family is full of contradictions! My family is adventurous, yet happy to stay inside and play games or watch movies together. We are a family of savers, yet we love to go on fun vacations and will often splurge to do so. I loved the family that I grew up in, and still think that my parents did an amazing job of raising my sister and I. I hope to one day be as good of a parent as they were to me.

Another interesting idea that came to me in class as we were doing the same activity was that my husband and I were raised completely opposite! I would say that my parents raised me in a authoritative manner, whereas my husband was raised in a household that was slightly more authoritarian. This difference in our family systems, as we were raised, has made taking about how we are going to raise our children very interesting! I appreciate the difference in perspective though and know that we will be able to come up with a dynamic that works for us.

Week One

This week we started talking about the dynamics of the family and what some of the roles of each of the family member's were. We also talked about statistics in the realm of family relations.

What really stuck out to me this week was related to when we were talking about family statistics. We talked about how the statistics on the divorce rate in the United States was inflated due to the lack of or biases put on information that had been gathered. We talked about how the statistics of the divorce rate affect people negatively. There are people out there who are so scared to get married because of the "evidence" that supports how likely they are to get divorced. What I was continuously reminded of in class is how each relationship is truly independent and unique. Just because there are statistics out there that say you are likely to get divorced doesn't mean you actually will. What is more important is what we do with this knowledge. Since we know there are factors that are working against the family as a whole, we should work hard to protect our relationships and families from the influences out there that are negative.