Urban Poly Princess

My friend who I grew up with in Tonga is an instructor at UVU and director of Career Development there. She has cancer but continues to be an optimistic ray of sunshine. I admire her relationship with her husband so much. In my limited opinion I don't think he's smart enough or educated enough for my friend BUT she has an incredible marriage BECAUSE she places the Lord first in her life and WORKS hard on her relationship with him. Lei's like me in that her mother isn't Tongan. Sis. Paongo is a Maori woman raised in New Zealand. Lei's parents attended BYU-Hawaii with my parents when it was Church College of Hawaii. Since we both spoke English and our parents either taught for Liahona High School or worked like my dad for the church PBO office, we played together with other Tongan/something else kids at Liahona-YES it is actually the name of the town where you can find the church high school AND where the temple is built.

I love this Facebook status she posted:
This isn't conference related...but it is life\love relevant. One assignment I gave my interpersonal students was to write a genuine letter to someone they have a strong relationship with clarifying and expressing the whys and hows of their commitment. Most chose parents, spouse, friends. One student, happily, solidly, passionately married over 30 years, however, had this quotable view on why their "thing" has worked. "Pretending is what's real. Every married couple alive pretends. They pretend that they don't hate their in-laws or their husband's stupid jokes or their wife's real laugh or that they don't actually love one of their children more than the others. Marriage is almost all pretend for everyone. That's the reality and that's what's real. Buying into the delusion that there is any other way to live together to get through an entire life together...that's the fantasy. That's pretending. But that's my marriage." At first I judged and gawked at this with skepticism but then I had a little bit of an "aha" moment in looking at my own marriage (enough to wake Chris up to talk while he"pretends" that he doesn't mind or isn't irritated). I'd like to think we have a good, meaningful, solid, passionate marriage but I'm not naive enough to deny that it's all romance and no recon for war. In retrospect, it is very hard work. Yes it is fulfilling when you finally get to deeper levels in your emotional and physical communication, when you can live in brutal honesty, when you know how to be true and accept and understand each other, when the treatment of the fragility of the time with each other is paramount and the hope to get through all the reality and/or pretending phases or pieces of a marriage is as important as water and air. Every time I get tempted to think I settled, or get lazy and take Chris for granted, I'm reminded still of how in awe I am of him and what we have made of "us". If the reality is that in pretending we sometimes create a pretty good "us" and that works for us, and brings out the best of us, that molds us into the kind of marriage that's too good to be true...the compromise of pretending is worth the blood, sweat and tears. So today, you will find us sitting on our giant beanie, holding hands, comfortable in our own skins, independent of each other and yet completely dependent on our "thing" and relishing the daily efforts, the zings we work on to still feel and the constant reality that every moment we must work on pretending to own the reality of marriage. It is so not perfect. It is real. It ebbs and flows. It is the best and the worst of us. And quite frankly, I wouldn't change a single damn thing.

This provided my own epiphany. I have wondered why I felt that weird stuff in the temple. Why did I feel horrible by reliving all those awful things my friend did. Why did that come to mind when I wanted to be strengthened spiritually. I felt that despite this I still needed to choose him. EVERYONE feels this way. We are different people and EVERYONE will have to love someone they sometimes won't like very much. I've never been in a very long relationship with anyone AND I usually get rid of anyone who gets on my nerves. ANYONE will have traits that will rub you the wrong way. It's why we simultaneously love and hate our family members. Everything isn't going to be roses and that is NORMAL. I haven't given any relationship I've had a real chance because I end it if when he does something I don't like. Everyone has disappointed me and everyone will!!! I don't know how I came to the conclusion that other people need to be perfect but I don't. That is VERY sad that I'm coming to this realization this late in life BUT at least I'm FINALLY figuring it out. Spiritually and intellectually if this is good, I CAN and NEED to work on anything and everything else!!!