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Interview With a Couple I Admire

I recently interviewed a couple to see whether or not they felt mostly positive about each other, or mostly negative about each other.  They say they have positive feelings toward each other.  It hasn’t always been that way.  In the beginning of their marriage it was characterized by negative sentiment override.  When the wife thought of the husband she was mostly frustrated with what she viewed as his selfishness and his lack of interest in the family.  He would spend all of his free time taking care of himself, and doing things he enjoyed doing by himself.  She was left to take care of their five young children, and was often busy from six in the morning until two in the morning, and then would have to get up in the night with the kids.  Her husband didn’t realize that she was so overwhelmed, and family things didn’t come naturally to him.  He had a lot of good qualities, but the wife couldn’t see them.  As time went on the wife prayed for...
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Married to last forever

My husband and I have been married for twenty-one years now.  We know each other very well.  I know that we will not face any trial in our marriage that we cannot work out.  We know that we are both committed to this relationship for eternity.  One huge thing for us is working on our communicating skills.  We are very different, opposite in almost every way, and sometimes we have trouble understanding each other.  I know it is much more destructive to communicate negative feelings rather than positive ones.  One thing I am learning to do is to not personally attack my husband, but rather focus on what my goal is, and talk about what I need from him to achieve that goal.  Our covenant marriage has helped us to not give up, even when sometimes it is hard. I know it is hard in our society to not put ourselves first, but if we want to have meaningful relationships we will have to learn to put others first a lot of the time.  We are used to liv...
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Marriage and Society

Marriage is the foundation of society.  When people change the definition of marriage that starts weakening the foundation of society.  The article summarizing the opinion of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges was a very interesting read.  I loved hearing all the different sides to every issue, especially since it’s done in such an intelligent way.  I happen to agree with the dissenting judges, but I loved hearing the reasoning of the judges that voted to change the definition of marriage.   I really liked this quote that Justice Thomas shared, “”[L]iberty in the eighteenth century was thought of much more in relation to “negative liberty”; that is, freedom from, not freedom to, freedom from a number of social and political evils, including arbitrary government power.” Or as one scholar put it in 1776, “[T]he common idea of liberty is merely negative, and is only the absence of restraint.  Petitioners cannot claim, under the most plausible defin...
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Marriage and Children

I find it really interesting that our society views marriage as important in some ways but in other ways it seems like we don’t care very much at all.  We, as Americans, spend about 50 billion dollars annually (according to Wikipedia) on the wedding industry.  We fight hard for marriage rights for everyone.  Yet we have a very high divorce rate.  Many people get a divorce and then regret it later.  The September 16, 2015 issue of the Huffington Post took a poll to see what the leading cause of divorce was, and they found communication issues to be the number one reason for divorce. It appears that we still see the value in marriage, but we don’t know how to keep the marriage strong enough to last a lifetime. I recently read an article entitled The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation , by Paul Amato.  I know that’s a long title, but so worth the read.  He talks about how divorce...
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