Divorce, Remarraige and Blending Families

Final Blog Post

This week was our final week in this class. The topic we talked about was Divorce, Remarriage, and Aging Families. This can be a hard subject for many to talk about, simply because of the sensitive nature of the subject. I do not have a ton of experience with divorce, but my grandma and grandpa did get divorced when they were young. He was not faithful and chose another woman. At that point in time they had 8 kids and he pretty much left. I really admire my grandma for being the best mother she could. She never remarried and raised 8 kids on her own. She learned how to make do. It was still very very hard. This has caused a disruption in my family. It has caused hurt feelings and even affected the way my father parented because of his lack of a father in the home. There were a lot of bitter feelings toward my grandpa. To this day there still is a rift. My grandpa married a woman that has no kids and never wanted kids. They do their own thing and don’t make an effort to see family. I hardly even know who my grandpa is. This is one example of how divorce can travel down generations. It doesn’t just affect you and your spouse of children in the present moment, but the effects can trickle down to your posterity.

Did you know that 70% of people two years after divorce realize it may have not been the best choice? This might make someone think twice before getting a divorce. Men are usually remarried again after about 2 years post-divorce. Another statistic we talked about was the about 50% of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. To me and a young woman who is not yet married, that is  a pretty scary statistic. How do I know if I am marrying the right person? How can I do everything in my power to prevent divorce down the line?

I feel like it is important to note that in some cases, trying to save and rekindle a marriage is the worst possible option. TO me this mean in cases that specifically deal with some sort of abuse of mistreatment, or when trying to make the marriage work in having more of a negative affect than a positive one. Maybe a couple is on the brink of divorce but decide to work it out? Great, right? Maybe not so great. Maybe there are children involved, and even though they stay married, they fight all day everyday around their children. This causes a very chaotic and toxic household that children should not have to live in. If one spouse is abusive, then it is absolutely not your obligation to stay.

Just a couple examples from the book on what may cause divorce;

1.      Socioeconomic Status

-          A couple of higher status is less likely to get divorces simply because of a higher income and education. Financial pressures add instability to already poor marriages.

2.      Age at Marriage

-          The younger you marry, the higher chance you have of divorce. 59% of women who married 18 or younger experienced marital disruption in the first 15 years.

 6 Stages of Divorce

1.      Emotional- falling out of love

2.      Legal – stuff

3.      Economic

4.      Co Parental

5.      Community – friends

6.      Psychic- acceptance

Challenges of Blending Families

-          Different culture

-          Experience

-          Priorities

-          Parenting

How can you make it work?

-   -Develop sense of family identity by saying “family” rather then “stepfamily.”

    -Help each other when working through loyalty conflicts. It can be hard for a child to maintain close -relationships with natural parent while trying to develop one with a stepparent.

  -  Resolve any lingering issues with exes.

   -Develop step parenting rules and behaviors that are acceptable to everyon

    -Be aware of and responsive to the feelings and needs of each member of the family.

-  -Nurture a strong marital relationship.

In conclusion, divorce, remarriage and blending new families can be a challenge but in a lot of cases there is hope, and things can work out. 

Parenting

Week 11 Blog Post

 “To you who are parents, I say, show love to your children. You know you love them, but make certain they know it as well. They are so precious. Let them know.” – Thomas S. Monson

This week in class we talked about parenting. We started out by discussing active parenting. A question he made us ask ourselves was “What do I hope to accomplish through parenting?” Here are the things I wrote down;

·     -    Raise children who have good values and morals

·      -   Created a safe and secure relationship with my children

·      -   Parent with love

·        - Provide a safe home where they feel loved and accepted no matter what.

·         -Let them know that it is okay to make mistakes.

·         -Allow them to make mistakes. This is how they will learn

·         -Make sure they feel listened to and validated

·         -Help them create a good self-esteem and self-worth

When seriously dating someone you are considering marrying, I think it would be wise to talk about each other’s parenting goals and techniques and make sure they align for the most part.

One thing my professor pointed out is that oftentimes our perceptions of God align with out parents. If our parents were harsh and cold and didn’t offer much love and support that is how we will view God. How do we want our children viewing God? We should be warm and loving and understanding and offer our support. We went our children to have a good relationship and positive view of God as their father.

Something that my professor said that I really liked was;

“You are always teaching by example, especially when you’re not.”

What does this mean to you?

Children have 5 basic needs. They are;

1.      Contact/ belonging (a lack of physical contact or sense of belonging leads to developmental issues.) When children don’t get the needs of human contact met, they take mistaken approaches.

2.      Power- the ability to influence their own world and make choices.

3.      Withdrawal- children need the ability to take breaks

4.      Challenge-

5.      Protection

What should be the parental approach when trying to meet these needs?

-       -   Offer contact freely to your children

-        -  Teach children to contribute

-          -Response ability= choices + consequences

-          -Teach children to take a break. Work together and break together.

-          -Brain development relies on experiencing consequences of their own choices

-          -Skill building

Another quote from class that really wraps up this part of my post is;

“You can never get enough of what you don’t need because what you don’t need won’t satisfy you.”

This applies to children and their needs because if they aren’t getting their needs met, they will look elsewhere to get those fulfilled. Oftentimes the places they look for those needs to be met in other places that could be more harmful to them. Make sure you pay attention to your specific child’s needs and try and meet them.

A good point my teacher made was even us as adults have certain needs, such as contact, love, hunger, and thirst. When these needs aren’t being met, we tend to look other places to satisfy that. If I am not getting any human contact, I may look for a NCMO, or a one-night thing with someone just to get that need met. The example my professor gave was oftentimes we think we are hungry so we begin snacking on things and then we eventually realize that we were just thirsty. We have to pay attention to our own specific needs and make sure they are being met for own well-being.

Fathers and Finances

Blog Check Week 10

This week in class we talked about the topic of “Father’s and Finances.” This was a really interesting thing to talk about. In the church, we tend to have fathers be the primary providers, or the “breadwinners.” The wives stay at home and take care of the children and housework. According to research, women tend to do 35% more work in the home compared to their husbands. Although I do appreciate the work that men do to provide for their families, I think that they should take more part in things at home. They created the children too, after all. We talked about the importance of living on less and learning to live within your means. You might not be able to have everything you want, but it will be worth it when you don’t have the stress of being in debt. My professor told this story about the family who made well over enough money every year, but they spent it all on things that didn’t matter that they could never make ends meet and pay their bills. You don’t want that at all.  It’s not how much money you make, it’s what you do with it.

            We also talked about how in the world, there is a trend in families to have both parents working outside the home and bringing in money. The truth is, is that this doesn’t really make that much of a difference. My professor talked about the TV show that he was once where a couple who both worked outside of the home was featured. The husband made 42,000 dollars a year and the wife made 21,000 dollars a year. An accountant crunched the number and revealed to them that in reality, they make 40, 500 dollars a year. He asked them “are you going to give up the time you could be spending with your children and family for 1500 dollars a year?” This was a real eye-opening experience for that family. They were upset of course but it just goes to show that it is not completely necessary.

Next, we talked about how to balance work and recreation in the family. How to you encourage children to work and contribute to the home while still making it a somewhat enjoyable, teachable experience? Some suggestions that were made were

-          Do it together, make it fun, and add music

-          Create a sense of unity

-          Don’t pay kids to work. They do less and they resent it more.

One cool thing that was said was “the more menial the labor the easier you can connect with others and talk.” I think this is true for families who need to spend time together. Another interesting thing that happened in Denmark was that they made work optional and suicide rates significantly increased. Work is something that humans need! Work helps make them feel important and prepares children for marriage.

One thing growing up that I resented was that my parent’s kind of just told us what to do. It seemed demeaning and honestly just made me angry. I wish they would have said “hey, let’s do the dished together” or okay lets all work on this one bathroom!” I don’t want my children to grow up with a skewed view of helping out in the household and have them hate it. I want to make it a fun bonding experience that we can enjoy together. I remember I went down to Utah one weekend and I stayed with my friend’s family. They all went outside and cleaned up leaves together. There was no fighting or arguing, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Ever since they I have kept that as a goal for my future family.

Commuincation and Mutual Problem Solving

This week in my class, the topic we talked about was “Communication and Mutual Problem Solving.” I have never been in a serious relationship, but I believe that effective communication is extremely important in any relationship; romantic or other. I have learned this just with living with roommates up here at school. Slowly but surely as the semesters have gone on, I have learned how good communication can make or break an apartment and your relationship with you roommates. I almost lost one of the best friends I have ever had because I hadn’t learned how to effectively communicate my feelings to her. I don’t think good communication comes super naturally to some people. For me, I never liked talking about my feelings to anyone so it is something that I have really forced myself to do and learn while here at school. It is okay if you are not good at communicating right now! The important thing is that you do your best to get out of your comfort zone and start making those changes. It will benefit your marriage, future marriage, friendships, and family relationships.

 An important thing that we noted was that YOUR SPOUSE ( or other person in your life) CAN’T READ YOUR MIND! Just because they are not getting the “hints” you are dropping doesn’t mean that they don’t love you. Sorry men, but sometimes you are just oblivious. But at the same time, women, we should be better about just being open and not having to drop about things! It’s like playing a game with our spouse, but the catch is that they don’t know hints the rules, or even that they are playing! How unfair is that?

In general, women have much better communication than men. Women can pick up subtle cues that oftentimes men can’t. That is nothing against men, it’s just in a woman’s blood I think haha

I saw this quote the other day on Twitter that said

“ It’s so weird how girls just know…I don’t know how they know. Half the time they don’t even know what they know but they know.”

It’s kind of funny but pretty true!

High Level Communication consists of three things

1.      Empathy

2.      Assertiveness

3.      Respect

We also discussed on the board the Three Empathy Skills

1.      The Disarming Technique- this is a method of helping to drop defensiveness. It is essentially you deciding to set your weapons down first. The moment you get defensive you force the other person to get defensive and argue with you. Find the Kernel of Truth. This is a small truth that you can gather from what a person is saying. Be open about it.

2.      Express Empathy- repeat back thoughts they have shared. Feelings and emotions.

3.      Inquiry- talk more, be interested in what they are saying.

My professor gave us a model for communicating with someone. He used this with his clients in therapy.

When_______ (client situation)

Feel/Felt ______(emotion)

because_______(thoughts)

I want you to _______(your hope)

When communicating, your

Words 14%

Tone 35%

Non-Verbal 51%

You can be trying to say all the right things but if your body language and the tone you are using contradicts what you are telling the person they are not going to take what you are saying seriously.

The final thing I want to talk about is the phrase “pruning in the wrong season discourages growth.” How does this apply to communication? If you try to talk about a hard or sensitive topic with someone when the time is not right, all that will do is cause more conflict and shut them down from future talking. If you try to prune a tree when the season is not right, it won’t bear fruit and it will just kind of become stagnant. You don’t want that to happen in your relationships!

What are your thoughts on communication?

Family Stress

This week in my family relations class we talked about stress and how it can affect the family as a whole. I am actually taking a Family Stress and Coping class this semester. A lot of the tings we talked about this week tie in really well with what we talked about in my other class this week.  A stressor is a “discreet life event(s) or transition that have an impact upon the family unit and produce, or have the potential to produce, change in the family system.” A normative event is one that “occurs in all families, can be anticipated, and is short term.” Here are some things to help you distinguish whether it is a normative event;

The first thing that I think is important to acknowledge is that stress is going to occur in every family, no matter what. Experiencing stress and learning how to handle it together is just a part of life and living as a family unit. Stress can be either positive or negative. For example; a birth of a child is definitely a stressor, but it is a good thing! On the other hand, a death in the family is a negative stressor.

The model we discussed class is known as the ABC-X model. It stands for the following:

A-    stressor events

B-    resources

C-    definition of the situation

   X- Stress and Crisis.

Here is how it plays out.

A-   A;   

1.      Is it something that occurs in all families?

2.      Can you anticipate its occurrence?

3.      Is it short term or chronic?

Here are 8 additional criteria to consider;

1.      Internal or external

2.      Does it affect one member or all members?

3.      Sudden or gradual?

4.      Severity

5.      Time (how long does it take to adjust)

6.      Expected

7.      Natural or human caused

8.      Perception (are we able to solve the crisis?

9.      Can I do this? What you believe is the truth.

B- RESOURCES

 Resources “characteristics, traits, or abilities of individuals that assist in overcoming stressor

-          Family must figure out ow to deal with event/situation

Key Trains

·         Ability to pull together

·         Ability to be flexible

In balanced ways

·         Not flexible enough

·         Too flexible

·         Not cohesive enough

·          Too cohesive

Accessing Resources

1.      Individual

2.      Family

3.      Community

C-    C DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION

How we define as important as accessing resources

Optimism

·         Is this a challenge or a threat?

·         Research- how does this affect recovery

Self-Fulfilling Prophesy (a prediction of behavior which biases people to act as though the prediction was already true

1.      I am going to fail the exam

2.      Why study? I’m going to fail anyways

3.      Failure

Cognitively REFRAME

Break stressor down into manageable tasks

X- Stress and Crisis

·         Crisis – family is not able to maintain its usual balance because of stressor event (“A state or period of disorganization that ricks the foundations of the family”

·         Family stress “something experienced by families that causes a change in the family or upsets their sense of normalcy

·         Not all stressors lead to crisis

Crisis = broken family

·         What is the purpose of pain?

·         What options

To conclude, although we all go through stress and crisis in our lives, I think the most important thing to take away is that they make us grow, and we learn from them. If we can take a difficult situation, face it head on, or to the best of our abilities and them come out of it better than we were before, I say that is a huge success. There are a lot of people that can’t do that. It is a lifelong learning process but it gets easier with time. We also have to remember that we don’t have to go through hard things alone. We should reach out and take advantage of the people and resources around us that are there to help. We are never a burden.

What are your thoughts on handling stress as family?

Sexual Intimacy in Marriage

This week for my class we talked about sexual intimacy in marriage. This was an interesting and informative topic to talk about. I am not married so I have no personal experience but I think that the things we talked about can be really useful for when that times comes for me. I think it can also be really useful for when I have children and have to teach them these things.

            Typically, men want sex more. They want sex so they feel safe and secure. Men often get aroused faster, and can only have one orgasm. Men have a sex drive that peaks around 18 and 19. On the other side of things, women often feel safe and secure first, so then they want sex. Women talk longer to get aroused as well. I have heard it described as lighting candles. You have to take the time to light the woman’s candles and get her excited, whereas men can often get excited quickly. Women can have multiple orgasms. A woman peaks in her sex drive around 30-35 which is significantly higher than man. I found this to be really interesting.     

            One thing that I really learned about intimacy is that it really is an expression of love. If you love someone, you won’t want them doing anything that makes them uncomfortable, and you want sex to be a pleasurable experience for them. Couples should enjoy having sex. It shouldn’t feel like a chore. It was created by God for a man and a woman to be closer and feel more connected as a couple.

We talked about infidelity than can happen in marriage. I know that when I think about being unfaithful in a marriage, I think about physically cheating. Being intimate with someone other than your spouse. But there is also a think known as emotional infidelity. This is becoming close with someone of the opposite gender that isn’t your spouse. You could be spending excessive time together, or oversharing private details about your marriage that should only be discussed between you and your spouse. It is really easy to lose sight of the lines that shouldn’t be crossed. They can become a bit blurry. This is something to be cautious of.

            This leads me into my next subject which is boundaries. Boundaries are something that are so important to be aware of, and to not be afraid to set. For me I know sometimes it is hard to set boundaries because I don’t want to seem rude, or I don’t want to make something awkward. But we HAVE to be able to do that. Boundaries with ourselves, others, our spouses, friends, family, anyone.

We also talked about how as parents, or future parents we should be informed about what our children are being taught. It would be wise for us to make sure we are the source that they get all of their information from about sex. So many things can be skewed and twisted and we don’t want our kids to have those misconceptions in their heads. For me personally, my parents never talked to me about sex or intimate topics like that and I really wish they did. I learned everything I know from friends and the internet and I wish it hadn’t had been that way. It definitely would have been one of the most uncomfortable moment, but it may have helped me later on. I know this is something that I want to do differently with my children. I want them to get their information from me but more importantly I want them to be comfortable coming to me with any question they have about anything. I want them to feel like we have an open relationship.

What are your thoughts on this topic? 

Early Marital Adjustments

This week in class we talked about transitions and adjustments in early marriage. This was a really interesting topic to talk about, especially since marriage is such a large part of our culture as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We tend to get married younger than the average young adult. Knowing about how to navigate as a newlywed can be super useful, even as someone like me who is VERY single at the moment.

We started out by talking about having a strong foundation to your relationship. Even when you start courting someone, you should start building a foundation that would be able to withstand hard times if you got married. So, what can you do to build a strong foundation to start from? I think honesty, communication, trust and mutual respect is a good start. Having spiritual conversations and living the gospel together. We also talked about problems solving skills, setting boundaries, and learning how to add family and friends in to the equation. These are things that you should start to work on when you are courting. My professor also said that we shouldn’t be dating exclusively until we are in a place that we are ready to marry. I think this is great advice.             If you wait until marriage to learn how to solve problems together you are going to have a hard time. Here is a quote that I really like from class. I don’t remember who said it so I can’t give credit.

“If women can look back positively at how the relationship started, they are less likely to let go of the marriage when things get hard”

What do you feel are some of the foundations that you build your marriage on? How has that helped you when the hard times have come? If you didn’t have a strong foundation, how has that affected you and your spouse?

We talked about the trends in marriage. The average wedding now costs around $20,000 dollars. To me this is insane. A lot of the times the marriage is delayed just so they can save enough money to pay for it. Don’t do this! My professor said that simply being married can reduce a lot of the problems couples seem to have. Cohabiting is not the same as being married. In fact, couple who cohabitate before getting married are statistically more likely to get a divorce.

We also talked about the challenges you might face once you actually tie the knot. They are:

-          Children (fun fact: (okay, not really fun but) Marital satisfaction goes down with the birth of each child)

-          Work

-          Being with one person all the time

-          Finances

-          Decision making

If we know that these are problems that might arise once we are married, it might be wise to talk about how we are going to get through those challenges once they do come up in marriage. If we talk about them beforehand, we will be better prepared to handle them.

In the first couple years of marriage, really try to establish those patterns that are important to you and your spouse. What do you want to do once you have children? What kind of example do you want to set for them? These are important things to think about.

            I really like this that my professor said. He said

“We can do what’s natural, or we can do what’s supernatural”

            The basically means that in marriage, you can do what the natural man would do, or you can look outside yourself and rise about what the natural man would do. Rise about and make your marriage better than you could ever have thought. Marriage is so special and we should treat it as such. Don’t take it lightly, but make it the best you can!