What are your "Bids"?

Have you wondered how in tune you actually are to your spouses emotional cues? For example, say your spouse is putting your clothes in the laundry and they keep sighing pretty loud. Do you just ignore this? Or do you ask them is something is bothering them? Doing something so simple, such as asking is there is anything wrong, can really bring you and your spouse together. The reactions we have to our spouse is so critical to the way our relationship will be. If our spouse says a “bid” that comes off as harsh, we can do one of two things. One, you can become defensive and say something in return super rude which can lead into a argument. Or you can recognize that your spouse is frustrated and respond in a calming way that help your spouse feel better. When you do this,”partners are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away”. It can definitely become difficult when your spouse says something harsh to you and you want to fight back. But if you want a lasting and loving relationship, you are going to have to give up those tendencies and really try to ask yourself,"Is there a deeper meaning become this harsh remark?". Asking yourself can really help save you and your spouse a lot of time from having fights over nothing.

Everything that we do in this life is a choice. Everything we say and every single reaction that we have is a choice. We can choose to simply ignore our spouse's bids for attention or we can take personally every single thing they say. But,when in reality, it is about something else.We have two choices on how we can react to our partner and that can dictate the rest of the day for you both. When our partner snaps at us, we can either become defensive and snap back right back at them, or we can take a deep breath and react in a more loving way. I love the concept of turning towards our partner, not away.
Becoming emotional aware of our partner and their needs is SO important to having a healthy and happy relationship.

Our Love Maps

Have you ever thought what you can do to better your love life? One of my favorite authors is Dr. Gottman! He gives such amazing advice on how to have a lasting and loving relationship. One of the things that he talks about is building your love map. Dr. Gottman uses this term to describe the part of your brain where you keep all the relevant information about your partner's life. It is so important that you have a friendship in your marriage. You need to be constantly learning about your partner so you can have that solid foundation. You need that strong foundation, especially whens things get rocky. Gottman talks a lot of about we can DO to help build our love map. I am not married, but I am dating someone right now and although things are still pretty new, I am excited to do some of the exercises together with him so that we can continue to build a stronger relationship with each other. Some of these exercises include asking about your partner their favorite things, or their hopes and fears. Questions that range from getting to know you to really deep questions. It is SO important to keep that flame alive.  When big changes happen during our happen (which they will), we will be better equipped to deal with them if we have that strong friendship and the ins and outs of our partners life. 


We also need to recognize that none of us is perfect. We all have a long way to go to become as Christlike as our leaders have urged us to become. Brother Christensen once said,"Avoid ‘ceaseless pinpricking.’ Don’t be too critical of each other’s faults. Recognize that none of us is perfect. We all have a long way to go to become as Christlike as our leaders have urged us to become‘Ceaseless pinpricking,’ as President Spencer W. Kimball called it, can deflate almost any marriage. … Generally each of us is painfully aware of our weaknesses, and we don’t need frequent reminders. Few people have ever changed for the better as a result of constant criticism or nagging. If we are not careful, some of what we offer as constructive criticism is actually destructive”. I think it is so important that we do not focus so much on our partner’s faults, but rather their positive. 
By doing these simple things, we will be able to help give our marriage a lasting chance!

Sources:The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work By Dr. Gottman

How To Argue

How you ever wonder what you could to do to help you and your significant other lesson the damage when you get into arguments? Have arguments become so bad that you are beginning to question your partner or relationship? You are not alone! There are so many couples out there that have many problems in their marriage and every time they try to work it out, it just becomes a fighting match. I may not know all the answers, but I will share you some things that I have learned that I feel will help! 

I love this quote! It is so true. A marriage that is built on a friendship, truly helps a marriage last. Why is this? When things get tough, when arguments arise, what do you have to fall back on? Do you have that friendship? That friendship helps minimize negativity that can come from arguments. For me personally, whenever things started to get heated when I am talking with my boyfriend, he will grab my face and push my checks together. I always end up laughing and it breaks that tension that was beginning to rise. That may sound annoying to some people, but because we have that playfully friendship, we both find it funny. I feel like every couple needs this in their relationship. It's that mutual understanding of wanting to bring things back down to a calmer level, without verbally saying anything. 

Respecting and honoring each other is so important to having a healthy relationship. If we are doing both of those things, then even when arguments and problems do come up, both people in the relationship will be able to work through. When we change our base perspective from being 'I defend my version of happiness' to 'what would make us both happy?", it really allows you to put your partners needs in front of your own and helps you become a more selfless partner. These times of relationships are the ones that truly last.

Temple and Marriage

A goal that I personally have strived to kept is to get married in the temple. Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you are brought up always hearing about temples. I also had parents that would frequently talk about their temple marriage and I would see them go on regular trips to the temple. I may have been too young to understand what exactly they were doing, but I did know that it was something important to them. I do feel like my parents could have done a better job at explaining the "why" of going to the temple.  I do feel that  because the temple is such a sacred place and the ordinances that are taken place are so special, we may not speak about it. But I believe that if we teach our teach in the correct and appropriate way about the temple, then they will be able to have the desire to go through the temple themselves one day. I hope to make temple trips a regularly thing when I get married and hope that my children will see our example and following our footsteps.


Going to the temple regularly with your spouse, I believe, is just one of many ways that we can strengthen our marriages. Making sure that both partner put in 100%, and not just 50% of their themselves in a relationship is so vital for the survival of a strong marriage. Marriage requires sacrifice. I think it is naive to think that marriage is easy. No matter how compatible you are with your spouse, there are going to be stresses that come and test your marriage. But if you have the mindset of having a covenant marriage, you will have the strength to work through anything.

Gay Marriage: Why Should We Care?

Have you ever asked yourself,"What does it matter if gay marriage is legal? It's not directly affecting me so shouldn't I let people of the same-sex get married?". If you have, you are not alone. I even know a lot of LDS people who have these thoughts even though the Church clearly states that same-sex marriage is against the standards of the church. Society tells us that we have no right to deny people the right to decided who they want to marry and deny them that happiness. Society tells us that our belief is wrong and that are have no right to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. You may feel that because of the ruling from the Supreme Court, all of the justices feel that way as well. But in fact, three of the justices were against gay marriage and that had very interesting arguments. When you are in a discussion with someone about gay marriage, you can use these three points that the Justices used in their argument.

One argument that the Justices use was Judge Roberts brought up was how much of the reasoning they provided could be used for plural marriage. Now that marriage has been redefined to include gay marriages, what keeps it becoming redefined for plural marriages? I feel like a lot of better use the argument that gay marriage only affects those are gay, but this is completely false. By changing the definition of marriage, it completely opens up the door for more interpretations of marriage which affects society.

Another argument he used was how Roberts talked a lot about how the decision should stay  with the states. Something that he quoted was “we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean”. By overruling what some states have delated as laws and completely discarding that, does raise concerns for the judicial role. He also made the point that just because it had the majority decision, it doesn’t mean that it has no basis in the Constitution.

Another argument that Roberts said was how this ruling was more based on the personal views on the other judges rather than law. Roberts pretty much called out the rest of the judges for deciding on this decision based on their personal beliefs rather than functioning of judges. He pointed out that there were no judges that are Christian or a South-Western which does play a part into how they view things. His last sentence really hit me. He said, “With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence”. This ruling was based on the judges personal views and what the majority felt and not based on law.

These three arguments were used to make their case that gay marriage should not be legalized. As you can see, it is way more than just not wanting two people to get marriage. It has a larger affect on the institution of marriage and society. That is why it is so important that we have a firm stance on this matter and that we teach our children the correct principles. Although we cannot control what laws are passes and such, we do have control over what we raise our children to believe. We can either let our children be taught by the world ( satan's lies), or we can make sure that we are raising valiant disciple of Christ who know what is right and what is wrong regardless of what the world tells them. Like you said, it is so important that our homes to be centered around Christ.