Picking Your Spouse

I decided to write my post on this topic mainly for my two younger sisters. They are 18 and 15 and could probably use some of this information to make wise decisions.

In class this week we focused on three chapters in our book about how we select who we are going to spend the rest of our life with. My teacher gave us this model to help us make wise decisions. The principle is that lever to the left of a category should always be slightly higher. You should always know someone more than you trust, trust them more than you rely on them, rely more than you commit, and be more committed than your level of physical touch.

This model was developed by John Van Epp and you can read more about it in his book How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk. I want to point out that this wasn't created by a Mormon, and it has good value for people of all beliefs.

Whenever one of the categories is moved up higher than the category on its left, bad things can happen. Sure there are strangers that could have a one-night-stand, then end up married and have a successful life together. But that would be the exception, not the rule. Most of us are the rule. If you move up the touch category too high too fast you might end up wasting a lot of your life with someone you wouldn't have ended up with had you gone about things the right way. Physical touch is like super glue and it wouldn't be wise to bind yourself to someone you hardly knew or trusted.

I want to talk about the first category of the R. A. M. Model. To be able to evaluate how much you really know someone there is the know quo.
The Three T's of the Know Quo:
TALK
TIME
TOGETHERNESS

Talk is talking about a wide range of subjects. You could have spent hundreds of hours talking to someone, but if it was only discussing Harry Potter and red velvet cake you really couldn't say you know them that well. It might feel like you do, but you really don't. You need to talk about the little things that you might assume. He may assume she wants to have a lot of children but it would be foolish to wait until 6 months into marriage to ask about it.

Time is the amount of months or weeks you've known someone. John Van Epp has found that anyone can keep up a facade (pretending to be something they're not) for about 3 months. After 3 months we will start to let our guard down and show what we really are.  That's why it isn't a wise thing to make your relationship sexual or to get married before you have known each other at least 3 months. I have heard it is important to know someone for all 4 seasons. He may be really into hunting and you won't know the severity of it until you've gone through that season with him. And she might be an angel in the summer, but a demon in the winter!

I want to emphasis that you cannot speed up Time! People will think that if they have spent 12 hours everyday with someone for two weeks it's as if they have known them for three months. Well they haven't. They've only known them for two weeks. 

The last T is Togetherness. This refers to doing a wide variety of activities in a wide variety of circumstances. This is why just sitting on the couch watching movies every night really doesn't prepare you to marry someone! In marriage you will be facing a wide variety of circumstances. You need to see how your significant other handles getting lost, having a crappy waitress, and being in a crowd of people.

I hope that this post will help you to either make wise decisions in pursuing your lifelong spouse, or in helping you to teach others how to make wise choices. If you have any thoughts or personal experiences with this topic please share below!

An interesting explanation

In class this week we talked a lot about the research on how some people will come to believe that they are a homosexual. I found it really interesting the pattern that researchers and therapists have noticed with these young men. I also really liked learning about why it is so important for a young men to have a solid relationship with their fathers. After learning about the research I feel like I am going to be better prepared as a mother. I do wish that we would have learned more about the pattern that some women will typically go through to decide they are a homosexual. I felt like we focused a lot on men, but not so much on women.

When Fathers Have to Leave

In class this week we talked a lot about family systems and different trends that statistics show. We read a study about immigrant families from Mexico and the trials that their families go through. I don't think I ever realized that many fathers come over first and work her for a few months to a few years before their families can come.

We talked a lot about how when the father is absence, the dynamics of the family have to change for things to still work. Aunts or uncles will step in, children will take on different roles, and married couples face challenges they never anticipated. When someone in the family system goes missing (i.e. father immigrates for work, or is deployed in military) the rest of the family member's roles must shift to fill in the gap. Also, we talked about what happens when the father is back in the picture. It makes things difficult because he tries to step into his old role, but it causes some problems and conflicts with the rest of the family because their new roles no longer fit as well with his old one.

I am curious to know more about similar situations to this. If anyone has had a family member gone for an extended period of time, I would love to hear what your experience was like. How did the family dynamics change while they were gone, and then what happened when that person came back into the picture?

Thank you for your comments!

Family Rules Can Sometimes Clash!

When we first started discussing the topic of family rules, specifically the "unspoken" rules, I didn't think my family really had any. But as I have been thinking more about it, I have come to realize that my family really does have a lot of "rules". It really helped when I started comparing my family to my husband's.

For example, at dinner time, in my husbands family everyone dishes up before the prayer, but in my family you dish up after the prayer. In Andrew's family, it's not really anyone's specific responsibility to ask someone to pray, and you can say no. In my family the pattern of who is responsible for asking someone to pray goes Dad, Enoch, then my husband (depending on who is there). And it's an unspoken rule in my family that you have to say yes. I think I've said no twice in my life and got the death glare from everyone in the family and ended up praying and that's how I learned what the unspoken rule was! I honestly was somewhat surprised the first time I had dinner at my in-laws and someone said no when they were asked to pray. But I've come to realize that in his family it's a rule that you can turn down praying if you want and in mine it's the opposite. It's not that one way is right and the other is wrong, that's just how it is in both of our families.

We spent our first Christmas cruising in Mexico!

I think that you really don't notice your family's rules until you get married and all of those rules clash! For example, our first Christmas I didn't buy any presents for anyone in Andrew's family. No one ever told me who we were assigned to so I just figured that we didn't need to get anyone presents. In my family presents aren't really a big deal. We siblings never buy each other presents for birthdays and we only get the person that we are assigned to a present for Christmas. My mom organizes it and we all draw someone's name from a hat. We also don't really get our parents anything. But in my husbands family it is an unspoken rule that you buy everyone a present for every holiday. It was kind of overwhelming at first because I wasn't used to it! And I think I made some people mad at first because I didn't see why it was such a big deal at the beginning. It is kind of hard to balance out the differences in each of our family's rules.

But now I have learned that there are many different rules in each family. It just takes a while to figure them all out!

I would love to hear about your "unspoken" family rules! Please comment!