Communication & Mutual Problem Solving.

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives. We are surrounded by different types of communications, such as verb and nonverbal communications, and each of those types plays a big role in our daily activities. Mostly, people find a really easy way to communicate nonverbally and as well through virtuality. Teenagers especially, find it really interesting to express their feelings when they send a text message, take pictures, etc. This new method has the benefits of itself and as well the opposite of that. Technology had come in many ways, which can make the lives of people really convenient and easy to communicate. One of the biggest investments that had come to those last couple of decades, is the internet and social media. Internet is well used for education, communication, receiving notifications from the apps, navigating in different websites, etc. A long time ago, when it was needed to send a message between two countries, most likely it took more that one month or depending on which country was the conversation to be held. Nowadays we are grateful that technology had come with many resources for us by making everything faster and easier. On the other hand, we can learn and develop even more our pieces of information by using the Internet, Wikipedia, Google, etc. However, we can find some negative ways of using this kind of communication.
 

First of all, we do not find a direct connection between the person that we are talking and this can not express all the feelings that we are feeling. Social media plays a big impact on this field. Scrolling on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, etc, we see that the idea of the personality should be the same or the style and the language that we use. Mostly, those people are not real with their own situations but they try to hide or fake till they become “queens” of social media.


Prioritizing this way of communication is not the best way that we should use in our family and especially in marriage. Communication work for those who work at it. Key to a goal relationship-to accept each others’ faults, to discuss, and not argue and always do your best to control your feelings when you are upset. Couples are a good example that we can see the way that manege situations when conflict comes in their marriage. In my own experience is a compelling example of this. My parents had been married for more than 27 years old. Looking at them as an example of love and cooperation, made me ask them for some good advice that I should practice in my future marriage and why not with my friends and roommates.

 

I would like to share some of that advice with you today.

• Listen more than you speak.
• Understand the other person first. 
• Understand the needs, wishes, and values. 
• Begin with empathy. 
• Take responsibility for your feelings. 
• Make requests that are practical, specific, and positive. 
• Use accurate, neutral descriptions.

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand but we listen to reply. Most of the time, young missionaries when they go for the first time they were introduced in one famous phrase “forget yourself and go to work”. This is from one of the leaders of my church “Gordon. B. Hinckley. Forgetting your self is relating to the conversation that we make with other people by leaving behind many negative feelings and selfishness. Prioritizing the other person and being able to talk clearly can help and as well result in many problems.
 

Like my parents and other couples, they do learn from experiences and each has the struggles in marriage or family. However, it is our responsibility to be open with one another in the way we talk, speak, and express our feeling. The art of communication is the language of leadership.-James Humes-

The family under stress.

• What is family stress? How does stress try in the family?

Family stress can make many faces and appear in different forms and behaviors. Especially, family, and social burdens on pandemic data, more complicated than the usual ones. The mental syndrome can affect the whole person or also many members, but it is not uncommon for the entire "family system" to suffer from social and economic stress and social. For example, stress can manifest itself in conflicts or family problems that cannot be sought. Young children in many cases disagree with parents to make tasks that are required for them to do. This is one of the main issues that mothers find hard to deal with their teenagers’. On the other hand, it can be hard for the relationship between them and their husbands. The lacing of communications can bring a lot of stress. 

 

Family stress is indicated by the fact that communication deteriorates. Family members do not talk about various topics such as worries, appointments, lessons, work, all that belong to the family and problems. This lack of communication between us only makes things worse. Isolation of individual family members can also be a consequence if there are old conflicts. Children, in particular, fall into the line of fire when their parents have conflicts between themselves and they do not know how to process these experiences. Therefore, they often retreat to their rooms and are silent and cannot or do not dare to talk to anyone in the family. 

 

The situation in the family is now being aggravated by the telephone, which is possessed by almost every person, even those of minor ages. By dealing mainly with the telephone (Internet, text, posts, messages, etc.), family members are isolated and lose contact with each other. This also causes not to communicate or discuss many family obligations.

 

• What are the consequences of stress in the family?

Family stress can lead to mental and pathological illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, burn-out, or depression. These health problems can also be caused by family overload. These people suffer from stress, are unable to sleep properly, meditate a lot, and suffer psychosomatic complaints such as abdominal pain, nausea or headache, lack of appetite, frequent urination. Conflicts between partners (spouses) can lead to the breakdown of families due to divorce or separation, whose children then often suffer more and in turn present new and subsequent problems. In some cases, this can even cause trauma to the child, which can damage the child's soul and even ruin their future.

• What are the causes of family stress?

There are many causes of stress in the family. They can be internal as well as external factors that stem from external influences. Internal factors include, for example, self-doubt, self-doubt and self-esteem, high demands on oneself and others, lack of arrogance about one's personal needs, insufficient ability to deal with conflicts, and fear of separation. or loneliness. The ability to not be able to say no. Many people are also stressed by burdening themselves with many tasks that they cannot perform.
External influences can include double the burden of work and family, an insufficient division of labor, conflicts within the family, lack of attention, concerns in communication (couple), and the care of old or sick family members. The loss of family members can also cause a deep crisis. In addition, stress can arise if someone in the family suffers from a mental illness. Financial, economic, social, and stress at work can also affect family life and create stress.
 

• Improving communication:

Conflicts arise when communication fails. They are often irritated by people who do not talk about their worries, fears, and problems. It is therefore important to improve communication and thus automatically improve the family situation and cooperation with family members and colleagues. Family therapy can be very helpful, for example.

 

• Seek outside support:

If caring for elderly or sick family members requires time and effort, professional help can have a supportive effect.

• Home maintenance can also provide relief.

Family help is also a good contact for problems. If you have problems with children and adolescents, you can contact a child and adolescent psychiatrist, seek contact with family members, do not use the phone too much.
 

• Put the order in daily life:

Tasks should be distributed correctly so that everyone contributes and not a family member is burdened more. Children, for example, can clean the washing machine, or go for a walk, play in the garden, take care of the flowers. A written list (To-do list) to plan work, the order of tasks can also help for a better organization.

 

• Practice skill and take time for yourself:

Arrogance about your needs can counteract the overload, so show simplicity and practicality. Family life is important, but you should not give up and neglect your needs. That’s why it’s important to rest, plan time for rest, and deal with things that are good for you. It's okay that sometimes you can't take care of children, housework, or other voluntary activities 24/7.

• Creating shared experiences:

In order for the family to come to life and experience happiness again after a phase of acute stress or conflict and to strengthen the ritual system, it is very important a monthly excursion or a dinner together that can bring a new dynamic to outdated structures and pathological family. Games together, discussions together can improve relationships and peace of mind.

• Maintaining social contacts:

To get out of your family environment and change your mind, meeting friends can be very helpful. Following the old hobby helps body activity. An evening of girls or boys for any celebration is helpful, so you will not have to stay in the same environment all the time. Here you can also talk to friends about your concerns and get advice or another opinion.

"Perfect family” can be when we try to help each other overcome their challenges and be there for one another.

  

Sexual intimacy and family life.

“Without knowledge, actions are useless, and knowledge without action is futile”-Abu Bakr-

Couples in our days most of the time prefer to have the perfect marriage which includes everything that is for the outside face such as a house, cars, the perfect vacations, etc. On the other hand, they do not have the right information for the privacy or things that they want to share with each other, which leads to miscommunications, selfishness, and confusion. Learning about intimacy and creating family life, will be more beneficial then prioritizing which car or jewelry would we buy for our spouse. 

Our environment today provides us many resources that can give us information about intimacy and how to make our family life easier. First of all, we should find the right equipment, resources and people to ask. The good and the bad of this information is that we should have at the right time and in the right way. As all we know, females and males are different not only from their physical appearance and the attributes that we do have but we like and express different desires. This can be related to couples when it is going in having an intimacy time between them or going in the other step in having sexual relationships and creating a family. According to the family and marriage therapist, females had the idea that good relationship stars by creating trust and as well as closeness between each other. On the other hand, males are more like to have more physical toughness between their partners. However, learn things that like and what they do not like, helps more that the couples can enjoy more marriage life and intimacy.


  

Sexual intimacy is a gift from God. It is sacred and it is no secret. The reason why we think that is sacred because it needs to be between a husband and a wife and not between other people. Most of the time teenagers find interesting learning about this topic by navigating on the internet in bad resources such as pornography, nudes, or dirty stuff. Those are inappropriate and can lead to misunderstanding the concept of intimacy. When a couple decides to get married they should talk and stay close together in the ideas that they have and what they want from each other.

Most of the time couples find themselves in the ESP Myth “ If my spouse loves me, he should instinctively know what I want and need to be happy”



 

When we do not talk about the things that we like and dislike especially in the intimacy part we find ourselves not enjoying what we are doing and not find connections any more. Nowadays, the number of divorces is increased a lot only because couples find themself not closed as they were in the beginning. Intimacy is really important between man and the woman to be special and loving. One experience that I would like to share is a compelling example of this. When my cousin got married she was only 18 years old and she did not know everything about intimacy and how she can talk to her husband about those things. Most of the time we see as a tabu this topic and especially from the family where I was raised. Her husband was older than her. He was in that time 28 years old which made him have more experience than her. After a while, she was not feeling the same as happy as she was and they had miscommunications. Some of their good friends suggested them go and had some counseling in a marriage and council therapist which could help them with many things that they need to improve. Because of that, my cousin now is much happier and they have a child now which was a blessing for them to stat to create their own family.




Let’s be open and cheerful in our family life and have a healthy conversation for our intimacy which can help us in many different concepts of our family. The body is a blessing of God and we should respect both us and our partner as the gift from Heaven.

Transitions in Marriage.

What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life and in your marriage? Marriage plays a big role in our society and it is one of the biggest steps towards your progression. We can learn many things when we go to school, work, different courses, etc, but we still grow and learn even more in our marriage. When people decide to get married, many ideas and expectations are in their life at that time. However, not everything can go perfectly in the way that we desire. 

Most of the time, it is required a lot of hard work, patience, and as well as faith. If we compare school time with marriage, or work with marriage the similarity that we can find between them is growth, failure, and success. Nowadays, young couples expect their life can be all sunny with a rainbow and without a stormy day. Disappointment comes in the relationship when the first challenges show up in their life and they are confused about how to overcome them. When we fail the test in school for the first time in one of our subjects, mostly we do not give up and live the school in the middle only for one class. Priority is to finish the major successfully, and we will do everything to pass that class, or to retake over and over again. The same principle we should follow in our marriage life. 

According to the statistics, most of the time people get married when they are young from 25-28 years old. In some other cultures, those statistics change but the average is around 20’-30’. However, we forget that during this time those people had lived only with roommates during the time of college, parents, or alone. When people get married it is a big step for them which will bring many different things in their life. One of the theories that help me to pictured my future marriage is the “Yin and Yang” theory. In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a concept of dualism, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. 

First of all, understanding the capacity of each partner and the differences that characters each of us, can make transitions in marriage much easier. Mostly, the problem in marriage life is not only in the first steps of our relationship. It comes and goes during our time that we stay and live together, bring children in life, make changes for a better life, share bank accounts, etc. Therefore, we should accept those changes and differences that we see and have in our life. One experience of those transitions is the story of Anabel. She is a friend of mine and even she is the same as me, her life is different for my life. We were born in the same city in the same year with three months between each other. Even though, we were best friends since children she changed a lot after she had her first boyfriend, who was her first husband as well. She was so in love and after she turned 18 they got married. In the first couple of months, I could see Anabel really happy and she told me that was planning on having a baby. In the fourth month, she got pregnant and I was so excited for her. Unfortunately, they lost the baby and this tragic moment brought many issues and fights in her marriage. They got divorced after 1 year and a half. When I met my friend and asked her why they could no try to fix the marriage, or could do something to fix this thing that came in their life. Her response was that it was hard for her to work alone and to don’t find support from her husband. Over 6 months my friend got through these situations and she was able to find again hope in her life. Now she had been married again, with another boy, and I can see that things that were not working out in her first marriage now they are working because everything that life is through to them they can respond together and pass that together. 

A perfect marriage is between two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. Like our families, parents, God, and many people that support us never gave up on us in our difficulty time, we should never give up immediately in the person that we decided to get married but work through things that life can bring and help each other with love and compassion.