Creating Healthy Ties With In-Laws

WHAT IT MEANS TO ‘CLEAVE’ UNTO ONE ANOTHER

One of the most challenging things for me when I was dating my future husband was to understand and to learn to love my in-laws. At the beginning things were easy – because there was not much of a commitment. Once he left to serve a faithful mission, however, the relationship between me and my future in-laws became strained because they did not think that I would wait for their son. There wasn’t a day that went by that my heart was not committed to my best friend and sweetheart. He returned from his mission and I was still there...to the shock and dismay of his parents. When we finally decided to get married, three years after his mission, the challenges of combining family traditions, creating new rules for our new family, and detaching ourselves somewhat from our families became real and not so easy. He was the oldest in his family of six kids and I was the second oldest in my family of eight. Both sets of parents had a tough time letting go. We pulled away anyway, but kept the lines open as much as we could...and should.

I wish I had read Creating Healthy Ties with In-Laws and Extended Families by James M. Harper and Susanne Frost Olsen way back then! In Genesis Chapter 2, verse 24, we are taught, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” Many children are given a serious guilt trip when they break away and others are applauded by their parents. The applauding parent is the one I would like to be when my children leave home for good to get married. I learned a great deal from this reading assignment about the balance between establishing autonomy as a married couple and the potential dangers of enmeshment between married children and their parents.

HELPING NEWLY MARRIED COUPLES CREATE A MARITAL IDENTITY

What type of adult a child eventually becomes should be a matter of pride and joy for parents, not a matter of disappointment. Watching a child turn into an individual with his or her own marital and family identity should be encouraged by the parents. It is said that “Parents give their children two things: roots to grow and wings to fly.” 

An enmeshed family is one in which the parents simply cannot let go and the child goes along with it. Marriages can be strained and even destroyed by in-laws who cannot accept their child’s spouse with love and respect for their boundaries and differences. Too much contact between the child and parent can eventually lead the spouse to feel that the marital relationship is becoming smothered and distanced. Harper and Olsen note that “One of the great gifts parents-in-law can give to their married children is to recognize early that they must help define and protect the boundary of this new couple.” President Spencer W. Kimball taught with specific regard to husbands cleaving unto their wives that, “She, the woman, occupies the first place. She is preeminent, even above the parents who are so dear to all of us.” That leads us back to the scripture in Genesis regarding cleaving. 

ACCEPTING DIFFERENCES IS VITAL

Gloria Horsley (The In-law Survival Guide http://www.amazon.com/In-Law-Survival-Guide-Gloria-Horsley/dp/0471194239) offered some sound advice concerning five specific things that every parent-in-law should avoid. They are:

1. Giving advice
2. Criticizing
3. Pressing
4. Taking over disciplining grandchildren
5. Trying to control everyone and everything

As President Boyd K. Packer declared that marriage is indeed a shelter, I would like to add that the home is the specific place where that shelter for the family should be created as well. It is important for married couples and their children to establish a place of safety and shelter in their own home. We are all indeed different, and marriage is not always an easy adjustment and transition concerning extended family. But seeking the Lord’s guidance and counsel in every decision as a married couple can sure make marriage and family life a successful adventure. Although we need to declare our independence from our parents and allow our children to declare theirs from us, those roots will always remain with the family unit because we are all ultimately eternally bound.

Power, Councils, and Unity in Families

 

Righteous Power in Parenthood:

I was so thrilled to read Richard B. Miller’s article titled, Who Is the Boss? Power Relationships in Families, this week. He begins by assuring parents that they are indeed the leaders of the family and should take on that role. In today’s world I see so much of the “tail wagging the dog” that it concerns me a great deal that parental responsibility is being shirked and overlooked simply by virtue of the fact that society has frowned upon telling kids, “no.” Miller points out that parents are the “executive committee and the board of directors” in the family unit. Children have roles as well, but parents are the CEOs. President Kimball once said that “Discipline is probably one of the most important elements in which a mother and father can lead and guide and direct their children…”  Joseph F. Smith warned against not checking our children in a wayward course. Joe J. Christensen added that kids are in desperate need of some good old “Vitamin N.” The N consists of a simple two-letter word that seems to be missing in kids’ worlds today. It is the power of the word “NO” that will nourish our children.

I really don’t like telling my kids no either. But I am aware that by omitting this word from my own vocabulary, I lead them to the idea that the world will always tell them “yes” when they want something and that I am not the parent in our relationship. Our Heavenly Father does not always tell us “yes,” so why should we parent any differently? “NO” can be a healthy alternative to spoiling a child and leaving that child with the false notion that the world revolves around him or her. I have already had my kids thank me for sometimes saying “NO” to them. They finally  have learned to appreciate my love and parental direction.

Family Councils:

In his book, Counselling with Our Councils, Elder M. Russell Ballard outlines the process and the effectiveness of councils within the family unit. I read this book in one of my past classes and quite enjoyed learning about how the church leaders counsel one another. Our family councils have always been designed in much the same manner. We open with a prayer, we have an agenda, we discuss the items on the agenda while listening to each family member’s ideas and concerns, and we try to come to a decision based on loving, caring, and Christ-like discussions. Ours doesn’t always work out as well and as smoothly as the councils that the Quorum of the Twelve manage to have. However, by patterning our family meetings after theirs, we bring the Holy Spirit into our home and have much more effective family councils as a result.

 

That We May Be One:

In May of 1988. Elder Henry B. Eyring gave a wonderful talk titled, That We May Be One, in which he addresses the necessity of unity in marriage. He said that “The Savior of the world spoke of that unity and how we will have our natures changed to make it possible.” Sometimes I think that it would take an act of nature to promote unity in my home. Sometimes it seems impossible to attain. However, Elder Eyring has promised us that if we are one in Christ, we shall be one in our marriages. Our entire purpose in having families is to unite our families, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, and ancestors.

One of the best ways to ensure unity in a family is to invite the Holy Ghost to sanctify our marriages from the start. Elder Eyring said that “Where people have that Spirit with them, we may expect harmony.” So, the key to unity and harmony in the home is to invite the Holy Spirit into our homes and our hearts each and every day. We must do this through prayer and a conscious effort to be peacemakers in the home. I know that my husband and I want nothing more than to have the Holy Spirit in our home as a permanent fixture. We both grew up in large families where there was much contention and yelling. So, it has always been our goal to rid our home of these tendencies and invite the Holy Spirit in every way that we can. It is not always easy, but it has provided our kids with a peaceful home and hopefully some good habits to take with them when they establish their own homes someday. He is truly our guide, our friend, and our comforter.

 

SEXUAL STEWARDSHIP 

in MARRIAGE

 

When the Lord unites a couple in marriage, just as Adam and Eve were united in the Garden of Eden, each is given stewardship over the marriage as eternal partners with certain individual expectations. Temporal and emotional stewardship is primarily what we think of when we imagine each person's role for ensuring a successful marriage. However, I realized this week that we have a "sexual stewardship" over our spouse as well. Brother Sean. E. Brotherson wrote an excellent article on "Fulfilling the Sexual Stewardship in Marriage" in which he explains how we should view sex in a marriage from the onset. He warns of three moral danger zones that are directly related to sexual expression and that most marriages fall victim to at one point or another. Most people falsely believe that marriage is its own "school of love" or "school of hard knocks," to be more precise, and that sexual responsibility simply must be learned along the way. Brother Brotherson described ignorance, inhibition, and Ill Will as three of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for sexual fulfillment" along with the three elements that characterize successful stewardship. They are agency, diligence, and accountability. Sexual satisfaction in a marriage is just as important (and perhaps more-so) as the far more openly discussed aspects to making marriage work.

 

IGNORANCE:

 

President Kimball has mentioned that the challenge of ignorance in a marriage is often a "silent wound" and, according to Bro. Brotherson, is perhaps "the most costly deficiency when it comes to sexual fulfillment between marital partners." We are admonished by our church leaders and by the Lord to seek further knowledge in all things. God himself is not vague in communicating our sexual stewardship through the scriptures, so we need to explore this powerful symbol that helps define a good marriage. We have our agency and "are expected to improve or enhance what we have been given," according to Dr. Brent Barlow, professor of family life at BYU.

 

INHIBITION:

 

Inhibition is the second challenge to sexual fulfillment in marriage. There are so many myths and beliefs that are circulated among couples once they become engaged. The Christian society is wrought with false ideas that sex is a dirty word and that sexual relations are, for some reason, unholy or are used for unholy purposes. We need to be diligent in seeking the truth of all things. Quite the contrary, our divine Maker has intended this strong attraction for holy impulses and for holy purposes beyond that of procreation. We should abandon the idea that these preconceived inhibitions should determine the satisfaction of our marriage. 

 

 

ILL WILL:

 

Ill Will is the third, and perhaps worst, danger to the emotional climate of a marriage. A marriage is doomed if these thoughts and emotions are not eliminated from the marriage and kept in check. It can be a real deal-breaker for some marriages. The scriptures can help us maintain a positive emotional environment in our marriage and help us to become accountable for our actions within the marriage. This is the part that interested me the most because my husband and I suffer from this when things get busy and we don't have much time to spend together. This time of the year is often the worst because I am off on school break (for work) and he is a Fire Marshal during the 4th of July period. It is one of his busiest times and one of my least busy times, so we often have misunderstandings...especially on my part. 

 

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS:

 

I love the articles that we read this week in class because they couldn't have come at a better time for me. I learned that my answers (as usual) to the issues that I face in my own marriage are found directly in the scriptures. We have been given a list of great LDS appropriate marriage resources that I will also include at the bottom of my blog post for this week. Although fidelity was also discussed in this particular lesson, I felt particularly drawn to the information on stewardship. It is more than just making sure that you have time for one another in order to procreate and have a family. There are so many God-ordained aspects to our sexual stewardship in marriage and I am in awe of the beauty of it all!