Communicators in Zion

Communication takes on many forms in any group, institution, team, company, and other settings. Marriage is certain not estranged to requiring communication in order to function properly. The text mentioned different forms of communication, from verbal and written communication to nonverbal behavior. Verbal communication is the most popular form of communication, in the sense that when we think of the word communication, verbal communication such as conversations and mass forms of communication usually come to mind. The book states, “One way to examine and evaluate an intimate relationship is to view it as an ‘ongoing conversation,’ a process in which the partners strive to influence and understand each other and establish consensual meanings in their life together. One of the difficulties in this process is that words-even common words-do not have a standardized and sing meaning that is the same for everyone.” This brings up an interesting and common issue among communicators. The book mentions, as an example, that the phrase I love you could be understood to mean that you feel a deep attachment, or that you are sexually attracted to the person, or that you find being with the other person a delightful experience. People can grow up in different cultures and different places, therein some use different words in ways and understand words to have different messages than what their intent is. This is especially true when marriages or other types of relationships cross borders and mix different international cultures. Good verbal communication, and unity in understanding each other, takes time and experience to develop. When a woman tells her spouse that she is fine, she is often trying to tell her husband that she is not fine. She doesn’t tell him that though. Some men stop there, ceasing the conversation and their communication. How words are pronounced often dictate what is trying to be said. For example, “okay” said with enthusiasm could show a sign of positivity and excitement, while “okay” said with a drawn on “o” could communicate doubt, hesitation, or that the person had something else in mind but will comply anyway. 

There is, however, another type of communication that takes on a more popular role than verbal communication does. Nonverbal communication, such as body language, social cues, sexual intimacy and other forms of physical touch, and behaviors that communicate messages are at a constant. Each day, we make hundreds of messages without using neither the pen nor the verbal communication discussed above. If our spouse does not realize or understand the message being transmitted through behaviors, effective nonverbal communication is not happening. Often these nonverbal cues are substitutes for verbal communication. Not all nonverbal communication, however, is bad or has negative consequences. Some nonverbal communication is good. The book gives a great example to illustrate this. It reads, “a man may ask his wife if she still loves him, and she may respond by smiling and kissing him; her response, while affirmative, is wordless.” It is none the less good communication. 

Sex is also a topic that benefits from discussion between the two participating partners. The book gives an excellent example. “Chuck and Linda are a fictitious married couple who are having a discussion about their sexual relationship.” In the dialogue, Chuck tells his wife that he believes men have a stronger sex drive than women. When she relies that she doesn’t know why he would say something like that, his answer is simple but vague, “I just think its true.” To which, her response is that she has too much to do to talk about something silly like that. Such conversations can go on endlessly without discussing the real issue. Merely because people are talking doesn’t mean they are communicating. 

Parenting: A Divine Calling

 

In the Family a Proclamation to the world it says, that parents have a sacred duty to rear children in love and righteousness and providing for physical and spiritual needs and teach them to serve and love in and out of the home. God showed us the example of being a parent. The first commandment to Adam and Eve when they were in the garden pertained to their potential for parenthood. What a special and sacred privilege it is for God to trust us enough to raise and help his children. The purposes of parenting are to protect and prepare children to survive and thrive in the world in which they are going to live in. I really like this and think that two important words that I got from it is survive and thrive. My sister in law always says that she kept them alive. I think its ironic because sometimes kids are hard to deal with and just being able to keep them alive feels like a lot of work but it is also about teaching them how to survive and fend for themselves. To teach them how to be self reliant, like how to cook, sew, manage money, how to work, and so on. Raising children is so much more than just watching them and making sure they aren't getting into things they aren't supposed to. Its about teaching them, giving them attention, encouraging them, helping, and most important is making them feel loved. I think its important that when you are teaching children, that they learn from the natural consequences which means without any parental influence. Obviously if they are doing something that is too dangerous or it will affect someone else then the parent would get involved, but other than that its good for kids to see that when they do something that their is always a natural consequence to something whether it is good or bad. I think that is how it processes in their minds. For example, when a child touches the hot stove, their reaction is that it is hot and to not touch it. Usually they won't touch it because they remember the consequence that happened naturally from it. I believe that children a lot of times just need to feel loved and have attention. I think when they don't have the attention needed from their parents is when they feel like they have to stand out and be a class clown in class or have sexual relations with other people to make them feel wanted and loved. When they don't feel love from a parent in the home they feel obligated to find it elsewhere and do stupid things. Everyone needs to feel like they belong and nothing is more important than the feeling that you belong in your home. When I was growing up in my home, my mom was at work most of the time and I was stuck at home with my 7 brothers and my dad who was in prison most of the time. When he came back I was scared to even be in my own home and felt like I didn't belong. My mom is the only one who made me feel loved, without her I would have probably acted out like some of my brothers did. They were pushed out and didn't get the love needed. I think that is super important and as I think about raising my own kids I know that its so important to show the that love and that they know they are loved and Im here for them. When Ii am a parent, I also want to ask them politely and tell them why and what I would like them to do differently. I want to be able to use my words and not be aggressive and react by hitting or just saying no, but explaining why I would rather they didn't do that is really important to me as I will be a parent someday. 

Family crisis!....Now we're stressed out!!!

  What is the difference between stress and distress? How do we cope with all the challenges of life? How is stress a beneficial mechanism to us and our family?

We have all experienced the stress of life, but sometimes stress isn't a bad thing rather it is important and good for us to have stress because it pushes and motivates us to do better. When I got married to my husband and moved in to our apartment it was a huge stress and felt overwhelming to do all the things in preparation for our marriage. Although it was a stress, it was needed and helped us to get the necessary things done. Just like when we feel stressed with our homework, dishes, laundry, etc. I get stressed with the daily tasks of life a lot and sometimes get headaches and have to put stress relief lotion on. It just feels like pressure on my head when I procrastinate to do my homework or to do housework, but I know it has to be done so when I do it  the stress usually goes away.  These are positive stressors and help the family be motivated in getting things done and  pressures us to accomplish our goals. On the other hand, distress is usually caused by an event of some sort and experienced with pain that requires help such as counseling or moral support is needed whether a death in the family, Injury,being abused, etc. When my grandma passed away 2 years ago, it was really hard and I felt pain and missed her because we were really close and was a distress, but it was cool to see the family come together and help each other out during this difficult time. I feel like stress and some distress are a good thing that helps us to cope with it and reach out for help from others, bringing the family closer together when going through hardships, but too much stress can cause health, emotional and physical problems especially when the stressor is caused by self inflicted pain. The brain believes everything you think, so if you tell yourself negative thoughts you are going to be depressed or if you keep worrying about future events that will happen you will probably cause yourself to have anxiety. That's why I think that its important to tell yourself positive affirmations and think positively. Coping means to invest own conscious effort, to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict. There are different ways people cope with stress and distress such as humor, seeking support, denial and just trying to ignore it which actually makes it worse, relaxation, venting, self blame, physical recreation and so forth. Everyone has a different way of coping with problems that works for them. The most important thing I think is to talk and communicate with family members and reach out for help or someone you trust to talk to. Im so thankful that when my grandma passed away that I had so many people to talk to about it in my life and hug to help relieve the pain. 


My husband and I are currently feeling stressed financially with the payments of rent, food, and bills. We are working through it and coping by working hard and budgeting wisely together. My husband works as a mechanic and is doing his best, I work as much as I can to help bring in financial support and we both work for our apartment complex doing the earlier morning snow crew. I think that as we work hard and do something to help solve the problem at hand it reduces our stress and helps us cope with financial decisions. I feel like this stress and challenge of not having a lot of money not only helps us budget better and talk it out, but also brings us closer together and strengthens our marriage. Its a good stress. Its like the fight or flight, we can either decide to run from our problems of face them. Everyone has stressors i life, but it depends on how you cope with them that is important to help relieve them.

The Birds and the Bees

How to teach children about sex in a way that it is okay as long as you are married? What are the differences that men and women feel pleasure during sex? What affect does being raped or molested as a child have in marriage?


It seems that in relationships, or in my family that when my mom talked about sex, it felt like sex was the most important thing in a marriage and that it was at the top of the barometer. She said that as long as you are good in bed, you will be great. Then as I started growing up I felt lost because everyone around me had a education on sex and I did not know anything about it and had to learn from friends and my uncle. I felt embarrassed that my mom didn't teach me one of the things she felt was most important. When I met my husband we had this communication and openness to one another. I think that you have to build this foundation on the relationship of getting to know someone, opening up, communicating, trusting, loving, being committed to marriage, and then the touch and physical desires of intimacy can come out. I think that if you are good at all of these things you are going to be good at sex with your partner and have a strong relationship. If it doesn't have this fundamental foundation in place and sex is all you care about, you wont be as good to knowing the needs and desires of your partner in breaking the basic barriers and most likely will be a struggle to be open and communicate about other things especially if you aren't able to even talk about sex. Not only will it be hard for you to talk about sex to your partner, when you have kids it will be even more difficult. I feel like it is hard to teach children about sex, especially going up in the church where you hear as a child that it is bad and to stay away from it and then the world tells you how amazing and fun it is, making fun of you if you don't have sex. Its so confusing as a child growing up where my mom never talked about it much and I felt all these mixed signals. Which made it really hard for me as I got married I feel like because I felt that I was doing something wrong but at the same time it felt so right. Its hard to explain, but the point is that I wish I would have known more and taught more that sex is wonderful and good within the boundaries of marriage. That it is a special and sacred thing to do with your spouse to grow closer together in becoming one. Bad experiences as a child can have a huge affect on marriage because it places a trust barrier and brings up bad memories which can be very hard for the couple to overcome this belief that sex is only bad and painful because of the way you experienced it by force.  Another thing that is interesting is how men and women feel pleasure and the stages of Excitement, Plateau, and Orgasm differently during sex. In a male it is pretty easy to get him excited just by touching him and arousing thoughts in his brain and orgasms pretty quick and then has this release and break. Women on the other hand, must feel safe and close to someone before they can get excited, when they are excited, there is this plateau stage that feels continuous until it finally reaches orgasm and even then a lot of times it can be multiple orgasms where as men usually can only have one and then have this release. I thought that was interesting and how much sense it makes.

Transition to Early Marital Adjustments

 What are the purposes of marriage? What are the challenges couples face within the first month and year of marriage? 


     When you meet someone and go on multiple dates with them, date exclusively or court, then they purpose and are engaged! This is an important opportunity the two of you have to work together to not only plan a wedding, reception, and honeymoon, but to also plan a LIFE together. A lot of people focus so much on the actual wedding and the reception that I think they sometimes forget what takes place after the 4 hour reception.
In marriage there are a lot of transitions and adjustments that happen after you get married.
People seem to have this illusion that when you get married it is all happy and about having fun. Which you do have fun being with the person you love, but there is also quite a bit of work to do. In the first months and year of marriage there are transitions that take place. A few that I thought of in being married to my husband for two months that we face are financial stress and learning to budget more, learning to balance school, work, temple and still having time for each other to go on dates, tasks of who does what, being with someone that often or letting them in, learning to deal with things when you don't agree with like the way they do something, and sexual relations and learning something your not used to and in the church all growing up sex being not okay and bad and now being married it is okay and a way to connect with your partner. Some of the transitions couples face within being married for a year is that holidays and traditions you have to decide about and how you are going to do it and with who and where your values and priorities lie and all the ones from the first few months that you may still be adjusting to. My husband, Jake and I love each other, but there are still so many things that we are learning about each other and what we prefer and don't like. Its a huge adjustment living with someone else and sharing everything with them especially when for so long you are used to doing things yourself. Its beautiful and special, but also challenging at times. Its work and being able to work together in life, thinking that when you marry it will make life a lot simpler is setting yourself up for failure. Its hard enough just for myself to make decisions and keep life balanced, when adding another person into the equation makes it more complex and confusing. Don't get me wrong, I love being married, it just was and still is a huge adjustment for me. Even though its a transition to make, there are many good reasons to marry someone. Some of the reasons I thought of is to feel loved and to love someone, to bring children into this world and be a family, have someone as a companion and be with you, service, fulfill our potential, it is necessary for exaltation and someone to have sex and please each other in this life. I think that having someone who makes you feel loved is really important to me at least. It helps you to see more in yourself and builds your confidence when you have someone who loves you. I also think that when you love someone you serve them and are a help meet for them. It makes me think about when Adam was in the garden and the lord created a women because it was not good that man should be alone, so he made Eve and provided Adam with a help meet so they can serve each other, learn, grow, and face the challenges of life together. It is such a  blessing for my husband and I to be married even though at times it is rough, it will always be hard but going through life with someone makes the journey so much better.

Last First Date: How to successfully prepare for Marriage

How do we prepare for marriage? How do we know what to look for in a partner? What is a date and how does if differ from hanging out? 

My grandma told me that who you marry is the most important decision I will ever make. I think she is right and I believe that is why it is important to date lots of people and know what qualities you like and are looking for in someone to potentially marry. A lot of times people see how physically attracted they are, but we also see and observe how they treat people and in different situations you can tell a great deal about someone.


In my class, we talked about dating and how to prepare for marriage. I thought it was interesting and felt really good about how my teacher explained it. The first step is dating. In today's world, people are so confused about what dating is and think that if your dating someone you are in a relationship with them. Dating used to be in the 1950's or so and is still the idea of going on dates and getting to know each other, not hanging out with someone, watching a movie and touching for pleasure. I feel like people are sliding there way in to a relationship by hanging out like a baseball player who slides into home base. Hitting the ball as hard as they can and then just run past all the bases so quick and slide in home base as to win. I think that is how people treat dating now days and just hang out and keep sliding their way in. Dating takes time and patience and going through all the bases carefully to find an eternal companion to prepare for marriage the greatest base of all.  Dating is about getting to know your date and involves the three P's and the three T's.  Elder Dallin H. Oaks shares the importance about dating and hanging out by sharing his definition of dating, "for a date to contribute to a pattern that could potentially mature into marriage, it should be paid for, planned ahead and paired off." I really like this and how true it is, a date needs to have thought and planned ahead of time. I found it so cool how much it relates to the Family a Proclamation to the world, how in marriage a father is to Provide, Preside, and Protect. In dating, when he plans he is preparing to preside in the home, when he is paying for the date he is showing he can provide and when he is paired off with you he is able to protect. Its so cool how in essence if you really date and have this in mind, you are preparing for marriage. When going on a date it is important to also have the idea of Talk, Togetherness, and Time. In other words, in getting to know someone you should go on activities of shared interest in which you can be together, its also important to talk and get to know each other, otherwise it will be really awkward. Talk about what you like to do, what you want to accomplish, your beliefs, anything that allows you to open up and just have fun. Spending time getting to know them and giving your evening to your date with undivided attention is helpful and allows you to focus on them. The second step is courtship, which means exclusively dating someone. This is after you have been dating a awhile and when you and your partner define the relationship. Some people may think this is out of style but I think it is necessary to talk about what you are as a relationship and helps to know whether to continue going on dates with them and not lead them on. This stage of the relationship is important and should be focused on seeing if you could marry them by getting know to them better, trusting them, relying on them and then in the engagement stage when he proposes you are committing to them and then in marriage you connect and become one through touch and having sex. I really liked the Relationship Attachment model we learned about in class and how we should know someone more than we trust them, trust them more than we rely on them, be able to rely more than we commit to them, and commit more than we touch them. 

Gender identity: Nature or Nurture

 Is our gender Biologically or physiologically hardwired? Is it Nature or nurture?

Today, the world is so confused about identity and the family. A long time ago, everyone knew that sex meant a biological factor and a way to tell if the baby is a male or a female, we are born male or female. Then we stopped using the word sex to define it because people didn't like that word being repeated and used the word gender instead and said, "What is the gender of my baby"? The word gender has cultural meaning attached to being masculine or feminine which influences personality traits. This turned the question of is gender biological or physiological, in other words are we born the gender we are or do we choose as we grow and develop our personality. Most people think that with new technology in the world today and that being transgender is becoming a normal thing in our society that it makes it right, what they don't understand is the consequences and effects it will have later. I watched a few videos on this topic and it is sad that there are 4-12 year old that "declare their gender" because they don't feel like they belong and accepted as that gender. In one of the videos I watched it was this boy who played with girl toys and wanted to become a girl because his sister who was born after him had disabilities and needed more care and attention, he felt that his parents loved and cared for her more because she is a girl and he wanted to become a girl to get his parents love and attention. I also know from reading that those who have been abused as kids will more likely have problems with their own identity whether it is a boy and his father abused him so he doesn't want to be like him or not wanting to have those memories as you look at yourself so you change your gender. This is a huge problem because I believe that gender is biologically, we are born the way we are and I don't believe you can truly change genders because it is who we are. It is not assigned or developed later in life and that we need to think about what gender we re. Male and females are different because of our brain and how we think. I that we are born the gender we are meant to be and the environment allows us to develop our gender but it doesn't change it rather it strengthens it. In the Proclamation to the world it says, "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternity identity and purpose." We were the same gender in the premortal life and will be in the next life so why would we change it in mortality. Heavenly Father created us this way and knows us so well, he wouldn't mess up on which gender we are. I think that as a female, it makes me better at understanding people and being able to help in feeling compassion for others at times then there are times when I feel aggression and want to just get something done and over with but I am thinking about too many things. I think that is why men are better at getting the task they are doing done because they focus on one thing at a time and women are better at connecting and understanding people is because they focus more on relationships and how everything connects. That is why men and women compliment and complete each other because they see things different and work together as a team. That is how I see it with me and my husband. Its like sister Dew says in her talk that your hands work together and compliment each other because they are exact opposites.

I thought this picture was funny because this is how I thought it was, but the world thinks there are like 70 different genders that exist. I thought it was interesting how society comes up with all kinds of things rather than just accepting themselves as they are.