MY Blog

Transitioning to marriage scares me and excites me. I can’t wait to be with the love of my life and be able to be with them. To be able to see them right when I close my eyes at night and be the first person I see when I open them in the morning. The thing I am fearful of is not being able to support this woman that I love so much. Not providing the life that she deserves. I know that doesn’t matter to her as much as it means to me, but it still is always on my mind. One of the many things that I will have to adjust to, is leaning on someone when it comes to major decisions in my life. I realize that the decisions I make now will not only affect me but her as well. Something we learned in class that is often repeated is, women expect marriage to change everything and men expect nothing to change in the relationship. I have never heard such a true statement. I don’t imagine much changing in our relationship besides us living together. After talking to my fiancé about that statement in c

 Selecting a life partner has been a big stressor for many people in the world. I hear of all these checkboxes my friends have for this special someone to come by and check them all off. When I hear these long checklists it makes me think that this perfect person doesn't exist, and if they did she/he wouldn't be interested in them. I think my friends are great and wonderful people, but the idea of this perfect person will come into their life and sweep them off their feet and will get married soon after probably won't happen. I've never been too stressed out by finding a life partner until my girlfriend mentioned marriage to me. I never gave it any thought until that moment. She just wanted to know my thoughts on the matter. I started to think of my own checklist and what I wanted in my forever life partner. Some attributes that come to mind include intelligence, kindness, sense of humor, attractiveness, and reliability. Faith also comes to mind, does she have a relatio

  It feels like my whole life I have been preparing for marriage. For instance when you are a child you learn to share and get along with others even when you do get annoyed. Fast forward to your teen years when you start to go on dates you learn how to treat your significant other, how to act in arguments, and learn how to get to know someone on a deeper level. Now as I am in my twenties I am preparing by becoming my best self. I am saving up in order to live and sustain another person. My mom always taught me to be grateful for the work that she and my dad do. In the article, Hanging Out, Hooking up, and Celestial Marriage, by Bruce A. Chadwick he mentions, “my third suggestion is to exercise faith and to have courage in dating and marriage.” Reading this brought me back to my mission and learning how to effectively teach others to help them gain an understanding of our church and living with a companion who is from different backgrounds and upbringings than I was. This prepared me f

What is culture? According to the Oxford dictionary, “Culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.” I’ve always thought culture and social class affected family very little, because I thought each family creates their own culture within a family. It turns out each of our family experiences are influenced in some way by social groups we belong to. Others involve the unique cultures to which we belong. Each influences the family in various ways, most often unseen. Growing up, my own assumptions about what is right and wrong often reflect the beliefs, values, and traditions of my family culture. I first thought of culture affecting a family to be a negative or a bad thing. I thought America's culture of families was negative due to the negative things you hear about on the news. You hear of all this crime and families being destroyed happening all over. It caused me to think our culture in the United States

We have so many different family dynamics in the world it's hard to define a normal family dynamic. Many parents or even children ask themselves this question. I have also personally asked this question, but there is no simple answer. Since there can be such broad definitions of the term normal. Still, there are several characteristics that are generally identified with a well-functioning family. Some charastics are support, love and caring for other family members, providing security and a sense of belonging, open communication, making each person within the family feel important, valued, respected and esteemed. In Lauer & Lauer or in “Marriage and Family in America”, it talks about how we are all personally bias towards what a normal family dynamic should look like. It goes on saying we will use are own experiences from when we were growing up in our own families. I find that very interesting that we can all form our own opinions and thoughts and technically they will all be