This week I had a lot of learning opportunities in my Marriage course.

I had a lot of material to read, and when I saw how much I needed to read, I got in shock, but it was an amazing experience.

I am single, so my knowledge about marriage has been acquired by my parent’s example, and church leader’s speeches. But this week, I could add to my list some teachings of Dr Gottman.

When I was reading the four horsemen in Gottman’s book, I started to think in this situation in my daily life. I found that in my last dating experiences, in my parents’ life, and in my friends’ relationships these four horsemen had been present, but in every situation the ending had been different. So, what made the difference?

I think that the different was made by the compromise of each partner to know better preferences, feeling, desires, goals, and plans of each other. Gottman teach in the book about our love maps, and he focus in our responsibility of know better our partner. Sometimes, despite long time together, we don’t know our partner, or sometimes his/her preferences have changed. This is because we frequently must to do each other questions about our preferences, and goals.

In the book, Gottman suggest that the cost (financial, emotional, healthy) of a divorce is high. I know that God know this, and it is the reason because he has talk to us through prophets about the importance of a healthy marriage. I love the quote of Joseph B. Wirthlin “Sometimes the greatest love is not found in the dramatic scenes that poets and writers immortalize. Often, the greatest manifestations of love are the simple acts of kindness and caring we extend to those we meet along the path of life.”

I think that we life in a world where the “passion” have moved aside “the pure love”, and where the own satisfaction, and own goals have become the center of the universe of a considerable quantity of people, but if we want to experiment a good marriage, we need to come back to the teaching of the Lord, and trust in his atonement, and how this atonement have the power to “takes us as men and women of the earth and refines us into men and women for the eternities.”