Kait Learns

This week's lessons were on sexual intimacy. This is a topic that a lot of people are afraid to talk about. On https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ it says, “Heavenly Father created the plan of salvation so that we can experience life, return to His presence, and have joy. Central to this plan are the spiritual, emotional, and physical unity developed in marriage and family life. He gave us the capacity for physical intimacy so that we could strengthen and grow our eternal families. He intends for sex to be a beautiful, powerful, and joyful part of our lives—not something evil or corrupt. Sex enables a husband and a wife to have children, express love, and strengthen their spiritual, emotional, and physical bonds. Sexual intimacy is an important part of marriage, and when it is used in the way that God has commanded, it brings great blessings and joy. While many in the world portray sex as casual or crude, the gospel teaches that sexuality is a powerful gift from Heavenly Father a...

Transitioning from engagement to marriage can be a challenge for many couples. Last week we discussed the four steps that lead to marriage: dating, courtship, engagement, marriage. The goal is to be stepping up to marriage, and not sliding down to marriage. Every step is very important and different from the step before it. This week I want to share what I learned about engagement.  How couples get engaged plays a role in marriage. Studies have shown that when couples go through rough parts of marriage, the wife tends to look back at the engagement to hopefully have a good memory of how the marriage started out. One comment from class that I loved was “is the engagement a commitment or a show.” In today's society with social media playing a huge part of our lives, proposals tend to be a huge production. This doesn’t need to be the case. The proposal needs to show that the guy is fully committed and is making a sacrifice to make the relationship move forward. In class we discu...

My professor for this course is a marriage counselor. At the beginning of the week he told us how he meets with his couples. He first meets with both husband and wife together and has a conversation. He will then talk with each of them one on one. Later he will bring them both together again and formulate what issues he sees. I found it very interesting that he said that based on their dating history, he can almost always predict the marriage issues. So what is dating? In some of the text I read it said that, “Dating is a primary way to select the person with whom you want to pursue a serious relationship with.” I think that most of us know this definition, yet we interpret how we should go about it in different ways. Here at college everyone has a different definition of what they think that it is. I have roommates who think that dating is just being with a person 24-7. I have other roommates who think hooking up with someone from Tinder is dating. Personally I don’t think eithe...

I studied a very interesting theory in class. This is a theory by Daryl J Bem. Daryl is a social psychologist. He came up with this theory that Exotic Becomes Erotic (EBE). His theory proposes that “individuals can become erotically attracted to a class of individuals from whom they felt different during childhood.” He explains the sequence of six different events that leads to an individual’s erotic attractions. I want to focus on the first four events. Biological Variables: According to this theory, biological variables such as genes or prenatal hormones do not code for sexual orientation per se. So the statement, “I was born gay” isn’t true. Childhood Temperaments: I think that the study explains this very well. “A child’s temperaments predispose him or her to enjoy some activities more than other activities.-- Children who prefer sex-typical activities and same-sex playmates are referred to as gender conforming; children who prefer sex-atypical activities and opposite-sex playmate...

What is culture? There are several definitions of this word. I want to focus on one of the definitions. A set of shared attitudes, values, gossip, and practices. We often like to tie “tradition” in with culture. Tradition is an inter generational pattern of belief and behavior.  In my class discussed how culture is not defined by skin color, language or geography.  Each family has their own culture.  I haven’t ever really thought about family culture. After learning about all of this in class I took a look at my own family. I asked my older sister what she thought was part of our culture. She just said, “mormon.” I am from Utah and grew up in a Latter-day Saint family. We grew up going to church every week, nightly scripture study and prayer, along with family home evening every week. As a family we always followed the teachings of our leaders and prophet.  I had another experience with my family this week that helped show me part of my family culture ...