The effects of communication

 Is communication truly the key to a successful marriage? The answer is easy; yes it is. Though it may be the one thing that everyone has not mastered yet, probably because they were never taught by having a good example. Growing up, my parents did not always have the best communication skills because my father never knew what healthy communication was. He has gotten a lot better but when I was young, I was frustrated how my father would react to some tuff decisions in the family. Over the years, he has been able to make changes to better understand my mom and she was able to have patience with him. With the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the center of the church is family. And we can apply the same principles about counsel that we learn in church, in our own marriages. What couple doesn't want their relationship to succeed? By learning how to listen, compromise, and communicate with each other, there would be a lot more successful marriage rates. In the United States alone, almost fifty percent of marriages will be in a divorce or separation, so what is going on? I still do not know this answer because I am only eighteen years old and new to the dating world, but as I have grown up with some children of divorce, I have been able to look at how some marriages sadly, end in divorce. One of my best friends told me that she can actually see herself never getting married because she does not want to end in divorce. Hearing this at thirteen years old it absolutely broke my heart, it was as if she was already giving up before she even started dating yet. She said that she saw how money was a large indicator that led to her parent's divorce, and her mother is teaching how she can not depend on a man for everything. There could be many other factors from both sides that contributed to this divorce, but again it falls back to a lack of communication. To start off a marriage there has to be trust between the two of you. How do you expect to get anywhere if there is no trust in the first place? If you two are seriously thinking about marriage, dating is the time to have these tough conversations. It is important to have these conversations about your financial status, what you want to do in your future and the size of the family that you want. It is better to have these discussions before you choose to spend the rest of your lives together. Men and women need to be equals in a relationship, it can not always be the man calling all of the major decisions in your marriage or the man always pleasing the wife to fulfill her satisfactions. It goes back to the simple saying that you have to work on yourself before someone can fix you or even be in a relationship with you. If you are not mature enough to have hard conversations and will be able to learn how to compromise, then you should probably think about working on that before getting into a serious commitment. It is harsh but it is the truth. You can not expect your partner to magically change your bad habits for you, you have to learn how to do that, and then you two can grow together. Maybe I am wrong and people can learn how to work together, but I promise you that if you start by working onyousrlf through maturity, it will be a slightly easier road to marriage.