Homework:  

1. Read the Marriage Parable:  Alma 32:37-43
2. Women...plan a "hot" date - something different that you haven't done in awhile.  It's can't be electronic.  You plan it.  You get the babysitter.  You take care of all the things. 
3. Sometime this week have a "remember when..." conversation with your spouse. 
4. Use a white board and write specific things you love and appreciate about your spouse with no expectation of it be reciprocated.
5. Read "What Lack I Yet?"  by Larry Lawrence.  Ask...what do I need to do to nourish the marriage.

​How did you do on your homework?
 
Class member:  It was really hard because my husband works nights so it was hard to be able to ask him what I could do for him. 
 
Class member:  I attempted the criticism because I criticize a lot.  I am not a sympathetic person.  I found out it was an epic fail!  I was really good when no one was around me and when I was focused on the things of the Lord.  I realized what caused criticism for me.
 
It’s not a fail if we learn something from it.
 
Class member:  I noticed with the criticism that I didn’t say it outloud, but I thought it in my head. 
 
A goal you might have it content communication.  Could you do this one task?  Would you mind doing ____? See if that helps pull you out of the critical thoughts. 
 
When I’m having critical thought I say, “What is it that I want from him?”  Sometimes I’m just frustrated. Sometimes it’s just that I want to complain.  I need to make me happy, but don’t make him responsible for that. 
 
Class member:  I’ve been working on the criticism thing between my husband.  We have lost some close family and it’s made us look again at my marriage.  Our marriage has been rough.  What I noticed is that when I was with some of my friends there was some high level of criticism.  I was very much aware of my conversations with people and I tried to step back and not be involved in it.  I’ve been working on being appreciative of life in general.  We can change the course of conversations just by our attitude. 
 
You are exactly right.  In our conversations among good people we find fault.  One person can have great power.
 
Class member:  I was listening to a podcast and she said, “The secret to parenting is momentum”.  When we change ourselves and our behaviors the natural effect is to trickle down to others. We have had our share of trials in our family and sometimes those trials put us in survival mode.  We don’t have time to worry about how our relationships are doing.  I’ve learned that our attitudes can set the tone for how our homes are.
 
This is truth!  We only have power over changing ourselves.  We can’t force anyone to change.  As you are making those changes in yourself because you want your relationships to be better, if your goal is to get them to be better because you are changing you will be disappointed.  You have to set that goal with pure intent.  It’s not attached.  You do it because you need to make you a Celestial person.  You have to make you a better person.  What is a Celestial person?  It’s someone who serves. 
 
When you evaluate your success in marriage what they perceive as truth in marriage is his truth.  You can have a lot of men who feel like they are very successful in marriage because they have provided you a lot of things, but you may feel misunderstood or alone.  To evaluate marriage you have to look at the other person.  It’s not a good marriage if one half is feeling like there are needs that are not being met. 
 
Class member:  Wouldn’t you argue in the same sense that it’s up to us to make sure our needs are being met on our own.
 
This is where content communication really comes in.  It’s a two-way street. 
 
 Class member:  I sat in a class at education week with a marriage therapist.  He sat in with the Stake President at marriage and he said that she doesn’t have to choose you in heaven.  When you are dating you act like you want them to choose you, but after 50 years in marriage would they want to choose you again.  Are you behaving that way? I heard, “Your job is to make yourself good and your spouse happy, not make yourself happy and your spouse good.”  I felt lighter and happier when I focused on only the good things to cast out the criticism.  I realized I’m happier when I look for happy things.  If I could make that my focus all my time things would be much better. 
 
The key is to develop a grateful heart. If you are really critical think about gratitude and the criticism goes away. 
 
I was talking to a lady that had grown up in the same community with her husband.  He went on a mission and got married 3 weeks after his return.  After 5 years her husband died and she hasn’t remarried, but she thinks about him all the time and acts like she is still married to him.  We all have trials.  It’s what we do with the trials. 

You either give birth to or marry your biggest problems in life.  That doesn’t mean anything is bad or good.  Most of us just go into marriage with unreal expectations.  We as parents need to teach realistic expectations of marriage. 
 
From the time they are little we say you need to get baptized, go on your mission, remain chaste, find a missionary, and then get married in the temple.  We teach them up to there.  With no other teachings their teaching comes through romance novels and they create unreal expectations in married and unmarried women.  Hallmark movies are always “happily ever after”.  Or they have you as a role model.  They leave saying ours is going to be different. 
 
Part of teaching them to work and do service and gratitude…this is teaching them real life.  We are raising our children with unreal expectations.
 
My guess is that within the first 3 years marriage was a shocking experience for you.  Somewhere along the line there was a moment of discovery that you said, “This isn’t what I thought this was going to be.”  Most couples within the first 5 years say, “This isn’t what I expected or wanted.”  This doesn’t mean that you are wanting to get a divorce or leave.  It’s interesting what you do in that discovery.
 
When you first start dating the person you are going to marry you are exclusive.  You know this is the person you want to be with.  This is the ‘infatuation’ period.  When you are engaged or just barely married.  You came to discover there is a lot of really good people out there that are a 10, but maybe not your 10.  They aren’t bad people.  They just aren’t your 10.  When you find what fits you look at that person and you see that there is 80% of that person that you adore and you can’t live without.  The other 20% are their irritants.  You think those are ‘no big deal’.  Usually it’s about an 80-20. 
 
You get married and you are in the “Infatuation” period.  You don’t need anything.  You can live on soup.  Then you click into the busyness, school, kids, work, and they are now in a different box as you get down the road a little bit.  By the end of 5 years that’s when you figure out what love is.  When you are in infatuation that is not love, you don’t have to think about them.  When you are growing out of that into ‘real life’ usually around 3-5 years they are so busy you say, there isn’t time for us.  How come I don’t feel Hallmark love at the end of the movie when I wake up now.  Sometimes we start to think we are falling out of love.  That’s not true.
 
Lynn Robbins was the sealer in my nephew’s marriage.  He said, “You don’t fall out of love.  Do you fall out of kindness?  To fall out of kindness means you quit doing kind things.  If you fall out of love you have quit doing loving things”
 
Pg 100 Syllabus Quote
 
It’s not that you just suddenly fall out of love.  Things have been happening slowly along the way that are not up to your unreal expectations so you start sliding out of the feelings of love. 
 
It’s to examine yourself.  You cannot listen today for your spouse only listen about yourself.  Then we compare what we have to our unread expectations and we become disillusioned.  We start to blame and criticize.  Part of this problem is from the fact that no where in your life have you seen in a role model a relationship of equals.  You don’t know how to be a relationship of equals. 
 
When you are a child you have a parent-child relationship.  The parent tells you what to do to be better. If you go into the work field you have a boss-employee relationship.  The boss has the right to tell you what to do.  If you go into a relationship of marriage that is a relationship of equals, but you haven’t experienced that before.  The reason friendships flow more smoothly is because there are no expectations.  We get into a marriage and we are bringing in expectations.  They may be unreal, but we are bringing them in.  We revert back to what we know…we fall back to the ‘parent’ role and help them be a better them….consciously or unconsciously we start telling them what to do.
 
“You just need to spend more time with the kids.  Could you watch less TV?  Could you wear better clothes?”  Then we go after them with little picks, “Do we have to have the TV on again?  Are you watching TV again?”  You have taken on the “parent” role for righteous reasons to help them be better. 
 
When you come to a relationship as an equal you just accept who they are and what they are.  You accept them where they are and then negotiate what you still want.  We don’t live parallel lives.  You are living in the same house and side by side, but no longer intertwined.  He is involved in his calling and work.  You are involved in your calling and children.  This is the norm!  This is what happens.  Your life stays parallel until the children leave home and then they get divorced.  They aren’t connected anymore. 
 
What causes that and how can I prevent that?
 
Women are given the spiritual gifts to maintain the balance of the marriage.  That is part of the commandment that you are given to ‘nurture’ in the Proclamation.  You are to nurture you marriage as well as your children.  Satan doesn’t want us to succeed.  If he can break down the mother/wife/woman and make you miserable he is going to take the gifts Heavenly Father has given you is to use them on yourself.
 
We tend to focus on their flaws.  We are forever doing this little pin prick.  It isn’t always verbal.  If it’s mental it’s affecting how you feel. 
 
Keeping score.  How come you ‘babysit’ and I just have to do kids all the time? How come I’m the one that has to call the babysitter?  Why do I have to call everyone to family prayer?  Why do I always prepare the FHE lesson?  Have you ever felt those thoughts?   If you are equals and you are giving emotional gifts you don’t keep score.  You give them freely.
 
Silent treatment….this is an adult temper tantrum.  You don’t want to argue you just quit talking.  You can’t resolve problems if no one is talking. 
 
Separate activities, blaming, workaholic, too tied to parents (more with newly weds).  The scriptures say, “Leave and cleave”.  How many of us emotionally cleave to our spouse?  Is your loyalty and commitment 100% to your spouse and not to someone else?
 
You have to let your spouse be where they are.  Then what?  How do you do this?
 
President Uchtdorf, “Lord is it I?”
Larry Lawrence “What lack I yet?”
 
Before we condemn our spouse we need to look at ourselves and see where we are at.  We need to expect a great deal of ourselves and accept who we married.  We only get to set goals for ourselves.  You are frustrated because they aren’t meeting the goal you have set for them. You need to present it without it being an unreal expectation. 
 
Men are different than women.  They think different, act different, feel different.  We cripple them and set them up for failure because of how we treat them.  We expect them to act like we are then we condemn them when they don’t act like us.  Women you have to get out of self pity.  You have to take responsibility for making your marriage work.
 
You get married because, “They make you happy.”  After you are married you feel responsible to “make them good.”  Our responsibility is to make them happy and make us good.  It’s not their responsibility to make you happy.  We set them up for failure if we hold them accountable for something that is not their responsibility.
 
President Hinckley said, “Marriage is an anxious concern for the comfort and well being of one’s companion.” 
 
What does ‘anxious’ mean?  It is committed, deep, serious, always, constantly. 
 
If you are anxious about one of your children do you ever not think about them?  Are you doing that about your spouse? You are focused on their well being and comfort.  It causes us frustration when they don’t focus on our well being and comfort.  That isn’t part of the equation. 
 
When does someone care about me?  Did that thought cross your mind?  Do you see how we just turned it back around to us?  When it’s focused in you will get sad.  When you focus out your bucket will get filled as a bi-product of enriching the marriage.  When you go at it like the focus on the marriage you won’t get it.  You will get it if you go at it by being focused on them.
 
Syllabus---Pg 103  Things to Perk Up Your  Marriage….
Lives need to be intertwined, but equal.   These are things you can do.
 

• Remember what you did when you were dating….and play the ‘remember game’ with them.  You have fun memories.  Recall them.  Share them.  Bring them back.  As you recall and talk about them those feelings come back to you.  That is a recall of how you felt in that moment.  It helps when you share those back.  You can do this at the dinner table.  They need to know that you love each other.  You are doing it because you want to bring back a happy memory.  If they don’t come up with another one…no big deal.

 

• Do not take offense where none is intended.  Men speak to facts.  They don’t talk to emotions.  You have to stay in it long enough to make it work.  President Uchtdorf’s story about the crocheted doily.  She had chosen not to take offense.  That is the key.  They may say something that is offensive.  Men sometimes just don’t understand feelings.  Our responsibility is to help them understand those feelings.

 

• Live within your means.  Avoid debt.  “Fix it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do.  Or do without.”  When we complain it makes them feel inadequate. 

 

• Maintain complete fidelity and trust.  This means media.  Don’t give big hugs to the opposite sex.  Chats online with the opposite sex.  There should never be any doubt in your spouses mind about your fidelity.  They need to know where you are going, who you will be with.

 

• Live the gospel.  It’s your responsibility to make you good.  If he isn’t reading his scriptures you read yours.  You need to build you.  Have good personal prayers.  Reading the Ensign.  Go to the temple.  Make your husband happy because that’s charity and the gospel. 

 

• Daily look for the good in your spouse.  This is living in gratitude daily.  Take the white board and put it up for your spouse.  Every day write something that you appreciate about them.  Some little thing.  It does lift them.  It is to help you break the habit of thinking negatively about them every day.  Look to validate them in the little things you do.  The more you do this the softer your heart becomes.

 
Class member:  One year we were going through a very difficult time for our family.  I wrote in a notebook and gave it to him for Christmas.
 

• Spend time together.  No electronics.  Go for a walk together. Just spend time reconnecting together.  Regularly spend time together.  Weekly date night is a good idea!!!  Make this a principle of your marriage.  It doesn’t have to be spending money.  It means you have time to be together and reconnect.  When you were dating you never ran out of things to talk about.  You didn’t talk about children or marriage or bills or the honey-do-list.  What should we talk about?  Read a book, read an article, learn something, talk about ideas, dreams, missions.  We forget how to just to happy talk.  Our talks now are logistics and correction.  Remember how to laugh together!  You used to have fun.  Go bowling.  Go miniature golf.  You weren’t afraid to have fun.  Have fun!   

 

•  Learn your spouse’s Love Language.  Words of Affirmation, Quality Gifts, Act of Service, Physical Touch.  Usually you give what you want.  You need to know what your love language is and you have to know what theirs is.  Help each other discover each others.  The second part is…together you have to come to an agreement of when enough is enough.  We have to talk about things.  If my love language is ‘acts of service’ and I want him to help me clean out the garage.  Men need an entrance and an exit.  “Could you give me 3 hours Saturday morning?”  He will be more likely to say yes.  At noon if the garage isn’t done it has to be enough.  If he chooses to go in and watch TV the rest of the afternoon it’s ok.  He kept his part.  You have to say what you want.  We think…”If you love me you would….”  It’s not a guessing game.  “It was a hard day.  Could you just hold me for a minute?”  If you are asking for talk time you need to have something ready to start the conversation.  If we don’t say what we want or what we mean offense can be taken. 

 

• Meet and greet at the crossroads.

 

• Be kind.  Tell your face you are happy you married him.  Sing occasionally.  Let them know you are happy to be in this home.  Have a happy spirit and let them see that. 

 

• Take responsibility for your own emotional well being.  Women need to talk more than men do.  Women need to have a good friend and spend time with happy people other than their spouse.  They need to have a hobby and have happy outlets.  You need to be responsible for your own happiness.  They cannot make them feel anyway.  Don’t hold them accountable for your happiness.  It’s a mental pinging that we are doing.

 

• This is an eternal relationship.  We need to tell them how grateful we are to be sealed to them.  Attend the temple with them.  Express the gratitude that the family is sealed, that they have the priesthood, and that you are grateful in their home.

 
HOMEWORK:

• I want you to go 24 hours without criticizing.  No thoughts or words.  If you immediately change your thought that’s ok.  If you criticize you have to start over.  No critical thought for 24 hours.  How long does it take you to be able to go 24 hours with no criticism. 
• Read Lynn Robbins October 2000 Ensign “Agency and Love In Marriage”
• Every morning I want you to ask yourself concerning your spouse…. “What can I do to make your day better?”  Ask your spouse verbally.

As we move into the last days, this topic will have greater discrepancies in it.  The church is not changing.  The gospel is not changing.  Until the Lord changes it the brethren can’t change it because public opinion changes.  The world and the church used to be pretty close in the morals and beliefs.  The world is going to start pulling away from the church.  We used to say, “We used to get along.  Can’t we still get along?”  The church is remaining the same, but the world is moving so the distance between them are much further apart.
 
The truth is, Satan is doing his job and the Lord is doing his job.  As those things happen it will feel like we are splitting.
 
Elder David A Bednar,   “Marriage Is Essential To His Eternal Plan”
“The adversary’s attacks upon eternal marriage will continue to increase in intensity, frequency, and sophistication.  Because today we are engaged in a war for the welfare of marriage and the home…”
 
There is a great weeding out that will come in the church.  That’s the parable of the virgins.  They were all ‘card carrying’ virgins, but 5 of them weren’t prepared.  They were all invited, but not prepared.  We have to be careful in our own testimonies.  Satan is smart.  We’ve heard the prophecy that the Lord will hasten his day because even the very elect will be deceived. 
 
I want to talk about the difference the Lord has in the plan between men and women.  If we understand the plan then maybe this won’t be as big an obstacle if we have this understanding.
 
In the Proclamation of the Family…gender was ordained before this mortal world. 
 
President Faust  “How Near To The Angels”
“We made certain commitments and that we agreed to come to this earth with great, rich, but different gifts. We were called, male and female, to do great works with separate approaches and separate assignments.”
 
Maxwell  “The Women of God”
“We men know the women of God as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, associates, and friends. You seem to tame us and to gentle us, and, yes, to teach us and to inspire us. For you, we have admiration as well as affection, because righteousness is not a matter of role, nor goodness a matter of gender. In the work of the Kingdom, men and women are not without each other, but do not envy each other, lest by reversals and renunciations of role we make a wasteland of both womanhood and manhood.”
 
Spencer W Kimball  “Women of the Church”
“We had full equality as his spirit children. We have equality as recipients of God’s perfected love for each of us.”
 
 
An eternal marriage and Godhood are both parts…the crust and the filling of a pie.  Both parts are different and bring different things to the pie.  We cannot become a God without a man and a woman.  Godhood is both.  It’s 2 parts different from each other, but both parts are necessary. 
 
It’s not ‘why don’t women get the priesthood?’  We each have our own part to play.  We need to have thanksgiving for what we have and magnify what we have.  We need to learn to honor and magnify their part. 
 
Men need women to magnify their part.  That is part of the gifts Heavenly Father has given to women.  It’s equal, but different.  It’s supposed to be different.
 
 “The Keys & Authority of The Priesthood”  Dallin H. Oaks
The greatest power God has given to His sons cannot be exercised without the companionship of one of His daughters, because only to His daughters has God given the power “to be a creator of bodies … so that God’s design and the Great Plan might meet fruition.” Those are the words of President J. Reuben Clark.
 
He continued: “This is the place of our wives and of our mothers in the Eternal Plan. They are not bearers of the Priesthood; they are not charged with carrying out the duties and functions of the Priesthood; nor are they laden with its responsibilities; they are builders and organizers under its power, and partakers of its blessings, possessing the complement of the Priesthood powers and possessing a function as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.”
 
Satan wants to destroy that process of coming together in unity.  He wants to make us unhappy and dissatisfied. 
 
Do you remember when Laman & Lemuel and they were talking about the Tree of Life.  The brothers came to him and said why don’t we understand it.  He said, “Did you enquire of the Lord?”  If we have a problem with it and don’t understand it have you enquired of the Lord? 
 
It takes humility because you have to be willing to hear what the Lord is saying.  If I say, “Teach me the plan” with an open mind you can get an interpretation of the vision.  If this is a struggle with you, the answer is the same, “Enquire of the Lord” without a predetermined answer.  He wants to share it with you.  If you ask him in a way that you think you know and you are going to give the answer first He will not be mocked.  You can find out if you have real intent.  You can find out from him and not some group at Temple Square protesting about not having the Priesthood.
 
Eternal Marriage Student Manual
“You [women] were not created to be the same as men. Your natural attributes, affections, and personalities are entirely different from a man’s. They consist of faithfulness, benevolence, kindness, and charity. They give you the personality of a woman. They also balance the more aggressive and competitive nature of a man.
 
“The business world is competitive and sometimes ruthless. We do not doubt that women have both the brainpower and skills—and in some instances superior abilities—to compete with men. But by competing they must, of necessity, become aggressive and competitive. Thus their godly attributes are diminished and they acquire a quality of sameness with man” (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 547–48).
 
The world says, “Let’s fight for the rights of women so they can be just like a man.”  You can go to war and be a soldier.  In the Book of Mormon the men went to war to protect the lives of women and children.  As we create that equality we lose the attributes of femininity. 
 
Divine Role Between Men & Women
 
We are doing this so you have understanding, but not so you can criticize and complain.  This is not to give you self righteousness.  You can become self righteous after you have all the things learned that I give you. 
 
Heavenly Father has given us a hand book.  It’s tough, but he’s given it to us. 
 
Proclamation on the Family
Men---Preside, Provide, Protect
 
1 Nephi 3:7---I won’t give you any commandments without a way to accomplish them.  Heavenly Father gave us gifts to be able to do this.
 
To Preside—men were given the gift of the priesthood.  They need that authority.
 
To Protect—strong bodies.  1 Peter 3:7    Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
 
To Provide—they are logical & competitive & aggressive. 
 
Class member:  Many years ago I saw a documentary.  Men’s brains are linear.  It goes in a straight pattern.  Women pull from all different parts of their brain.  Even science has proved it. 
 
We have to understand that it is a gift.  With these gifts Satan works hard to tweak them and disrupt them so that they will destroy a man.  The same thing happens with a woman.  That is how Satan can most effectively tempt men and women differently. 
 
Women---Nurture
 
Men preside in a mental/physical world.  Women nurture in an emotional world. 
 
The attributes that we have are related to feelings.  Women look at life in feelings.  Men look at life in facts.  These are good things, but it creates major differences in us.
 
Gifts given…charity, sensitivity, kind, compassionate, see the big picture, feel spiritual things.
 
If a man is stressed typically he likes to withdraw.  If he has a problem at work or something he is thinking about, he withdraws and figures it out then will present the solution to you.  He likes to have it fixed in his head before he presents it to you. 
 
Example:  Your husband comes home from work.  What happened today?  You can sense that something was wrong.  He says everything is fine.  When you go to bed you keep asking ‘what’s wrong’.  He’s not ready to share yet because he hasn’t worked it out.  You think “He’s mad at me.”  He comes home and now he has been thinking about it and resolved it, but where are you?  You are ticked…”Now you want to talk about it.” 
 
Because we don’t allow each other to be different we tend to overreact.
 
A woman in stress wants to talk, but we don’t want to be fixed.  Because they can see we are stressed they say, “Let me tell you what to do.”  We don’t want them to fix us, but they want to fix us because they can see it’s hard for us and they don’t like us to hurt.
 
Often women think they are just helping them be better.  They say if I want your help I will ask you for it. 
 
Men are logical thinkers.  When you are talking to a man he will talk facts.  If you want to start a conversation with a man you say, “What do you think about th?” If you want to start a conversation with a woman you say, “How do you feel about that?”  Different things excite us.  The fact that it’s different doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. 
 
Example:  You are sitting home at night.  You will ask them about the game and he will give you all the facts about the players.  They ask you something, you go on this long tirade of emotionalism. 
 
It’s like talking 2 different languages.  If your husband is talking to you in facts he is talking to you.  Men can be thinking “nothing”.  They are in their “nothing” box. 
 
Men are problem solvers.  Women give unsolicited advice because we want to make things better.  Men call that nagging.  Ask them when they want your help. 
 
Women tend to use superlatives.  “You never take the garbage out.”  “You always sleep late.”  Men get hung up on those superlatives. 
 
These are the things that Satan uses to drive wedges between our differences.  These are the things we need to work on. 
 
Men live segmented lives.  They think about one thing.  If they are at work they are thinking about work.  Women live integrated lives.  Everything flows into one big river.  A woman knows where the children are, where the dog is, and is planning her Relief Society lesson all at once.  This can have problems when a child comes home and we let loose on them because of something else that is happening in our lives.
 
The goal is to learn how to celebrate & magnify their difference without you becoming a victim of Satan in the gifts you have been given.
 
One of the things men are to protect, is their home from Satan.  This means movies, internet, music.  Men need to be involved in this, but so do women.  Men need to protect on ALL levels not just to provide a shelter. 
 
Ephesians 5:23 (preside)
D&C 42
Genesis
Corinthians
Moses—cleave unto his wife
Abraham—cleave unto his wife
(I think these references are all listed in the syllabus.  She didn't read all the references just the book they were in.)
 
A man is supposed to cleave unto his wife.  What is cleave?  This is to hold on tight to. Think about a man who lives a segmented life.  Where does his mind go if he has a wife who is very efficient in taking care of their home?  To other areas…work, hobbies, etc.  It is hard for a man to remember to come back and take care of this. 
Man’s commandment is to “cleave”
 
D&C 121—priesthood…aspire to the honors of men and do not learn this one lesson.  They get tempted to focus on the honors of the world.  They want to have more money and a bigger car.
 
Exercise unrighteous dominion…they use the power and authority to preside with love, kindness. 
 
Your responsibility as a wife is to help them magnify their gifts and responsibilities.   Their responsibility is to help you magnify your gifts and responsibilities. 
 
If you complain about what you aren’t getting in a marriage you are focusing in.  Happiness in marriage comes as you are committed to doing loving things. 
 
Lynn Robbins “Marriage is a choice”
 
The more you work to magnify them the more they turn back to you.  When we seek it as a product we seldom find it.  When we magnify them it comes back to you as a byproduct.
 
Women—if you want to support them and magnify them you are responsible with the 3 A’s. 
 
To magnify “Provide”—we have to learn to “Appreciate”
To magnify “Preside”—we have to learn to “Admire”
To magnify “Protect”—we have to learn to give them “Affection”
 
As you master the Triple “A’s”.  They will magnify the “P’s”.  When you try to get them to do the “P’s” by nagging, it decreases their ability to provide for that.
 
Howard W Hunter
“I suppose you would say it is a man’s viewpoint to throw a burden upon a woman to maintain the stability and the sweetness of marriage, but this seems to be her divine nature. She has a superior spirituality in the marriage relationship, and the opportunity to encourage, uplift, teach, and be the one who sets the example in the family for righteous living. When women come to the point of realizing that it is more important to be superior than to be equal, they will find the real joy in living those principles that the Lord set out in his divine plan” (Teachings of Howard W. Hunter, 139
 
1 Peter 3:1-7
 1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
 2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
 3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;
 4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
 5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:
 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.
 7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
 
Women—commandment is to ‘submit’. 
 
To submit doesn’t mean you are a doormat.  The Savior submitted to the Father.  They came to the agreement, but the Father presided.  The Savior was not a doormat.  They had the same agenda.  They worked together to achieve it, but the Father presided.  That is how we become submissive in our marriage.
 
Satan tempts us with being self righteous. 
 
“Conversation” means “by the conduct” of the wife…Joseph Smith Translation 1 Peter 3:1.
 
We need to examine how we are handling the situation if the husband isn’t making changes.
 
We need to have respect rather than condemnation for him.  We are speaking with a pure clean language.  You adorn yourself with a meek and quiet spirit.  That is not criticizing and complaining.  Then go to D&C 25.
 
HOMEWORK:  Read D&C 25  Write down everything that is a counsel to you.  Look at the things that you need to work on.
 
This section is full of great counsel to women today. 
 
D&C 25: 16 And verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my voice unto all.---This is for all of us.
 
Vs. 4—murmur not—this is my commandment.  This says to stop complaining. 
 
How do you stop complaining.  You change your focus from ‘why don’t you…’ to ‘how can I help’.  ‘What can I do for you?’  The whole purpose is ‘how can I help you?’  When you were engaged you spent the whole time trying to stay a step ahold of them. The more you reach out and help them the byproduct is that they feel loved and they want to help you.
 
What does that mean to you in your marriage and your relationship?
 
Vs 5—your responsibility is to comfort your spouse—with consoling words.
 
How many of you want to say, “I told you so.”?  When they get into a predicament. In meekness it is, “I’m so sorry.  How can I help?”  When you get in a bind do you want him to say, “I saw that one coming.”
 
Vs 13—lift up thy heart and rejoice
 
Do you know how many homes Emma actually had?  None until she went to Nauvoo.  This means begin grateful with what you have.  Are you thankful for the home you live in? Or do you want new furniture?  Are you thankful for the clothes you wear or do you always look for more?  Count your blessings and be grateful.  When all we want is something else that is defeating.  When your husband comes home your face acknowledges that you are glad to have them there.  Smile!  Let him know that you appreciate what he is doing and you are glad to have him home.  Your kids need to see you happy.  That’s part of living in gratitude.
 
Vs 15—beware of pride
 
We have a hard time with that.  We tend to get self righteous.  We need to stay out of pride. 
 
I invite you to begin the study of D&C 25 that you may see the counsel that is meant for you.
 
Celebrating Celestial Marriage by Richard K. Scott
“It is interesting to know how man is put together—how incomplete he is.  His whole physical and emotional, and for that matter, spiritual nature, is formed in such a way that it depends upon a source of encouragement and power that is found in a woman.  When man has found his wife and companion, he has in a sense found the other half of himself.  He will return to her again and again for that regeneration that exalts his manhood and strengthens him for the testing that life will give him.  A woman has the privilege and influence to transform a man into an able and effective LDS priesthood leader.  However, for this there are two prerequisites.  First, she must want to, and second, she must know how.  Part of knowing how includes the genius of encouraging him to meet his obligations without replacing him in his role, without presiding over him.”
(Church Relief Society Conference, Salt Lake Tribune, October 2, 1971, B-1)
 
This is not an event.  This is a process overtime.  We need to ask for priesthood blessings.  We need to have our children ask him for blessings. 
 
HOMEWORK: 

• Ponder question---What can I do to better support my husband in the 3 P’s?  This needs to be specific and a point to begin.
• Read “The Keys & Authority of The Priesthood”  Dallin H. Oaks
• Read D&C 25—Make a list of what you can do to become a better wife
• Pray for your spouse in your personal prayers each night this week
• Have a conversation down memory lane… “Do you remember the time we…?”  Happy memories.

 
“How Near To the Angels”   President Faust
“All of you will have to sometime answer to your natural womanly instincts, which the Prophet Joseph said are according to your natures. He said, “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates.”16 You should respond generously to those instincts and promptings to do good. Hold your soul very still, and listen to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. Follow the noble, intuitive feelings planted deep within your souls by Deity in the previous world. In this way you will be responding to the Holy Spirit of God and will be sanctified by truth. By so doing, you will be eternally honored and loved. Much of your work is to enrich mankind with your great capacity for care and mercy.”
 
This is the glory and purpose.  The Lord has endowed you to do it. 

I have a granddaughter who is getting married this Saturday in the Boise temple.  She cannot remember anything.  Her finance is in Rexburg working.  They are so fun when they are together or apart they are delightful to watch. 
 
Do you remember when you were there?  If you have forgotten just watch Hallmark they are all feel-good movies. 
 
She is constantly texting him or talking to him on the phone.  Everything is about her. 
 
When you are growing up what is life about?  It’s about you!  It’s about how you feel.  Then you meet someone who you think feels ‘all about you’.  You want someone who has you as number one.  When you are dating or engaged that is not a problem.  The problem is that you can do nothing else in life. 
 
You don’t become an adult and get married you get married and they become adults together.
 
We go into marriage with those feelings.  There is a high intensity. 
 
HOMEWORK:  Lynn Robbins “Agency and Love in Marriage”  or “Love is a Choice” (book)
 
“It is almost humorous to observe a young unmarried couple in love. After spending an entire day together, they are back together again on the phone that same night. It’s sheer torture for them to be separated. Even in their thoughts they can hardly focus on anything else. Love begins to disrupt their studies or work. Everything else in life becomes a nuisance and an interruption that keeps them apart until they can be together again. In their minds there was never, in the history of the world, a truer love than theirs. We call this level of premarriage intensity “infatuation.”
 
What happens then?  About 5 years in when your first inventory of what it’s like to be married.  You probably have a couple of kids, you are out of school.  About that time you look at marriage and say, “This is not what I thought this was going to be.”  We do a poor job as parents of teaching children the reality of what marriage is.  We teach them to be worthy and get married in the temple. 
 
It’s not the Cinderella Syndrome after you are married.  Most of us got married not expecting that.  Our feelings in our heart were, “My marriage will not be like my parents.”  Most are saying we are going to do this different. 
 
Most of you that have been married for at least 5 years are not wanting a divorce.  The relationship in the marriage has become stagnant.  It’s comfortable and you are there, but it doesn’t light any fires in you.  It’s just there. 
 
When you hit 10 years….that’s when we start getting some problems. 
 
Alma 32 (This is the Parable of Marriage)
 37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
 38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
 39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.
 40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.
 41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
 
Change the words

• Tree=Marriage
• Heat of the sun=family life, teenagers, busy-ness, car won’t work….real life
• Ground=heart
• Fruit=love

 
It takes no effort right then at the beginning. 
 
“IF” ye nourish it with much care.  That is the key.  You are doing something and if you do it with much care you have real intent.  You are focused on it.  It takes thought.  It takes effort.  It takes sacrifice. 
 
“IF ye neglect the marriage”…from day to day you aren’t thinking about your marriage.  You are thinking about your church calling, the house, kids, laundry, bills, dinner….but never in your mind does it become…what can I do for my spouse.  You are actively involved in logistics.  It has passed from your heart to your head.  It is because of busy-ness.
 
Nourishment is to ‘focus’ on building the relationship. 
 
“You pluck it up and cast it out”---That means you become emotionally disengaged in building the relationship.  It’s almost an emotional divorce.  There is no more connection.  You become roommates passing in the night.  There are many empty nesters that are getting divorced because they haven’t built the relationship along the way. 
 
The key is consistency.  You have to do this all the time.  Satan is 100% aware of marriage and hates it.  He is 100% anxiously engaged. 
 
David A Bednar “Marriage is Essential  To His Eternal Plan”
“The adversary’s attacks upon eternal marriage will continue to increase in intensity, frequency, and sophistication.”
 
“After they marry, this intensity tapers off. Living under the same roof, they each begin to discover a few peculiar idiosyncracies in the other that they had not seen before. Some of these are irritating. The infatuation begins to fade. Those who have confused infatuation for love begin to worry and wonder if they are falling out of love. “Where is that level of passion, the fire I had during courtship?” they may ask themselves. Their relationship is passing through a common stage and is at an important crossroad. If they believe they have fallen out of love, they may begin to drift apart.” (Lynn Robbins)
 
It’s the 80/20.  80% is good so you focus on that until after they are married.  Then after marriage you focus on the 20% to try to make them better.
 
 “People think marriages end with an affair or something equally explosive,” says John Gottman, author of Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.  “In fact, most end gradually, sliding down a slope of complaint, criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal until it’s difficult to scramble back up.  Yet there are usually early warnings that the relationship could be headed for trouble.”
 
Most marriages just ‘slide’ out of love.
 
People don’t fall out of love.  You don’t fall out of kindness.  You quit doing kind things.  If you think you are falling out of love it’s because you have quit doing loving things.  Being in love is your choice to do loving things.  It’s not about keeping a score card.
 
Are you going to make a commitment to be in love?  One person in a marriage can change the feel.
 
Jenkins Lloyd Jones
“There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young [men and women] who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and [beautiful] wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed. …
 
“Anyone who imagines that bliss [in marriage] is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.
 
“[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …
 
“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.
 
“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride” (“Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Deseret News, 12 June 1973, A4).
 
Obedience—Life’s Great (Donald Stahli)
“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”
 
Too often we go immediately into comparison. 
 
HOMEWORK:  President Uchtdorf “In Praise of Those Who Save”

• Read this talk write all the “to do’s” you need to do to make your marriage good.
• I found 10 counsels to perk up your marriage

 
One of the biggest things Satan is using is Social Media and Phones…and being in the same room and texting other people.  There are problems with people looking up an old flame and having long conversations.  This is dangerous.  It’s destructive.  Don’t talk to people at work and talk about your spouse and confide in them.
 
We need to be 100% loyal to our spouse!  That is where criticism stops.  You aren’t comparing them.  There is a danger in reading romance novels.  When you are reading the novels it fills you with infatuation feelings.  You create unreal expectations in your head. 
 
Pornography is rampant in the church.  Don’t for a minute think this stops with teenagers.  It is a problem with men and women that become disenchanted with their marriage.  Pornography in any form is dangerous in marriage.  It takes those feelings and puts them somewhere else other than your marriage.  It’s available on so many levels. 
 
Another problem is we throw temper tantrums.  It’s actually the silent treatment.  We say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  We think if we don’t talk about it then it will just go away.  We have to learn to not take offense when things are said.  We need to talk them through.  We need to learn to listen and not take offense.
 
“You were stuck in your own perspective.  You didn’t mean to be late, but your lateness affected your spouse and their feelings.”  Lynn Robbins (Love is a Choice—book)
 
As we discuss things it becomes a debate about who is the most right. 
 
He realizes that he should have said, ‘I understand you are angry.  I’m sorry you have been waiting for me for so long and this is not the first time.  It must seem I give meetings higher priority than you.  That must be frustrating.  It will not happen again.”
 
Anytime you seek first to understand them and then you can explain your side.
 
Question:  What would it be like to be married to me?  Am I causing my spouse offense?  Am I causing him grief?  Am I causing him unhappiness?
 
“Lord is it I?”  President Uchtdorf
 
 “What Lack I Yet?”  Larry Lawrence
These give you quite an inventory
 
Ways to reignite your marriage after you have accepted your responsibility to ‘nurture with much care’!

1. Remember when….What did you use to do when you had no money?  Do it again.  Create something you can do together…read a book together.  Pull out pictures and scrapbooks. 

1. Learn to not take offense….We take offense way to quickly.  They are just stating an opinion.  Just don’t do it!  Sometimes you just have to hold your tongue

STORY:  “I am reminded of a story about a couple who had been married for 60 years.  They had rarely argued during that time, and their days together passed in happiness and contentment.  They shared everything and had no secrets between them—except one.  The wife had a box that she kept at the top of a sideboard, and she told her husband when they were married that he should never look inside.
 
As the decades passed, the moment came that her husband took the box down and asked if he could finally know what it contained. The wife consented, and he opened it to discover two doilies and $25,000.  When he asked his wife what this meant, she responded, “When we were married, my mother told me that whenever I was angry with you or whenever you said or did something I didn’t like, I should knit a small doily and then talk things through with you.”  The husband was moved to tears by this sweet story.  He marveled that during 60 years of marriage he had only disturbed his wife enough for her to knit two doilies.  Feeling extremely good about himself, he took his wife’s hand and said, “That explains the doilies, but what about the $25,000?”  His wife smiled sweetly and said, “That’s the money I got from selling all the doilies I’ve knitted over the years.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “What is Truth”, CES Broadcast, January 2013)

1. Live within your means….Women, this means you also don’t complain about what those means are.  Stop complaining.  Be grateful for what you have and that you have means.  Live within your means and have a savings.  Save something every month.  Find a way to save something and express gratitude regularly over what you have so he feels adequate in taking care of the family
2. Maintain complete fidelity…Don’t vent to everyone.  You don’t have the right to confess your husband’s sins.  We need a safe place and it better only be one sacred confident place.  Be careful about that. 

Is talking to someone as effective as writing it down?  It depends on the person.  They can write it down and get rid of it and throw it away.  Some people need to be able to think about it and have input. 

• Live the gospel…do not create spiritual goals for them.  You are there to support them and sustain them in their goals.  If you have a spouse that is not where you are spiritually and you are frustrated.  You pray that your heart will be changed and you will feel loved.  It gives them the courage to change.  Only love will build them.

 
Class member:  I listened to that last year.  I heard this.  In a few things that I thought our family was lacking I have been praying for a whole year for these things.  I don’t know if he has gone through things to open his eyes.  In the last 3 months he is finally get it.  It’s been wonderful for the Lord to help me and to help him at the same time.  I took this to heart.  I have watched the Lord work in our marriage and in our lives. 
 
The Holy Ghost will change them.  You won’t.
 
If you support your spouse 100% the Lord will make up the difference with your children. The Lord knows where you are and the Lord will make up the difference.  You have to nourish him.  They have an empty bucket.  They have nothing left to give.  You have to put it in for a long time before they can give it back out. 
 
This is an eternal marriage not a marriage for right now.  There will be times in all of your marriages where one of you will be stronger than the other. 
 
You choose to make yourself good and them happy. 

1. Look for the good in your spouse…..write it down so they can see it. 
2. Be quick to say I’m sorry even if you aren’t wrong.  You can be sorry about the rift you have put in the relationship.  
3. Spend time together
4. Learn your spouses love language
5. Meet and greet at the cross roads
6. Be kind….we are kinder to the people we meet or those that are in our ward. Tell your face!  J 
7. Take responsibility for your own emotional well being….your spouse is not responsible to make you happy.  You are responsible to make yourself happy. 
8. Avoid unreal expectations….this comes from comparison.  This comes from an unreal expectations in what you thought your marriage would be.  It matters what you do about where you are.  Mourn if you need to mourn.  Bury the person you thought you married.  All of you will find that they are not who you thought you married.  Fall in love with who they are and who you have.  

Class member:  My niece just got married.  He said love your spouse just a little bit more than anyone else…your moms, dads, friends, kids.
 
Love is a commitment to do loving things! 

1. Learn to listen.
   
2. Remember that you have an eternal marriage and they may not be resolved in this life.  You will see something different in the eternities.  Go to the temple often.

“When supper was cleared away, dad would support mother’s slight weight and help her to the bathroom, trailing the bubbling, transparent oxygen tube.  There he would tenderly undress her, and slipping out of his own clothes, hold her failing body against himself while he washed her in the shower and shampooed her hair.  After their shower, he would help her to the side of the rented hospital bed where he perched her for dressing in her nightgown.  I was deeply touched by his tender care of her, how totally absorbed he became in these simple tasks as he softly brushed the limp hair back from her forehead.  But then would come my favorite scene of all—the one most deeply etched in memory that was to forever epitomize this experience and this season for me.
 
On knees still from his own seventy years, dad knelt on the floor at mother’s feet.  Tipping the contents of a fragrant pink bottle into the palms of his hands and rubbing them together, he applied the soothing lotion ever so carefully to the delicate, dry skin of her legs and feet.  Bent there before her, the glow of his snow-white hair in the tiny Christmas lights almost gave him the appearance of a holy man.  A Holy Man….images of two distinct silhouettes converged into one in my mind.  Of one who knelt now in love and service in the stillness of this tiny room.  Another, much younger, much longer ago, who knelt in a similar way to wash the feet of ones He loved.  A Holy Man….They were two thousand years apart, but they were one.  The entire meaning of the sacred season told in a simple task.”  (Written by Sandi Errigo)
 
Our marriage becomes celestial when we are more concerned kneeling at the feet of our spouse in giving rather than getting what we want.  

​I have a granddaughter who is getting married this Saturday in the Boise temple.  She cannot remember anything.  Her finance is in Rexburg working.  They are so fun when they are together or apart they are delightful to watch. 
 
Do you remember when you were there?  If you have forgotten just watch Hallmark they are all feel-good movies. 
 
She is constantly texting him or talking to him on the phone.  Everything is about her. 
 
When you are growing up what is life about?  It’s about you!  It’s about how you feel.  Then you meet someone who you think feels ‘all about you’.  You want someone who has you as number one.  When you are dating or engaged that is not a problem.  The problem is that you can do nothing else in life. 
 
You don’t become an adult and get married you get married and they become adults together.
 
We go into marriage with those feelings.  There is a high intensity. 
 
HOMEWORK:  Lynn Robbins “Agency and Love in Marriage”  or “Love is a Choice” (book)
 
“It is almost humorous to observe a young unmarried couple in love. After spending an entire day together, they are back together again on the phone that same night. It’s sheer torture for them to be separated. Even in their thoughts they can hardly focus on anything else. Love begins to disrupt their studies or work. Everything else in life becomes a nuisance and an interruption that keeps them apart until they can be together again. In their minds there was never, in the history of the world, a truer love than theirs. We call this level of premarriage intensity “infatuation.”
 
What happens then?  About 5 years in when your first inventory of what it’s like to be married.  You probably have a couple of kids, you are out of school.  About that time you look at marriage and say, “This is not what I thought this was going to be.”  We do a poor job as parents of teaching children the reality of what marriage is.  We teach them to be worthy and get married in the temple. 
 
It’s not the Cinderella Syndrome after you are married.  Most of us got married not expecting that.  Our feelings in our heart were, “My marriage will not be like my parents.”  Most are saying we are going to do this different. 
 
Most of you that have been married for at least 5 years are not wanting a divorce.  The relationship in the marriage has become stagnant.  It’s comfortable and you are there, but it doesn’t light any fires in you.  It’s just there. 
 
When you hit 10 years….that’s when we start getting some problems. 
 
Alma 32 (This is the Parable of Marriage)
 37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
 38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
 39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.
 40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.
 41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
 
Change the words

• Tree=Marriage
• Heat of the sun=family life, teenagers, busy-ness, car won’t work….real life
• Ground=heart
• Fruit=love

 
It takes no effort right then at the beginning. 
 
“IF” ye nourish it with much care.  That is the key.  You are doing something and if you do it with much care you have real intent.  You are focused on it.  It takes thought.  It takes effort.  It takes sacrifice. 
 
“IF ye neglect the marriage”…from day to day you aren’t thinking about your marriage.  You are thinking about your church calling, the house, kids, laundry, bills, dinner….but never in your mind does it become…what can I do for my spouse.  You are actively involved in logistics.  It has passed from your heart to your head.  It is because of busy-ness.
 
Nourishment is to ‘focus’ on building the relationship. 
 
“You pluck it up and cast it out”---That means you become emotionally disengaged in building the relationship.  It’s almost an emotional divorce.  There is no more connection.  You become roommates passing in the night.  There are many empty nesters that are getting divorced because they haven’t built the relationship along the way. 
 
The key is consistency.  You have to do this all the time.  Satan is 100% aware of marriage and hates it.  He is 100% anxiously engaged. 
 
David A Bednar “Marriage is Essential  To His Eternal Plan”
“The adversary’s attacks upon eternal marriage will continue to increase in intensity, frequency, and sophistication.”
 
“After they marry, this intensity tapers off. Living under the same roof, they each begin to discover a few peculiar idiosyncracies in the other that they had not seen before. Some of these are irritating. The infatuation begins to fade. Those who have confused infatuation for love begin to worry and wonder if they are falling out of love. “Where is that level of passion, the fire I had during courtship?” they may ask themselves. Their relationship is passing through a common stage and is at an important crossroad. If they believe they have fallen out of love, they may begin to drift apart.” (Lynn Robbins)
 
It’s the 80/20.  80% is good so you focus on that until after they are married.  Then after marriage you focus on the 20% to try to make them better.
 
 “People think marriages end with an affair or something equally explosive,” says John Gottman, author of Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.  “In fact, most end gradually, sliding down a slope of complaint, criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal until it’s difficult to scramble back up.  Yet there are usually early warnings that the relationship could be headed for trouble.”
 
Most marriages just ‘slide’ out of love.
 
People don’t fall out of love.  You don’t fall out of kindness.  You quit doing kind things.  If you think you are falling out of love it’s because you have quit doing loving things.  Being in love is your choice to do loving things.  It’s not about keeping a score card.
 
Are you going to make a commitment to be in love?  One person in a marriage can change the feel.
 
Jenkins Lloyd Jones
“There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young [men and women] who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and [beautiful] wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed. …
 
“Anyone who imagines that bliss [in marriage] is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.
 
“[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …
 
“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.
 
“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride” (“Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Deseret News, 12 June 1973, A4).
 
Obedience—Life’s Great (Donald Stahli)
“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”
 
Too often we go immediately into comparison. 
 
HOMEWORK:  President Uchtdorf “In Praise of Those Who Save”

• Read this talk write all the “to do’s” you need to do to make your marriage good.
• I found 10 counsels to perk up your marriage

 
One of the biggest things Satan is using is Social Media and Phones…and being in the same room and texting other people.  There are problems with people looking up an old flame and having long conversations.  This is dangerous.  It’s destructive.  Don’t talk to people at work and talk about your spouse and confide in them.
 
We need to be 100% loyal to our spouse!  That is where criticism stops.  You aren’t comparing them.  There is a danger in reading romance novels.  When you are reading the novels it fills you with infatuation feelings.  You create unreal expectations in your head. 
 
Pornography is rampant in the church.  Don’t for a minute think this stops with teenagers.  It is a problem with men and women that become disenchanted with their marriage.  Pornography in any form is dangerous in marriage.  It takes those feelings and puts them somewhere else other than your marriage.  It’s available on so many levels. 
 
Another problem is we throw temper tantrums.  It’s actually the silent treatment.  We say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  We think if we don’t talk about it then it will just go away.  We have to learn to not take offense when things are said.  We need to talk them through.  We need to learn to listen and not take offense.
 
“You were stuck in your own perspective.  You didn’t mean to be late, but your lateness affected your spouse and their feelings.”  Lynn Robbins (Love is a Choice—book)
 
As we discuss things it becomes a debate about who is the most right. 
 
He realizes that he should have said, ‘I understand you are angry.  I’m sorry you have been waiting for me for so long and this is not the first time.  It must seem I give meetings higher priority than you.  That must be frustrating.  It will not happen again.”
 
Anytime you seek first to understand them and then you can explain your side.
 
Question:  What would it be like to be married to me?  Am I causing my spouse offense?  Am I causing him grief?  Am I causing him unhappiness?
 
“Lord is it I?”  President Uchtdorf
 
 “What Lack I Yet?”  Larry Lawrence
These give you quite an inventory
 
Ways to reignite your marriage after you have accepted your responsibility to ‘nurture with much care’!
 

1. Remember when….What did you use to do when you had no money?  Do it again.  Create something you can do together…read a book together.  Pull out pictures and scrapbooks. 

 

1. Learn to not take offense….We take offense way to quickly.  They are just stating an opinion.  Just don’t do it!  Sometimes you just have to hold your tongue

STORY:  “I am reminded of a story about a couple who had been married for 60 years.  They had rarely argued during that time, and their days together passed in happiness and contentment.  They shared everything and had no secrets between them—except one.  The wife had a box that she kept at the top of a sideboard, and she told her husband when they were married that he should never look inside.
 
As the decades passed, the moment came that her husband took the box down and asked if he could finally know what it contained. The wife consented, and he opened it to discover two doilies and $25,000.  When he asked his wife what this meant, she responded, “When we were married, my mother told me that whenever I was angry with you or whenever you said or did something I didn’t like, I should knit a small doily and then talk things through with you.”  The husband was moved to tears by this sweet story.  He marveled that during 60 years of marriage he had only disturbed his wife enough for her to knit two doilies.  Feeling extremely good about himself, he took his wife’s hand and said, “That explains the doilies, but what about the $25,000?”  His wife smiled sweetly and said, “That’s the money I got from selling all the doilies I’ve knitted over the years.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “What is Truth”, CES Broadcast, January 2013)
 

1. Live within your means….Women, this means you also don’t complain about what those means are.  Stop complaining.  Be grateful for what you have and that you have means.  Live within your means and have a savings.  Save something every month.  Find a way to save something and express gratitude regularly over what you have so he feels adequate in taking care of the family

 

1. Maintain complete fidelity…Don’t vent to everyone.  You don’t have the right to confess your husband’s sins.  We need a safe place and it better only be one sacred confident place.  Be careful about that.

 
Is talking to someone as effective as writing it down?  It depends on the person.  They can write it down and get rid of it and throw it away.  Some people need to be able to think about it and have input. 
 

1. Live the gospel…do not create spiritual goals for them.  You are there to support them and sustain them in their goals.  If you have a spouse that is not where you are spiritually and you are frustrated.  You pray that your heart will be changed and you will feel loved.  It gives them the courage to change.  Only love will build them.

 
Class member:  I listened to that last year.  I heard this.  In a few things that I thought our family was lacking I have been praying for a whole year for these things.  I don’t know if he has gone through things to open his eyes.  In the last 3 months he is finally get it.  It’s been wonderful for the Lord to help me and to help him at the same time.  I took this to heart.  I have watched the Lord work in our marriage and in our lives. 
 
The Holy Ghost will change them.  You won’t.
 
If you support your spouse 100% the Lord will make up the difference with your children. The Lord knows where you are and the Lord will make up the difference.  You have to nourish him.  They have an empty bucket.  They have nothing left to give.  You have to put it in for a long time before they can give it back out. 
 
This is an eternal marriage not a marriage for right now.  There will be times in all of your marriages where one of you will be stronger than the other. 
 
You choose to make yourself good and them happy. 
 

1. Look for the good in your spouse…..write it down so they can see it. 

 

1. Be quick to say I’m sorry even if you aren’t wrong.  You can be sorry about the rift you have put in the relationship. 

 

1. Spend time together

 

1. Learn your spouses love language
2. Meet and greet at the cross roads

 

1. Be kind….we are kinder to the people we meet or those that are in our ward. Tell your face!  J

 

1. Take responsibility for your own emotional well being….your spouse is not responsible to make you happy.  You are responsible to make yourself happy. 

 

1. Avoid unreal expectations….this comes from comparison.  This comes from an unreal expectations in what you thought your marriage would be.  It matters what you do about where you are.  Mourn if you need to mourn.  Bury the person you thought you married.  All of you will find that they are not who you thought you married.  Fall in love with who they are and who you have. 

 
Class member:  My niece just got married.  He said love your spouse just a little bit more than anyone else…your moms, dads, friends, kids.
 
Love is a commitment to do loving things! 
 

1. Learn to listen.

 

1. Remember that you have an eternal marriage and they may not be resolved in this life.  You will see something different in the eternities.  Go to the temple often.

 
 
“When supper was cleared away, dad would support mother’s slight weight and help her to the bathroom, trailing the bubbling, transparent oxygen tube.  There he would tenderly undress her, and slipping out of his own clothes, hold her failing body against himself while he washed her in the shower and shampooed her hair.  After their shower, he would help her to the side of the rented hospital bed where he perched her for dressing in her nightgown.  I was deeply touched by his tender care of her, how totally absorbed he became in these simple tasks as he softly brushed the limp hair back from her forehead.  But then would come my favorite scene of all—the one most deeply etched in memory that was to forever epitomize this experience and this season for me.
 
On knees still from his own seventy years, dad knelt on the floor at mother’s feet.  Tipping the contents of a fragrant pink bottle into the palms of his hands and rubbing them together, he applied the soothing lotion ever so carefully to the delicate, dry skin of her legs and feet.  Bent there before her, the glow of his snow-white hair in the tiny Christmas lights almost gave him the appearance of a holy man.  A Holy Man….images of two distinct silhouettes converged into one in my mind.  Of one who knelt now in love and service in the stillness of this tiny room.  Another, much younger, much longer ago, who knelt in a similar way to wash the feet of ones He loved.  A Holy Man….They were two thousand years apart, but they were one.  The entire meaning of the sacred season told in a simple task.”  (Written by Sandi Errigo)
 
Our marriage becomes celestial when we are more concerned kneeling at the feet of our spouse in giving rather than getting what we want. 
 

​I don’t care how fabulous your marriage is it can be better.  Most marriage have these times of being fabulous and then we go to ‘I don’t know if I like you anymore’.  There are two imperfect people learning to get along.  A relationship that close there will be ups and downs. 
 
The Lord will have a ‘tried’ people.  I’m convinced you either marry trouble or you give birth to it.  We are going to experience some wonderful growing opportunities in this life. 
 
I think for myself as a girl growing up, girls come into the world wanting to be married.  Our society has changed that a little.
 
In the pearl of great price it says…”their desire will be to their husband”.
 
Typically boys come making truck noises and gun noises. 
 
From the pre-existence gender was part of that.  We had different roles. 
 
In my growing up in Young Women’s you were taught that families are important.  They are the heart and basis and focus and foundation of Jesus Christ.  It is the heart of the plan of salvation.  I learned that you kept yourself clean as a female.  That you found the perfect return missionary, and that you get married in the temple and you have beautiful children who never have snotty noses and cause problems. 
 
I still think we are basically teaching that process.  The process isn’t wrong and should be taught, but don’t stop there!  When they walk out of the temple life is not perfect. 
 
I was at a wedding reception at the Train Depot in Boise.  They had a formal line for 20 minutes.  The reception was 2 ½ hours then the bride and groom danced like an aerobic exercise.  They were having so much fun!  I thought how much fun to start your marriage out like this.  I thought…How long is it going to last?  I don’t think they are going to get a divorce, but how long will it last.
 
How did you pick who you picked to marry?  You were attracted to him. 
 
Real life isn’t full of just ‘fun’.  You think (I thought) that marriage was a continual date, you just didn’t go home at night.  It was just supposed to be happy time all the rest of your life.  You are on your best behavior when you are dating and engaged and you are for the honeymoon period for up to about 2 years.  What does that mean?  The honeymoon period (Lynn G. Robbins) the ‘infatuation period’ it takes no effort for you to do loving things.  Do you remember when you were engaged?  Can I leave him a note?  Can I take him a treat?  You meet up on campus during the day or meet.  You call and talk until midnight.  We never talked about kids and money, but now you never talk about anything but kids and money BUT you talked all the time. That’s not real life and not real love.  Love starts afterwards.  Love is hard.
 
There are hiccups in marriages…one is at 5 years, one at 10 years, and one at empty nesters.   At 5 years we have kids and life is not what I thought it should be.  At 10 years we think we should be getting ahead and have a new car and new furniture.  At empty nester couples look at each other don’t even know who they are. 
 
Divorce becomes the out instead of making things right.  We aren’t teaching our children to do really hard things.  Relationships are hard things.  We have to help them learn communication.  That helps them become a problem solving tool in marriage.  If those things become habits when they are young when they move into real love they begin thinking about it. 
 
Love is a Choice by Lynn G. Robbins
 
Love is a verb you act on and it’s a conscious choice.  When you are most frustrated they aren’t understanding what you want.  When you decide to make the covenant to love them your feelings are not predicated on what they feel or do for you. 
 
In 1 Peter---if they will love their husbands even without the word (it says how to love them…with patience, etc) it changes hearts.
 
Marriage Isn’t For You
My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”
 
 
 
Principle 1:  Love is a choice.  It’s something you commit to doing. 
 
Love is a commitment to doing loving things regardless of what is coming back at you.  It is a covenant that you make with Heavenly Father and your husband. 
 
We as women make covenants to our husbands.  Those are important! 
 
Probably your first frustration was when I realized that Mike & I didn’t think the same.  I thought we did.  “Yeah” meant you are welcome to say whatever you want to say or do, but then I’m going to still go and do what I want to do. 
 
Men and women are not the same.  We act different and think different.  A lot of a woman’s frustration is that they don’t see things the same way we do. 
 
A Husband Shopping Center
A "Husband Shopping Center" was opened where a woman could go to choose from among many men to be her husband. It was laid out in five floors, with the men increasing in positive attributes as you ascended up the floors.
The only rule was that once you opened the door to any floor, you must choose a man from that floor, and if you went up a floor, you couldn't go back down except to leave the place.
So, a couple of girlfriends go to the place to find men.
First floor, the door had a sign saying: "These men have jobs and love kids." The women read the sign and say: "Well that's better than not having jobs, or not loving kids, but I wonder what's further up?" So up they go.
Second floor says: "These men have high paying jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking." "Hmmm," say the girls, "But, I wonder what's further up?"
Third floor: "These men have high paying jobs, are extremely good looking, love kids and help with the housework." "Wow!" say the women."Very tempting, BUT, there's more further up!" And so again, they go up.
Fourth floor: "These men have high paying jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak."
"Oh, mercy me. But just think?! What must be awaiting us further on?!" So up to the fifth floor they go.
The sign on that door said: "This floor is just to prove that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping and have a nice day!"
Sometimes women are like this.  We have a lot given to us in marriage, but we focus on what is not there.  Instead of building on and validating on what we have we continue to focus on what else we want as those we were entitled to more because we are so good. 
 
The key is to be grateful for what you have.
 
Men & Women
Men & Women:
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.
=============================================
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
=============================================
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
=============================================
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot & not try to understand
her at all.
==============================================
Married men lived longer than single man,
but married men are a lot more willing to die.
=============================================
Any married man should forget his mistakes,
there's no use in two people remembering the same thing.
=============================================
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.
=============================================
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.


 
That brings out the point that men and women see thing different.  They look at life differently.  We become unhappy when we can’t get them to see it our way. That is the wrong goal!  That is Satan’s goal not Heavenly Father’s goal.  It’s like a pie…the crust and the filling to get a complete…whole…pie.  We should be celebrating the differences instead of trying to make a mirror of each other. 

​Example…He has had some challenges at work.  How was your day?  Fine.  What happened?  Nothing.  We think why are you so crabby?  After kids go back to bed we take offense because they don’t want to talk about it.  The next day they come home ready to share.  We continue to carry life like a river.
 
The problem with them not sharing is because we shut the door.  If we do that often then they don’t bother sharing. 
 
Men because they are logical thinker in love they want to fix you.  We are saying we don’t want you to fix it, but in their love they want to fix the problem.  He has to open up the ‘lawn care box’ to talk about that.  If you want to talk about ‘Johnny and his grades’ he has to put away the lawn care box and take down the Johnny box.  Women are like ping pong balls and we jump from one thing to another.
 
You go to a good movie and we come out crying and he thinks it was ‘good’.  If you go to a high action they think it’s great and you come out and it’s not the same for you.  Things that we like might not be the same.  We are talking about the natural man.
 
Joseph Fielding McConkie & Robert Millet, pg 49 “The Holy Ghost”
“Because the spirit of revelation is so closely associated with the feelings of the heart, because the voice of the spirit is the voice of gentleness, because the Spirit is naturally attracted to purity, and because the Lord delights to honor those who serve Him—especially those with whom He has entrusted the care of innocent and newly born children—it stands to reason that women are, by their very nature, more susceptible to the spirit of revelation than are men.”
 
If a woman has that natural gift (men can have it) but men are given the priesthood.  Women are given the right to bear children and that sensitivity to spiritual prompting so they can nurture and equally needful is the priesthood that man is given to preside.  You cannot have eternal families unless you marry those together.  It is through the power of the priesthood worlds are created. Separately they are not eternal.  We need those two parts to come together to be celestial.  The very differences are created so we can implement the Lord’s plan to do it.
 
Goal in marriage---It’s a covenant to love and not predicated on ‘if he holds FHE’ ‘if he remembers my birthday’.  You have already made the covenant regardless.  He said the same thing.  We don’t get to judge them.  We only get to say, “Am I keeping my covenant?”  only based on ‘I chose to make that covenant.’
 
We need to help them magnify those responsibilities we have been given.  My job is to help him, not with nagging. 
 
A 2 year old temper tantrum in an adult is the silent treatment.  Usually we do that with a heart full of blame.  Anytime you are blaming progress cannot be made.  First thing you do is go to your knees and ask for the power to forgive and then ask the Lord to forgive you for your feelings.
 
“What Lack I Yet?” Larry Lawrence
 
Ask… “What is the very next thing I need to do right now to move forward in my marriage?”
 
D&C 25:14  Soul is to delight in your husband
Opposite of delight is criticize and find fault
 
Moses 4:22-23  Desire shall be to thy husband. He shall rule (preside)
 
D&C 25:  Murmur not—your role to comfort your husband
How do you comfort someone?  You listen to them.  You don’t tell them what to do.  It’s a spirit of meekness. 
 
D&C 25  Go with him (have date night)
 
D&C 25  You need to be happy (smile!  Greet him with joy)
 
Pride is that feeling of heaviness, hardness, criticism, frustration---that is when you are in pride.
 
Having a greater spiritual sensitivity Satan tweaks that to be self righteous.
 
Woman = Submissive (this is the word from the Lord)
Men = Cleave (this is the word from the Lord)
 
D&C 44:32  Cleave unto her
Genesis 2:23
Moses 3:24
Abraham 5:18
 
President Hinckley said it means to have ‘nothing’ before her other than God. 
 
That means the wife box should always be out and open.  Men forget to think about their wife.  They always love her, but they forget to think about her.  Children always love their parents, but you are not really a person you are just Mom.  In marriage “I love you.  I’ll let you know if that changes.”
 
Alma 32—Nourishing the marriage with much care. 
 
Richard Paul Evans—Put his love story online.  What can I do to make your day better?  That is the key….to think about and focus on.  Over time it changed their relationship. 
 
Women…
Preside/Provide/Protect---Our responsibility is to be the wind beneath their wings to accomplish these things.  You support them and magnify them as if they did.  You will be held accountable to your part.  You may not judge that.  You may not say, “When you really want to be a good priesthood bearer then I will do it.”  Once you know there is an accountability. 
 
Men preside---women need to with great sincerity admire him. This means you don’t seek to change him. You appreciate who he is.  You pray in gratitude for him.  You honor his priesthood by asking him for blessings.  You validate him.  You look for what he does well.  You do not keep score. 
 
If Satan can get women with good intent to be critical of a spouse she can break his spiritual nature.  A man needs to feel the spiritual sensitivity and as he feels that through you he feels heavens spirit better.  He still needs to do all he can do too.  You can bring that spirit to him if you help him do those things.
 
The number one thing with the Priesthood is to serve others.  You naturally come with that desire to do that.  You have been given that gift.  He has been given the priesthood to learn to serve that. 
 
Men provide---women need to appreciate them.  This means you live on the budget he brings home without complaint, with joy.  You tell them how grateful you are.  You exude a spirit of joy in your home.  You teach the children to take care of and not waste things and appreciate their father.
 
President Faust
“Let every mother understand that if she does anything to diminish her children’s father or the father’s image in the eyes of the children, it may injure and do irreparable damage to the self-esteem and personal security of the children themselves. How infinitely more productive and satisfying it is for a woman to build up her husband rather than tear him down. You women are so superior to men in so many ways that you demean yourselves by posturing or belittling masculinity and manhood.
 
In terms of giving to fathers love and understanding, it should be remembered that fathers also have times of insecurity and doubt. Everyone knows fathers make mistakes—especially they themselves. Fathers are in need of all the help they can get; mos

I love this class because most of us are hypocrites on this subject.  We go to church and pretend that our marriages are perfect.  We are all mortal and our marriages are tough.  Most of us want to put on this image that we are always good.  Sometimes we aren’t really honest about where we are in relationships. 
 
My philosophy is that any good marriage could stand good counseling.  There are great tools that we need to learn.  We are working forward to making it better. 
 
Somedays you probably contemplate what it would be like to be single.  We are imperfect mortals.
 
What is the goal in this life?  To live with our Heavenly Father and in order to do that we have to be like him.  We have to develop His attributes.
 
Some of you may have a ‘perfect’ child.  This is the almost self raised child.  They are mild.  They keep their room clean because they want to please you.  They are peace makers in your home.  Some of you may have that child.  If you were blessed with that child you are taking a course in parenting 101.  You still have to get up in the night when they are babies.  You still have to potty train them.  Is it really hard when you have a ‘perfect’ child. 
 
What if some of you have children that are strong willed, say ‘no’, throw temper tantrums, hard to get to go to church, defiant at everything you say.  Now you are enrolled in Parenting 505.  It will teach you patience, reliance on the Lord, absolute complete humility.  This hard one gives you the opportunity to learn Christ like behavior.  You have the choice to learn it.  You don’t have that same opportunity with the ‘perfect child’ in Parenting 101. 
 
You either give birth to trouble or marry it!  Heavenly Father wants to give us that opportunity to grow.
 
Most of us go into marriage with a faulty idea of what it should look like (in the church). Most of you are not raising your children to be good marriage partners.  We aren’t teaching them what it’s like to be real in marriage.  We are still teaching the same principles that we had when we grew up. 
 
Girls…be active, get YW medallion, be clean, go to college, be moral, find the perfect missionary, get married in the temple and live happily every after.  It’s not wrong it’s just incomplete. 
 
Boys…same thing…add go on mission, find the right girl. 
 
After you are married a few days you learn that marriage is not what you thought it would be.  You still have the idea subconsciously you think it’s an extension of a perfect date, you just don’t have to say good night. 
 
When you are on a perfect date what are your manners like?  You are still trying to impress.  How long do you have the energy to live like that? 
 
When you are in this class you have to listen for yourself.  We will talk both men and women’s side.  You aren’t listening for what they should be doing.  I want you listening for what you have power over that you can change. 
 
Hopefully we will go from understanding to application.  Some of you, those who maybe have a rocky or empty marriage, I want you to know and testify that if you change you the relationship will change.  I’m not talking about abusive marriages, just regular normal empty marriages.  No one husband or wife should be abused.  That needs to be dealt with, with the bishop.  You are not abused if you don’t get your own way. 
 
The first part of a marriage is called the “Infatuation” part of marriage (October 2000 Agency and Love in Marriage by Lynn Robbins)   This is where you live on love.  It requires no effort.  You are always thinking about fun things to do for them.  No one said…you need to do this.  You just did it.  That’s not true love. 
 
True love requires conscious effort and sacrifice.  It’s a choice.  In the ‘Infatuation’ period it’s like living in the Garden of Eden.  You begin to slide out of that. 
 
About year 2-3 when the first baby comes along Mom’s attitude changes from what Dad used to know.  Dad is finishing up school.  It’s busy and crazy.  Baby comes.  Mom is home with the baby and Dad is still working and finishing home.  Women start wanting attention and time.  I’ve been home with this baby all day.  He needs space…I’ve been at work and school and just need someone to care.  As each person looks at their own needs what begins to happen?  We start sliding just a little bit. 
 
Child 2 comes and you are still ok.  When Child 3 comes it’s over.  Mom is completely immersed in being Mom.  Dad is trying to support the family and church callings. 
 
With 3 kids you don’t let go of anything.  You still keep your house clean and try to do it all.  The more kids you have the more you let go of. 
 
The #1 reason people want to get divorced is that ‘we are falling out of love’.  Love is a verb.  Do you fall out of kindness?  You don’t fall out of kindness you stop doing kind things.  You don’t fall out of love.  You stop doing loving things.  It’s a gentle slow slide out of love. 
 
Alma 32 (The Parable of the Seed)
 
Change the wording…
37 And behold, as the tree marriage beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
 
This is the infatuation time.  If you nourish with much care…what does much care say….time, effort, intentional…if you take a plant and just expect the plant to grow will it?  It probably won’t. 
 
My Dad’s hobby was plants/gardening.  We moved into a house.  He laid out a plan on gardening.  He took a wheelbarrow and hand mixed soil for every plant he planted.  The yard turned out incredible.  That is nourishing with much care.  What did he have to do?  What did it look like? 
 
He learned about the plant.  He had to find the right balance.  Then he had to do it…many times.  He did it daily!  That’s what carefully nourishing looks like.
 
 38 But if ye neglect the tree marriage, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun trials, selfishness, illness, PMS, post pardem, work-a-holics, internet gaming cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
 
We are through the infatuation period.  We have talked about intentional parenting.  We need to do intentional marriage and marriage with a purpose.
 
“Pluck it up and cast it out”…I’m not talking about divorce.  This means…ignoring each other.  You are casting out your willingness to nourish.  You are emotionally and spiritually withdrawing from them. 
 
Critical years in marriage 5 and 10…hump years.  In almost every marriage people stop and say this isn’t what I wanted.  The next time is ‘empty nesters’. 
 
If I feel like my needs are getting met…they aren’t moving, but I am and it creates distance.  If I am really offended and hurt and will not move how do we close the gap.  It doesn’t matter if they move from you or you move from them.  You can begin to do the much nourishing. 
 
 39 Now, this is not because the seed marriage was not good, neither is it because the fruit love thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground heart is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree marriage, therefore ye cannot have the fruit love thereof.
 
This is where you ‘find new interests’, you aren’t listening and aren’t paying attention to me.  That marriage is still good.  Your heart is hard.  You have to nourish with conscious purpose. 
 
In the infatuation period is the 80/20.  The others you dated just didn’t have the same things you wanted.  Then you found the person you wanted and they had 80% of what you wanted.  There was 20% of the things that annoy you.  Let’s say that they have allergies.  In the spring and in the fall they ‘sniff’.  Because you love this person so much in the Dating/Infatuation your heart is torn that you have allergies. 
 
5 years down the road that isn’t funny anymore.  You are saying…could you knock it off.? Could you blow your nose?  We go to the point where we are going to fix the 20% because we are wanting to ‘help’ them.  We rationalize it that way.  We start to parent our spouse.  (Women do that)  Men will criticize.  Those things that didn’t bother us in the beginning are going to start bothering us. 
 
We will encounter other things. 
 
Example…There was a woman married to a guy and they went to a fireside.  The husband was driving home and he thought my wife is always mad about the toothpaste lid.  I will put the cap on the toothpaste lid.  The next morning he got up and sure enough he left the cap off and put the cap on the toothpaste.  He comes home anticipating that his wife will greet him. 
 
How much effort did it take for him?  Conscious effort.  He does it every day all week and the wife never says a word.  Saturday morning he is coming his hair.  She comes in and folds her arms and say, We need to talk.  She says, “I want to know why you haven’t brushed your teeth all week.”  J 
President Hinckley….Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just ordinary people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. . . .
Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.
A lot of time you don’t even know what is missing, but you just feel like something isn’t right.  Most of real life is happy normal life. 
 
Stephen Covey…“At one seminar, after I’d spoken on the importance of demonstrating character within the family, a man came up and said, ‘I like what you’re saying, but my wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other that we used to. I guess we don’t love each other anymore. What can I do?’
 
“‘Love her,’ I replied.
 
“He looked puzzled. ‘How do you love when you don’t feel love?’
 
“‘My friend,’ I responded, ‘love is a verb. The feeling of love is the fruit of love. So love your wife. You did it once, you can do it again. Listen. Empathize. Appreciate. It’s your choice. Are you willing to do that?’
 
“Of course, I was asking this man if he was willing to search within himself for the character required to make his marriage work. All our relationships follow the contours of life; they have ups and downs. This is why our families provide a critical measure of our character—and the opportunity, again and again to nurture it.” 6
 
PONDER:  What would it be like to be married to me? 
PONDER:  What specifically can you do in your marriage to make your spouse happy?
 
That is your homework assignment.  DO whatever you wrote down as what you need to do. 
 
There should be things that are more sacred to you than the intimate relationship…trust, shared experiences, the depth of the relationship changes.  It’s built on much better long term things. 
 
I am satisfied that a happy marriage is not so much a matter of romance as it is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one’s companion.  “What God has Joined Together” April 1991
 
Anxious concern = nourish
 
If you are anxiously concerned about a child’s homework you are there, talking to the child, talking to the teacher.  If you are anxiously concerned about your companion you have to know what brings them comfort?  What makes them happy?  What are their goals?  What are their dreams?  What’s on their bucket list?  Do you know what’s on your bucket list? 
 
Stop criticizing your spouse and focus on what you can do NOT what they aren’t doing.  Stop looking at what the relationship is lacking and start focusing on what the relationship has. 
 
Tools:

1. Play the “remember when…” game out loud with them. What were the fun things you used to do? As you talk about those things the feelings come back. You begin to regenerate the feelings of the infatuation period. Then re-do one of those things again.
2. Stop taking offence….women are notorious. We take offense when none is intended. We don’t listen to the why first we get offended first. They forget your birthday.

STORY:  “I am reminded of a story about a couple who had been married for 60 years.  They had rarely argued during that time, and their days together passed in happiness and contentment.  They shared everything and had no secrets between them—except one.  The wife had a box that she kept at the top of a sideboard, and she told her husband when they were married that he should never look inside.
 
As the decades passed, the moment came that her husband took the box down and asked if he could finally know what it contained. The wife consented, and he opened it to discover two doilies and $25,000.  When he asked his wife what this meant, she responded, “When we were married, my mother told me that whenever I was angry with you or whenever you said or did something I didn’t like, I should knit a small doily and then talk things through with you.”  The husband was moved to tears by this sweet story.  He marveled that during 60 years of marriage he had only disturbed his wife enough for her to knit two doilies.  Feeling extremely good about himself, he took his wife’s hand and said, “That explains the doilies, but what about the $25,000?”  His wife smiled sweetly and said, “That’s the money I got from selling all the doilies I’ve knitted over the years.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “What is Truth”, CES Broadcast, January 2013)
 

1. Live within your means. You need to appreciate that your husband is providing and guard and cherish that money that he brings into your home. Debt will destroy a marriage faster than anything. Christmas is coming. Cash or nothing.
2. Maintain complete fidelity and trust. You would be amazed at how many marriages are broken up because they go onto the computer and starts chatting with old friends of the opposite sex. Be careful about reading romance novels. It’s not the reality of the real world. You have this idea that prince charming should be always in the ‘infatuation’ period. Stop comparing. Stop it! This also means you do not confess your husbands sins to your mom, sister, friend. You have no right.The only place you can discuss his weaknesses that are really bothering you…Heavenly Father, him, and bishop….all confidential.That’s the only places you should be discussing their flaws.
3. Personally be living the gospel. Read your own scriptures. Have your own personal prayers. In your prayers ask the Lord often “What Lack I yet?” in marriage. You will be surprised what he will tell you to do. That’s part of living the gospel. We marriage someone expecting/wanting them to make you happy. You want them to make you happy while you make them good. It should be reversed. It is your job to make you good and make them happy.

 
Class member:  “Why do we spend our whole marriage trying to change our husbands and then complain that they aren’t the men we marry.”

1. Consciously look for the good in your spouse. You need to say 15:1 positives to negatives. If you choose to do this get a white board and put it in just your space. Everyday write a validation on it. This is your gift to them. What your write on the board is a gift. These are choices for you.
2. Be quick to say “I’m sorry” and be very quick to forgive. Get down on your knees and pray until you can forgive. Why do ‘discussions’ get intense? Because we want to prove they are right. You are not at war. You can say I’m sorry ‘about the wedge in the relationship, and feelings of contention’ even if you don’t agree with them.
3. Spend time together. Date night without children is important. Once a year going away by yourselves without children is important. This should be MANDATORY. That’s when you remember why you married each other. On date night….No cell phones, no electronics (it’s not gaming), not a movie. This is interactive. Put something in the emotional bank account of each other.Each of you are individually there. What do we do for date night? Have you become so old you can’t think of a date. Take turns. Go do something that is weird. Do something new. Get out of your rut. Do something fun and exciting.
4. Learn your spouse’s Love Language. I love you can be words and that almost counts. You should say it everyday, but if it isn’t attached to feelings it’s not getting in. You have to say I love you so it’s felt.

 
Class member:  I made a comment that my husband doesn’t like to hear ‘I love you’. 
 
Those words somewhere in his life have caused him a great deal of pain.  Example:  Some children are raised by mothers who are critical and demanding and harsh.  They always find fault .  They are always criticizing.  I’m not going to make it.  Then they say, “I love you” and it doesn’t go in.  That was related to someone who used those words, but never showed the feeling.  They don’t always carry meaning. 
 
You know the scripture in James…”Faith without works is dead”…that’s what it is.  Don’t tell me you love me, but show me you love me by what you do.  If those words are offensive don’t use them, but you must show it. 
 
Examples…my love language is verbal validation.  I need people (those that I love) to tell me not praise, but encouragement about what I am doing right.  I needed my husband to say, “I love the way you read this story to the kids.”  That’s what I needed, but he didn’t know what it was to give it to me.  I decided I needed to teach him what he needed.  His love language is physical touch.  He would be exhausted…if I would give him a back rub he would just melt.  You could just feel the tension going out of him. What makes you feel good is what you want to give.  My feeling is thank you very much I had 10 children crawling all over this body I don’t want one more person touching me.  I make 3x5 cards.  They say the dumbest things.  “I would walk across the desert barefoot to be with you.”  One night he came home…he was in a good mood and so was I . I said, I need you to give me 3x5.  He started to read them.  He said you have to be kidding.  I said put them in your drawer.  About 3 nights later I was in tears.  They don’t know if they should come in or go back out.  Saying how is your day?  I said I need a 3x5.  Do you want me to go get them?  I said you need to put your arms around me and read them.  We both just started to laugh hysterically.  He wasn’t threatened.  He wasn’t criticized.  It showed him what I needed.  Now he is very good at validating. 
 
Everyone feels love differently.  Some is touch, some acts of service, some time, some conversation.  There is a zillion ways that say I love you.  If you don’t know…then you need to start paying attention to when you ‘feel that warm fuzzy’.  You need to begin to validate when they give you what you need.  Say, “I love it when we walk through the mall and you hold my hand.”  I love it when you come home and you give me a hug.”  Ask them…What is it that makes you feel loved? 
 
Class member:  I just had my kids take the love language quiz.  I had no idea.  I guessed wrong on them.
 

1. Meet and greet at the crossroads.
2. Be kind! We stop being kind. We are nicer to our friends at church that we are to our spouses. That means smile! Do happy talk.Everything is not this heavy thing. Do you know why your children would rather be with their peers rather than at home with you?Their friends are happy. You need to put something in that can come out that’s nice. When you were dating you could talk for hours. Say please, thank you, I appreciate, I’m grateful.
3. Take responsibility for your own emotional well being. Women are emotional basket cases. You are responsible for figuring out what makes you peaceful. You find out what it is. You need to track your cycle….that week…be nice. During that week we find more fault with our spouse than any other time. Cut yourself some slack. Cut them a lot of slack.
4. Avoid unreal expectations. No one is perfect. Stop worrying about the person you thought you married and love the person you married. You have to work through those unreal expectations.
5. Learn to listen.  Listen to them. Listen to what they are saying and what they are feeling. Listen to what their intention is.Listen first! Then you can say your part. Ask 3 questions before you give your side. That validates them and makes them feel like you are listening.
6. Remember that this is an eternal relationship. Say evening prayers, go to the temple together, talk about covenants. Have your husband give you priesthood blessings. Seek his counsel and guidance. Women come to earth more spiritually sensitive.Satan takes that gift and tweaks it to make women feel self righteous.

 
Pick one of the “Homeworks” at the end of the chapter.  Read the story at the end of the syllabus on Marriage. 
 
President Benson…When marriage becomes a quest and ceases to be an irritant in that moment Heavenly Father will endow you with great power.
 
Your power will come as you make that eternal relationship your quest.