How To Avoid the Baby Blues

In my Family Relations class we were talking about how having a baby can affect your marriage in a negative way. Both the husband and wife need to work even harder than before. This can put new stresses on them. A mother's workload increases 64% and a father's workload increases by 37% in the first six months. Sometimes the husband could feel left out because most of the wife's attention is on the new baby and most of the time he starts to withdraw. He can start to put his attention elsewhere. The wife, therefore, thinks that the husband is being selfish because of his withdrawal and his attention being elsewhere. This makes the husband perceive their wives as disagreeing more than she did before therefore decreasing marital satisfaction. Overall, these things don't bring the spouses closer together like a newborn baby should. I think a solution to this could be just talking to your spouse in a loving way about what you need from them. Communication is key!

How Do You Know If You Are In Love?

This week in my Family Relations class we were discussing falling in love. We were discussing how you know whether you are in love or not. Sometimes you may think that you are falling in love but really you are just infatuated with someone. These loving feelings might be a case of misattribution of arousal. This is when we think we are feeling passionate love because we are aroused. We can wrongly attribute this arousal to romantic feelings. It might not be the best decision to define your feelings as love when you have just been aroused in some way. Arousal can happen through drinking, exercise, caffeine, etc. Love at first sight might just be the result from these circumstances. So how can we tell if we are in love? In the book Marriage and Family The Quest For Intimacy, it gives questions that you can ask yourself. These questions can help you decide if what you are feeling is a healthy relationship or if it is infatuation: Do you and your lover each believe in your own personal value? That is, do you think well of yourself as a person? Do you have high self-esteem? Has your relationship improved each of you? Are you in some way a better, stronger, more attractive individual? Do you value the relationship because of that improvement? Do you each maintain some separate interests? Do you have meaningful relationships apart from your lover? Is your relationship an integral part of your total life rather than a kind of side interest? Are you each capable of respecting the other's growth and interests without being possessive or jealous? Are you friends? Would you still want to relate to each other even if you weren't lovers? It might not be possible to answer all these questions early on in a relationship. According to the book, "The ultimate test of a loving relationship is time." So just don't jump into anything!

Family Relations:Homosexuality

This week in my Family Relations class we were talking about homosexual tendencies. We were discussing that most homosexual tendencies stem from boys liking girly things and girls liking boyish things when they are little and the parents reinforcing this. Some parents may notice that their sons like playing with Barbies. They then assume that they are gay and treat them like they are gay. This makes them believe that they are gay or that they are supposed to be girls. Boys can have feminine characteristics and girls can have masculine characteristics. Parents just shouldn't teach boys that they are supposed girls and vice versa. This can be avoided.
My teacher said something in class this week that hit me pretty hard. He said something along the lines of for every gay couple there are two women who won't be able to get married. This hit me hard because it made me realize how much homosexuality is affecting the world.

Why Is Dating So Confusing?

I was reading my friend Rudi Pena's blog called The Dating Life of A Mormon Girl and I agree with what she says completely. She talks about how Mormon girls look forward to being able to date at the age of sixteen. Then when you actually turn sixteen your expectations are shot down because it is not what you expected. She also talks about how nowadays dating is so blurred because no one wants to classify a date as dating. Usually it is classified as hanging out so a lot of the time girls don't know if guys are interested in them or not. It used to be that if a guy liked a girl he would ask her out. I believe that some guys are hesitant of asking a girl out because they think that girls think that a date means that the guy wants to marry them or they think that it is more serious than what it actually is. In my Family Relations class this week we were talking about cultures. The Mormon culture is that couples usually get married in their early twenties and they get married fast. I think this scares some people away from dating altogether. This is probably a big reason why some guys only want to "hang out." Most girls are not like this however and guys should just go for it!
If you are actually in a relationship, it can sometimes crumble because you go and vent to your friends and family about things that annoy you about your partner. This will eventually make you have pent up hard feelings toward your partner, I believe. So I think in order to help fix this problem you should talk to your partner about directly instead of talking to other people about them. These are some of the reasons why dating is so confusing but I think we can make it a little less confusing by not being afraid to date and not talking about our partners faults to others.

Hanging Out, Hooking Up, and Celestial Marriage

I was reading an article for my Marriage Preparation class last semester. It was called "Hanging Out, Hooking Up, and Celestial Marriage" by Bruce A. Chadwick, a former sociology professor at Brigham Young University. I gained quite a few insights from this article about dating and marriage. One insight I gained is that we need to reject the Cinderella complex which is to not focus on finding the perfect person and live happily ever after. This mindset does not prepare couples for married life. Instead of looking for "the one", you should look for "a right one." Also, instead of waiting for someone to carry your glass slipper around to find someone for you, you should be proactive and seek someone you like who is worthy of you. This week in my Family Relations class we were discussing family theories. The mindset of looking for "the one" reminds me of exchange theory. Exchange theory views social interaction as a cost-benefit analysis in which people try to keep their costs lower than their rewards. This reminds me of this because many people probably think that some relationships consistently costs them more than it rewards them because they might not think that the person is "the one." They then are likely to avoid that person or break the relationship so they can find "the one."

Another insight that I gained by reading this article was that if you exercise faith then Heavenly Father will give you courage to get married, stay married, and have children.

Bruce A. Chadwick talks about a topic that I feel strongly about, and I agree with him completely. He talks about how you should keep intimacy at an appropriate level so you can enjoy the presence of the Spirit and to be worthy to be married and sealed in the temple. You should not cohabit. Chadwick says, "The truth of the matter is that 30 years of research has made it clear that couples who cohabit and then wed are less happy and are more likely to divorce! Why? Because cohabiting couple are not willing to exercise the faith to make a lifelong commitment, and their commitment does not increase much when they marry."

Another thing that stood out to me in this article is that if you are single you should pray for yourself in a dating relationship and also pray for the young man or woman you are interested in. You should pray for what is best for them which may turn out not to be you. But that is okay. The Lord will bless you, and good things will follow. 

I really like this article because it testifies to me how important marriage and family is and that it is essential to eternal life.