Many Hard Discussions

For the past four years it's been important to me to keep communication open between myself and my Hubby.  Our minds can run wild with assumptions of what each other feel or think about any given situation or topic.  And I don't think any marriage can survive unspoken assumptions.  They become a divide between couples that keeps widening with the silence.  I just couldn't let this happen. 

Many times there has been that awkward beginning, "um...can we talk about something?" or "I've been thinking about _____ and I'd like to tell you about it"  or  "are you open to a serious discussion right now?"  There is a fear of response.  Will I be completely shut down?  Will he understand?  Is this going to be another fight?  Will this be the topic that makes him want to leave?  And so many other possibilities that ran through my mind.  But I had to do it.  We just had to talk about everything.  To keep the trust there must be vulnerability.

I never wanted to "convert" my Hubby out of Mormonism.  That doesn't respect his spiritual ability to choose his beliefs.  But, to make life work for us, I felt it was very important for us to know how each other felt about different things; such as:

How and what are we going to teach our kids?   
How do we handle extended family church activities? 
What do we do on Sundays? 
What do each of us think about W.O.W.?
What do each of us think about Tithing?
What do each of us think about the non-disclosure policy the church has about money?
What do each of us think about Polygamy?
What is celestial marriage?
What are each of our "roles" in our own family?
What do each of us think about afterlife?
What do each of us think about eternal families?
What do we do about temple attendance?
What do we do about church attendance?
What do we do about problematic teaching methods?
What do each of us think about LGBTQIA equality?
What do each of us think about women and their role in the church?
Who do we think God is?
What kind of person is he/she?
What do each of us think about the church's new essays?
What are the important values we want our kids to understand?

I'm sure there were many more topics that we covered, but 4 years is a long time and recalling all of them is just unrealistic.   Many of these topics came up multiple time throughout the last four years.  We reevaluated our previous decision and made adjustments when needed. 

I'm going to spend the next little while writing about our discussions concerning some of these topics.  I will cover my feelings before, during and after the discussion, the differing points of view we had or didn't have, and what we decided to do.  I'm doing this so that you can understand how it worked for us, how hard it was to get to a compromise, and hopefully you can extract something from our experience that can benefit your situation; whatever that may be. 

If there are any other hard topics that you think we might have talked about that I haven't listed and you want to know how it went, please feel free to message me or comment below.  I'll share if I can.