Becoming a quality person and recognizing the qualities in your spouse.

Elder Ashton discussed the importance of becoming a quality person. I really love this and the things he says. I look at my daughter, who is 12, and wonder about her future when reading these things about dating. And my other thoughts run to, am I still a quality person now that I am married? How about your loved one, your spouse, do you see who they are now? Do you see the good qualities that they have?

Regarding my daughter. My husband has always felt that improving yourself is one of the most important things that you can do when trying to get a date. When he was younger, he would learn the guitar, learned how to water ski, rock climb, not to mention he was a college gymnast at the time. But what I loved most about his quest to improve himself was the care he took in building his testimony. He was so easy to find attractive since he was athletic but it was his testimony that really stood out. In our efforts to raise our children, we often talk to my daughter about who she wants to be. She is just starting to want to date, since all her friends are, yes dating at 12. Since she is so young we often tell her to improve herself so that when the time comes she can shine as a young women of value and talent and to become the kind of person a great guy would want to date. She is so cute, she is learning the ukulele and learning how to rock climb. She is also learning volley ball and working on writing a book.

The other side of this when I was reading this, is who am I now, now that I am not looking for someone to date. Often I think the belief is that we don’t need to continually improve ourselves once we do get married. I know there are certainly times when I have felt them myself. Yet as I was reading this what really made me stop and think was, who am I now. Does my husband still want to be with me, does he still after 15 years enjoy my company? It really made me take a hard look at myself. Yes I am married, but I really believe that this is not the end of self-improvement. We have a great marriage, I am so lucky to have such an awesome husband. But I believe that I still must keep trying to improve, or one day it may not be the case. So my goal today is to take one thing at a time and build up a person he loves to hang out with.

In finding out more about my husband, I refer you to love maps. It is a great activity given to us by John M. Gottman, from “The 7 Principles For Making Marriage Work” It’s a great book if you haven’t read it. In this book Gottman talks about love maps.(chapter 4) A love map is in general a lot of questions, about your past, your preferences, your loves, your sorrows, your difficulties, basically a bunch a questions about you, the real you the deepest part of you. He asks that you ask your significant other these questions, see how many you know and how many you don’t have any idea about. Often when we first get married, we know a lot of these things about each other. But as time goes by things change. Do we still know your spouse like we used to? Do we still know what makes them happy or sad? If we don’t know them, how can we love them?

I am going to give a challenge, if you haven’t read Gottmans book, “The 7 Principles For Making Marriage Work” then please do! It’s a great book with wonderful insights!

So what do you think? Do you think self-improvement should stop at marriage? I mean we are the person that our spouse wanted to marry why change, right? Do you still understand your spouse, know them, know that makes them happy or sad, or what they like?

References:

Ashton, Marvin. "Becoming A Quality Person Now - Ensign Apr. 2010 - Ensign". Lds.org. N.p., 2016. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

Gottman, John Mordechai and Nan Silver. The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work. Print.