I was going to wait until I had finished my reading to try this out, and I suppose I still could, but... well... at least this way I can attempt to make my procrastination more useful, right? (Because I could choose two sections of the chapter to read and of course I picked the longest one.)
One thing I thought I'd try out was practicing writing about family studies. Last night I spent three or so hours on a ten-point writing assignment, which looking back shouldn't have frustrated me as much as it did... but writing was one of the things I struggled with the most during winter semester and was the thing that stressed me the most. And it looks like this term is going to be pretty writing heavy, in one way or another. So I thought, as an experiment, I would just write some of my thoughts about my readings here. This is a pretty friendly place, right? I mean... pretty much no one reads this anyway, making a fairly safe spot for my experimental writing. I may structure it, I might not. I just want to be thinking about it. And I want to be able to write without thinking excruciatingly about each sentence, while at the same time being aware of my passive voice and gradually correcting and re-organizing my very thoughts so that they are strong-less strong-strongest in format and stuff like that.
Well, one of my classes is on intimate relationships. The name of the class is "forming marital relationships," and, being married, it gives me a lot to think about. I wish, though, that my husband were reading the same things, because some of the things in here and in my studies in general, I'd like to discuss with him. Shortly before we were married, the bishop of his student ward gave us a book. It was a sort of marriage prep book, with important things to consider before marriage (a little deeper than "where's the coupon drawer going to be?" be that could be a topic of interest as well). We both thought it was more than a little silly, though it did generate some discussions between us. However, looking back, we could have benefited a lot by just biting the bullet and talking about some of the topics. I suppose we still could.
See, in today's reading, I chose a section about ways to measure intimate relationships. (Which, if you think about it, is a very valid question: how would you go about measuring your own relationship, let alone someone elses?) One brief section included sample questions from surveys and "scales" that are generally accepted as means of measuring satisfaction within a relationship, and I asked myself the same questions. I wondered how my husband would have answered them, and I kind of want to ask him. I'm just the sort of self-depreciating person who would consider myself a nagger or the one who sulked after an argument, but I really am very in love with my husband and rarely feel dissatisfaction with our relationship. Any dissatisfaction I feel is most likely (not always) in myself, not in him or our relationship.
The funny thing about that, though, is my last writing assignment and most of our class discussion today was about the concept of a family system and how the individual is inseparable from the whole. Not in a horrid drone sort of way, but, for example, therapists had a difficult time making progress with children because they attempted to only deal with the child and his or her individual problems. Later, when involving the whole family and looking at/fixing the group interactions, the child progressed much faster. A child's behavioral difficulty was less likely due solely to the personality of the child and more likely attributed to their reaction to what was happening in the family. Thus, to get back on track, it makes me wonder if I look at myself in a depreciating kind of light, how that affects our little family system, since my output is hardly contained within myself.
On that note, though, I think I'll stop before I am tempted to pour out too much of my soul and/or think myself into a tizzy. I'll just get back to reading about ways to observe relationships and have a fine time of it.
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