Week 5--Putting off the "natural" man

For one of my classes this week I have been reading “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman. Although this is not the first time I have read material from Gottman, this is the first time I’ve read it in book form and been able to follow more closely his methods and what he is doing for couples.

In order to have a great marriage, we need to be friends. Gottman talks about that in the “Seven Principles” book. I always thought my husband and I were friends, but I can see that there are many ways we can improve our friendship.

Funny story…I think we had been married almost 20 years before we knew each other’s favorite color! For some reason that subject never came up. We just assumed that we knew what each other’s favorite color was. He thought mine was red (it’s green), and I thought his was blue (it’s yellow). It is funny to think about now, but I am amazed that we made it 20 years into marriage before discovering something as basic as a favorite color. I guess we've spent so much time talking about the big things that we neglected the small everyday/normal things like "what's your favorite color?" Honestly, I'm not sure how good we would do on the Newlywed show since we don't know some of these basic things. 

Hopefully through the coming weeks I will be able to learn, and share with my husband, some ways that we can improve our friendship and our whole relationship.

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Part of being friends is learning to think of the other person, to be aware of his or her needs. In the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, chapter 3 verse 19 it says, 

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

Learning to put off the “natural man” is part of learning to live and interact with other people, to take time to think of others and not just of ourselves. In a marriage we need to be willing to work together to accomplish our common goals. And, we should have common goals rather than each person having their own goals. Marriage means working together. Each spouse will need to remember the list in Mosiah 3:19 when interacting with each other. Of course, that is much easier said than done. Since we live here on Earth, we are definitely “natural men (and women)” and the selfishness that comes with that is not always easy to overcome. Through the atonement of Christ, we will be able to overcome our own weaknesses and do what we can to strengthen the relationships that we have with those around us. 

For more information on John Gottman's work go here.