I’ve been listening to a podcast called Love, Factually in which the two hosts discuss movies from a relationship perspective to determine if the way the movie portrays the key relationships is accurate and/or giving good advice about how relationships succeed or fail. It’s pretty interesting because one of my pet peeves is when a movie steers into tropes that are just ridiculous or don’t make any sense (some of what passes for “relationship advice” in the movie Love, Actually, for example is just straight up misogyny. I mean, I guess it’s easy to fall in love with Colin Firth, but they literally do not speak a single word of the same language to each other, so WTF??)
There was another interesting contrast in two movies they discussed: It’s a Wonderful Life vs. La La Land. These two movies, both of which scored well on their “how relationships really work” scale have an opposite message for what you should do in a relationship when the needs of the individual would seemingly require that the partnership split up. In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s dreams would take him far from Bedford Falls on a life of adventure and education, but Mary’s dreams for a life with him require staying put and raising a family. Her wishes prevail. In La La Land, Sebastian’s dreams of opening a Jazz club conflict with Mia’s burgeoning acting career that will take her to Paris for her next big role, ending their relationship due to distance. They discuss this, are sad about it, but ultimately their private dreams come before the relationship. It could have gone either way, and usually Hollywood prefers to put the relationship over the individual needs, but in this case, that’s not what happened.
This tension between individual needs and preserving the relationship is not just for romance, though, obviously. Some families may require members of the family to behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, result in their being used or abused, or may erode their ability to find happiness or have self-esteem. It’s why it’s not uncommon now for people to cut ties with their family entirely. The more people are able to demand respect, to live independently, the higher our expectations for being treated well. We are no longer forced to be in relationships on someone else’s terms when we have the ability to live on our own.
A topic the podcast discusses often is the “mini-culture” within a relationship. These are the inside jokes and funny stories that we share in a relationship. They can be between intimate partners, but they can also be within family groups. I read a very revealing account of a Trump family dinner in which a seven-year old Donald ended up with mashed potatoes being dumped on his head to end his bullying of his younger brother, a grievance he seems to maintain to this day. (There’s a similar story in my family involving an ice cream cone). The rest of the family still enjoyed this as a joke at his expense. Shared family stories don’t always have a butt of the joke, but they are amusing to the insiders as a part of the “mini-culture” of the family, the way they explain what holds the group together. In a marriage, if one partner refers to the couple’s inside jokes or mini-culture and the other partner doesn’t engage or leans away from it, that could signal trouble for the relationship. At the least, it signals that they are not engaging in the relationship at that moment–they are distracted or “just not into it.”
I also recently watched the Brendan Fraser movie Rental Family, about a has-been actor living in Japan who is hired by a company to play roles in actual people’s lives: a groom, a mourner, a father, a journalist writing a story about someone whose glory days are long gone. The company’s founder says that this is something that is more culturally acceptable than going to therapy in Japan, which sets up the question in the viewer’s mind: are fake relationships and role playing an equally useful form of therapy. And of course, the movie brings up conflicts like when one family member wants things to go a certain way, but the individuals affected have other wishes. It’s a great concept for exploring what makes relationships real vs. fake. If the original premise was fake, maybe a real relationship can still happen. If the original premise was real, the relationship can still be fake, based on shallow investment or hidden agendas.
Which brings me to a completely different phenomenon I witnessed for the first time in my life: the Hallmark movie. I confess that I thought I knew what they were, but I had no idea. I was playing cards with my sisters while my brother in law watched one of these confections a few feet away. The core issue (aside from a nearly 100% impossibly white cast) that I observed is that there was literally no plot. There was no actual conflict. It was just white people saying things to each other in an extremely low stakes environment where everyone looked like they were dressed for a church social. It was so devoid of plot that he didn’t even notice when it started playing over again from the beginning. He was about twenty minutes into the second watching when his wife noticed it had restarted again. I was mystified.
I also recently read a pretty decent list of advice for couples in relationships (on Reddit) that I thought I’d share from JasontheWriter:
- Avoid keeping score (unless you’re playing Monopoly). – Don’t compare who did the most chores, who did the most romantic things, etc. You’re a team. The more you can view it that way together, the better.
- Pull your weight. – Just because you’re not keeping score, doesn’t mean it’s a license to not do your part. Intentionally put in effort every day.
- If you wouldn’t say it or do it with your spouse standing next to you, don’t do it. – This is more about how you talk about your relationship or spouse with other people. Respect isn’t just something when you’re physically together. Dismissive comments to the boys that you think are funny are disrespectful (not saying you do this, just saying in case).
- Make date night non-negotiable. – Make it intentional, scheduled, and more than just binge watching Netflix while you scroll on your phones. Treat it like a doctor’s appointment that took you two years to get. It doesn’t have to be anything big or even leaving the house; just focused, non distracted time with each other connecting. If you need ideas, get the LoveTrack app (it’s free). It’s a date night planner that can help you keep things fresh and creative, and you can sort by ideas that are at-home vs going out and relaxing vs active.
- Be ready for seasons where each of you will have to step up more than the other. – This ties more into the keeping score thing, but understand that there will be seasons in your marriage where you need her more and seasons where she needs you to step up more. Expect this to happen, and be ready for it together.
- Don’t do things begrudgingly (that was hard to spell). – ‘Doing the right thing’ and ‘doing the right thing with the right attitude’ are two totally different things in a marriage. If she asks you to do a chore you don’t want to do, do it and be pleasant about it. Scoffing around while you do it is just a one-way ticket to fightsville.
- Have a plan for money. – Don’t fall into the trap of ‘we’ve always just been good with money so we don’t need a plan.’ Sit down and figure out what you’re going to do with money, in good situations and bad situations. I personally am a huge advocate for there only being ‘our money’ but some couples like split funds or somewhere in the middle. I think shared funds is more of the team mentality, but you have to have a plan in place to make this work.
- Don’t get complacent. – There’s a phrase in the military that complacency kills. I think this is true for relationships as well that if you get complacent, your relationship will die. Be aware that relationships typically don’t end over one big thing; it’s small, gradual, and slowly happens over time where you wake up one day and ask what happened. Stay intentional
- Have scheduled check ins/family meetings. – This may sound silly, but this has been great for my wife and I. We have monthly meetings (sometimes weekly) where we go over what’s going on and what’s coming up and voice any joys or concerns. Some people might say it’s too business-like, but it ensures we’re both heard and has been great for our communication.
He also said that before you make a commitment (e.g. marriage) make sure you are on the same page about dealbreakers like children, pets, moving, and family obligations.
One of the things I’ve noticed in relationships with some church members is that it often feels like there is a third entity always in the room: the church. Another podcast I was listening to is hosted by a woman from the south who has been an atheist her whole life, but she’s surrounded by Evangelicals, and as she observed, there’s one thing Christians are more focused on than Jesus (who, she admits, is pretty awesome in theory), and that’s getting you to join their congregation. She said it was something she encountered over and over growing up, and she had to reinforce her boundaries to be able to have a real relationship. When “friends” would try to change their meet up from a coffee shop to their bible study group, she would firmly remind them that she was friends with them as a person and that she had no interest in joining their church. Even if she attended their church with them, she was never ever going to join it. In some ways, that’s like the “mini-culture rebuff” described above. Or it’s like Regina George in Mean Girls telling Gretchen (who keeps using the word “fetch” as a new slang term she invented) “Quit trying to make fetch happen.” You can’t make your couple-friendship a thrupple-friendship with your church under coercion.
Tis the season where we are spending time with family, like it or not.
- What are your tips for relationships?
- Are there any on this list that you disagree with?
- Have you seen any movies that you think totally get relationships wrong?
- What family or relationship stories bring you together in a shared mini-culture?
- Have you gotten what you consider good relationship advice from the church? If so, what was it? If not, why not?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
“In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s dreams would take him far from Bedford Falls on a life of adventure and education, but Mary’s dreams for a life with him require staying put and raising a family. Her wishes prevail.”
I’ll admit it’s been a while since I’ve watched It’s a Wonderful Life, but in my recollection it wasn’t just Mary getting in George’s way, was it? I mean, they were going to travel for their honeymoon then real life hit them in the face – it wasn’t Mary keeping him home, it was the ways in which he decided to take on responsibility for things. If anything, I thought Mary came across as realistic and adaptable – being willing to offer the money when it was clear that George was fighting internally about it. Or, that’s at least how I remember it….
To your question about bad movies about relationships, they abound. For me, it’s mostly the ones with the trope about two people who can’t stand each other until they suddenly, magically realize it was sexual tension, not annoyance. Like that will magically paper over the incompatibility issues down the road!
In terms of advice “from the church,” I’ll mention one thing that I have found to be really helpful in our marriage. I put that in quotes, because really it was from a person who at one time was a stake president and gave marriage seminars in stake (at the same time, or other times, not sure and really don’t care – and didn’t care at the time whether he had “stake president bona fides” or whatever – just noting that as the “from the church” angle).
His advice was to do what he called “content communication.” His advice was to basically say, “spouse, I am content communicating right now that I want/don’t want/XYZ.” The other spouse was to listen to that and accept that what the spouse said was what they truly meant. No more “I’m fine” with an eye roll – rather, share what you are truly feeling/thinking/needing (tempered, of course, with tact hopefully!).
Very closely related – really intertwined with it – was advice to avoid hint-dropping as a communication style. He gave funny anecdotes about marriage relationships where there was a lot of hint-dropping, and how pissed off one or the other would get about it. Basically, if you want or need something, content communicate about it.
We’re to a point in our marriage where we have practiced content communication so long that we don’t have to overtly say “I’m content communicating right now” but instead work to take each other at our word always. Is this simple, “duh” advice? Probably! I’m not pretending that this is “church” specific advice – but it is still very much needed.
The irony is that it was a family member that pushed us to listen to the seminar, who themselves are supreme at hint-dropping. But I guess we all have our blind spots.
Relationship advice from the church? Well, the church really doesn’t teach much about how to have a good relationship, but the things it does teach are bad.
The church openly teaches that God/the church is a third party in the marriage. I once taught the family relationships class and this was the first lesson. (I modified it without telling anybody) This is horrible for relationships. Although it is advantageous to the church. It is very good for the church to be right in the middle of your marriage. If you put your relationship to the church equal to your partner, it ends up with the church asking so much of the time and money that the humans lose out. Humans have limits on how much time, effort, and money they can give. But unfortunatly, the church has no limits on how much it will ask for. It keeps on asking for more and more until you start telling it to take a flying leap. If both husband and wife put the requests from the church on an equal basis as requests from their spouse, they quickly find there isn’t enough time for each other or children. Been there done that. We kicked the church out of the relationship.
You have to put each other first or you don’t really have a marriage, you have two individuals devoted to the church. I have seen couples who do it like the church says and their individual lives both revolve around church callings, not each other. The man’s ego is tied up in getting the big callings, and the wife’s either is totally tied up in her children or she is into her social world of church callings. The married individuals hardly see each other and hardly know each other, but are united in being deeply devoted to church. Oh, the marriage might last. The two people are happily on parallel paths, sort of serving the church next to each other. Doesn’t mean there is any love there.
The other part of marriage advice that is horrible is that the couple should stay together even if there is abuse. The whole way it handles abuse is bad for all members of the family. It is so important to the church that “the family” stay together. “The family” is more important apparently than the safety of family members. The advice to forgive abuse when it just keeps happening over and over is NOT forgiveness. It is tolerance. Also, one parent should never “forgive” the other parent for abuse of a child. No, it is their job as parent to make sure their child is safe. First, make sure the child is safe by getting the child away from the abuser. Then get the abuser the help they need to stop abusing. Make sure the abuse victims gets professional help healing. Then you can forgive and put the family back together if that is what everyone wants. Abusers do not stop out of guilt. So the church thinking they can repent by talking to a bishop is so pathetically misguided. In fact, guilt often feeds into a guilt/shame/tension/abuse cycle. The abusive person needs more than a confession to a bishop can provide. They need professional help, but they also need a motive to change. Loss of freedom or loss of family are the only things that seem strong enough to get an abuser to be motivated to change. So, the church coddles them, but doesn’t turn them in to police so they can face the consequences and get motivated. It also fails to protect victims from further abuse.
Anna, also when the church is the third party in the marriage, the marriage is often threatened when one party wants to leave the church. The staying partner feels betrayed when leaving the church really should have nothing to do with the marriage.
The church thinks it has to be the gatekeeper between us and God and also the main cement in a marriage.
A song that I’ve always liked but come to appreciate even more as I age is “do you love me” from Fiddler on the Roof. A couple in an arranged marriage discusses if they love each other and at the end of the song they each say “I suppose I love you.” The song lists out a bunch of things they do for each other after 25 years. They talk about learning to love each other. To me this feels similar to what therapists say – that we actively have to choose each other every day. My wife and I are both *very* different people now than when we met.
I’ve been married 29 years (which is 4 more years than Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof – scary), and if you would have told me that marriage is so difficult I legit might not have chosen it. Been through two periods of near-divorce, including severe depression (both of us) and (only) me leaving the LDS church. However I can say when it’s going well it’s better than everything else.
The list in the OP is pretty good. I’d add something about physical intimacy somewhere in there, otherwise you’re only roommates in my opinion. The best piece of advice we got before marrying was from Truman Madden, my stake president at the time. He said you must go on weekly dates and – surprise – temple dates don’t count. I’d also add that conflict may be a sign of a healthy marriage, otherwise honest conversation may not be happening. I absorbed the message growing up that conflicts were almost always negative, but now I believe conflict is inevitable and that it’s contempt and contention that should be avoided.
An interesting topic! Thanks for your write up.
Relationship tips that I’ve found helpful:
– Live the Principle of Consent with your partner (“Consent” is greater than simple “Chastity”, which I’ve seen abused/misused).
– Prioritize “Impact” love over “Intent” love. Do your best to act in ways that help your partner “FEEL” your love.
– Treat your relationship like a daily choice. You always have the choice to stay and engage or move on. We tend to take things with “permeance” for granted, and we can ironically show up in our relationships better when we realize they are inherently fragile in many ways.
My first thought on reading this:
Turned out both my husband and I loved this song when it came out during our early teens.
Trevor, totally agree with you on the whole conflict thing. I grew up seeing my parents resolve their conflicts. And then listening to general conference talks and quotes about couples who never argued. I thought the latter was both very unhealthy and setting youth up for problems later when they married and encountered conflict, instead of these apparently argument-free marriages GAs were selling. Apparently there was a whole lot a passive aggression going on instead. It wasn’t that long ago, that President Eyring was lauding his father for listening to the spirit in determining what his wife wanted (for him to accept the post at BYU and move to Utah), when she herself hadn’t told him what she wanted when asked, but instead had said he should do what he wanted. Apparently he was supposed to know that she still wanted to move back to Utah, a significant number of years after they’d been away, and hadn’t changed her mind in the interim. Which also ties in with Adam’s comment on content communication. Yeah, I’ve mostly not been impressed by lessons on the subject of marriage coming from the pulpit. I can’t be doing with passive aggression. Straight talk every time please.
Q: What family or relationship stories bring you together in a shared mini-culture?
I think inside jokes are really an underrated aspect of intimacy. My wife is engrossed in lots of pop culture stuff. She has these decades-old inside jokes from her siblings that really transcend time and create a shared bond. When I try and participate in these inside jokes (even if just inquiring about what she thinks is so funny about a TikTok influencer), I think it helps me be a part of something mundane that is funny to her. When we laugh later about something, it’s a shared bond. There are still the other big things: intimacy, inlaws/family, money, career, gender roles. But just these mini-culture/inside jokes are kind of like this invisible glue that you can know and communicate to each other throughout the hard times.
That comment about the Japanese Rental Family for some reason made me think about “Dad Advice from Bo” which I saw a TikTok commercial about airing on national television. It might be the American version of rental family (rent dad advice?):
https://www.tiktok.com/exploremore
“Bo Petterson shares important life tips as a father. From teaching followers his secret trick for lulling babies to sleep to his favorite car-buying tips, Bo is there to help. When he isn’t sharing dad advice on TikTok, he’s fighting for a cure for his daughter Emily’s brain injury, sharing updates on their journey with the community.”
“Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I think that’s about the best advice that could be given to a married couple.
I agree with Anna’s comment that marriage advice is horrible when it counsels the couple should stay together when one spouse is abusing the other spouse or a child. Forgiveness, which is a commandment, does not include staying with an abuser so that he (usually) can abuse again. I can forgive someone who abuses my child, but I can still report him to the police and I can testify against him in court. Forgiveness is personal and is in one’s heart. Forgiveness does not mean silence. Part of honoring and sustaining the law might include allowing the state to perform its God-given function of doing justice. Reporting a crime to the police and testifying in court is not gossiping.
Jack, I appreciate your sweet words, but they lack any specificity. They are unusable by most people in real-world situations. A church leader who counsels a wife to stay with a husband her assaults her, or to stay with a husband who has sexually abused a child, errs grievously when he tells the wife that she must do this so that the man can properly repent, and that the commandment to forgive others compels this course of action upon her. The man’s repentance is his own business, and the commandment to forgive does not compel someone to remain in a bad place where reoccurrence is likely. And whether reoccurrence is likely is not one of the priesthood keys of discernment that a bishop or a stake president holds.
I agree with Jack that happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord, but some people, and some leaders, misrepresent that those teachings are. For example, my wife and I don’t do number 4, above, date night. We get along great, but we don’t do date night. Why? Because my wife, who was eldest of several children, was in many ways deprived of her adolescence, or at least big parts of it, because her parents (who really weren’t good parents) discovered date nights, and the “commandment” to do it, and they required my wife to babysit every Saturday night during her junior HS and HS years, without exception, and with no regard to what she might have had happening in her life. Some leader said to date night, and her parents obeyed the commandment. But there is no commandment to have date night. It might be good advice, in some circumstances, but how each couple decides to draw closer together is something that only they can decide. My wife and I stopped at a new hole-in-the-wall restaurant (new to us, anyway) when driving back from a doctor’s appointment. The stop was unplanned, and we enjoyed ourselves. The “date” was not intentional, planned, or scheduled. It works for us. We’ve been figuring it out for thirty years. I know too many couples who had regular, scheduled, and planned date nights, and they’re divorced now.
Jack, You present your quotation as advice, but is it advice? Isn’t it really an aphorism?
To me, it seems wholly unusable as advice.
Agreed with Trevor H and Hedgehog – my wife and I agree that when someone declares they never fought with their spouse, then that probably just means their spouse never raised issues that should have been brought up. On the other hand, and unfortunately, those that declared it in GC were of a much older generation (thinking Gordon Hinckley) where it was expected for the wife to just grin and bear it. Gladly, we have been (painfully and haltingly, admittedly) shifting away from that culture of silence.
But seriously! No way there is a marriage where either party does not have reason to have conflict with the other at SOME point. AND how valuable it is to model healthy forms of conflict (e.g., disagreeing while still showing that you care for the other side) and conflict resolution (including apologies!).
ji:
“Jack, You present your quotation as advice, but is it advice? Isn’t it really an aphorism?”
Maybe you’re right–maybe it’s more of an aphorism. I probably should have included the next sentence:
“Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”
While it lays out specific principles it doesn’t offer advice on how to apply those principles in specific situations–and I think that’s as it should be. Speaking in general terms–I think if we have the Savior’s teachings in our hearts that we’ve got a much better chance of building a happy home than we would by any other philosophy or means. And of course, if specific help is needed then we can go to professionals for advice–or even wise loved ones or friends. Even so, all the advice in the world won’t help–not as much as it might at least–if we fail to prioritize “repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion,” etc.–all of which are expressions of his pure love. And it his love that will make more of a difference than anything else.