Marriage and its Transitions

Any transition or change we face has the potential of being hard or difficult. Things such as college, a new job, going on a mission trip. Marriage can also be one of the biggest transitions one may face in there life. When we are to be married we know we want to live with and love our spouse forever but we often may not realize what a transition it can be. I would like to discuss some of the ways that marriage can be a  hard transition and then some ways in that the transition can be a bit smother in our lives.
  I hear people complain all the time about there family. Some say things like " ahh my brother is so immature" or " I love my parents but I just can't stand being with them for more than a couple of days at a time". Who knows you may have found yourself saying this yourself and you understand the struggles of family life. Well what is it like with 2 families instead of one? Receiving a whole new family is a hard transition that comes with marriage that many people have to face. It can be hard to be considerate of family members views and  differences that you are not used to while still trying to form your own habits and way of doing things with your own spouse. This can be really hard and make the marital transition  difficult. When you are married you are forming your own family with your spouse and your own way of doing things. Often parents and others want to still have the exact same role as they did before and want to in a way infringe on your choices and have a strong say in what you do as a couple. A marriage in a way is leaving your family behind and committing to your spouse and relying on them instead of parents and others. This can be often hard to understand and cause a lot of stress to a newly wed couple trying to transition.
  Another transition that happens in a the life of a couple comes with the first child. It can be difficult to feel close to your wife when she is having to worry so much about her health and your future child while she is pregnant. Like wise it can be hard for the pregnant wife to find ways to be close to the husband and involve him with the pregnancy when she has so much already to think and worry about. Research shows that for most marriages marital satisfaction takes a significant drop with each birth of a child. Sadly often this drop may lead to a divorce. On the other some couples focus so much on there children and not on each other that when there children leave the nest they do not know what to do and many couples at this step in there lives often get divorced.
  So whats a person to do to help with this? Are we all just destine to failure? The answer to that is no. In each of these transitions there are things we can do to help. For instance when the married couple is pregnant it is wise to try to involve the husband as much as possible. When there is an ultrasound or appointment have the husband go so he can feel included. And when the baby starts to kick let the husband feel and know what it feels like. This will help him to feel excited and included during the pregnancy and likewise closer to the wife. Dating is also a highly important tool to use often from the beginning of the relationship until death. This will help the couple to always feel close to each other in what ever step of there life together. It is also important to talk openly about your family plans and goals. This way you can booth be on the same page and not have to worry about the advice from the peanut gallery about how you should have to do things. Then when pressure comes from family to do things a certain way you wont have to worry as much because you will already have experience forming your own way of doing things with your spouse.
  Yeah any transition can be difficult especially a marital transition. However, there are a lot of things to be mindful of and practice in order to keep the marriage strong despite the potentially difficult transition. Tools like being involving the husband in the pregnancy and going on dates can help smooth out potentially hard transitions.

Dating: The Road to Marriage

When I was younger and I imagined life as an adult I always pictured things like having a wife and children. However, I never really thought of how one got to that point in the first place. I figured that people just at some point liked each other and decided to get married, kind of like in the movies. However, at least in our culture here in the U.S., dating is often the road that leads to marriage. In this weeks blog I would like to talk a little about dating and the road to marriage, but also some things to be mindful of when dating, such as the RAM model.

I still remember one of the first times I asked a girl on a date. I was 16 and I went bowling and got ice cream with a girl who was a whole 4 years older than me and who was actually one of my sister's best friends. One of the things that makes me smile looking back at it, is that I remember I spent at least $15, which was a ton of money for me at the time. I remember thinking to myself, "Man this dating stuff isn't for poor people like me, there has to be a better way to do this." Well, even though I was wrong about dating only being for the rich, there is a good and a bad way to go about dating.

It is important to consider what it means to date. From what I have learned, I believe that dating is a way to get to know people and to see with whom you are compatible. When dating you should do a wide variety of activities, with a wide variety of people. This will allow you to get to know what you do and do not like in another person, and gives you an opportunity to see how people act in different situations. I certainly am no expert yet, but if you did something like going to the movies every week with the same person, you may or may not be able to really get to know them very well or get to know others.

Once you start to know what you like and have gotten to know someone, the next thing you should start to do is to start to court. Courting is more or less a trial, or test where you see if you are compatible for marriage. If the couple is compatible, and everything works well, you may decide to get married and have the rest be history. At least that's how it works and should work in my mind, and is a safe way to do things. This isn't considering the norm of different cultures around the world, but is one safe way to do things that will help you get on the road to marriage.

Pretty simple right? You get to know different people, and then you get to liking one so you court and if it works out you get married. Even though that pattern seems pretty easy to follow it may not always be so easy to live.



One thing that we need to be aware of while dating and courting is the RAM model. The RAM Model (Relationship Attachment Model) was introduced by a man named John VanEpp. This model takes into account 5 different measures to consider when we are in a romantic relationship with others. These 5 measures have a specific order, and could be seen as a hierarchy of needs that need to be met in a relationship. The 5 measures are: 1) to know someone more than you 2) trust them, and to trust them more than you 3) rely on them, and to rely on someone more than you 4) commit to them, and to be more committed to someone than you are 5) physically intimate. When in a relationship, if we want to avoid rushing into something dangerous or something we may not want, we should be mindful of this model. So much heart ache could be avoided if this model was followed. It is important, because often things like holding some one's hand and kissing them can blind us on how much we actually know someone. It would be horrible if you committed to someone based off of how much you liked kissing them to find out to late that the person was a jerk. Often people's true colors don't show until months into a relationship, but if you didn't take the time to know and trust them, but got roped into a commitment with them, it may be hard to back out. Sadly people often marry jerks and those whom they did not actually know too well and it all could have been avoided if the RAM Model was followed.

Dating can be a lot of fun, but it also can be very important. Many different rivers lead to the ocean, just like many different paths lead to marriage. Just like how all rivers are not the same, all paths leading up to marriage are not the same. There is defiantly a wrong way to do things, and there is definitely a good way that will lead you to a healthy marriage with less chances of divorce.

Boys Will be Boys

We have all heard this saying before: boys will be boys. Maybe it was when your grandmother saw her grandson fall out of a tree and hurt his arm. Or maybe when your dad saw you and your brothers take your bananas from lunch and started to pretend to shoot each other. But is this really what boys do? If it is, does it have to be this way? And finally should it be this way? Hopefully, after reading this blog post, you will be able to form your own answer to these questions.

There are a lot of tendencies that we see in younger children that seem to reflect their gender. There are a lot of them if you really think about it, and it takes just a short time see them in how children play. Boys tend to like to play with toys such as cars and bugs and monsters, and girls play with their cook sets and dolls. Boys like to run around and play sports and army, and girls like to socialize more. Some other things one may notice or claim, is that girls are more nurturing than boys are, and that boys in fact seem to be more aggressive.  Girls seem to pay more attention to detail and the way things appear, but boys seem to be better with directions. As I mentioned, this is not always the case. Sometimes you will have a girl who will want to play army just as much as the boys, or you may see a boy who wants to play dress up with the girls, but these are some tendencies or trends and things  that we tend to notice that are specific to gender. However, are these tendencies stereo types or are they fact and what the statistics actually show?

Some people may say boys will tend to be more aggressive, or that they like to do things like play with cars because that's what they learn from their culture and the messages they receive from their family. However, is this really the case, are our tendencies the way they are because of the way our culture teach us to be? Even though I believe this could play a part to the differences in tendencies, overall this is not what the research shows.

One research study observed infants and noticed some unique differences that were related to gender on the biological level. The female infants tended to look longer at peoples faces, and to be more excited when looking at individuals up close. With boy infants, however, this was for the most part not the case. In fact, they were a lot more excited looking at the mobile hanging above them, and looking at it as it moved.

In another interesting study, it was found that boys and girls responded differently to separation from their mothers. When infants were separated from their mothers and were placed on the opposite side of a plastic barrier from them, the girl infants were more likely to sit and cry out for their mothers and shed tears. The boy infants did not tend to do this, but instead they usually tried to break through the plastic barrier and would ram into it. These babies did not act this way because it is what they learned from their cultures, but instead it seems that a lot of these characteristics come naturally and without external influence.

It is interesting that as the babies grow up, we can see that their actions and behaviors reflect this information. Boys will tend to want to play with things that move like cars and usually want to run around. Girls like things that are pretty and have details, like dolls. Boys will be a lot more likely to take sticks and hit each other with them and to play war and girls will be more likely to take their dollies and rock them to sleep. Maybe this is just the way things should be. If one thinks about it maybe this is a good thing. Often these gender characteristics are good to have growing up. It can be a very good thing that women seem to be more naturally nurturing, because traditionally the mother is the one who will nurture the young in a family. Maybe it isn't a bad thing that boys are aggressive either. Men being aggressive can have a lot of evolutionary benefits, including the benefit in society today of a man being more likely to be the protector of his family and to confront danger.

In my opinion it is a good thing that the majority of soldiers are men, and that women are better at being the nurturers and are natural mothers. Everyone has a unique roll to play and we are made different from each other for a reason. There is an important document in my life that I follow called, "The Family: a Proclamation to the World." In this document it states that: "Gender is an essential characteristic of individuals premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." In other words, we are who we are for a reason. So, is it true that boys will be boys? If you ask me I will give you a strong yes and I believe it is for a good reason.

The Family Soccer Team

Last week in my blog I talked a lot about family cultures and family rules. I mentioned how each family has a unique way of doing things that often make up its culture. One of the other big things that make up a family's unique family culture are the roles that are played by individuals in the family. These roles in the family are a big part of the family structure that make a family the way it is. However, a family structure can be intentionally and unintentionally planed and influenced. Today I would like to especially touch on how the roles within a family's culture can be changed by unique circumstances.



Something that I really enjoy is playing sports, especially when I was younger and had more time on my hands. One of my favorite sports is soccer. Like many other sports, soccer is a team sport made up of several important positions that can either strengthen or weaken a team.

I think that a family similarly organized in the way it is structured. Like a soccer team, a family is made up of many important roles and positions. There is the member of the family who often is responsible for the nurturing of the children and taking care of the family. There is also the person in the family who is in charge of being the leader of the family. There are other important roles, such as the caregiver who is the bread winner, or the family member who is the peacemaker. There even roles such as the family clown or the miniature mother. A family is operates best when it has the majority of these roles filled by members of its family and when the members work in union.

The culture  of a family influences who will play what roles within the family. For example, in traditional families in the United States, the mother usually fills the role of the nurturing the children and is a stay at home mom. Fathers are typically the main source of income and are responsible for providing for the family.

However, whatever roles family members start out in taking within their culture, there are outside forces that may influence a family to have to adjust or adapt their way of functioning as a team.

Have you ever thought of what would happen in a soccer game if all of a sudden there was no goalie? Or of what would happen if all of the people who played up front as forwards could no longer play?  Things would become chaotic and difficult pretty quickly. Maybe the team could still pull off playing the game, but at what expense? With no goalie, the defenders would have to work twice as hard to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals. Without forwards the other positions would have to double their efforts to make sure that there team would do the best to win.

Just as the structure of a soccer team can be a big part of its success, so is the structure of a family. However, there is not always a complete team full of players in every family. Due to various circumstances, the family roster may change drastically and as a result the family culture must adjust to the new dynamics.

This week I learned about how the unique circumstance of migrate families drastically influences their family structure. Often, the families coming here to the U.S. cannot come over all together, so they usually will send the father over first. In many cases, up to three years may pass before he can earn enough money to bring the rest of the family over to be with him. So what happens in that time while the family is separated?. Who plays the position the father while he is gone? Maybe the eldest brother might step in, or an uncle who is close by. But no matter who takes his position, it is an adjustment that effects the whole family.

Even when the family is finally united there are big adjustments that must be made to the family structure. For instance, once in the U.S., it's common for both parents to have to start to work. Who now is going to watch the children now that the mother has to work? As both parents work, and their children adjust to the changes in family circumstances and in their new country of residence, the family can get overwhelmed as they try to adapt and change to meet the new challenges they face.

This kind of thing can happen to more than just migrate families. Changes in the family structures are seen in military families when a parent is deployed, in homes where a family member goes away to jail or prison, or in families that suffer the tragedy of the death of a loved one. No matter the reason behind the change in the family structure, it can be very hard on the family team. Often in the family we can pick our own positions, but, in many circumstances our family soccer teams are not so ideal. It is important to be sensitive with the families who struggle around you and to reach out to help them. If your own family team is struggling, don't be too hard on yourself. Your family is not the only one with challenges. Don't be afraid or ashamed to ask for the help or support you need.