God and Friendship in Your Marriage

 

This last weekend I went to Vegas with my husband. He planned the whole things, in fact; I didn’t even know where we were going until we got to the airport and some man turned to us and said, “You headed to Las Vegas?” We stayed in a house he rented with a pool, a hot tub, a pool table, a beautiful master bath and bedroom, and I loved it. I know Vegas doesn’t scream “Best Trip ever!”, or even places you really want to vacation, especially if you don’t gamble and party. Nevertheless, we had a ball. We were kid free and carefree. The best thing about going on vacation with my husband is we get to be our best selves. There isn’t stress, other’s (kids) agendas to satisfy, homework, paperwork, laundry, and so forth. We get to pay attention to each other in a way that we wish we could every day. Both of our love languages are more than satisfied, and we truly get to see what good friends we are. IT IS AMAZING!

 In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman emphasizes the importance of friendship in a marriage. He says, “Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.” When a couple can stay friends even when dealing with all the challenges of being married, they are experiencing PSO (positive sentiment override). Gottman explains this is when couples positive thoughts about each other, and their marriage are so dominant that they override negative feelings.  When we were in Vegas, we didn’t have to overcome any negative feelings, but back to our busy lives with six children, and we definitely need to be able to combat any negativity. This can be very hard, but with a strong friendship, we are more likely to have a happy marriage. 

So what happens when we BFFs decide we don’t want to play together anymore, and we don’t like how the other is doing things, or not doing things?  Well, for me I do a number of things, and sometimes I can handle the problem and remember that I have respect and fondness for my friend. Other times, not so much. I need improvement. I need help. The questions are, when will I realize that I need to stop what I am doing and what do I do when I realize? Gottman states that if we have fallen into bad patterns when we disagree, we are, “unlikely to change unless [we] receive the right sort of help.”

This is where many might explore different avenues of help, but as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, I know that I can go to God for help. That doesn’t mean that reading a book or going to a professional is not the right sort of help. I may need that also, but the first place I should go to for help is my loving, all-knowing Heavenly Father. 

 

H. Wallace Goddard, author of Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, said that God’s purpose for marriage is three things: “a refuge-a safe haven-from the troubled world,” “a laboratory where each of us could conduct daily experiments in gospel living,” and “a spiritual challenge course to humble us, stretch us, and refine us.” God has so many things for us to use marriage for. He knows how hard it will be, and I know for sure that it is the only way we can live with God again, so He definitely wants us to succeed at it.

 Now if my latest rendezvous with my husband was how we lived our lives, I could conclude that my marriage is what Goddard said marriage is not, “a retirement village where we sunbathe, work the buffet, and play golf.”  We, however, do not live our everyday lives this way. We get to enjoy such trips because our marriage is all the other things Goddard says marriage is. We have to continue to work at it. We need to go to God for help and keep Him in our lives every day.   We also have to continue to build our friendship. 

I have a long way to go when problem solving in my marriage, and I prefer a vacation over most days. What I have learned is that friendship is important in my marriage and that God makes that friendship work.