Making Good Great; A Marriage Blog BY Heather Hansen

I have two close friends that went through very painful divorces due to pornography. Both required extensive years of therapy to reverse the damage that it caused in their marriage. As I was reading through the text, so many of the facts were things that she shared with me. Both couples were married in the temple. The husbands at the time were both active in the church. I can remember one of the ladies telling me about how it started by him watching a popular show on HBO. I had heard of it and knew that it was very crude. There was a justification that it wasn’t pornography because it wasn’t labeled as such. Soon after it wasn’t enough. There had to be more. It didn’t take long for the negative effects of pornography to directly affect their wives. It was sad to see both men who I knew walk away from their marriages to find something else they thought they needed. I thought back about an employer I had before I was married. I had just returned home from my mission and he and his wi...

Trying to talk about issues in a marriage that have gone on for a long time can be difficult. The “marital poop detector” is something that every couple should have in the back of their mind. We can try to sniff out things early in our marriage. Things that just aren’t smelling right. I could think of many things in my own marriage that have brewed for way too long because they were ignored. Looking at some of them now makes is more difficult because I let them go on for too long. The problem with me is that I sniff out the trouble, but then walk away from it in fear of causing a fight. I have spent a lot of time trying to keep the peace instead of expressing my thoughts and worries in a calm heartfelt way. Something that comes to mind is playing sports on Sunday. I grew up with a strong belief in never playing sports on Sunday. My husband is a convert to the church. He joined the church when he was 25 years old. I didn’t find out until we had kids that he did not think the same wa...

We can’t always see what others see. My husband has made it very clear that he can’t hear me when I yell. He walks away or shuts me out. I have always tried to be mindful of my volume when I talk to him. Even when I’m not yelling, he says that I’m yelling. Throughout the years he really isn’t talking about my volume, he’s talking about the way I start a conversation. I have learned that I need to work on softening my start-up. I have tried to work on this so that the four horsemen don’t show up. If I have a harsh start-up in a conversation, it will always lead to stonewalling by the end. Fixing the harsh start-up is something that is solvable in our marriage. It’s been going on a long time and I do think we have the tools to work through it. Today while the kids were at school, I walked into the kitchen to see my husband doing the dishes. The dishes are pretty much the one household chore that I do. The kids unload, and I load. He had the right side of the sink full of water and so...

Understanding what pride really is will help us to understand where we are in our marriages and in our relationships. President Benson explains it when he says, “the proud wish God would agree with them.” In a marriage this could take forms of a husband or wife puffing themselves up to be above the other. Pride shows its way when one or the other gets pleasure from being right. They always want to win or be better than the other. We live in a world today where success is sometimes overly applauded. My husband has a side job where many are competing to get to the top. Last year my husband got one of the positions that he had wanted for so many years. It is only seasonal, so every year it starts over. He received many text and phone calls from other men that also wanted that spot. They were happy for him. I think he felt a little bad about the way he had acted the years prior when it was them getting the spots. He never said anything negative to them, but there was jealousy. He wanted w...

Turning towards my spouse hasn’t always been easy, and on more than one occasion has been very difficult. In the last year there was a situation my husband went through at work. He had made a decision that affected not only him, but our family. I had told him before he made the decision that it was a bad idea. He proceeded with the decision because he thought it was best. Months later his decision resulted in a temporary loss of pay. Before his boss and other employees in leadership positions made the final say, there were several meetings surrounding the situation. When my husband came home and told me what was happening, my first response was, “I told you not to do it”. I was feeling a moment of pride because I knew that I was right, and he was wrong. It was hard for me to feel sorry for him. It only took a few days for me to change my thoughts on the matter. Not because I thought I was wrong, but because I was wrong with how I handled our conversation. I knew that my husband neede...