Infidelity

Fidelity
Once you commit to marriage, you also commit to several other things, one of them being fidelity. However, the breaking of this commitment is one of the most publicized and well-known acts. It seems that you cannot go anywhere without hearing or reading about how so-and-so cheated on so-and-so. Infidelity is so common-place that many marriages start out with the plan that their marriage won't last at all.
Causes of Infidelity
Obviously you don't wake up one morning and decide to cheat on your spouse. Like with anything bad or evil, it starts gradual. It could be a friend or a coworker, or just about anyone it seems. First you just start talking, and then talking turns into meeting up with them and having lunch, and then lunch turns into more phone calls, and more ways to meet up, and then you start telling this person about your hopes and dreams, and then you start comparing them to your spouse, and soon you've placed yourself in a compromising situation where you feel uncomfortable sharing this all with your spouse because you know how it looks, and it looks and is wrong.
Boundaries to Help Prevent Infidelity
The only sure-way to prevent infidelity is to set boundaries with your spouse. Should you ever be alone with a member of the opposite sex? Should you seek out to talk to friends of the opposite sex? What about friends of the same gender? Coworkers? Church friends and leaders? What will you do when you are placed in a compromising situation? Spouses need to talk with each other consistently to make sure that their marriage is being protected and remains secure.

First Year of Marriage/First Child Born

I briefly discussed what I learned in class with my family over the weekend. My boyfriend had some interesting insights that I felt would be beneficial to share:
"One trouble that newlywed couples run into occurs at the birth of their first child. The family dynamics radically change. What was once a single bilateral relationship, becomes three independent relationships. One of the problems that occur with the development of these relationships is due to the inherently close relationship of the mother-child relationship. The husband and father can begin to view this relationship with jealousy because that relationship is often built by neglecting the two relationships that he is a part of. There are several ways to avoid marginalizing the husband in the family when the first child is born.
"Your mother (he was referring to my mother) made it sound very simple, 'You feed them, and he changes their diaper, and there you both have a relationship with the child.' While this answer is simple, it gets to a fundamentally strong suggestion, by allowing the father to help with daily regular chores with the child he can begin to develop a relationship with the child, and by giving his wife the time away from the child to recoup, she can spend additional time and is inspired to preserve her relationship with her husband."

Love

What is love?
It is a question that has drawn much attention and debate over many centuries. Even today, people think that love means different things. Is there a right love and a wrong love? Are all loves the same? Are there different types of love? Can love last forever, or is it fleeting and temporary?
Love Leading into Marriage
When most people in western cultures think of love, they think of passion and the romance behind love. However, in eastern cultures like India, love is thought more of a commitment and sacrifice for the well-being of one's partner and family. Their marriages last much longer than the average two-year marriage of Americans. What do people in India have over Americans then? I think that most people in the U.S. get married with the idea that their marriage won't last--they lack true commitment. Then why even bother getting married? If people got married actually planning on never divorcing or giving up on their marriages, there would be a lot less broken families and unhappy children. Unfortunately, individualism is valued above all in the U.S., so until that changes, there won't be a decrease in the divorce rate anytime soon.

Gender

An Eternal Characteristic
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about gender is what The Family: A Proclamation to the World says: Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. The differences in gender are eternal, and when something is eternal, it is a truth. The divine attributes that each sex has are not merely a result of societal influences, but they reside much deeper within us.
Each Story is Different
When it comes to the hot topic of homosexuality, it seems that there are multiple stories that prove or disprove the claim that homosexuals are "born that way". I too have a story about a friend of mine. I met him in the 5th grade, and then we continued to be friends throughout middle school and high school. From a young age he was concerned about things that most males his age weren't: fashion, his handwriting, expressing himself creatively, and other "female typical traits". During middle school he was constantly told that he should be gay, even though he had crushes on girls. He was attracted to women; he told me this himself. We then entered into high school together, and the high school we attended was a preforming arts school, and known for more of its student population having homosexuals than other schools. It was our freshman year that he told me and his other friends and family that he was gay. Was it all just a self-fulfilling prophecy? Was it the pressure to be gay that caused him to feel that he had to be attracted to men? Did he lie to me that at one point he was attracted to women? I'll never know. I lost touch with him after high school. All I know is that you can't blanket statement why one person is homosexual or not. Each person is different and goes through different life experiences, even if they may show the same temperament or personality.