One of the things that I found interesting in discussion this week was the adjustments a couple will face in marriage. Budgeting was a huge one that I think will be difficult to adjust to. Budgeting money is one that came to my mind, but someone brought up the time you will have to budget as well. Whether its work, school, cars, recreation or time spent together. 

Another things we discussed was children and how children change the marriage. I think that is going to be a very difficult transition - going from having your full focus on one another to so much focus on your child. There was a study done that showed that men generally perceive their wife to be more disagreeable after they had children. In actuality women were more agreeable after children. Why then would the men think this? One theory we came up with in class was that after children are born women tend to have a lot less time to care for and nurture their husband - so the husband feels less important and "second best" now. The wife can feel very overwhelmed in this situation with trying to balance both the role of a wife and the role of a mother. If not communicated as a couple this can cause tension and feelings of isolation in both the husband and the wife. 

How do we avoid this? 

One thing my teacher shared was that his wife tried to share every experience she had with him. If the baby kicked she would have him feel it. She had him at all the doctor appointments and after the children were born included him in as many activities with them as she could. At first he thought she was just being demanding - but after realized how divine her actions were. It kept them close as a couple and certainly close as a family.  
If you have any advice on changes when you were married/had a child please comment :) 

Love. What a fitting topic :) 
This week in class we studied love and all the different types of love out there. There is charity, the pure love of Christ, the love we feel for family, the love we feel for close friends and the romantic love we feel for that special someone. 
What I am going to share today is not what we discussed in class but a discussion I had after class. 

We were talking about dating and this girl in my class made an incredible observation. She stated that everyone is walking around all searching for the same thing but no one ever says anything. Love is too scary to talk about, yet everyone wants to be loved. Why do we do this? Are we afraid of rejection? Failure? Or are we afraid that it might actually work out. Sometimes we can be so afraid of love that we don't even give it a chance. We judge someone right away assuming they are too good for us, or not good enough. Why don't we just give them a chance? Human relationships are an essential part of life. If we don't risk it we may never get the biscuit. Be honest, give people a chance, and just HAVE FUN. Be bold and courageous in love. Yes, you risk getting hurt if you put your feelings out there, but if you don't you risk missing out on a lot more. 

While preparing for class this week we were able to learn about the different characteristics of both genders. So female vs male - what is it that makes the other gender so complex? Here are a few key things that I learned that really resonated with me. 

1. Women are much more relationship oriented than men. 
   
2. Women and men both experience about the same feelings on a daily basis but women just have a greater degree of expressing those feelings (so women AREN'T really more emotional, they just show it more often which is why it has led us to think that)
3. Women are much more sensitive to non-verbal communication than men (for good reason - as women are the primary care-givers)
4. Men are naturally more aggressive (which even shows up when comparing boy and girl toddlers)
5. Men are more spatial oriented (which kind of means they are focused on one thing at a time)

Men's brains vs Women's brains

Men's brains can be compared to a room full of boxes - they move from one box to another whereas Women's brains can be compared to a ball of wire - everything connects to something else. Men's brains have more grey matter - which means more storage area in the brain. Women's brains have more white matter (about 5x more) which is associated with verbal and emotion connection. This may be why women express their emotions more often - because it is easier for them

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In The Family: A Proclamation to the World (which you can find a link to at the top of this page) it is proclaimed that in the family men are to 1 Provide 2 Preside 3 Protect their families and women are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. 

Knowing the different responsibility that each spouse holds in the family relates perfectly to the attributes that as men and women we hold. Men are more aggressive which definitely helps in the protection of the family but also the providing and presiding over the family. Women are more relationship oriented, and able to read non verbal cues better than men which makes sense in that nurturing children consists of developing relationships and reading many non-verbal cues.

There was a woman who spoke in another class about Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia - which is a disease associated with having excessive or deficient sex steroids. The type this woman had caused her to have a more "male" brain. Not in attraction but in drive. So when her and her husband had children she did not have the instinctive motherly traits that women usually have. 

The word preside derives from the word, president which means a delegator of , or to direct and lead. We do not believe that the man is in charge and has final say. Both the husband and the wife are on equal ground.