Systems

Did you know that every family has their own system made up of rules and roles? If you all the sudden stop doing what you’re expected to, or performing your role, the system gets thrown off in a big way. How do we form roles or rules? How can one person get stuck in a rut to be a specific way, such as the family rebel or the family peace maker? I had the role of being the only girl, so being a little bit spoiled came with that and the role pretty much formed because I was the only girl, imagine that! Some roles are not formed so easily. The role of peace maker happens in almost every family in different ways. My brother Spencer was more so the peace maker in our house, he just had the personality for it and it naturally fell on him. Like a system though, as we perform our roles the system can work together, with some boundaries or rules. As we work together we can help, support and teach one another. I don’t know about you, but working with or around my three brothers was not always my favorite and we used to get on each others nerves quite a bit, that resulted in fighting. When rules are implemented and followed, we work a lot better together.

When I was about 6 or 7yrs old, we moved to a new house in a little Utah neighborhood. There were a few girls my age and I was so excited to make new friends. One of the girls invited me over to play on her swing set in her backyard and I didn’t think to run inside and tell my mom first. When my mom finally found me, she was so mad and I was grounded for a week! I knew better after that, to never go somewhere without telling my mom, it was a rule I then knew very well. I got some negative feedback that reinforced not doing that ever again and I never did! That is how rules are formed. Through our experiences we can get feedback that a behavior is okay or not okay. When we go to other peoples houses, we may learn a certain word is okay to say or that crying can get you what you want, but when you go home and try it out it may not work because each family has their own rules.

Your family system that you grow up in can really shape who you become and you may seek to be the peacemaker in your future home if that is the role you are familiar with. I was usually the listener for my friends and when I made more friends, it was usually because they liked to talk and I would listen, as that is what I was familiar with. It took a long time for me to start breaking that trend and it has caused some hurt in relationships where I was usually there to listen. I had a lot of negative feedback from some friends because they felt like I was no longer willing to listen to them, which was not true at all but I can see how that is what they felt. I just wanted to be heard every once in a while and even when I would share, they quickly made it all about them again or they would interrupt. It distanced us and I sometimes wonder who I would be now if I didn’t change. I still cherish those friendships, but I have learned to look for healthier friendships and I found a spouse that meets me equally, he wants to hear about my day and talk about things going on with me, as I like to do that with him too. I am so glad that I realized why I wasn’t feeling validated in certain relationships and started to become more vulnerable with others, I have never felt so loved and I have some great people in my life that I know truly care.

Taking a little turn from rules and roles we all have, I thought something was super interesting the other day that I learned. Boundaries are important, they are really healthy and they are good to establish early on. When we moved to Washington I was 8years old, almost 9. We had a huge backyard in our new house and the new neighborhood had lots of kids, similar to our old neighborhood in Utah. My brothers and I loved to play night games and so we quickly became friends with the other kids. Most of our backyards didn’t have fences and we LOVED it as kids. We had one huge yard pretty much to play in all day and night. It started to become a problem though, kids would come into our backyard when we were not home and just start jumping on our trampoline. That could be a law suit waiting to happen as trampolines are easy to hurt yourself on. Boundaries or fences can be really important to show that we have rules and we want to be friends, but we also are a family first. This last paragraph was a little random and maybe didn’t quite make sense to some people as to why I shared it. I do know however that we should always put our families needs and safety above anything else. Boundaries can help us do that! I would love to hear other peoples ideas on this! Comment below if you thought of something you wanted to share!! 🙂

Marriage and Family Trends

Hello family and friends!! This week I wanted to write about something I found super interesting in my Family Relations class at BYU-Idaho. My professor wrote a few things up on the whiteboard and we discussed how they are impacting the world right now. He had a column titled Marriage and Family Trends, where he wrote a list of what is common today among couples and those with children and how marriage and family are being negatively affected by these growing trends. We have quite the long list of trends and I won’t go over all of them, but at the end of my post I will list all the trends we talked about and if you have any comments or questions about them, feel free to reply! I do want to discuss a few that I felt more passionate about.

The first trend we discussed was about how marriages are declining and why. There are lots of reasons as to why of course, some people are just having a hard time finding someone to spend the rest of their lives with. I know this isn’t the case for all, but for some it could be based on the mentality that we are developing in the US as I don’t want to settle and I can do better, or the fear of missing out somewhere else. Another thing we talked about is that jobs and education are put as such a priority now and marriage is seen as getting in the way in some cases. I know that marriage is a commitment but it is so worth it, I have only been married 6 months, but everyday I am reminded how amazing it is to have my husband in my life and I hope we do our best to know just how important marriage is and teach our future generation that.

The next trend I wanted to write my thoughts on was how cohabitating raises the rates of divorce and yet more and more are cohabitating. Did you know that between 60-80% of young adults are cohabitating before marriage? Some people may say, so what or no big deal. To me, this is a huge deal. I believe that if you are wanting to be with someone and live with them you should be able to make a commitment to marry them. One of the reasons cohabitating leads to divorce is because the couples develop a mindset that the relationship is temporary and cohabitating should be easier, one foot out the door. As soon as the couple are married, expectations are raised most of the time subconsciously. When expectations are raised because you are now married versus just living together, it changes your relationship. You feel trapped more because your used to one foot out the door and not having to put as much effort and work into the relationship that is now a marriage till death do you part. My thoughts about cohabitating or living with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiancé before marriage are pretty opinionated, I totally see that others have different ideas and thoughts, I just hope to convey a little of what I have been taught and what I hold as truth about each of these trends. But to leave you with the outcome of multiple studies done on cohabitation, if you live with someone before marriage you are three times more likely to get divorced.

My husband and I started dating when I was taking a preparation for marriage class on campus. He was up in Washington and I was down at school, we had met at a summer camp 4yrs prior. We just struck up conversation and he liked to learn about all my classes but mainly that one(the one that talks about healthy dating), I wonder why! I talked to him about how important it was to build a relationship in a healthy way, it is easy to jump the gun and involve more physical touch than you should in the beginning of the relationship, or to start getting really ahead of yourself when you are infatuated with someone. It is so hard to make sure you build trust first, and get to know someone before you start a dating. That class helped a lot in how we built our relationship and I am so grateful for that. When I saw all these trends up on the board I became so grateful for the classes I have taken and how they have helped me with big decisions regarding the rest of my life.

The trends we talked about yesterday were first that marriages are declining, there are more single households than there used to be, a lot more people are cohabitating, people are waiting longer to have kids, in fact there are less women having children in general, marriages are happening later in life as well, lots more babies are born to unmarried mothers, and the rate of employed moms for kids under 6 are rising, divorce is rising and premarital sex was rising but in the last couple years it has gone down slightly for those still in high school. I know that is quite the list, but if you are hoping to talk about the statistics of these trends or have any questions, feel free to reach out!!