Sexual Intimacy

Sex can be a wonderful, sacred experience. 

The best way for that to happen is for sexual intimacy to occur only between a husband and wife who are married. I'm recently married and I'm so grateful that both my husband and I waited until we were married to have sex. It made the experience so much more special and meaningful since it was the first time for the both of us. It gave us the opportunity to learn and grow together and become one.

Since male and female response cycles are so different, it takes time to learn about each other's needs and wants. A common misconception is about women's response cycles. Sex has to be a decision for a woman. They have to feel safe, emotionally connected, and have nonsexual touches outside the bedroom to decide to have sex. Once a woman decides, then the men must include the talk and touch. For a woman to have any desire, she needs to have that emotional connection and touching outside the bedroom. This makes her feel safe and loved and more comfortable to give of herself to her husband. 

There are benefits to being so different though. This gives the spouses an opportunity to think about the other person and their needs more. The more selfless you are, the closer relationship you will have. Once a couple puts in an effort to understand each other and talk to each other, they can be on the same page. When this happens, when a husband and wife can understand each other and know how to help the other, it will make sex that much more satisfying!

Adjustments in the Early Years of Marriage

When a couple first gets married, there's a lot of adjustments and transitions that need to be made. The main question that gets asked in some form or another is, "Where do we set boundaries?" 

I think the biggest boundary that needs to be set is the fact that a couple needs to have transparency. This means that when people ask about intimate things in another couple's marriage, that couple needs to be honest to the person asking that certain things are only between the husband and wife. This also means that if the husband or wife is upset at the other, that they shouldn't go to friends or mom and dad and vent to them. Even if the couple has gotten past what happened, other people might still be stuck on it and won't forget what happened, whether big or small. 

The solution to this: communication is key! A husband and wife just need to talk to each other FIRST. Since I'm newly married, I've seen this firsthand. A lot of our problem was that we weren't being as honest and open as we should've been about our feelings and thoughts and that lead to miscommunications and misperceptions on both of our parts. We would've saved a lot of time if we would've just talked about it as things happened rather than waiting until feelings had been hurt. 

Another major adjustment in a marriage is when kids start to come. Babies can bring so much joy into a family's life, and yet a lot of couples find that their satisfaction in marriage decreases after each child is born. This can be because of many different reasons. Some of these include the fact that the baby needs constant attention and so the mother's attention is often more focused on the baby. This often makes the father feel like he's not involved and he feels left out. A lot of misperceptions end up happening on both ends, which makes each spouse less "satisfied" in the marriage. 

There's lots of ways that this can be avoided though. The main thing would be that the mother should encourage the father to be very involved during the pregnancy and after the child is born, and the father should make sure he's doing his best to be involved. Before the birth, the father can go to all the doctor appointments and the mother can make sure she's scheduling the appointments around the father's school or work schedule. During the birth, the mother should rely on her husband, more than her mother or other women in her life. This can be an incredible bonding experience, so it's important that the husband is being the one involved and not someone else. After all, it's not just her baby. It's their baby! After the birth, each spouse should be attentive to each other's needs and look for opportunities to love and serve the other, especially since babies can make both parents so tired and worn out. The father can help take care of the child and bond with it at the same time. When couples take the time to love each other and include the father in the important, bonding times with the child, marital satisfaction won't go down but can actually increase.

To me, families take a lot of time and communication. It's so important to always be looking for opportunities to serve and love each other. A spouse and their wants and needs  should come before anything else!

Dating and Preparing for Marriage

Nowadays it seems as though it's getting harder and harder for people to have successful marriages. Personally, I think part of it might be that the dating world has changed and the definition of dating has changed. I think this could contribute to people struggling more in marriage. 

Some people genuinely want to find someone to love and marry. Others may just care more about the physical aspects of a relationship. I know in my high school NCMOs (noncommittal make outs) were really popular and people thought it was fun and cool. For a relationship to truly work and be healthy, it needs to start at a certain place and progress in a certain order. The Relationship Attachment Model (RAM) is the perfect example of this. Dr. John Van Epp created this believing that this is how a relationship should progress in order to survive and survive happily.

The first is "know." How does a relationship start without knowing that person? 

The second is "trust." The more you know someone, the more you trust them. 

(Each aspect builds off of the one immediately previous)

The third aspect is "rely." The more you trust someone, the more you can rely on them to 
meet your needs, whether that's in a friendly relationship or romantic. 

Fourth is "commit." 

Let me ask a question. 

Have you ever committed to someone before you really knew them? Dated after just meeting? And how did that work out? This may sound harsh, but it probably didn't. Why? 
Because these aspects of relationships were unbalanced and out of order. 

The fifth is "touch." If this comes first, then there is no base and support for the relationship. I mentioned make-out buddies or one night stands. Why do they exist? Because people start the relationship at touch and try to work backwards. It does not work that way and it shouldn't. Without a solid foundation of knowing them building into trust, trust becoming reliance, reliance leading you to commit, and LASTLY commitment leading to touch, a relationship is not healthy. 

My advice to you? Start at the very beginning. Build a friendship that has the strength to support the other aspects of a building relationship, especially if you want it to lead to marriage.

Gender Roles

Most people would tend to describe female tendencies as:

Emotionally expressive, cooperative, detail-oriented, relationally-oriented (how things are in relation to each other), and typically better at language and writing.

Most people would tend to describe male tendencies as:

Physical/aggressive, competitive/active, gross-oriented (sees things in the "bigger picture"), spatially/task-oriented, and typically better at mathematics and logic. 

That being said, there's ALWAYS people who are an exception to the natural tendencies, and there's also a range of each "category." It's ok if someone is different than the "typical" male or female, that's what makes us all different and unique. We have to be careful not to treat them different because we think they are "different."

So if men and women are so different, why would God assign/demand that they create a family together?

I think President Gordon B. Hinckley put it beautifully when he said, "In His grand design, when God first created man, He created duality of the sexes. The ennobling expression of that duality is found in marriage. One individual is complementary to the other. As Paul stated, 'Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord' (1 Corinthians 11:11). There is no other arrangement that meets the divine purposes of the Almighty. Man and woman are His creations. Their duality is His design. Their complementary relationships and functions are fundamental to His purposes. One is incomplete without the other."

Men and women are pretty much opposites to complement each other. Based of The Family: A Proclamation to the World, women are best fit to be the nurturers of the children and men are to provide for, protect, and preside over the family. That doesn't mean that the husbands and wives don't help each other. Husbands and wives are supposed to be equal partners and work as a team to make their family work. It's amazing because our tasks/abilities go along with how our brains tend to be wired. 

Husbands and wives round each other out and are able to provide both sides of the spectrum. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't be able to reach our full potentials and help each other learn and grow. For example, a wife may be more detail-oriented and focusing a lot on the here and now. The husband can them come in and help her see the "bigger picture." This also goes for the children as well as the parents. Children need both parents to be able to create the perfect environment for them to learn and grow.

Here's a funny explanation of male and female brains called, The Tale of Two Brains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XjUFYxSxDk