Episode 6: Early Marital Adjustments

 Alright. So, this week's topic was proposals and early marital adjustments. I love the topic of engagements, because I think it's so exciting. It also matters a lot more to the marriage than most people think. My professor told us about men that he knew who did giant proposals in front of everyone, proclaiming their love to the girl they were wanting to marry, and most of the guys in my class agreed that sounded pretty awesome and romantic. The women, however, did not. The woman preferred a more quiet and simple style of proposal, while being private but still intimate. Most problems that end marriages, happen at the beginning. Usually with in the first three years. My teacher says "Most people don't divorce over big problems. It's usually the small stuff." He talked about his own experience and others he has helped that at the beginning of their marriage they never talked about little things like sleeping in the same bed. By not talking about it, both people in the marriage let it build up and jumped to their own conclusions of why the other person was doing these things. This led to a built up break down where they were forced to finally address the situation. To get an idea of this, my teacher asked the class to break up into small groups and asked a few married students from the class to be in each group. Then he asked the married students to talk about some "Early Marital Adjustments" that they have had to make while being married so that us unmarried students could get an idea of this. A few that I wrote down were cleanliness, finances, communication styles, family/parent involvement, and many other things. One thing that this class has made me consider doing is dating for longer than LDS couples usually date for. I've realized that the amount of time you spend dating a person can make or break the future marriage. I've heard people say, "You have your whole marriage to get to know your spouse" and wow does that phrase scare me. I want to know everything there is to know about my spouse because I will be spending eternity with him. Another thing we talked about is when a couple doesn't want to get divorced because they have kids together. As a child of divorced parents, I will say that I never in a million years would have asked my parents to stay together. I do not think that this is healthy at all. As we were talking about this in class, one of my classmates said this which I thought was very interesting and I had never thought of, "You are going to spend eternity with your spouse. Your child is going to spend the rest of eternity with their spouse." This meaning, your child will be taken care of in the afterlife. If you would rather be divorced, then do it, instead of being miserable in a marriage neither of you want.

Thank you so much for reading this week. I'm going to try a new way of writing this blog next week and just see how it goes. I normally just take notes during class and then write my blog at the end of the week, but I'm going to try writing most of the blog during my class and get all my thoughts down while they're still fresh. Anyways, hope you all have a great week.