Talking about marriage ...

(I know that Pilgrimgirl posted about these rings a while ago. And I remember telling her about seeing them in a catalogue before she and Nichan got married. And I wonder if she'd told me if she'd already seen them, or if I was the one who introduced them to the rings

At DOT*, Nichan spoke about Changing Expectations of Marriage. Since we’re using the Doctrines of the Gospel Institute manual to structure the discussions this quarter, I guess it could loosely come under the lesson on the Importance of Family. However, Nichan also borrowed heavily from his own experience and from an article that came out in the November 2006 issue of Sunstone, “For Better, For Worse, For Apostacy?: How Faith Issues Affect Couple Relationships.”

The article was actually the transcript from a SLC Sunstone conference session, which I attended, and found amazingly poignant. I came away with the distinct impression that, as long as both partners could maintain the love and respect that were the bases of the marriage in the first place, that the marriage ought to be maintained as well. There are very few things that I believe are cause for divorce … physical or emotional abuse, infidelity, and trying to escape the laws of the land are the few I can think of right now. Of course, I wish more people thought long and hard and clearly about getting married in the first place. Avoiding mistakes is much better than trying to fix them after the fact. The ounce of prevention, etc etc.

That being said, not everything can be predicted. I’m sure the couples in the article, Nichan and Pilgrimgirl, and others who contributed their personal experiences to the discussion last night had no idea what types of faith challenges would materialize months, years and decades from their courtship period, and how it would affect their marriages.

The one message that stood out to me from last night is the need for really good communication. Before and during. Talking about everything. Assumptions. Desires. Plans. What is needed by each person. What is wanted. What is realistic. What is hoped for. That and being flexible. I tend to think that most things can be successfully negotiated. Of course there are some things that aren’t. In which case it’s good to find out what they are before it’s too late.

Superman and Precious are the best case for this that I know of. Someday I’m going to have to ask Superman where he got that comprehensive book of questions that they perused together in the months before their marriage. Moods. Finances. Leisure activities. Child bearing and rearing. Sex. One silly but possibly relevant set of questions that stuck out in my mind: Do you follow any particular sports teams? Do wins or losses significantly affect your mood? For how long? This line of questioning wasn’t even really on my horizon, but could potentially be very important to someone who is heavily invested in sports.

And, it was very nice to hear from the elder statescouple about how well their marriage has turned out, despite the changes in how they viewed themselves and each other, and what seemed to help. They call it dumb-stupid-luck. Whatever it is, it seems to have worked marvelously for them.

*Given the recent storm over controversial names, I’m just going to refer to the Wednesday night discussion group as DOT: Discussions on Theology. Journeygal has already aptly described it as,” a group of people with various-levels-of-religiosity who are in one way or another interested in Mormonism, and get together to respectfully discuss doctrine and practice within an intent to promote faith and understanding.” However, as that is really long, and not acronymn-able, I’ll just refer to it as DOT. Nice. Short. Inoffensive. I hope.