Communication is keeeyyy

Well people, it is not a surprise that communication is one of the most essential parts of a relationship. Not so fun fact: One of the most common reasons that people end relationships is because of terrible communication. There are 5 secrets I am going to share with you for EFFECTIVE communication! Are you ready?

1.    The disarming technique- I know it sounds weird but it is huge! Have you ever been in a disagreement with someone and it is something small but it ends up being this huge fight that you are so overly mad but then you realize you have no idea why you got mad in the first place. This is why.  People become defensive of themselves or they blame others. This creates a high tension situation so the first step to the disarming technique is to avoid or decrease both peoples defensiveness.. Next you have to agree to not blame, take responsibility, be honest with yourself about your desire, and find the kernel of truth. What the heck is the kernel of truth? GOOD QUESTION. The kernel of truth is taking apart the original thing that the person said. What are their true feelings behind their words. Maybe they just cant tell you the full truth of what they feel, or maybe they don’t know themselves. 

This step literally can change everything. You can say something like “you are right, I was just trying to fix your situation and I forgot to listen to what you were saying. I need to listen and validate what you are feeling”

2.    Thoughts of empathy. People need you to understand, validate, and empathize with them. Repeat what they said and say that you can see how they could feel _____. You can guess their emotions.

3.    Gentle inquiry- invite them to share their thoughts and feelings. Ask them to share how they feel and what they are thinking.

4.    when_______-what is the event or circumstance

     I felt ________ -Emotion not judgment or evaluation

    because _________ - share the connections or thoughts

     I would like ________ - a solution

5.    Be authentic/respectful and have admiration for each other.

Now these seem like dumb little things but every single one of these steps are very important and can completely change the nature of an argument. When you implement these, you will immediately see the difference in your conversation. The aggression will dwindle, you will be able to be calm and actually work things out well. 

I have another secret to share! 

Mutual decision making

Plana time to sit down to talk about it- no interruptions ~30min

            Sacred time

            Sacred place

Tell each other -love and appreciate5-10 min 

sincere and authentic -little things

            "Thank you

            We have been praying for”.     

            “I love you so much. Appreciate you taking care of….”

Pray-talk to Heavenly Father - to please help us - priesthood

Discusswhat we think Heavenly Father would want/ do- gods will- till consensus 

pray againand ask if the consensus is right- feel it?

Have a Snack- chocolate, pie

In family decisions HEAR EVERYONE- EVEN CHILDREN

Now that you have the secrets to communicating well and how to make decisions without argument. Go out and put it to work! You will be surprised how much different things will turn out. 

family under stress

It is no secret that there is a lot of stress on and in families. I know all of us have felt it. Whether it is stress from outside things or arguments/ disagreements within the family as well. The most attacked thing within this world, besides the belief and love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, is the family.   With this being the most attacked, Satan uses his most clever tactics to get us to argue and have the ultimate goal, break the family apart.

For the last two years, I have been fighting the worst of my depression and anxiety. Before this, about two years prior, I was at the start of my emotional breaking point. This created immense stress with my family. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice for suicide prevention. You could imagine the level of stress on us. I am still surprised that our family is still intact. Luckily, we had resilience. There could have been very bad outcomes from this but instead, we were able to push through.

Now let’s talk about what stress really is. One definition on Merriam- Webster defines stress as constraining force or influence: such as a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. So this sounds like stress is really bad! Stress can literally cause physical health problems. I remember when my anxiety was through the roof and I was so stressed, my stomach hurt all the time and I couldn’t eat really anything. It can cause stomach ulcers, muscle pains, headaches, fatigue and it can affect your sleep like crazy. I know that My body gets so achy and I either can’t sleep or I have terrible nightmares. Stress, obviously, affects you mentally as well. It can change your mood, make you lack motivation and focus, it can make you irritable and angry, or it also can make you sad and depressed. Stress drives people to drink or start using tobacco products or drugs. People tend to withdraw from lots of activities and people when overly stressed as well as they can have angry outbursts. They can displace their feeling of stress onto you.

You can see how these symptoms can cause even more problems in the family but there are effects of families that affect more than just our bodies. They affect our relationships. WOAH. So you are telling me that my inside world and outside world both get affected… YEAH its crazy I know. So there are so many stressors that occur to a family, things like Sickness, loss of job, financial problems, natural disasters, depression, addictions and death of a family member. These create so much tension in families. These types of stressors can destroy families or make them closer but it all depends on what they do. Families that come together usually try to openly talk about the stressor, use each other for support, and allowing each other the tie to process alone. I know the last option is a little odd because you would think that leaving someone alone would be bad but when there is some big event affecting the family, people need time to process, cry, think, and feel. I know that for me, I need some space for people to think about what is going on and figure out what is really happening and what is my mind making up. I have a pretty creative mind. Families that pray together tend to have better success getting through the stressor at hand. They are brought together spiritually through prayer and they get to have an outlet to give their problems too.

Sex, love making, and WHHHATTT?

Alright, lets talk sex. I know this is a touchy subject and some of you are blushing just reading this but sex is a topic that isn’t talked about and is ESSENTIAL to a marriage. Now first off there I think that there is two types of sex: Sex and LOVE MAKING. The difference is crucial. If you are making love then there is openness and communication between you and the other person as well as love and knowledge of each other and care. Without these things on both sides, things can get very careless and not both people are taken care of. Now what do I mean by “taken care of”? That’s a great question! There is a thing called the Sexual Response Cycle. 

This shows the responses of a man and a woman and the differences in orgasm and plateaus. There is a comparison to explain this difference and how hard it is to get a girl going versus a boy. A man has 1 candle, it is easy to light 1 candle, but a woman has 200 candles but when you light all of them, she lit. This explains that it takes more effort and time to get a girl going and, in the mood, than a man.  Now, did you know that the brain is the biggest sex hormone? It’s true! Part of this is related to how the people see each other, attractive or non-attractive. Things like a woman sees him holding a child a being gentle then this shows he will be gentle with her and can trust him or when he does things for her, it takes things off of her mind and allows her to put energy into other things, so she sees that he will help her. The brain is also part of the sexual response cycle with its chemicals called serotonin (pleasure hormone), Dopamine (thrill, OH YEAH), and for women oxytocin (bonding, feel close). The extra hormone that is released in women is the same one that is released during and after birth, so you can see why women get more attached and hurt when things don’t work out. Now it is important in the sexual part of relationship to be unselfish. This is an intentional act not an automatic. NEVER FOCUS ON ORGASM. It is about the bond you are strengthening not the pleasure feeling. You have to know each other intimately. 

Another topic in the sexual category is self-pleasure. This is called masturbation. In this day in age people use pornography as a way to help themselves masturbate. Now do you think with all these brain chemistry hormone releases that it is healthy to watch porn or masturbate? The answer is no. Yes, I know they teach in health class that it is healthy but it isnt. If a man is watching pornography, then his partner could end up feeling like she has to compete with the people in the videos. She could feel that she has to fight for his attention. Pornography is the ANTI to love making She could then think that he is thinking about the girls on the video instead of her while they are having sex and then there is the factor of the man being attached to whom he is watching or even just his hand..  Its chemistry. 

Lastly, I want to touch on is the negatives effect “sex” can have on people. The reason I put it in quotes is because in this part of it, it doesn’t even qualify as sex. First off there is the kind of sex that the man doesn’t care one bit about the girl and he just does what he needs to get off and then he is done. This can happen in and out of a relationship. I have personally been used in this way in a commited relationship. It is the worst! You think he cares about you and then he only takes care of himself. This is very damaging to someone. They feel worthless and powerless and even like a used up piece of garbage. That’s how felt and still feel from time to time. There are worse cases where a person can be sexually abused or raped and they can have those same feelings butthey may be intensified. I relate these things because although one is consented and one is by force but they can have similar outcomes of feelings. Consent can quickly turn into abuse and can hurt someone beyond your understanding. When someone is hurt in a sexual way, it leaves internal scares that can last forever.

Dating to engagement

In my last post, I talked about how there are steps to moving from dating to getting married. The steps in between those are very important. You have to court someone, which basically is when you are exclusively together and only have eyes for the other. During this stage you are still trying to impress the person and get them to really fall for you. You do things like hold the door for her, kiss her hand, more gentle touching or making things more special. This is a very important part of the process and is really the foundation of an entire marriage. I truly feel that the things that you do in the courtship/ exclusive stage is what you build your relationship upon. If the two of you fight a lot with you are supposed to be impressing each other, then how are you supposed to have a happy marriage. Contrary to common thought, getting married does not fix everything at all. If anything, it makes thing more difficult because you are now connected to each other. Although I am not married yet, I know that getting married is a big deal that takes a lot of thought effort, patience and a sense of humor but more than that it takes a strong foundation to be healthy. This foundation is commonly missed because no one is taught how to find a spouse, but they are told to do it. People aren’t taught how to look for a spouse or even how to decide if the other person is good for them. Some people become so desperate that they lose a lot of their “criteria” they have, and they settle for someone that doesn’t take care of them, doesn’t have the same life goals, or doesn’t have the same morals. So many people over look large things in the others life or personality just so they aren’t alone. I think that our society is so afraid to be alone but doesn’t know how to be in a relationship either. You can see how this is a problem. Now why would it be important to know how to be in a relationship? To be able to build that essential foundation! CORRECT!! Without a solid foundation that is built together, problems that come up during a marriage, can and will destroy a marriage. The foundation provides for turbulence but makes it so the couple can come back to something. There are many many many couples that allow for small fights to push them to divorce because they didn’t establish that essential foundation. Now what does it mean to build a foundation within a relationship. The next stop of this process is getting engaged. Now-a-days, people are doing what has been called “sliding” into marriage. They can almost miss the engagement stage. You might be asking what I mean when I say miss the engagement stage. It is believed by some that it isn’t good to discuss actually being married to the one you are with and if you do talk about it/ say things like “when we are married” or “if we get married”, then it can skip the engagement and the proposal can be overlooked and less significant. It is thought that couples can bring up topics that relate to marriage an ask what is important to the other in a marriage or what they think they want but not applying It directly to the actual couple. I think that maybe this isn’t the most correct of thinking. Just because the couple talks about these things, does not necessarily mean that they won’t put much significance on the engagement. I think that in some ways it can be helpful to talk about marriage and say “if we get married” because then you both understand that you are BOTH working towards a marriage and are serious instead of one thinking marriage and the other thinking that this was just a temporary thing. I know so many people that they are suddenly broken up with because the other person only saw their relationship as a stepping stone and temporary. There is much more success to be had by communicating that you see a future together. In my opinion. There are so many ways to go about relationships but there is one thing sure. There are steps to and stages to becoming married.