Don't Go to Bed Angry at Each Other

In respect to marriage,"It's not if you'll get hurt, it's when you'll get hurt." The loving relationship that comes from marriage makes the hurts worth it. It's going to happen; you're two imperfect people spending a lot of time together, coming from totally different backgrounds and families, having good and bad days; you're going to hurt each other. So, I love the advice:
"Don't go to bed angry at each other".
We heard this before we got married and we've tried to stick to it. It helps to be able to start the next day fresh. Even if you can't solve your problem the same day, at least you can agree to disagree, or agree to talk about it later, before going to bed.

image from furniture clipart

Traditions

When does your family open Christmas presents?

There are so many traditions surrounding Christmas. Which ones do you keep when you get married? I doubt it's possible for you and your spouse to have completely compatible traditions.

Recently Ryan and I read "Twelve Traps in Today's Marriage and how to avoid them" by Brent A Barlow. We weren't expecting much from this book; but it turns out it was actually really helpful. Dr. Barlow chose twelve common traps in marriage and what to do about them. One was "tradition". He specifically mentioned the problem he and his wife had with deciding when to open Christmas presents - Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The tradition trap is when we insist that our marriage be exactly as our parents, friends, or relatives have it---or insisting that our marriage be as marriages of the past.

Solution: Examine your traditions. Decide which ones you want to keep, which ones you will discard, and which new ones you're going to make together. At least that's what works for us. We've done a lot of that over the years. There are plenty of traditions that we each had growing up, including some that we cherished, but that just don't work for our own family. Those traditions have to be let go of in a tender way.

Parents Celebrating 40 years of Marriage

On my parents 40th wedding anniversary, we took them back to the college dorms where they met. They could remember which numbers they lived in and everything. While we were outside taking pictures, a college student came out of the dorm where my dad had lived when they met. My parents described briefly that it was there 40th anniversary and which apartments the two of them had lived in when they met. The student was surprised because not only did he live in the apartment my dad had lived in, but his girlfriend also lived in the apartment my mom had lived in! That probably made some fun conversation for the student that night.

This photo is taken on my parents 40th wedding anniversary in front of the apartment where my dad lived when he met my mom.  

Study Him

Carlie, a blogger wrote a list of 5 habits to make marriage a priority. I love number three. I think it's just worded well. It's actually very similar to what Ryan talked about here.

"Study Him(Be a Detective):

I've studied that man of mine for over 16 years now because I want to know what makes him tick. What’s his passion? What’s his love language? What are his spiritual gifts? What irks him? What makes him feel most respected and loved by me? These things haven’t been hard to learn, but they have taken my time and focus. Once I know the answers to these questions, I just try to pursue them, cultivate them, or encourage them in my husband."

It's a cute idea. Actually figure out all the good things that your husband loves and try to do those things for him and encourage him to do those things. Also, note that she mentioned "what irks him?"... don't do those things. 

Above image from mycutegraphics.com

There's (a lot) more to intimacy than kissing...

Too often, we make the mistake of thinking that physical relationships define the intimacy that comes in marriage. This misconception manifests in a lot of ways. Shallow relationships, based only on physical attraction, invariably implode unless they develop into something more in time. People think their marriage is in trouble if they're no longer "satisfied" with their partner, not realizing that the real trouble runs much deeper than a lack of exciting romance. People choose not to marry in the first place, thinking that the physical relationship is the important part anyway. Or they believe some physical relationship can replace the traditional one.

The marriage relationship is really about being intimate, in the Victorian sense of the word. It's about building an enduring friendship, acquiring a deep empathy for someone, leaving your own worries to her and taking on her burdens as your own. It's about magnifying each others' best traits and overlooking weaknesses, of making a safe place for each other. It's about sharing a lot of secrets between you and keeping very few secrets with others. A successful marriage intertwines two lives so tightly that you can't imagine being apart, and your plans always involve your other half.

And yes, the kisses are fun, too.

Lovely LipSense Lips pictured above.

Honoring My Veterans

My (Leah's) sweet grandparents were dating when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. Granpy signed up for the Navy and went off to war. The only thing that kept Granpy and Granny in touch was letters. Granpy would write home coded messages about what he could share. Granny would write regularly and encourage him. In 1944 they got married on a short furlough, they were married 2 days before Granpy went back to war. Just as a side note, Granny still writes so many letters today. She always sends birthday cards to everybody on their birthday, Christmas, Granpy's birthday, and any occasion she feels like. Since Granpy died twenty plus years ago, she sends everybody a memorial letter about him each year.
I'm especially grateful for the Veteran's who fight for us, so that we don't have to fight. Freedom isn't free. Our military are paying the cost right now, our Veteran's have already paid the cost. Thank you service men and women.

More pictures of my Veteran's on my blog here.

Review: The Peacegiver

"The Peacegiver" by James L Ferrell

The couple in this book seemed just like Ryan and I. They'd been married 12 years, got married in the Los Angeles Temple a year after the man returned from his mission, etc. Then, I read on and hated how their marriage was. It wasn't really like ours at all. They had been fighting for years and spent lots of time not speaking to each other. They were both about ready to separate. All I can say is, marriage is not meant to be like the broken relationship described in this book. Marriage is meant to be a happy, rewarding union between man and woman. The book showed how it could be too. What I liked was the idea that whose fault their marital problems were, didn't matter. The Savior had already accepted their sins and the fallout from those sins upon himself. So, it was each individual's job to forgive, regardless of whether the other one forgave. In this way, the book was very uplifting.

The book mentioned how marital sins were addictive like alcoholic or drug sins. The marital sins like "not speaking to each other", "thinking oneself superior to the other", "hateful words" and such changes a person to feel like they are justified in doing these sins and makes them commit more and worse sins of that nature as if the sin itself were addictive. It's only through the Savior's atonement that we can get out of vicious cycles of destructive behavior that destroy our marriages. At times during the read, I found myself thinking, thankfully I wasn't stuck with a husband like that. But, a marriage relationship is like a living thing. It needs attention, love, time, patience, nurturing, etc, to grow well. Our marriage could have gone that way had we let it. I have a daily choice in my relationship how to treat my spouse. I don't have the choice how he treats me, but I can do a lot to shape how he wants to treat me. I certainly am in complete control of how I treat him. The book showed how we each have our own responsibility to make our marriage the best it possibly can be. The Savior will help us with that. If we rely on Him, I believe we can have what marriage is meant to be: a happy, rewarding union between man and woman.

Investing in the One You've Got

It takes work to stay married. But, doesn't it take even more work to divorce and remarry?

After a divorce, I often see both spouses eventually try to remarry. The effort they put into remarrying translates to: lots of money, time, hope and attention spent on lots of dates. They'll spend tons of time, money and attention into their appearance - working out, getting new clothes, haircuts, etc to look like a good catch. In fact they're willing to become their best self, so that somebody will fall in love with them. Anybody who has dated knows that lots of these dates are going to be awful. That's just how it goes sometimes, especially while you are working on improving yourself. Often the dates can be so awful that the individual may begin to wonder if they should continue the process, after all it's really taking up a lot of their resources. Then, often after soooo much work, they find a match that works. They put a lot more time, money, hope and attention into this person, while continuing to work on themselves and hopefully end up marrying to them.

This pattern shows up so frequently, and I always wonder what would have happened if both of them had put all that money, time, hope and attention into each other when things started looking bad. And what if they invested all that time, money and attention into their current spouse? This would be a good point to work on their appearance as well - working out, getting new clothes, new haircuts, etc, to look their best for their spouse, as an offering to their spouse when the relationship is rocky. Not just working on their appearance, but also trying to make themselves a person worth loving. Sure, they might get some awful "dates" out of their spouse at first. But, if they continue they might realize that they are investing in the individual that made them fall in love and get married in the first place. They also might become the individual their spouse fell in love with in the first place. If they continue investing so much time, hope, money and attention into their spouse, they might just fall in love again. After all, they already went through the process of falling in love with this individual once, filtering that spouse out from the rest of the human race as one being a great match.

Please, try putting a lot of work into your relationship, before divorcing and putting a lot of work into other relationships.

Service In Marriage

"He who serves in some things, is good for somethings. 

He who serves in no things, is good for nothing."

-Hugo E Martinez

Try out service more in your marriage. There's always plenty of work to share.

Going Through Rough Times

Before we got married, we were studying at Brigham Young University. I always had lots of roommates to talk to about everything. I loved staying up late talking with them. When I was engaged to marry Ryan I thought late night talks were a thing I'd have to give up. I just couldn't imagine Ryan being into that. Perhaps I couldn't imagine it, because we were required by the school to keep a sort of curfew! We talked a lot on our dates, but I just thought it would be different. After we got married I was very pleasantly surprised by our first fun late night talk. Now we continue to talk regularly in the evenings after the kids go to bed.

Recently I went through some incredibly difficult things that I can't talk about yet. It was a critical time for me, so it was a critical time for our marriage. Lots of late night talks with Ryan helped get me through the hard times. I called him my psychologist. I love that we can talk together. Big problems that one partner is having can bring a couple closer together or further apart. For us, it brought us closer together thanks to talking everything out. Good communication is vital for marriages.

Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln may have had a difficult marriage. It's said that they couldn't communicate well. When something went wrong Mary would scream and throw things. Abe would just withdraw and walk away. I wanted to find out more about this marriage. I learned that they had trouble with food too.

Mary had been raised on fancy expensive delicacies. Abe on the other hand had been raised on very he plain inexpensive food. Abe wanted cornbread, mush, bacon, eggs and milk. Honey was a delicacy for him. When Mary set out food such as "Aspic of Tongue, Pate de Foie Gras, Turkey stuffed with Truffles, and all sorts of wild game, such as venison, pheasant, or canvasback duck" Abe would probably just pick at his food. Learn more about what went wrong. The food disagreements were probably a side-effect of bad communication and lack of compromise in their marriage.


Ryan and I had our very first disagreement as newlyweds about food. One of us wanted canned corn, while the other wanted frozen corn. That disagreement was solved long ago when I developed an allergy to a preservative in canned food. Today we eat corn-on-the-cob or frozen corn.

In our kitchen now there are onions which I bought just to make Ryan happy. There is fresh broccoli Ryan bought to make my favorite dish, Beef with Broccoli. And I just hastily cooked up the last of the potatoes, because we always disagree on how to store and wash them. So, I guess our food represents our marriage. Mostly we try to please each other, but we definitely have our disagreements.

So, does the food in your house represent compromises, tolerance or problems between husband and wife?


Information about the food of Abraham and Mary was taken from The Food Timeline . Also from ---The Presidents' Cookbook, Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks [Funk & Wagnall's:New York] 1968 (p. 236-7).

Tiny Thoughts

 "Marriage is a gift from God to us, the quality of our marriage is our gift to God." Elder Clayton

Is it worth saving?

We go to incredible lengths to save a life in danger. The world might be a very different place if we worked as hard whenever a couple's life together was in danger.

New News

My friends Ashley and Craig share one of their tips for staying happily married in Ashley's words:

"The first couple months of our marriage my husband would ask me if he was still "new news". I realized this was important to him to feel special and loved and I began to make more of an effort to treat him like I did when we were newly engaged. I did this by greeting him when he got home with a hug, kiss, and big smile! By listening attentively to his interests (even when they are technology related and way over my head). Also, I treat him like new news by still kissing him a lot. Craig treats me like new news by bringing me home a treat he got at the store or at work, contacting me during the day to see how I am doing, and letting me plan our weekends. Treating each other like new news has helped us to stay in love and honestly we fall more and more in love all the time."

One Dozen Years Married Together

Today we happily celebrate 12 years married together. We never regretted our decision to get married together. By getting married together in the Latter-day Saint temple, we invited God to help us in our marriage. I recently taught this concept in simple terms to children. I asked them, "who knows you better than you know yourself?" The answer, "God". Then I asked, "Who will know your future spouse better than anybody else?". The answer was again, "God". Then, I asked, "So, if you fall in love with somebody and want to get married and stay married, then,  wouldn't it make sense to invite God to help you in your marriage?". They understood this idea. Then, I mentioned that anybody can ask for help in their relationships with anybody and especially in their marriage. However, if you are married in the temple, then, God promises to help at all times. So, if you love somebody enough to live together, or enough to get married, then why not do it the way God intended, so He can best help you stay married happily. Also, this is the way to be married forever, even after death.

I can think of a time in our marriage, when I wasn't happy with Ryan. I prayed to figure out what to do. I had the prompting from the words of a song sung at church, "In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eye can't see". Then, I realized he must be hurting for some reason, so I approached him much more kindly than I would have. I couldn't have really known about his hurt, without God's help, because Ryan probably was only vaguely aware of it himself. So, I'm grateful to an all-knowing God for teaching me that lesson.

Mother's Day Marriage Musings

On Mother's Day I compared notes with a friend of mine about our mother's day experience. Her husband had bought some presents and was getting ready to cook dinner for her. I thought that sounded like a nice mother's day.
Then, I happened to chat with this friend's husband a few minutes later. He was feeling horrible, because he had forgotten to fix breakfast for his wife. She had had to make it. He was nervous about making dinner, wondering if he'd give anybody food poisoning. I laughed at that part. He was totally focused on helping his wife have a good day, even though it hadn't started great.

This couple has been married close to 30 years. So, I thought maybe I could learn something from them. They'd had the same experience, but they looked at it differently. The husband was recognizing his mistake with breakfast and trying to reconcile by making the rest of the day better. The wife had chosen to look at the positive side of the day, by focusing on what could happen, instead of what did not happen. The husband had bought the presents ahead of time and was willing to tackle the dinner that he really did not feel confident about, just because he thought his wife would like it. I hope their special day ended well.

It seems to me that if we look for the positive things our spouse is doing and sacrifice our comfort zone to help our spouse, then hopefully our marriage can last 30 years and still be strong.

Money, Money, Money - Family economics

We've talked a lot about the impact of healthy marriages on people, but they also have a huge impact on the economy and economic well-being of families. We recently encountered a study that details just how big an impact, and for how long the connection has been known. It's super-long, super-detailed, and cites several dozen earlier studies. We've pulled some highlights for the impatient:

• Multiple studies show that married men have 20-30% higher income than their single peers, with the effect strongest for low-income and at-risk demographics.
• A stay-at-home mom has such a strong economic impact on the family that she would have to earn $120,000/year or more to break even working full time outside the home.
• Married couples file less than half of all income-tax returns, [but] they pay nearly three-quarters of all income taxes paid by the American people.
• It can be argued that the continuing housing market downturn is at least partly due to the fact that single parents (an increasing fraction of all parents) are drastically less likely to qualify for a mortgage, driving real estate demand downward.
• Two-thirds of children born out of wedlock live in poverty at any given time, compared with only 12% of those born to married couples. A child born and raised out of wedlock can expect to spend at least 50% of childhood living below poverty level vs. only 7% for a child of married parents.
• the English term economy originates from the Greek word, oikos, which means household
• Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville both wrote that the strength of the American economy (vs. that of Britain) was partly due to the colonists marrying younger and having more children than their British counterparts

The Kind Words You Say

The Kind Words You Say Can In Memory Lay and Sunshine Forever Impart...

I was just watching an old classic movie, "Johnny Lingo". There's a father that is so mean to his daughter. He always calls her ugly and treats her like she is worthless. The daughter believes him... until one day. The richest man on the island wants to marry her. He offers her the biggest dowry anybody on the island has ever heard of. He tells her how beautiful and wonderful she is. She becomes beautiful and wonderful. It is a cute story.

It's so true in real life. If we treat our spouse how we want them to become, they will become that. We can hurt or help our spouse just by how we talk to them. Let's all say lots of nice things today and always to our spouse. That's the happy way.
 I love Johnny Lingo. You can see what else I wrote about it here

Let Your Spouse Be Who They Are

My friends Craig and Ashley are happy to share what works in their marriage. They have been married over a year and a half. Ashley comments:

"My husband Craig thanks me all the time for "letting him be him". This approach helps us be happy. Early in our relationship when I would make cookies or muffins, as soon as the timer would beep Craig would rush over to the oven with me and as I was pulling out the tray he would grab one of the treats... I would get so frustrated telling him he needed to wait so I could see which one was ugliest and have him take that one in case I was giving the treats away to family or friends. Wow, pretty rude of me. My husband deserves the best, he deserves to get first pick. I changed my way of thinking and grew to love the fact that he wanted one of my baked goods as soon as it came out of the oven! Sometimes now I even tell him, I'm about to get the tray out of the oven, come pick one. This is an example of me letting him be him, letting him live true to himself and not trying to boss him around."

Ryan laughed after reading this. He said maybe I should just let you eat the cooked meat straight out of the frying pan from now on. I said, "Yes, I think that's a great idea!"
We are talking about letting your spouse be who they are in the little things that really don't matter in the end. We are not talking about things that are inherently right or wrong. 

So, how can you let your spouse be who they are?

Science behind a happy relationship

Courtesy of Happify:

Study: two-parent families improve economic mobility

What is the most important factor blocking social mobility in the US? 
It could be single parents, not economic inequality.
 
As reported by New Scientist:

An important new Harvard study that looks at the best community data on [economic] mobility in America – released this past weekend – suggests a cause that progressives may find discomforting. ...

A lot of research – including new research from the Brookings Institution – has shown us that kids are more likely to climb the income ladder when they are raised by two, married parents. But this is the first study to show that lower-income kids from both single and married-parent families are more likely to succeed if they hail from a community with lots of two-parent families. ...

Economic inequality was not a statistically significant predictor of absolute or relative mobility.

How about them apples?

I (Ryan) am the consummate square. Straight lines, rulers, graph paper, plaid shirts. Engineer. If this picture were taken while we were dating, you might be able to guess which apple I cut and which one Leah cut:

And you'd probably be wrong.

I grew up carefully slicing apples as shown on the right: straight down the center, with an intricate cut to remove the stem and seeds from each quarter. If you're counting knife operations, it works out to around 18.

On the left, we have Leah's apple. Four cuts and it's ready to eat. Easy to make thin slices out of, too. Just goes to show. Even an engineer can learn something from his wife about straight lines and efficiency. I never would have guessed that when we got married.

Note: No apples were wasted in the making of this post.

Look at Yourself Before Judging

When we first got married, I was looking disgustedly at our cluttered bathroom counter. I saw Ryan's shaver, his hair gel and his comb all left out instead of being put away. I was getting mad at Ryan and then I stopped for a second and looked at the bathroom counter again. I saw my hairbrush, my ponytail holders, my curling iron...and then realized that my list went on and on. Almost all the mess on the counter was mine. I quickly put ALL of OUR stuff away and moved on. I was grateful that I hadn't embarrassed myself by telling him he was leaving out too much stuff. Sometimes we need to just focus on ourselves first when there's a "messy" problem.