Happy Marriage and Longevity

How can I make my marriage happy? What defines a happy marriage? How do I make my marriage last? There has been an abounding amount of discouragement in the half of the last century on the sanctity and reality of a happy marriage. Satan and his armies have attacked it from every angle, making it seem irrelevant, impossible, and anything other than what it is, central to God's plan. With this reality, here are ways to prepare for a successful marriage, keys to a successful marriage, what influences a dysfunctional marriage and how do we avoid it, and how marriage affects children.

How to prepare for a successful marriage
Love the Lord – Follow Christ and keep an eternal perspective.
Become Productive – Seek to become a happy, productive person in your own right.
Be Happy – Cultivate a cheerful attitude and the ability to laugh, even at yourself.
Develop Friendship – Learning to be a true friend is a perfect preface to a happy marriage.
Create Order – The temple is a house of order and the same should be said of our own homes.
Serve – Practice consistent acts of service and kindness.
Maintain Moral Purity – The law of chastity is a law of happiness, it is a law that protects the sacred powers of procreation and magnifies the lyrical joys of romantic intimacy in a way God created, ordained, and blessed.
Attend the Temple – The temple ordinances focus on the rescue and the salvation of families.

“Preparation for marriage is a lifelong process. It must be planned for, lived for, sacrifices for, prayed for, and even suffered for. Our living cannot be very purposeful if we just glide into marriage without thoughtful preparation.” – Sister Patsy Pollard

Keys to a successful marriage

“The one who marries to give happiness as well as receive it, to give service as well as to receive it, and who looks after the interests of the two and then the family as it comes will have a good chance that the marriage will be a happy one.” –Spencer W. Kimball

A few tips to a health marriage: Develop, maintain, and cultivate love, support, tolerance, communication, realistic expectations, caring, nurturing, sense of humor, commitment, respect, know how to handle conflict, problem solve together, interdependence, enjoy one another, and have fun together.

“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That is what makes a marriage last.” – Simone Signoret

What influences a dysfunctional marriage and how to avoid it

“Each marriage starts with two built-in handicaps. It involves two imperfect people. Happiness can only come to them only through their earnest effort. That effort will succeed if each partner will minimize personal demands and maximize actions of loving selflessness. “– Elder Russell M. Nelsen

It is unrealistic to have the idea that your marriage will be perfect or stress free. All relationships involve wanted and unwanted demands, gratification, conflict, irritation, and pleasure. Frequently conflict, anger, jealousy, criticism, moodiness, extreme financial problems, and abuse of all kinds can occur in a marriage when the couple allows the stress of a marriage to overcome the love of a marriage. There are different ways to avoid a dysfunctional marriage in the home, however the most important are to allow the Lord to be an active member in your marriage, be willing to sacrifice and be selfless, work together and have patience, developing a sense of humor, and having realistic expectations.

How Marriage Affects Children

In the Journal of Marriage and Family, a study found that children report more warmth for their fathers when their mothers have a higher marital warmth and that both fathers’ and mothers’ relationships with their children depend on the marital quality and on the other parents relationship to the child. Truly happier marriages affect children positively.

“While any particular individual child of divorce or out-of-wedlock birth is not destined for the following scenario, children from society’s single-parent families, as a whole, statistically suffer in myriad ways; be being pooerer and staying poorer longer; by having emotional and behavioral problems; by experiencing a greatly weakened father-child and even mother-child relationship; by getting pregnant out of wedlock, abusing drugs, and performing poorly in school as teens; by remaining at a higher risk for physical and sexual abuse; and by growing up to have a difficult time achieving job and marital stability. As a result, statistically these children are also more likely as adults to inflict the same difficulties on their own children, thus perpetuating the cycle. Problems such as these and others have recently led even reluctant social scientists to conclude that many of society’s family units have not simple changed but that many of them are in deep trouble.” – Elizabeth Vandenberghe

Marriage and Health

“Believe it or not, when you choose to marry someone, not only are you choosing how you are going to live your future, who you have children with, who you will share your values with, and who will be your complete companion, you are choosing someone that can directly affect your mental and physical health.” …And we would like to add your emotional, social, and spiritual health as well.

Physical Health Benefits of Marriage

What are some of the physical health benefits of marriage?

• Married people across cultures have better health than unmarried people
• Married individuals have lower rates of alcoholism than their unmarried counterparts because they tend to offer encouragement, support, and protection from daily problems that could otherwise lead them to using alcohol and other drugs
• Married men and women have lower suicide rates than unmarried ones because married people have meaningful social networks of friends and relatives. Meaningful relationships give people a sense of personal value and a feeling of responsibility to others
• Married individuals have less illness, accidents, and murder; they are less likely to die from all causes, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, car accidents, and murder
• Married individuals spend less time in hospitals and have higher recovery rates
• Married individuals tend to have stronger immune systems, making them less likely to catch colds and develop other illnesses than unmarried ones

Emotional Benefits of Marriage

What are some of the emotional benefits of marriage?

• Married individuals have the lowest rates of depressions and schizophrenias compared to the unmarried
• They tend to handle stress and anxiety better than their unmarried counterparts.
• Marriage tends to make individuals to be more motivated to do well at work and to persevere through stressful situations
• Married persons are less likely to be lonely because they always have someone to share their thoughts, feelings, and lives with
• Married persons are more likely to report feeling hopeful, happy, and good about themselves
• Married couples have sex more often and enjoy it more physically and emotionally than their unmarried counterparts

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”

Dealing with Stress !!

Stress and college life sometimes seem inseparable. But they don't always have to be "joined at the hip." The five biggest causes of college stress are: peer pressure, competition, separation from family, freedom, and choosing a major/career.

The first step in dealing with college stress is to identify what is stressing you out. Is it exams?, papers, etc. Then try to develop a plan to lower your stress on the subject.

Here are a list of ideas that may help reduce your stress level at college.

* Make a list of everything you need to do the next day each night before you go to bed. This may help you get a good night's rest, which will not only relieve stress, but also help you stay organized and eliminate that last minute frantic feeling.

* Put things on a list that you can accomplish. If your list is unreasonable it will end up making you less productive.

* Try spreading out assignments over a certain amount of time. This way you'll feel less overwhelmed when it's crunch time.

* Get some help if you're feeling stressed about a difficult assignment. Speaking to a professor, teacher's assistant, or tutor may give you a useful confidence boost.

* Set some time aside for yourself whether you need some 'alone' time or you want to be with your friends.

* Try deep breathing exercises to help you relax and clear your mind.

* Don't be so hard on yourself!
ALSO,

Stress mostly boils down to self management. It is up to the invididual to control their stress and how their body reacts to their currently life situation that might be causing tension. It is important to not overlook the problem or the symptoms that result from stress, but rather recognize the importance of returning to their personal equalibrium in order to be an effective worker in their variety of responsibilities. One article suggested that meditation and relaxation in the moment is one of the best ways to deal with stress.
1. Time: Many find that learning how to get into a deep relaxation resolves stress. In stressful moments, it is helpful to be able to take that ability to relax deeply and create it in one minute.
2. Place: Individuals should learn how to find relaxation in any sort of atmostphere or place.
3. Element: Stressed individuals should learn how to relax all parts of their body despite the differing activities they are involved in.
4. Size: Inidivudals should learn to remember to relax. Take the times that their mind are unoccupied and use those times to practice relaxation meditative techniques.