Three Wolves...

In Bruce C. Hafen's talk, "Covenant Marriage" he introduces the three wolves that can endanger a marriage.

The first wolf, is natural adversity. Natural adversity is the trials that come from life. Life is never trial free. Even the Savior, who lived a perfect life, had trials. Adversity and pain comes to everybody. Some couples go through trials of loss, infertility and financial woes.

The second wolf are the imperfections of spouses within a marriage and how those imperfections create issues within the marriage. For example, when one spouse is more critical then they are praising of their spouse, it can create more issues within the marriage.

The third wolf is outside attitudes such as individualism working its way between spouses. In today's society "I" comes before "we" no matter what. My own family has often said things to me like, "Why burden yourself with more children? Go see the world with your husband, make memories, do something else with your life... etc." In my opinion and I think that my opinion matches up with the Lord's, there is nothing greater that I could do with my life than be a mother or be a wife. I am working my way towards perfection or becoming more Christ-like. That is my goal in life and society's attitudes seem to completely ignore that.

In my opinion, the most dangerous of these wolves is the second one. We can attempt to block the outside world and we will always deal with natural adversity. But, unless we confront our imperfections and work on them, there is nothing we can do to protect our marriages.

In my marriage, something that I have to constantly be aware of is my anxiety issues. My anxiety issues come from some earlier abandonment issues from my childhood. My father left my family when I was 2.5 and he never came back. This has caused a lot of issues for me and my husband. My anxieties make me really insecure in my relationship with my husband. The first year was really difficult for us, simply because we hadn't learned to communicate about the emotions I was feeling. My husband and I finally discovered that when I was feeling particularly insecure about aspects of our relationship, I needed to bring them up in a non-confrontational way and let my husband know what I am feeling. It is now a running joke in my home to say, "I'm only telling you this because I know you can't read my mind..."

We've discovered that communication is a key way that we can protect our marriage, but is not the easiest thing in the world. We have to constantly work on this. It reminds me of what Professor Mad-Eye Moody (Harry Potter) always says, "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!"