The Desired Failure of the Four Horsemen

 During this week’s reading I was pleased by the reaffirmation and recognition that my marriage has grown and evolved in a good way over the twenty-one years we have been together. The pitfalls of couples in distress that were described in John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work used to be daily occurrences in my home. My husband and I married quite young and we both felt the need to gain our own independence from one another and to feel more important than the other. Rather than working together like teammates for our common good we were competing for first place with one another like we were opponents. In Mosiah 3:19 we are told that the natural man is an enemy to God and that as mortals we would have to learn to be submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon us. For the first few years of my married life I was failing miserably at all of these Christ-like characteristics within the bonds of my own marriage.

While I was reading this week about the Four Horsemen in Gottman’s book I was reminded of the numerous occasions when I was critical, defensive, contemptuous, and a stonewaller. These behaviors were nearly ingrained in my by my parents and their poor examples to me. These behaviors are what came “naturally” to me. As I matured and began to see my marriage in a broader perspective, I realized that if I didn’t take ownership of my selfish ways and change my heart, my marriage would most likely be doomed to failure or at best, we’d stay unhappily married. The prospect of failure or unhappiness tied knots in my stomach. I decided to rebuild my marriage the Lord’s way.

It has taken me many years to begin to understand my role as a wife. I still have a long way to go but with the Savior’s help I was able to become more submissive and less contemptuous, more humble and less critical, meeker and less defensive. I was able to abandon old habits and tendencies and begin instituting new ones that were patterned after Jesus Christ. In the early years of marriage I wanted to be most important. I wanted to be right. I wanted the last word. I wanted to be the boss. I was prideful. Once I began to understand that these selfish desires would only drive my husband and me further and further apart, I began to panic and try to figure out what I could do to begin mending our relationship.

Through much prayer and effort my marriage is being healed. We are still a work in progress and we still have a long way to go in establishing a celestial marriage but I have hope and faith that with the skill set we have learned, we are well on our way to a happy, eternal marriage. I believe that we will consistently continue to move away from the negativity of the Four Horsemen Gottman described and toward