Fishing In Alaska, by Martha Arnell
One important aspect of a marriage is to show interest in your spouse's interests. Through the years I've tried to be a cheerleader when my husband brought home game after hunting, fishing etc. My father wasn't a hunter or fisherman, so this was a change for me. We have a set of mounted deer and moose antlers on our wall in our family room. Also, since my husband has been into running and especially marathon running, I've tried to be his greatest supporter and cheerleader. We now have 19 marathon medals hanging on the deer antlers in our family room.
My husband has always desired to travel to Alaska to go fishing in a back-country river-trip. His opportunity came the summer of 2009. Of course, I was also invited. Traveling down a river in a raft all day and camping in tents in the wilds each night along the side of the river was not my greatest desire (I enjoy camping in my fifth wheel!). Anyway, I committed to my husband that I would go on the trip, support him, and not complain. The first day on our week-long river-trip, some no-see-um bugs and some horsefly type bugs bit my ears and face. When I awoke in the tent the next morning I felt strange with large swollen ears and eyes. I luckily had brought some over-the-counter allergy medicine, which helped somewhat with the swelling. But the greatest help was the blessing I asked for from my husband that morning outside our tent. He enjoyed his trip greatly, a life-time experience. I didn't complain and survived my bitten face, which took another month to look normal.
After reading the story form Martha Arnell, “Fishing in Alaska,” I had to ask myself, would I go through that experience for my spouse? Well, maybe not that particular one, but I know I have gone through experiences where I was not the most comfortable, but I did it because it was important to him. My take away from the story was we do things for our spouse we don’t necessarily want to, but because we now it is important to them and we want to make them happy, we do it anyway.
I know I want to make my spouse happy. I do have to work at it and I know I make many mistakes along the way. Dr. Gottman’s information about turning towards each other instead of away helps to build that emotional bond between husband and wife. As I look back in my marriage, I can see when I turned towards my spouse and when I turned away. These bids for attention from one’s spouse are important to keeping the relationship in a positive state. This week, I have already noticed some bids for attention from my husband and some bids I have sent to him. So far, these bids have resulted in a turning towards each other and the benefits from doing so have increased my positive bank account and I think it has for my husband as well.
The emotional bank account is an account that can be either negative or positive. As Dr. Gottman describes it, “Each time partners turn toward each other, they are funding what I’ve come to call their emotional bank account. They are building up savings that, like money in the back, can serve as a cushion when times get rough, when they’re faced with major life stress or conflict.” Sure, our bids are not always met with a turning towards each other, but the swelling feeling of love is definitely worth the effort to try.
Turning toward your spouse can take a leap of faith. We might be hurt by being turned away or we could be doing the turning away. Faith is marriage is necessary and Goddard’s thoughts on faith in how it pertains to marriage are also pertinent to this week’s discussion. He talked about how we sometimes in this life focus too much on the mundane and trivial stuff, which causes us to find fault with our partners, but having faith can change our perspective to an eternal one giving us more patience to deal with each other’s faults. Faith causes us to look outward instead of inward. We spend less time dwelling on negative things and more on positive things. I loved this from his book, “Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ requires that we trust God is working to rescue our spouses even as He is working to rescue us.” We are all in need of God’s rescue, or to have the faith to become even a little bit more like Him as we journey through our time on earth. President Uchtdorf said in a recent conference address:
“Somehow, as the days multiply and the color of romantic love changes, there are some who slowly stop thinking of each other’s happiness and start noticing the little faults. In such an environment, some are enticed by the tragic conclusion that their spouse isn’t smart enough, fun enough, or young enough. And somehow they get the idea that this gives them justification to start looking elsewhere. Brethren, those who save their marriages understand that this pursuit takes time, patience, and, above all, the blessings of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It requires you to be kind, envy not, seek not your own, not be easily provoked, think no evil, and rejoice in the truth. In other words, it requires charity, the pure love of Christ.1 All this won’t just happen in an instant. Great marriages are built brick by brick, day after day, over a lifetime. And that is good news. Because no matter how flat your relationship may be at the present, if you keep adding pebbles of kindness, compassion, listening, sacrifice, understanding, and selflessness, eventually a mighty pyramid will begin to grow.”
Our marriages will be enhanced as we let the power of the Atonement work for each of us as we work through our irritations with each other and follow President Uchtdorf’s advice to build our marriages brick by brick.
References:
Gottman, J. M. (2015) The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books. New York, NY.
Goddard, H. W. (2009) Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage: Eternal Doctrines that Change Relationships. Joymap Publishing. Cedar Hills, UT.
Uchtdorf, D. (2016, May) In Praise of Those Who Save. Ensign.
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