Great Marriage Goals for the New Year

The content of this article has been adapted/expanded from "Simple Yet Powerful New Year's Revolutions" by Jim, originally article available here.

Great Marriage Goals for the New Year

1. Regularly show that you love your spouse.

• Daily: Say, “I love you!” at least three times a day.

• Daily: Say "I love you!" through touch. A soft stroke or caress on the cheek, arm, or shoulder as you’re passing by says, “I acknowledge you and value you!”

• Weekly: Say "I love you!" through written communication. Try email, a post-it note, a secreted love letter, a message on the bathroom mirror or window, Facebook, a hidden card in a lunch box, or a card slipped in a purse.

2. Rekindle the Flame of Courtship

• Open the door for your wife (both at home and at the car) .

• Kiss your wife/ husband goodbye each time you leave home.

• Hold hands as much as possible.

• Pray together before bed.

• Call your wife/ husband during the day for no other reason than to keep in touch.

• Take time to properly greet your spouse after work. Hug, kiss, and cuddle. Take just a few minutes give undivided attention to each other and share news.

3. Plan a Getaway

• Sit down together with your spouse and plan a weekend away as your own personal mini-marriage retreat.

• Be creative to stick within your financial means. Have the kids away for a weekend, and just stay home—but refuse to answer the phone, get distracted by email or Facebook, or watch TV. Or plan a night window shopping at a favorite store, a picnic at the park, or a candlelit dinner and special movie. Even a romantic stoll can be a great mini-getaway.

4. Read a marriage enrichment book together.

• Read aloud and take turns reading a few pages a night.

• Allow the book to open discussion topics. Make comments and suggestions on how your marriage is going and how you might apply the material to your relationship.

5. Say "Thank You"

• Take time to thank your spouse for making and keeping these relationship goals with you.

• Say "Thank you" for the little things your spouse does to help you and show love to you throughout the day. Never take your marriage for granted!

The Good Old Days?

This is so funny. I especially love, "If he is unhappily devoid of the colour sense, he must be forcibly restrained" and "Manliness is not a purely physical quality."

P.S. I wish my husband was "successful with his chickens" just so I could tell him so!

Book Review: The Relationship Seasons, by Matthew O. Richardson

The Relationship Seasons: Navigating the 5 Stages of Relationships by Matthew O. Richardson. Published in 2008 by Leatherwood Press (Sandy, UT). ISBN: 978-1-59992-017-7. $16.95, 192 pages.

The Relationship Seasons is an instructive, doctrinal-based guide to romantic relationships. The back cover identifies Richardson’s audience as those seeking romantic relationships, involved in romantic relationships, “or trying to guide [their] children through the dating years.” Although Richardson’s instruction is sound, helpful, and encouraging, his audience is a little mixed. His first few chapters seem to be only for parents while the rest of the book is better instruction for young people. It takes a bit of navigating to find the right places in the book that apply to you, but then Richardson’s ideas are very helpful. This confusing of audiences makes you wish Richardson had written two books—one for parents and one for young people—rather than trying to tackle both audiences in The Relationship Seasons. As it is, each audience will just have to point themselves to the applicable part of the book for themselves, after which they will surely find great counsel and instruction.

HBO's Big Love and LDS Temple Misrepresentation

On Sunday, March 15, 2009, HBO will be airing a segment of their Big Love series titled Goin' to the Chapel. In this segment, they will be showing individuals dressed in temple clothing, and they are planning on sending secret cameras in to the temple to show the inside of the temple itself.

Please help stop HBO from airing such an offensive show! You can go to the link below to submit a comment to HBO.

http://www.hbo.com/apps/submitinfo/contactus/submit.do?title=GeneralInformation&questiontype=generalInformation&questiontype=general

Please go here to see the Church's official statement on this event: http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/the-publicity-dilemma

Below is the message I sent:

Dear HBO,

I am writing to ask you not to air the new segment scheduled to appear on "Big Love" on Sunday March 15.

I fear that the segment you wish to present is inaccurate and offensive to many people throughout the world that are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We hold our marriage and other religious ceremonies performed in our holy temples as sacred rites directed by God.

Although only recommend-holding members of the Church are authorized to enter dedicated temples, we welcome the public to visit our temple open houses. Information about our temples and open houses are available at: http://www.lds.org/temples/home/0,11273,1896-1,00.html.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I ask you to respect our beliefs and practices by not making a public display of what we hold sacred. If you are interested in learning more about our Church and what we believe, from the source, please visit the website above and Mormon.org.

Thank you for listening to the request of a concerned citizen and Church member. In our country we believe in freedom of religion. I believe this means that we also believe in not persecuting people's beliefs through misrepresentation and ridicule in the media.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Ricks

Book Review: Behind the Smiling Faces

Behind the Smiling Faces: An LDS Perspective on Marriage and Divorce by Renita Clark Cassidy and Alan Cassidy, 264 pages. Published by Leatherwood Press (Sandy, UT), 2008. ISBN: 978-1-59992-127-3. Retail price: $16.95.

Behind the Smiling Faces contains advice, instruction, and experiences from eleven marriage and counseling professionals and over eighteen “ordinary” Latter-day Saint couples. Even if the title is misleading and the book’s scope is very broad, the wide-ranged and varied content of Behind the Smiling Faces accomplishes the goal of the authors to represent the “people” we see all the time—“the men and women who worship with you on Sunday. . . . your family and friends. . . .[or] even you” and how “some . . . smiles reflect and inner peace and joy” while other “smiles mask . . . pain” (11).

My assumption in reading the title of this book, and seeing the cover photograph, was that it would be a depressing soapbox about how the common LDS view of the importance of a “perfect” marriage is flawed. This assumption was incorrect. Instead, this book is a compilation of information striving to demonstrate the realities of marital challenges and joys in an LDS context.

What’s the difference? For the most part, Behind the Smiling Faces is very encouraging, despite what the cover art depicts. I loved reading the advice from LDS marriage and counseling professionals included in Behind the Smiling Faces, many of whose books I have also read or heard of.

The biggest problem I found with this book is the scope is extremely broad. At first I felt like the book was written for people preparing for marriage, then for people who were married and needed advice and encouragement (don’t we all?), then for people who were thinking about divorce, and then for people who have already gone through a divorce. Because Behind the Smiling Faces tries to cover all of these circumstances, I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving it to anyone in any of those groups. For example, the divorce parts would be big downers for people preparing to get married, and the marriage prep advice would be salt in the wound for recent divorcees.

Thus the only audience that Behind the Smiling Faces fits is marriage enthusiasts, like the authors, professionals quoted in the book, and anyone else interested in learning everything the authors could think to include about an LDS perspective on marriage, but readers would need to be without any severe emotional ties to the topic.

I was also disappointed that most of the book is in interview format—questions followed by answers. I would prefer that the marriage and counseling professionals and interviewed couples would have just written their own chapters instead of the authors breaking up what they have to say.

Behind the Smiling Faces is far from a bad read, but it is confusing. Reading the author’s preface, “Words to the Why’s” (besides the fact that it should be "Whys") is definitely essential and helped me realize what the book was trying to do. I loved the compilation-type content from LDS marriage and counseling professionals as well as the real-life stories from couple interviewees, but because Behind the Smiling Faces tries to cover too much it’s not quite right for any specific audience.

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