Week Nine

This week we talked about couples relationships. We covered all the basics to this topic, in fact I think we have talked it to death, but for the sake of the blog, we started talking about crisis in a a relationship and how to prevent it and how to react to it. For example, prevention would be like savings, food storage, 72 hour kits, and just plan things out, also another very important aspect to this is good communication, insurance, medical, car, life, family and friend support, and education. This is a pretty good list to help prevent a crisis or at least make the burden of a crisis a little bit easier. I think its also import to learn good coping strategies and what works best for you and your spouse or significant other, so when a crisis comes your way you know how to work through it. Also we talked about 9 dimensions of a couples relationship; they are satisfaction w/ partners personality traits and habits, the amount and kind of communication, how conflict is handled, how finances are managed leisure activities, sex, children/parenting issue, relationships w/family and friends, and religion.

We Finished the week talking about The family life cycle and all the different stages of a family, from the day you start your family, your wedding day, to when you have an empty nest again. According to our book, their are six stages to this cycle and I feel like its pretty accurate, they are, 1) Independence-leaving home, 2.) coupling-the journey of families through marriage, 3.) Families with young children, 4.) families with adolescents, 5.) empty nest- launching children moving on, and 6.) families in later life. I Thought this was interesting to study because its true we see this happen all the time and don't usually say anything about it, or don't notice that it is happening. But there is a pattern in all things and why would the family be any different.