John M. Gottman, says “ At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is a simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.   By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company.   These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes and dreams. ” Let’s start there.   Think about couples you know.   What do you admire about them?   Probably the way they interact with each other.   The couples I admire have a deep friendship .   I can honestly say my husband is my best friend.   We were friends before we started dating.   We were in the singles ward together and he was my home teacher.   He was a great home teacher and we’d have him come and hang out all the time.   We were forming a friendship that bloomed into a relationship!   Through this friendship we were able to find out what we like, what we don’t a...

Who knew marriage had to be defended ?!  But it does.  The reason being, marriage is under attack .  The Supreme Court has decided that marriage is not only between a man and a woman, but between same sex as well.  We need to support tradition marriage, while showing love to our fellow men.  How can we do this?  President Nelson in his speech stated, “You will have many opportunities to strengthen understanding of the Lord’s side of that argument by the eloquence of your examples, both as individuals and as families. ”   I think the best way to support traditional marriage is by example .  Example for our children, our neighbors, coworkers and all those we come in contact with.  We need to talk about our love of our marriage and our religion.   President Nelson also stated that we can’t be “quiet and comfortable Christians.”   We must defend our religious freedoms daily!  What this means for me is to share my opin...

Elder Oaks shared a wonderful talk about divorce.  In it, he said,  “In one way or another, divorce touches most families in the Church.” I thought about the way divorce has affected me.  I’ve been happily married for 14 years.  No talk of divorce has ever come up.  My parents and in laws are happily married as well.  I thought, I’m lucky, divorce hasn’t affected me.  But it has...divorce is all around.  My aunt and uncle got divorced.  My cousin, who was my best friend growing up got married right out of high school (years before I did) to a boy whose parents were also divorced.  They decided that they would break the cycle and wouldn’t get divorced.  This is a great goal and most couples have this goal before they married.  They had financial problems the first few years of marriage and moved in with my aunt.  It wasn’t great for their marriage but before things got too bad, they moved out and saved their marriage....