Before this week I really thought the key to a happy marriage was communication and our ability to work out any problems that might arise. I was totally wrong according to John Gottman in his book titled "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work". As I was reading, he talked a lot about friendship and how having a strong friendship was the key to making marriage last. To me, this makes sense. If you are good friends you would have already established good communication and the ability to work out differences. These attributes are a result of a deep friendship. I knew dating that I wanted to marry my best friend because if I married for looks or circumstances alone, things wouldn't work out so well because everyone knows looks fade and circumstance can change. Marriage needs to be founded on something deeper, and that is friendship. Reading his findings from years of research and studying other couples, I realized that I set myself up for a higher chance of a successful marriage, just by marrying my best friend. As Gottman was describing all the different signs of how we can react to conflict or problems in our marriage. He talked about the first sign as a harsh start ups where your conversation goes from 0-180 in no time flat. This will set you up for failure to work out problems. The second sign is the four horsemen. The four areas are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and the last one is stonewalling. Criticism usually contains the following statements in the conversation; "you always" or "you never". You are making it all their fault. Contempt is when you have a sense of superiority over your partner. You are putting them down and showing signs of disrespect. The next one was defensiveness and I think you know exactly what this means. We feel like we are being attacked and put ourselves on the defensive to protect ourselves. The last one is Stonewalling where they just shut down completely. They won't look at you or respond. They have checked out. The third sign that Gottman mentions in his book is flooding. This is when you become physically overwhelmed and feeling defenseless. The last stage is body language. Your body goes into overdrive and you can have increased pulse rate and sweating. You show signs of physical stress.
I saw a few areas where I can improve or change my point of view or change how I simply respond. It also helped me see that we are doing well in certain areas or brought to my attention our little quirks that help us deal with stress. A little background on our relationship. We met each other in our Paramedic class at Ricks College and we were in class all day, with 20 + credits. When we weren't in class we were picking up shifts at the ER or riding along with the ambulance. We practically lived at the school and at the hospital. We were with our classmates almost 20 hours a day. Our dates consisted of studying for a test or picking up ER shifts together. On our internship and during the extra semester we attended, we were able to do more traditional dating. Through this year and half we saw each other at our best and at our worst. We learned how different we both are from each other. We really got to see everything that made us who we are. We had to deal with conflict and overcome hard times. We enjoyed many happy moments and experienced situations that strengthened our bond. I know that if we had gotten married quickly after we met our marriage would not have lasted. We needed that time to get to know each other and develop a strong lasting friendship first. Timing was everything and the Lord knew we would need this time and to have these experiences together so that we could have the best chance of having a lasting marriage relationship. Looking back going through all of these experiences have helped us keep nourishing what is most important in our lives. We know we will have to continue to work hard each and everyday to defend what is important to us. I know that we can do this if we put the Lord as the center of our lives and apply the atonement everyday. I think H. Wallace Goddard hit the nail on the head talking about the Atonement and living a Christ centered life as the key to a happy marriage, in his book titled, "Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage. Just like we want to be best friends with our spouse we also should strive to have that same deep and close relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ. When we have that relationship we will become more like him and feel connected to Him through the Holy Ghost on a daily basis.
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