Loyalty at the Core

At the core of marriage there must be certain aspects such as, love, trust, loyalty and many more. These aspects are often entwined with each other. For example when you are loyal to someone they are more likely to trust and rely on you. Loyalty is very key to a marriage but by having infidelity you are destroying your personal loyalty towards your spouse. I think there are very few cases though where people go into a marriage thinking they will break their fidelity. This is exactly what I want to talk about is how to prevent infidelity, especially emotional infidelity which I believe to be even more common and less known.

An emotional affair is often a trap that's becoming easier and easier for people to fall into. With text messages and social media it is easier today then ever to talk to people privately. Emotional affairs  can come in a range of ways from simply confiding in another, besides your spouse or a professional set aside to help marriages, to talking about intimate topics with another and/or sexting things with another.

Most emotional affairs start off very innocently. Imagine you have had a life time best friend of the opposite gender. There is nothing initially bad about that, however, lets say you start confiding in them on what to do about something regarding your marriage. You then start comparing your spouse to your friend. Mabey you feel like you can talk to your friend better then your spouse. Pretty soon you are in an emotional affair. You also often see this when spouses add old relationships as friends on social media.  Your friend may message you complaining about their relationship and to help them out to try to relate and you complain about yours. Pretty soon you are confiding in each other. You may start to remember how wonderful it was and compare it to what you have now.

Even talking to family members would be wise not to do. Most the time when you confined with a family member that persons view of your spouse will change, even once you have forgiven them and moved on. People often believe that infidelity can only happen with the opposite sex but even confiding and getting emotionally attached to those of your same sex can be dangerous.

When you have problems with in your marriage the best thing you can do is talk to your spouse about it. Statistics have shown that when one spouse reaches out to others for marriage help the marriage is ironically more likely to end in divorce. If you do have to talk to someone for help it is best to go to a professional who is set apart to help marriages and who isn't a family member.

Happiest day to the sadddest day of your life

Many dream of the day when they will find their true love. They picture their wedding as the happiest day of their life. Little do they probably consider though how significant that day and the events leading up to it can be, compared  to the rest of their lives. I want to address this and how these first decisions coming up to marriage can either greatly bless or hurt your marriage.

The first step to the marriage adventure is the day you are proposed to. Some would say how you are proposed to isn't significant. This simply is not true though.  How you are proposed to sets up a precedent for the rest of your marriage. If he has a planned and formal proposal he will probably put more effort into your marriage then if he asks off hand while you were watching Netflix on the couch. So when a guy proposes it would be wise to take note to how it is done.

Now that you are proposed to the next stage is  engagement. This is a crucial time to get to know each other and bond over wedding plans. So how long should your engagement be? That really depends on you but facts show that you don't want it too long or too short. If your engagement is long you are more likely to fall into sexual relationships before marriage. If your engagement is to short though then you could miss out on essential steps that should take place. One step is planning the wedding. If your engagement is short it makes the planning stressful instead of a bonding time between the couple. You also should have an engagement long enough where you can have full-disclosure conversations.

When planning your wedding it also would be good to make sure this is a couple bonding time. Often the planning of a weeding is between a mother and daughter and maybe the father. It would be wise to make sure the future husband is equally involved in order to let the couple grow closer together.

Lets back up for a moment though and talk about money starting with the ring. How much your ring costs can greatly effect marital satisfaction later. Statistic show how every 100$ over 2,000 spent on the ring decreases marital satisfaction. The same idea goes for the wedding. Cheaper weddings increase marital satisfaction. A good saying to go by is more guests not more money. A wedding isn't about showing off for others but instead having them celebrate your union and the creation of a new family. This even goes for the honey moon, how cheaper honey moons tend to have better marital satisfaction then expensive ones.

So how come this is so? Spending big sums of money can start a relationship off on a stressful start. If the man pays for the ring he can start the couple off in serious debt. Normally these sums of money are paid three different ways. One, the couple waits and have a longer engagement. Two, the parents pay for it. Or three, the couple pays.

First, what if you wait as a couple and push off the marriage so you can pay for it.
 Like I mentioned earlier the longer you wait the easier it is to cohabitate. Cohabitating has shown to increase divorce rates and decrease marital satisfaction.

Second the parents could pay. This can lead to problems because the parents may feel like they made an investment and hence have certain rights. For example they may feel a right to plan the wedding as they see fit or they expect the couple to visit them on holidays. Also since they feel they invested into the marriage they might get unhealthily involved in the marriage to make it last.

Third the couples may pay. Like I mentioned earlier this starts the couple off in debt. Debt has proven to add great stress and rifts in marriage. The couple may have to work more to pay it off and hence spend less time together. It also has proven to make a couple less likely to desire to start a family.

Your marriage can be the happiest day of your life and lead to some of the happiest lives.  If not done right though it can  start a couple off on the wrong track. You should have a formal proposal, you should have an appropriate length engagement, and you should be careful how much you spend. This process can be a strengthening time for a couple, and hence it would be smart to do it right.

Ties that will last

Love is an art and building healthy lasting relationships is even more so. To begin to understand love though lets look at the different kinds of love. First there is Storge which is the kind of affection one finds between parent and child. There is also Agape which is charity such as the pure love of Christ. These two types of love are unconditional. The next one is Eros  which is a sexual or physical romantic love and the last one is Philia which is love between friends and brotherly love.

When getting into a relationship many fall into a Eros love. It takes more then just that though to build a lasting love. You need to have the charity of Agape love and many would argue you need the love of Storge and Philia too. When building towards a lasting relationships there are steps you should take and you shouldn't move to the next step till you feel like you have completed the one before it. The steps goes as follows, know, trust, rely, commit, touch.

The first is know, you get to know someone by adding together talk, together, and time. You need to be able to talk to each other and disclose. You need to hang out together. Go on dates, see them in different settings. This way you get to know how they act and not just their favorite color. The last part is time. It normally takes about 3 months for habits to show up and you get to see a persons true self.

Once you know a person you can start to put trust in them. Once a person has proven to be trustworthy then you can rely on them to fill your needs.

Next is commit. Simply put, no, you shouldn't commit to anyone that you don't know and can't trust and rely on. This sounds obvious when stated but so often we see people get into exclusive relationships with people they hardly know, let alone can trust and rely on.

The last part is touch. This part normally gets out of whack. So often couples skip to a stage where they trust and snuggle with someone before they even truly know them. This is simply not healthy though. Physical touch by nature, even  just simple hugs, can really make a bond between people. You see this if you go on long trips with people you don't know. By the end of the trip after sitting by someone for a long time even if you don't talk much you feel closer to them by the end.This is why touch should be last. By having touch in your relationship you will feel closer to the person and hence are more likely to trust and rely on them with out truly knowing them first.

In the end most of it comes back to knowing someone. If you want to have a good relationship you need to truly get to know the person first. You need to see them in multiple situations. This way you know before hand what you are inviting into your life before you commit to it.

Equal does not mean the same!

Many would have you believe that girls and boys act unalike mostly based on their environment. Many believe that since boys and girls are treated dissimilar they grow up different. Much research shows though that a lot of these differences actually has to do with biology and hence the contrast between boy and girls is more innate.

 Such contrasting differences can even be seen from birth. Many babies, who are to young to fully understand their surroundings, act differently to situation. Even evolutionally this would make sense that we fit into certain categories. Woman have to put all their energy into making a baby, because of this, man evolved to be more protective in order to protect his wife during this venerable time when she is creating. He also will then need to protect her and their child when they are both weak from the birthing process.  biologically men have more grey matter in there brain which allows more storage and processing. Woman have more white matter which allows them to make up to 5 times faster connections between the emotional and verbal part of their brains. This explains why woman tend to be more comfortable talking about their feelings. Another way to see sex traits contrast through biology is actually by looking at people who don't fit the mold.  CAH girls find themselves to be very tom boy, they tend to be rougher and not as nurturing, they also aren't as comfortable with feelings. So how does this prove that traits are biological? Well CAH girls are actually exposed to more testosterone while they are in the uteral. So yes some people aren't as feminine or masculine but that also can be contributed to biology not just purely environment. Society has tried to make boys and girls more equal and it has simply not worked. Toy companies have made dolls for boys and video games for girls but they simple do not get the same attention as their other more stereotypical boy girl toys. 

Men and woman in general are different and that's ok. It is how God designed us. We are born with different traits that make us who we are. By bringing these traits together in marriage we complete each other and make a more perfect whole.