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: 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!
Jealousy And Social Media
Anonymous Question Series:
Q: My husband gets jealous about Facebook likes, emojis, and comments I get from other men who are just friends. How do you recommend dealing with such situations?
A: The quick answer: Recognize your husband’s jealousy is rooted in fears and insecurities and avoid taking responsibility for his emotions.
Jealousy is a toxic form of control and is never a healthy or appropriate response. While it is important to respect and love your spouse, to hear out their concerns, you never should take responsibility for his emotional immaturity — his jealousy. What I mean by this last comment is that you should never feel you have to change because your spouse guilts you, scares you, or uses logic to convince you to change. Even in the case of emotional or physical infidelity, jealously is toxic and not healthy.
It is natural to experience hurt, pain, sadness, maybe even a little jealousy, but jealousy is a manifestation of other serious emotional issues. Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., addressed these mental health issues well in her article "What's Really Behind Jealousy, and What to Do About It".
Research has linked several traits to jealousy:
Low self-esteem
Neuroticism: a general tendency to be moody, anxious and emotionally unstable
Feelings of insecurity and possessiveness
Dependence on your partner (Codependency)
Feelings of inadequacy in your relationship
An anxious attachment style
Take courage in your integrity. You get to be you! Some married individuals require or expect their spouses to "unfriend" old friends of the opposite sex and past boyfriends/girlfriends and share social media and emails. This is inappropriate. Some people agree to do this because it seems to make logical sense, and they see it as a form of "honoring" their spouse. So, they agree to go along with it. Sure, absolutely, if you personally decide it's best for you to avoid interacting with others of the opposite sex, you get to make that decision. But it is not loving nor healthy of your spouse to make you feel obligated to comply.
Elder Holland made it clear that this immature jealousy and tantrum is not appropriate (refer to my post: Marital Myth of Communication):
"The second segment of this scriptural sermon on love in Moroni 7:45 says that true charity — real love — 'is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity.' Think of how many arguments could be avoided, how many hurt feelings could be spared, how many cold shoulders and silent treatments could be ended, and, in a worst-case scenario, how many breakups and divorces could be avoided if we were not so easily provoked, if we thought no evil of one another, and if we not only did not rejoice in iniquity but didn’t rejoice even in little mistakes.
Temper tantrums are not cute even in children; they are despicable in adults, especially adults who are supposed to love each other. We are too easily provoked; we are too inclined to think that our partner meant to hurt us—meant to do us evil, so to speak; and in defensive or jealous response we too often rejoice when we see them make a mistake and find them in a fault. Let’s show some discipline on this one. Act a little more maturely. Bite your tongue if you have to. 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city' (Proverbs 16:32). At least one difference between a tolerable marriage and a great one may be that willingness in the latter to allow some things to pass without comment, without response." —Jeffery R. Holland, How Do I Love Thee?
Respond with love and boundaries, don't lose who you are, have fun and be you. It's not easy, but he needs to learn how to be an adult and a loving companion. You can't force him, but you can take comfort in knowing you get to be you.
One final thought. If he is making such an issue over "likes" that you feel it had to be addressed with me, I am going to assume this behavior is not limited to social media. I would encourage you to read and become familiar with emotional blackmail.
Additional Resources:
Here is a summary of the book: "Emotional Blackmail" patterns
Find the full book here: Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
Emotional Blackmail website: Out of the F.O.G.
Self-Assessment of Emotional Abuse: Emotional Abuse
“Thank You” Doesn't Quite Do It
"Building a celestial marriage. The scriptures give an occasional glimpse into societies in which people “were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18), where “there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.” (4 Ne. 1:15.)" —Spencer J. Condie, And We Did Liken the Scriptures unto Our Marriage
“Thank you” doesn't communicate the profound appreciation I have for my wife. It seems too trite. In no way does it express the joy, all-accepting love and adoration I feel from my wife and what she has provided for me. Nor does it fully express the appreciation I have for her Christ-like example and courageous endurance, with which she not only accepted, but full-heartedly committed to supporting me in my Master’s program. To convey even slightly the miracle and blessing this has been, I must share briefly how we got to this point.
When I was thirteen I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I wanted to be a psychotherapist. It’s an unusual story—after all, what kid knows they want to be a therapist? A firefighter, astronaut, race car driver, a professional skateboarder, surfer, sure. But a therapist? I felt I might have been the only one ever, in the history of the world. Although I didn’t know such a career existed or the vocabulary to describe my passion at the time, I was fascinated by human behavior. My stargazing was people watching. I got just as much awe and sense of magnificence from viewing the human experience as looking into a clear star-filled night. It wasn’t until I found an “Intro to Psychology” college textbook a couple years later that I realized it was a career and entire field of study. I took that textbook everywhere and devoured it. When in high school I was reading Jung, Fraud, Maslow and Rodgers. I was bored with fiction and thought it was a waste of time. I wanted more; I wanted to understand why people do what they do, what made them tick, both the emotional and logical.
I couldn't wait to get out of high school; it felt like a wasteful distraction. Finally in college, I took as many classes as possible in the field of psychology. It came naturally and with little effort. I remember Dr. Mark Chamberlain’s (an individual I greatly admire) occasional surprised look when I would respond in class. One such experience came when in the first week of class he was addressing various topics that were going to be covered in the coming months. He began to briefly address the issue with cancer patients and their aversion to food during chemo. I asked if he was referring to the “Garcia Effect.” His look was both of surprise and joy to hear his new freshman’s passion for the topic.
Ironically, my very passion and joy in understanding human relationships was most challenged in my first marriage. My dear bride, my love, my friend, struggled with my decision to become a therapist. Additionally, she had put her education on hold to get married. It wasn't clear to me at the time why there was such an opposition to my career choice. Nonetheless, I desired to be one with her and support her in her education. I made the very difficult decision to postpone indefinitely, my therapist career path.
The next thirteen years were filled with great memories and equally difficult memories. In no way do I regret or resent those thirteen years. If anything, I learned more about human relationships than any class would have provided. I learned how to love unconditionally, forgive, be forgiven, have courage, trust, and how to be an individual in a marriage. I also learned how to see the heart of another who is struggling — see them not as their pain or struggle but for who they are as a person, a human, a child of God. The marriage ended, but some time later, I met Julie.
On June 8, 2012, we married in storybook fashion. If anyone tells you there is no such thing, stop them with a dramatic pause and confidently assure them that is not true and show them this video. (I must add, after the events in the video, she climbed up on the roof at 11 p.m. and shouted from the rooftop that she was getting married.) Storybook marriages are real. Period.
It was Julie’s loving prompting that encouraged me back onto the path to becoming a therapist. This was not a rash decision; it was thought about long and hard. You see, it wasn't just a dream come true marriage between to people. This blessing included five children, three daughters from her and two sons from me — in addition to two ex-spouses. Adjusting to a "normal" life would have been difficult enough. But going to school again would require me to be absent from home for long periods of time. With a full-time job, full-time schooling and eventually a full load of clients, it was rare for me to be home. In the last year of the 2.5 years schooling, we were routinely waking up at 4:30 a.m. and retiring at 10 or 11 p.m. at night. We often joked that we saw each other more during our courtship when she lived in Utah and I in California.
Now after almost three years of marriage, I have finished my Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy. Her love and support wasn't limited to encouraging me to achieve my dreams; she made them her own, too. It became our dream. This was not my goal. It was ours. She would sometimes even say, “We are getting our master’s degree.” This was not just getting through a difficult time; it was becoming one with each other. Loving the process as Elder Maxwell has said, one is not only to endure, but to endure well and gracefully those things which the Lord “seeth fit to inflict upon [us].”
We read in Mosiah about how the Lord simultaneously tries the patience of His people even as He tries their faith (Mosiah 23:21). One is not only to endure, but to endure well and gracefully those things which the Lord “seeth fit to inflict upon [us]” (Mosiah 3:19), just as did a group of ancient American saints who were bearing unusual burdens but who submitted “cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord” (Mosiah 24:15). —Elder Maxwell, Patience
Julie, my love exemplifies the meaning of Elder Maxwell's words.
Additionally, in these three years she has sent two daughters off to college, one on a mission, put two boys through the Cub Scout program, remodeled our home, started a new career, and jumped feet-first into a new business venture. She found daily ways to bring our family closer to Christ. We valued our 5 a.m. "dates" at the gym, long hours of editing papers, and many insightful heart-to-heart conversations.
In every way, she has been that best friend, completely adoring partner in life. We are deeper and more in love now than ever before. This is my feeble attempt at expressing my deep and ever-grateful love and gratitude for all you have done. Thank you.