Divorce

Divorce is terrible and sad. This makes me so grateful for the church because even though divorce is still present within the church but its a lot harder I think.
I've been sealed in the temple with my husband and its a flood of relief to think that I will have my buddy forever.
When we talked about a spouse passing away. I just look at how complex that all is but I'm sure our Father in Heaven sees a whole lot more than what we can see and understand what is going on. I do not know how its going to all work out and I could attempt to try but I think that would put me in a position that probably isn't correct. I just like to view things gospel related that pertain to me. Its hard to go beyond and try to solve everyone's situation.

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas.

Parenting

I found it really interesting on how we talked about Parenting with adolescents. Watching that movie clip with the mother and her son who is struggling with a problem with a girl he likes. It kind of shocked me on how easy it is to blow off a problem that you can clearly see. I think a lot of it is because parents do not know how to properly act towards their teenagers.

I SOOO want to change what myself. I want to be that parent who focuses on her children and takes the time to problem solve with my teenage son/ daughter. Its really true that it only takes 2 minutes. Only two minutes and it makes a huge impact on their lives.

I plan to start this now. I'm not a parent but I am married and I'm going to take a more active stance with my husband because that will help prepare myself for when I do have children.

Budgeting

I have to admit. I am not very good at budgeting at all. I kept track of my money pretty well and saved a lot of it and then I got married and it started to feel that everything was gone. I didn't realize how expensive married life really is but it is also really nice to share resources. My husband and I both work on Campus.

I do notice that the more we worry about finances the more often we do go out to eat or we go to the store and buy something. I didn't notice this was happening until we talked about that problem in class. It scared me. I wasn't going into any major debt or anything but I noticed that we weren't so well off as we might have believed.

I talked about this with my husband and he agreed we need to sit down and write out a budget. It is SO relieving knowing how much you need to spend and where you are putting your money towards. My husband has taken the Money Management Class last year and remembered a lot from it, which helps a ton.

I'm grateful for the book "One for the money" by Elder Ashton. It was very eye-opening and said to admit that I probably wouldn't have read it unless it was required but I'm grateful that I did and it was definitely worth the read.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

May your crusts be flaky and your turkey juicy. :)

Communication

Every time I study about communication (especially within the family) I realize that much more how incredibly vital it is. I heard once that the highest rate of divorce in the LDS culture were 3 things (which I can only recall 2 at the moment) but all of those were interconnected with communication.

I'm in a Psychology of Effective Living class right now and we were pretty open in this class and I heard from a guy in my class that he has been married now for over 10 years and how much of a struggle it was with him and his wife and how he realized that they did not know how to problem-solve together. They were completely opposite. After he was finished, I talked about how important it is to make sure while you are dating someone to realize the different problem-solving strategies the both of you have... the guy who just finished talking rose his hand again and said "yes, that was the problem. My wife and I didn't ever really date...". This really hit home because Brother Williams has been saying that since Day one in this class that if you do not date then your marriage will become a lot harder in the long run. Soo, please date! And date correctly.

I'm really grateful that my husband and I have dated and have gotten to know each other really well. Even though yes we do struggle at times but I think we have figured out how we communicate and how we need to solve our problems together so it makes things a lot easier.

Now I just need to apply how Brother Ballard teaches how to counsel. That way when we have children it will be very easy to know how to properly counsel within our own family.

Family stressors

I didn't enjoy this weeks lesson too much because it really felt like it got me down. I dont' exactly like focusing on the negative and problems in my family (I mean who does) but I didn't think that I had so many and that sometimes I was bringing out problems in my family that I shouldn't have. Also, I think this week helped me realize that the proper attitude will help you get through family crises without letting it destroy the family.

Make sure you take a moment when you are taking in a problem. Do not let your emotions get ahead of you. I believe that is what the natural man is and what Satan wants you to do. Let the spirit guide your choices and be considerate on how everyone would feel in the situation that you are in. I believe children realize just as much as adults, if not more, of what is happening within the family. So be kind, loving, and tak

e a breathe when making a decision.

Infidelity

This last week in class we talked a lot about infidelity. It kind of took me by surprise about how easy it is to fall into an affair. When the class read the article it talked about two guys who were assigned to work with this girl. They were both happily married and neither of them had the thought of falling in love or having an affair with this girl. One of the men had rules that he had made with his wife about not driving alone with a girl so he always made an excuse to find a ride there. The other guy didn't have a problem with it. It turns out that he did end up falling in love with this girl without even wanting to.
As soon as I read all the prep work for this class, I went and sat down with my husband and we talked about what we would do to prevent fidelity. Neither of us are really worried about fidelity because we are newlyweds but we still talked about it and put down some boundaries. I'm really grateful for that. I'm even more grateful for my spouse and his willingness to understand this problem better with me.

Marriage with a new baby

On Friday, we talked about how much marital status changes once you have a baby. I found it really interesting that some couples completely shut off and don't keep their marriage as strong as they first started. I would think that by having a baby it would help the couples pull closer together. I do like the address that Bro. Williams gave about how to keep your marriage strong. First is to keep dating. Its important to let go of your little baby and take care of your spouse. Go out and have fun. I know a lot of women just wish they could have a good excuse to go out of the house. Ever since I was younger I always remember that Friday night is date night. There is no reason to skip it unless we are in the in hospital. Besides that my parents are out of the house.

Another way to keep your relationship together was to be romantic. Have intimacy. Have intimacy sexually and also with intimacy just with socially. Just write each other love notes. Express your love. Another thing you can do is to just love each other and say that you love each other. A last thing to do is to keep each other involve with the baby. Let your husband take turns with playing the baby or holding the baby. Don't let your husband feel left out. Or if you are the husband get involved and ASK the wife to hold the baby or play with the baby. Your wife will absolutely love it! :)

"Preparing for Marriage"

This week in Family Relations we learned about how to prepare for Marriage. I know I'm already married but it was still very interesting to learn about how this still applies to my life. By learning this week I feel like I can help out those who are still struggling with making that wonderful decision on getting married. 

I learned a TON about cohabiting this week. I always wondered why it was such a struggle for those that cohabit to have a successful marriage afterwards. I learned that there are four different types of cohabiting couples but the main thing I learned was that if you start off cohabiting you and your partner are still living two separate lives. That means when you do eventually get married you are sill more likely to fall back into those habits that you have originally started off with and you will struggle with the idea of the whole concept of marriage which is sharing. Once you get married you are striving to be in unison in everything. You have to learn that it is suddenly not your money that you earn anymore but its own money that we earn. I just found it so interesting that you really need to be careful with how you handle your choices now (before you get married). Cause they will make a huge impact later in life. 

Basically get married first then do the hard part of learning to mesh together. (its more fun that way anyways)

Gender Roles

Today in class we had to read from Chapter 3 on Gender Roles. We discussed the different family types. We talked about if we had come from a traditional household or a more shared role. I think typically families are still on a traditional type of family roles because of what we have been taught in the past and what we still believe to be important roles to certain genders. Although there seems especially in the last few years that has been changing. There is more of a call of equality. There are more working mothers and more stay at home fathers. I just find it interesting that maybe our roles that we have known for centuries is suddenly going to take a major shift in the families.

Immigration Families

I have grown up with hispanic and mexican people all of my life. My family had owned a Mexican Restaurants for over 15 years. We were really good friends with people of this culture and what type of lives they have lived. I do believe that we need to be a little bit more caring and helpful to those that are trying to adjust to our country. I feel like we carry waaay too much bias in our daily life. Let us reach out to others. Be slow to judge and be the better person. Treat them like normal people and be more open-minded about the situation that they are in.

Theories

This week we learned about the different types of theories. I really enjoyed learning this because I'm a psych major with a cluster in sociology so we study theories all the time. I was really thinking about it lately on how I react to my husband and which theory I probably use the most. Its really complicated because I think we all mesh theories all together. I would really love to use dominately the family systems theory. This one obviously seems to take on a more altruistic perspective and more ways to serve those in the family. I would definitely like to not use the exchange theory as much because even though it doesn't have to be a bad thing, I think it can easily lead you into the wrong direction.

Those were just a few thoughts that have gone through my mind this week during class.

My name is Brighton Brooksby. I got married about 2 weeks ago and life is just wonderful. I am taking this class for my cluster and I'm excited to jump into this course. 

So far, this class has helped me think of what I really want out of this class and I know that I really want to strengthen my relationship with my husband. I want to be a better communicator and learn to talk to people and their issues and troubles more fully. I would love to learn how to consult and be much more understanding and caring. I have high expectations for this class and I hope that mind will be open and willing to understand the things that are going to learn in this class. 

Excited

Im excited to start this blog and begin a whole new semester!