Lessons from Moroni, Pahoran and Gottman

     I’ve spent the last week considering how nurturing my fondness and admiration can make a difference in the relationship I have with both of my sons who have developmental disabilities.  We’ve gone through a difficult time recently.  Just as with typical children, the times of joy and peace are cyclical with the times of stress and trial.  Unfortunately, both boys have been going through a tough time, at the same time.

     In Alma chapters 60-61, Moroni writes to Pahoran, chastising him for not sending the help that Moroni so desperately needed.  Moroni is a man of God and a great leader, but he is at the end of his charity.  Pahoran graciously takes in all that Moroni wrongly accuses him of and replies with praise and gratitude for Moroni’s righteous motivations.  Moroni had lost sight of who his real enemy was. 

     Sometimes I lose sight of who my enemy is.  When life is difficult and my boys are trying my patience, creativity and emotional stamina, I sometimes falsely label them as my enemies.  They become the focus of my anger and ridicule.  They become the object of my fight.  Gratefully, the Lord gave me Pahoran to answer for them and the Spirit to remind me of who the real enemy is.

Satan is the enemy of all things family.  He is the one who wants us to be miserable, the one who desires our anger and finger-pointing and what-ifs.  My boys are not my enemy, they are fighting on the same side of the war I’m fighting on, the war for the life of our eternal family.  Sometimes I can’t see what’s keeping them from coming to my aid.  Sometimes I don’t see the battles they’re waging because I’m so focused on my own.  Sometimes, they need me to come to their rescue when I thought all along that they were just living the good life and I was the one doing all the work. 

     This time, I fought the enemy in a new way.  This time, I used Gottman’s antidote to contempt.  I started Gottman’s seven-week course in fondness and admiration and focused on my boys each day.  “I am genuinely fond of M and S.”  M is so sweet with his nephews and S offers the most heartfelt prayers.  The second day I thought of good times I’ve had being their mom and the next day, specific qualities that make me proud of each of them.  It’s been over a week now.  Some days have been harder than others, but I’m already feeling a difference. 

     They are my sons, not my enemies.  Divided we will both fall.  Together, bound by my fondness and admiration for who they are becoming, we will conquer our mutual enemy. 

Still Best Friends

     Why is friendship so important in a marriage?  We are patient with our friends, we want to be with them, we trust them, we give them the benefit of the doubt.  A friendship is full of what John Gottman calls “positive sentiment override,” where positive thoughts about each other and the relationship override any negative ones (2015).  According to Gottman, a couple who has a deep friendship share “mutual respect and enjoyment of each other’s company” (2015). 

     My husband and I have been married for 28 years.  For the past ten years, we’ve been raising our two adopted sons who have special needs and so there has been more strain on our relationship than there was in the first 18 years before the boy’s needs became such a drain on our marriage’s emotional resources. 

     Gratefully, I married my best friend and we are weathering the storms together.  Two weeks ago, we left the boys with their married sisters and spent a week together on a road trip in New England.  Since I’d had John Gottman’s book for a few years, I brought it along for the vacation and we had some terrific discussions using his love map exercises. 

      When our sons are present, we can’t carry on a conversation, enjoy a meal together or even just play without the stress of keeping them safe, meeting their needs and staying ahead (or on top of) their emotional outbursts.  As wonderful as weekly dates are, when we live with a constant high level of stress, a few hours are often barely enough time to decompress and rarely long enough to have deep, meaningful conversations.  I’ve often wondered if they were really doing our marriage much good. 

     Surprise, the Prophets really do know what they are talking about when they counsel us to go on weekly dates and attend the temple together regularly!  It works.  After spending a few days on Gottman’s love map exercises, we happily discovered that we did know each other, we had stayed more connected than we thought, and we were still each other’s best friends.  We also discovered that without the stress of special needs, the four horseman all but disappeared.  The contempt, criticism and defensiveness are all symptoms of the incapacity we often feel in parenting our boys. 

     The hardest part of the trip has been coming home.  For me, the vacation was reassuring and made me feel closer to my husband and ready to tackle the trials of daily life again (I’m also dreaming of the next vacation).  Interestingly, the result has not been the same for my husband.  He’s going through a mourning stage now.  For him, the vacation made him realize what he could have, on a daily basis, if our circumstances were different at home.  He’s mourning the life we won’t have because of the boy’s disabilities. 

     Both reactions are OK.  Both are healthy and needful and neither would have happened if we hadn’t spent days together with Gottman’s book, discovering the depth of our friendship that has and will continue to sustain us. 

Genogram Insights

     Creating a genogram helped me visualize a trend in my family that I hadn’t been aware of.  My husband and I are the only members of the Church on my genogram, but we are not the only devout Christians.  Those in the family who actively live a Christian lifestyle, who attend worship meetings, read scriptures and seek to serve also have lasting marriages.  Some of those who have divorced also had religious backgrounds, but none of them lived a religious lifestyle. 

     I need to be clear that I’m not saying being religious is required for a lasting marriage, but it has certainly made a difference in my family.  There are two marriages in my genogram that lasted without a religious foundation, but they both had a commitment to family as the most important institution on earth.  Each of them was a person of integrity who believed that their word was final.  A vow of, “for better or for worse, until death do we part,” was not to be broken.      

     Although my marriage is the only temple marriage, it is not the only covenant marriage in my family.  My aunt and uncle and their sons and wives were all married in religious ceremonies where they made promises to each other and to God.  Each of them has centered their families on Christian virtues, prayer and consistent attendance at Sunday worship.  They know that God is at the center of their family and their devotion to Him strengthens their familial relationships. 

     Conversely, the other marriages in our family were often performed by a Justice of the Peace and took place in courthouses, parks, hotels, and basically any venue that was not a church.   Most of these marriages did not last long; they were contract marriages.  They promised each other their love, but without a deep conviction of the importance of staying married, their relationships crumbled under the weight of addiction, selfishness, and adversity.    

     Couples in a covenant marriage are deeply aware that their marriage is more than just the two of them.  They hold strong convictions concerning the importance of marriage and family to society.  They believe in the joy of raising children to be good citizens and in the strength of commitment to endure both the good times and the difficult.  A covenant marriage looks outward to the needs and desires of the spouse rather than inward to selfish pursuits.  A covenant marriage is strengthened and fortified against the trials and temptations of mortal life when it is founded on faith in God and His plan. 

Obergefell v. Hodges

     If you’d asked me a week ago to tell you what the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges had been about, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.  I wasn’t ignorant of the Court’s same-sex marriage ruling, but I was ignorant of the circumstances surrounding the case and the far-reaching consequences of the Court over-reaching its judicial bounds. 

     I really thought the whole situation was about whether homosexual unions were good, right and correct or not.  How have I lived 50 years and never read a Supreme Court case summary or dissents?  I think I imagined them full of legal jargon and reading something like a loan contract or a warantee, full of legal jargon and incomprehensible to the typical person.  Obergefell v. Hodges was a pleasant surprise.

     Not only was case summary in plain English, the rebuttals were witty and pointed.  I somehow imagined our Supreme Court something like the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  A diverse group of wise men who counseled with each other and debated congenially until they came to a consensus.  I know Supreme Court is a majority vote, but somehow that didn’t change my idealized vision of them.  Reading the dissents of Obergefell v. Hodges woke me up.

     Justice Roberts said, in dissent, “Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.  Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”  In Obergefell v. Hodges, the judicial majority redefined marriage.  They took an establishment that they admitted had, throughout all human history, been defined as between a man and a woman and using “[our] better informed understanding” Ante, at 19, redefined marriage so as not to deprive same-sex couples of what they interpreted to be Fourteenth Amendment rights.  They did not rule on law as was, but “enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law.” (Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice C. J. Roberts, dissenting p.2)

     The Judicial Majority used a changing and “evolving” definition of liberty and supported their view with examples that had affected marriage and individual rights but had never touched the definition of what a marriage was.  None of the “rights” being denied to same-sex couples before the Supreme Court ruling were affecting the liberty of homosexual individual or couples.  In fact, they had the right to live together, create spiritual unions, raise children, purchase property, etc.  They had the liberty to live as they pleased, without fear of legal consequence. 

     What the proponents of same-sex marriage wanted, was not to have the liberty to be a couple or family, but to be entitled to government benefits.  In changing the definition of marriage by court order, the Supreme Court gave a the vocal minority a small victory at the expense of democracy.