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Divorces are Damaging but Not Damning

It is never a couple’s intention to end in a divorce when they are staring into each other’s eyes exchanging marital vows on their wedding day. Nevertheless, divorce does happen. If you are married and this is your first marriage, you have about a 35% chance that you will divorce the person you are married to. In 1970, divorce rates spiked as the No-Fault Divorce laws were put into place. These laws allow a divorce without anyone being at blame in the marriage. Prior to these laws, one of four things had to be happening in a marriage for a divorce to granted by a judge. They included: abuse, adultery, abandonment, and alcoholism. If one of these four things were not taking place prior to No-Fault laws, a divorce would not be granted. But now, thanks to those laws, the marriage bond is weaker and looked at as a more temporary set up. Today, couple could get a divorce granted simply on the grounds that they are tired of each other. People who divorce once are more likely to divorce aga...
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Needed: Parents!

One of my all-time favorite questions to ask on a date is "What form of punishment did you receive most as a child?" I've always just thought it was a funny question but now that I think about it there is a lot one could learn about someone from it. Such as, how wild of a child they were, or how their parents raised them. People often parent similar to the way they themselves were parented. Personally I was issued a time-out sentence more often than anything else. No parent goes home from the hospital with their first child and truly knows what they are doing. As a result every single person on Earth was raised differently than the rest. Throughout time various alternative parenting has been tried. Before WWI it was fairly common for well-off English households to employ a governess to help raise and educate the children. In Israel, a kibbutz was another form of raising and training children. Boarding schools, finishing schools, child care professionals for 70 years ...
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Fathers are Vital

In a world that continues to empower women and demean men, we are losing the importance of the male gender. Women are portrayed as more masculine and smart today than ever before. Men on the other hand are minimized and portrayed as more animalistic and unnecessary than ever before. The world highlights the optionality of fathers with things like sperm donors, government support programs for single mothers, at-work childcare, and the classic “everyone’s doing it” mentality. After all, if a woman wants to be a mother, why bother with the annoying accessory of a husband. However, this mentality is damaging for all touched by it. Good fathers are vital, not optional in the healthy development and supporting of a growing child and family.                 Good fathers are pivotal in a number of aspects. Daughters and sons understand better how a healthy romantic relationship should function with a father in the home...
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Communicating in High Stress

Most of us have played the game Telephone at some point in our lives. A communication chain is formed, and a person begins the game by whispering a word or phrase into their neighbor’s ear. That person then whispers what they heard into the next neighbors ear down the chain. This process continues until the end of the chain. The last person to receive the word or phrase says it out loud. The goal is to have the word of phrase go unchanged as it is passed from person to person. Sounds simple enough, but in most cases, the message receives some thorough manipulation by the time it reaches the end destination. This is especially true if the chain is made up of a large number of participants. Good communication is vital in a relationship. Especially in critical or rough situations. Thoughts and feelings are constantly being communicated. First, they are encoded into a medium, a form of communication, whether that be verbal or nonverbal. That message then travels, much like in the ga...
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Life is Hard, and Then We Die

"Life is hard, and then we die". Ever heard that one before? As lame as it sounds, it’s true. Life is hard! Crisis happen all over the world every single day. The number of potentially breaking events that unfortunately do happen every single day, is an incredibly long list. The death of a loved one, natural disasters, addictions, evictions, loss of employment, disability, injury, illness, abuse, financial struggles, etc. Although we can't always control what life throws at us, we can control how we will react to what is thrown. We all handle crisis a little differently. Take this home owner for instance, "For days, wildfires raged through our area. We had to evacuate our home for nearly a week. When we returned, we discovered that hundreds of homes had burned down in our neighborhood. Driving around, words like "disaster" and "crisis" kept coming to mind. Yet a smile brought a moment of relief as we drove by one burned-down home. The owner...
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Complete Fidelity

Women and men are not the same. Shocking, I know. Your parents may have tried explaining this to you using birds and bees. Having “the talk” however does not mean you are suddenly an expert on sex. It doesn’t work that way. The joining of two people through such intense physical intimacy comes with a lot more than a single conversation or even a single experience can teach you. Before I get into this topic, it is important to lay out on the table the importance of keeping this kind of relationship within the bonds of matrimony. The only truly “safe sex” is done between a husband and wife who have saved that part of themselves for each other. It is safer not just physically but emotionally, spiritually, and mentally as well. Sexual intimacy can be compared to a very delicate gift. It should be unwrapped slowly and together. Just as “The Talk” should not be a one and done thing, neither should sex. Each partner should communicate, cooperate, take time, and explore together. It’s not ...
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It's about a marriage, not a wedding!

Dating. Young adults can't seem to get enough of it. Our everything revolves around relationships. If were not currently in a relationship we probably just got out of one. If we aren't currently in one, we are probably thinking about being in one. If were not thinking about being in one, were probably sporting the fact that we aren't in one. But the thing with dating is that if all we do is date, we'll just end up in a nasty cycle of "hang out, make out, drop out, repeat". Talk about an emotional roller coaster. Hurl! I'm not saying go into every first date with a ring agenda in the back of your mind, but you also shouldn't throw emotions around like a hacky sack. Avoid just spending time with someone. Invest it. So, let's say you've got this dating thing nailed down and the question was popped! First off, mozeltoff! Second, Are you ready for this? The average wedding in America costs $30,000. Of course, it doesn't have to be anyw...
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