Seeking to Understand

In Goddard’s book he quotes President Ezra Taft Benson: “Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life. (Goddard, pg.144)

Marriage is hard its not supposed to be easy. Marriage helps us strengthen our weaknesses and use our strengths to help other. Marriage allows us to learn to be patient and compassionate, to work with one another and to develop a relationship that will surpass any relationship we have had in this life.

Gottman teaches us that having high expectations and standards for our marriage will enable us to have high quality marriages. This is because people with higher expectations, expect not to have a lot of negativity in their relationship and therefore are willing to confront negativity gently using a marriage warning system which Gottman entitles the “Marital Poop Detector”. This allows couples to notice warning signs and lets them figure out what’s going on in their marriage before the small, solvable problems end up becoming much bigger problems. Gottman suggests that on a weekly you ask yourself a list of questions to see where your relationship stands. Here is the list:

1. I have been acting irritable
2. I have been feeling emotionally distant
3. There has been a lot of tensions between us
4. I find myself wanting to be somewhere else
5. I have been feeling lonely
6. My partner has seemed emotionally unavailable
7. I have been angry
8. We have been out of touch with each other
9. My partner has little idea of what I am thinking

• We have been under a great deal of stress and it has taken its toll on us
• I wish we were closer right now
• I have wanted to be alone a lot
• My partner has been acting irritable
• My partner has been acting emotionally distant
• My partner’s attention seems to be somewhere else
• I have been emotionally unavailable to my partner
• My partner has been angry
• I have little idea of what my partner is thinking
• My partner has wanted to be alone a lot
• We really need to talk
• We haven’t communicated very well
• We have been fighting more than usual
• Lately, small issues escalate
• We have been hurting each other’s feelings
• There hasn’t been much fun or joy in our lives.

Gottman suggests that if you check more than four things on this list you should talk, calmly and gently with your spouse in the next three days. If you take the time to do a weekly checklist you will always be aware of where your relationship and allow you the time to reverse negative issues in your marriage.

I was grateful for the guidance that these two books gave to effectively and fairly easily improve my marriage and also to recognize what a strong, happy foundation I am fortunate to have already. Is our marriage perfect? Absolutely not but I can see the good things as well as the things that we can rectify. I hope that I will be able to keep these lessons with me and continue to better my relationship with my husband.