Couple Highlight: Jordan and Bronwen
This post is part of the series, “Couple Highlights.” Each Couple Highlight was originally shared in the Improving Intimacy in Latter-Day Saint Relationships Facebook Group, which is a private group. In order to share these posts publicly on danielaburgess.com, explicit written consent was granted by each couple.
Couple Highlights began on the Facebook Group as a way to hear about the growth happening for couples in the group, and to give them an opportunity to share their story--their marriage journey, where they are at, and the challenges they’ve overcome.
Hi everyone! We are Jordan and Bronwen Merrill. We met in November 2015 when Bronwen’s best friend, Lexi, introduced Bronwen to her current boyfriend: Jordan. They got along well and Bronwen remembers thinking that Jordan was quite the catch. But, Bronwen was dating someone else at the time and was living in Florida for an internship in Walt Disney World. By the following January, Bronwen had returned to BYU for Winter Semester and was “on a break” with the previously mentioned boyfriend. By chance, on the very first day of the semester, she crossed paths with Jordan. She remembered exactly who he was (“her best friend’s boyfriend”), but Jordan didn’t realize the connection, thinking Bronwen was a beautiful girl he’d met but couldn’t remember where. Bronwen re-established how they knew each other, and Jordan, slightly embarrassed, told Bronwen that since Lexi was entering the MTC in February that they were no longer dating.
Bronwen knew that she couldn’t possibly date her best friend’s ex-boyfriend. But, she was just returning to Utah after 8 months of living away, and could definitely use a friend. They exchanged numbers and got to talking. Very quickly, Bronwen realized that she liked Jordan...a lot. Jordan offered to drive Bronwen to the grocery store. They studied together in the library. They decided to hang-out (NOT a date!) and make waffles together before watching a movie with Bronwen’s roommates. Bronwen told her roommates that they could NOT abandon her that evening, because she really liked Jordan but couldn’t do anything about it! She needed group protection so that nothing would happen.
Well, that non-date ended up being pretty good. Jordan and Bronwen were getting along great, and after the movie, ALL of Bronwen’s roommates did the very thing she told them not to do--they abandoned her and left her with a cute boy! That not-a-date ended up being the night of their first kiss. After Jordan had left, Bronwen called her mom and told her that 1) she was going to officially break-up with the guy she was “on a break” with (mom was pleased, she’d never liked him anyway), and 2) she was pretty sure she wanted to marry Jordan. (Jordan didn’t feel *quite* that strongly about the relationship at the start, but it didn’t take him long to get on the same page.)
Jordan proposed in July and they got married in December 2016.
Since then, Bronwen and Jordan have moved homes TEN times. They’ve lived in 8 different cities, 2 different states, and 3 different countries. They currently live in France, where Bronwen is a Parade Performer in Disneyland Paris and Jordan is a Live Streamer for Twitch.tv.
I’m going to break from speaking in the third person now, since talking about our intimate life together from an outside perspective seems a little odd to me. Haha!
Over the last 4 years, we have learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and our relationship. Just last week, we made some major break-throughs regarding the communication styles we prefer! We feel we are constantly learning, growing, and adapting our relationship so that we can both experience great happiness.
In the beginning of our marriage, I (Bronwen) had a hard time adjusting to being on birth-control (I was taking the pill at the time) and my sex drive was really low. This was frustrating for both of us, and I felt a huge sense of guilt for not wanting to be intimate. Those early conversations were difficult as I tried to express that my lack of libido had nothing to do with my feelings for Jordan. It took somewhere between 6 months to a year for me to feel a little more “normal” on the pill. During this time we still had sex, and those times were great, but we weren’t having sex as often as we thought we would be.
It wasn’t until early 2019 that I switched to Nexplanon (arm implant) for birth control, and it made a world of difference for me. Jordan noticed it, too. I know that any form of hormonal birth control “messes with” my hormones, but Nexplanon has been really great for me. We aren’t in a place where we are “ready” (not a great word choice, it’s obviously more nuanced than that, but roll with me here) to have children right now, and being a Parade Performer at Disney while pregnant...it’s just not a great mix.
We are so happy to be our little family of two. We’ve loved being able to travel, follow our dreams and support each other in those dreams. We’re not entirely sure where life will take us next, but we know one thing: we’re happy to be going there together.
Couple Highlight: Nich and Kelsey
This post is part of the series, “Couple Highlights.” Each Couple Highlight was originally shared in the Improving Intimacy in Latter-Day Saint Relationships Facebook Group, which is a private group. In order to share these posts publicly on danielaburgess.com, explicit written consent was granted by each couple.
Couple Highlights began on the Facebook Group as a way to hear about the growth happening for couples in the group, and to give them an opportunity to share their story--their marriage journey, where they are at, and the challenges they’ve overcome.
Hi! Whenever we are asked to introduce ourselves the first thing that comes to mind (for Kelsey), is “well we’re pretty normal I guess?” Pretty soon into thinking of details to share, though, we remember that while Kelsey is born-and-raised from Provo UT (pretty standard) and we met in the MTC, bound for the same mission (also not unheard of and surprisingly common these days), Nich is a convert from the Midwest with tattoos XD. I (Kelsey) forget sometimes that we might not appear typical to most people in Provo, UT (where we live). Another aspect of our lives that may provide some insight into why we are the way we are is that Kelsey works full time and Nich is a full-time student and at-home dad.
I guess you could say we hit it off as missionaries, but we also served in a pretty strict mission (under Elder Choi, see the talk “Don’t Look Around, Look Up” from the April 2017 General Conference), so we weren’t all flirty or particularly thought about dating each other while we were out serving. Because we were in the same MTC district, Kelsey got home about 6 months before Nich, in July 2016, and that’s when we started writing. We were engaged by the following Easter. We’re pretty confident that the mission president’s wife at the time shared a photo of us with the missionaries when we started dating, and not just to some missionaries, but probably in a zone-conference PowerPoint. It’s fun to have our mission memories in common and we find ourselves laughing about and reminiscing over many mission things together.
We have been married since August of 2017 and have one child who is just over 2 years old (yes, she was born before our first anniversary – by eight days!). Something some of you may know about us is that Daniel Burgess is Kelsey’s step-father. So, obviously, that’s how we were introduced to the group. We’re both really grateful for Dan’s perspective and the conversations he’s helped us have, as they have made it easier to navigate the tough conversations needed in every marriage.
Speaking of tough, while there are many things we feel are healthy and good about our relationship, we both struggle pretty majorly with mental illness. Nich has depression, suicidal thoughts, and ADHD, and Kelsey has high anxiety. You can imagine these things pair great with each other, amiright? Nich has had a sense that he needed help since he was a teenager, but the first time he got professional help was from the LDS family services therapist associated with our mission. He hasn’t had an official therapist since then, but has been on Wellbutrin on and off since we’ve been married. He still struggles to know how to handle his mental health problems consistently. As for Kelsey’s mental health journey, she loves to soak up information and get advice from others, so she has dived in to several podcasts since we’ve been married. One of the first ones was Dan’s, of course, and she has also found a lot of resonating concepts from Amanda Louder’s Live from Love. She’s currently loving Awesome With Alison (comment if you love her too!) and working with a therapist recommended by Dan. Together, we try to be really open about our struggles, and have conversations about how we can help each other often. It’s not easy to be dealing with, but we usually feel confident that we can work through things together.
When it comes to sex, you can imagine how a high-anxiety person and a person struggling to see meaning in life (depression and suicide ideation) might have difficulty feeling in-sync when it comes to connecting intimately. If either of us are feeling stressed or particularly overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions, sex isn’t a priority until we have talked and re-connected emotionally. For both of us, emotional connection is an extremely important aspect of not only general intimacy, but sex as well. We probably block ourselves from feeling like being intimate because we over-analyze where we are emotionally and get caught in our own thought-traps.
Because of everything described here, we are grateful to be able to participate in this group and have had a lot of mind-opening conversations about ourselves and our relationship because of the questions and opinions posed here. We’re both pretty active in the group and are of course willing to answer any further questions anyone has!
Couple Highlight: John and Katie
This post is part of the series, “Couple Highlights.” Each Couple Highlight was originally shared in the Improving Intimacy in Latter-Day Saint Relationships Facebook Group, which is a private group. In order to share these posts publicly on danielaburgess.com, explicit written consent was granted by each couple.
Couple Highlights began on the Facebook Group as a way to hear about the growth happening for couples in the group, and to give them an opportunity to share their story--their marriage journey, where they are at, and the challenges they’ve overcome.
Hey! We’re John and Katie Salmond. We have been married for almost 15 years. We both grew up in homes where we were not educated about sex. Shame was paramount in my home in particular (Katie). We were lucky to read a few books during our engagement that helped us identify our cultural and parental taught shame around sexuality and fight against it. We have been quite lucky that we have not had tons of shame around our sex life. Sexuality and intimacy groups are a place for me to find my people, learn, get ideas of fun things to try and get recommendations about books.
We have experienced a few health challenges that have shaped our intimacy and sex life though.
We have had long-term infertility. Facing the possibility of never having children, re-imagining our family structure and navigating intimacy crushing treatments has bound us, helped us to turn inward as a couple and strengthened us. Our life became about us as a couple and being fulfilled and putting our relationship first. When we did have our one son, our couple relationship has remained our priority.
We have also worked to manage the challenges that mental illness brings. John has drug-resistant depression resulting in low/no desire. I had postpartum anxiety with intrusive thoughts. It has made it so we have had to very clearly communicate wants and desires, schedule sex and stick to each other. Our couplehood is our home base. It’s what has gotten us through so much.
Couple Highlight: Daniel and Julie
This post is part of the series, “Couple Highlights.” Each Couple Highlight was originally shared in the Improving Intimacy in Latter-Day Saint Relationships Facebook Group, which is a private group. In order to share these posts publicly on danielaburgess.com, explicit written consent was granted by each couple.
Couple Highlights began on the Facebook Group as a way to hear about the growth happening for couples in the group, and to give them an opportunity to share their story--their marriage journey, where they are at, and the challenges they’ve overcome.
My wife and I will begin by sharing our Couple Highlight.
Hello! We are Daniel and Julie Burgess. We’ve been married for eight years. We have three married daughters, two living in Provo, and the other living in France working for Disney Paris. Our two sons are currently living with us. The oldest son is preparing for his mission and the younger son has one more year before he starts high school. We have one grandchild, and we’re loving getting used to the titles “grandma” and “grandpa”.
Daniel has a background in Finance, and currently works as a marriage and family therapist specializing in intimacy issues. I love sharing the joy that comes from my work as an author, podcaster, and presenter. I also find great joy in getting lost in my books; church history, LDS scholars, the writings of our prophets, etc.
Julie recently retired from teaching school, and is excited to get back on stage. I love performing in theater and spent 25 years performing in shows along the Wasatch front. I have written several published pieces of choral music, conducted numerous choirs, and taught voice for many years. I also love my wall of power tools, and relish a good project!
We love studying and discussing the gospel, remodeling our homes, weightlifting, hiking, and traveling. We’ve paddled kayaks in Mendocino, Alaska, Utah, and Nova Scotia.
Since each of us were previously divorced, we knew going in that we’d be facing as yet unrevealed triggers and dysfunctions. Many of these issues were rooted in the behaviors from our previous marriages. It affected the way we communicated with each other, and the way we perceived the meaning of each other’s words and actions. We have had many long (sometimes tearful) discussions as we’ve navigated these bumps. Being willing to actually talk out loud about our fears and misconceptions has made it possible for us to be more vulnerable with each other, and has definitely increased the depth of our relationship.
Having both grown up in the church, we’ve struggled with the way sexual/morality topics were taught in our teenage years. We have both strived to teach these important concepts in a better way. In our house, we wanted conversations about desire, arousal, and intimacy to be normalized. We’ve had open discussions with our kids at the dinner table and sitting together in the hot tub.
As parents of married kids, we’re grateful that they feel comfortable discussing questions about intimacy and the role it plays in their relationships. This is a huge difference from the way we were raised, where we would have never brought up these topics with our own parents. We love to see how the members of this group encourage each other and help each other understand differing points of view. It’s so wonderful to see the conversation about intimacy within LDS relationships change in such a healthy and supportive way!