Talkin' it up!

Well this week we talked about everyone's favorite topic------COMMUNICATION! Three things go into communicating with others: nonverbal cues, tone of voice, and the actual words. I think I get really caught up in the words I'm saying, heck, I love words! But in reality, the actual words we say have little to do with the message we send. Communication is a case where it doesn't matter so much what we think we're sending, but what matters is the message that is received.
Try to imagine this as a circular diagram (it was kinda hard to make) but this is how communication works:

thoughts and feelings=>encode=>send through a media=>decoded
^                                                                              v
^                                                                              v
Decoded<=send through a media<=encode<=thoughts and feelings<=

You can see that there is a lot of room for misinterpretation as we try to figure out our own feelings and the feelings of others. This day brought me back to the symbolic interaction theory and how often people aren't meaning to send the message we receive.
It's important to create shared meanings so that you both know what you are talking about when you say certain things. I think this helps us to feel connected and better understand each other.
We also got this cool tip:

Describe the situation
Express feelings/opinions
Assert your wishes
Reinforce, reward people who respond positively
Mindful--stay on topic
Appear confident
Negotiate--willingness to give to get

I am a little apprehensive about parts of this model, but I think overall it's pretty good.

We're goin' crazy!

This week it was all about crises and how families deal with them. Crisis is defined as something that makes it so a family can no longer function as it did before the event. We learned a cool little formula:

Actual event--observable part, the stressor
Both resources and responses--attitudes, $, insurance skills, flexibility, cohesion, lean vs. blame, church
Cognitions--how they perceive the event
------------
total eXperience--the crisis

It was cool to learn about how it isn't the event that determines whether the family will survive or not, but rather how the family deals with it. Certain things make it easier for a family to deal with crisis like the things under the resources and responses. The way we think about a crisis really affects how we experience it and how the family will be able to function after the crisis. Our thoughts sure do have a lot of power!

Some tips we got were:

• "It's the structure, not the stressor"  We often focus on the actual event and not how we deal with it, but really it's the structure of our family and what we choose to do that affects how we'll be afterward.
• "Making decisive acts, being mindful of other's situations, and not following natural tendencies tends to lead to improvement through crisis." Families can either go through crisis and be worse off, the same, or better off afterward. I think most of us want to be better off, so if we think about how we're acting and choose to be agents who act rather than objects that are acted upon, our families will be better off following a crisis. 
• "If it doesn't get resolved, it won't change." Too often we think if we just kind of ignore things and let them "blow over" they'll go away, but this often leads to extended periods of hard feelings that are unresolved.
• "Observe and describe reality" ex: I'm really sad and it's hard to deal with VS. I'm really sad , it isn't fair that someone did this to me. 

We're all bound to face a crisis at some point in our family lives, but we can choose to make the best of it and come out better than we were before!

"We often think the event creates the feeling but in reality our thoughts of the event create our feelings which lead to our actions...we decide how we respond to events."

No! No! No! Go!

This week the topic was sexual intimacy. I was really surprised with how interesting this topic was and how much I learned. I really love when sexual relations are talked about in light of God's plan and how it should be, instead of just that it's bad--which isn't the case at all! I loved how my professor addressed some flaws LDS culture (I guess that's a little ironic). In the LDS culture, what we're too often taught comes off as sexuality being bad (instead of sacred and not appropriate at the time), and then we get married and are expected to just GO (hence the title of this blog)! Brother Williams talked about how we don't need to rush things even after we get married and we discussed what this bond really is about.
We also talked about how people too often think that a good sex life is what majorly contributes to a happy marriage. Sure, it's a factor, but it isn't as big as many think. And it's more of a thermometer (according to our book)...generally if the marriage is going well, the physical intimacy will be going well, if the marriage isn't going well, neither will the physical intimacy. I think that's because it is SO much more than just being physical, it's really uniting two people and an expression of love, so if you aren't showing your love in other ways, then the physical intimacy won't be as satisfying.
We also talked about affairs! It never occurred to me how much really is cheating. We discussed the emotional detached and attached involvement and the physical detached and attached involvement. We also read about a newly married woman who didn't realized she was emotionally attached to another man and that this was infidelity. She was so upset and never wanted to compromise anything with her husband. She realized she had to change the way she thought and her actions. We have to be really careful about what we're doing and how we interact with people of the opposite sex. We do not want to be unfaithful and cause problems in our marriages.

Taking the plunge

From the weddings to marriages--what makes them good? People can go absolutely crazy over an extravagant wedding and do a lot less to prepare for the actual marriage. Transitioning into marriage can be difficult, here two separate people, two separate lives, suddenly become one--or hopefully they do. When two people get married, they've got to figure out lots of things--what traditions they'll follow, who will do what work, how decisions are made and many, many more things.

This week I learned about what can affect marital satisfaction. It was interesting to see the different trends for the level of marital satisfaction. We talked about how children affect marital satisfaction. Apparently the marital satisfaction tends to be rising and rising in the first little while of marriage (no surprise there). And then when the first child comes it tends to decrease slightly. This kind of surprised me--I thought babies were supposed to bring joy and happiness! But we talked about how it is only slightly lower and we discussed things to prevent the satisfaction from declining too significantly! I loved talking about how we should involve the husband (/father) a lot in the pregnancy--let him talk to the belly/baby, bring him to the doctor's visits, pick out baby things together, have him be really involved in the labor, and discuss things that will change once the baby comes. We learned about how too often women use this as a time to bond with other women,  which only ostracizes the husband. In reality, these special times should be shared between husband and wife to bring them closer together and to bond them to each other and to the baby. It's a really important bond we don't want to miss out on! 

Moral of the story, build connections with your spouse and make sure you are creating your own family and talking about how things will change and they'll go much smoother! 

It's all about the loooove

L-O-V-E...The thing we all want to find. As a female, love is something that is often on my mind, though I have never before experienced learning about love in a school setting. Boy, was this an interesting experience. In this section we focused on what love is, how people select their partners, and differences between cohabitation and marriage. I'll admit that though I clearly will wait until I'm married to live with someone, I thought the research might show that a different start would produce a more satisfying marriage. I found it really intriguing that those who live in cohabitation have a harder time adjusting to marriage because they lead parallel lives when cohabitating and cannot become "one" as easily after marriage--God really does know what he's talking about. I also found it interesting the different things that go into selecting a life partner. Our textbook focused on what attracts us to people and why people get married. Surprisingly they said that love isn't the biggest reason (though people mistake it to be the only reason). Things such as money, similarity to our families, and close proximity were all reasons for selecting someone--though they may be subconscious. We like what we're comfortable with and thus we seek to find someone who fits into our mold. We also have a very limited pool of people to choose from--though the internet has opened this up quite a bit. 

After this section, I realized that love isn't what we typically may think of and that it can be very hard to define. But, falling in love isn't all we need in order to have a successful and fulfilling marriage. I think love comes with time and grows deeper as we get to know someone more and more. What a beautiful thing!

The Role of your Gender

It always is extremely intriguing to me to learn about gender roles and how that affects things. I must admit, reading our textbook about how females tend to ask a lot of questions and such was somewhat comforting! I thought I was broken since I ask literally a billion questions...apparently I'm normal :) I think it's really cool to learn about genders and how that helps us to understand those around us more. It sure opens my eyes, at least. It was interesting to talk about what we're born with and what society makes us into and the different things that are considered masculine and feminine.
I think the most beneficial thing I have learned about this week is about Same-gender attraction. We learned about different studies that have been done and watched an interview of my professor and he explained the difference between same-gender attraction, homosexual, and gay. He talked about how these feelings come about. Mainly he said that it all starts when a boy (we focused on boys) is different from the other boys--maybe he is more creative or sensitive and doesn't really like the same things the other boys do. The boys then tend to push him out and not let him be a part of the group. He then finds that the girls will accept him and like doing some of the same things. Sometimes the boys even make fun of him.
It then gets to the point when boys start to notice girls and girls start to notice boys. This boy already has been around the girls and knows what they're like. But he begins to wonder what it would be like to be "one of the guys" and how he wishes he could be closer to them and more a part of the group--this has absolutely nothing to do with sex. He just has a desire to be accepted and understand them more. At this point is is same-gender attraction because he wants to be more intimate with other boys (in a nonsexual way).
This turns into homosexual when a boy starts to imagine what it would be like to hug the guys or be more physical and they sexualize it. He also said that this almost always happens when a boy has been sexualized (molested, touched inappropriately, etc.) at a young age. People have been calling him gay and labeling him, and if his body reacted when a man was inappropriate with him, he thinks "well then maybe I am gay. It must be true."
This isn't something that we are just born with and have no control over. He suggested that if this is something you're struggling with, you have to get back to basics: think about who you really are--a son or daughter of God--and  what that means, pray and read your scriptures and so on. You also need to stop thinking about people of the same gender in a sexual way. We have the ability to control our thoughts and this is something we must do--homo and heterosexual alike.
I think it is so interesting how we have such an enormous impact on those around us. We must realize how the way we treat other people will affect them. When we understand that we all have different personalities and temperaments and qualities, we can accept them for who they are and not ostracize them for being different than we think they should be. We should be Christ-like and seek to become more like Him by loving and living as He does.

Society and the Family

This week we learned a lot about how society impacts the family and how the family impacts society. To be honest, I never really thought about how social class or our cultural background affect how our families are. We talked about how those in the lower social class can have some serious family problems, but then again so can those in the upper class. We concluded that it isn't as much about how much money you have, but rather how much focus on money you have. We must keep our focus on our Savior, Jesus Christ, and on our families.
We also read about a study done on Mexican immigrant families. I never realized how taxing that would be on a family. They are torn out of their network with their extended family and many of the roles played in the family system are disrupted.--forcing members of the family to take on new roles. A lot of tension is created when this happens and gaps grow wider between generations. It's really eye-opening to see how many different things affect the family, no wonder families are suffering so much today.
I just find it so interesting to learn about culture and how the culture of your family is different than other families. I think it's important to recognize these things so that we can be aware and make changes in our families to better the lives of our children and our family as a whole.