Marriage advice

President Danny Henderson of the Mount Zion Branch just contacted us, about what advice I gave to a couple when, as a Bishop, I performed their marriage. I performed about a dozen marriages while Bishop. Here is what I typically said before performing the actual ceremony (sometimes I also gave the couple a written copy of this advice)---

What we are doing here today in creating a marriage is important. Married people live longer. Married people are more successful in their lives and careers. Married people report greater happiness than unmarried people. Even more important, when children are raised together by a happily married couple, they stand the best chance of growing up happy, well-adjusted, and successful. My wife JoAnn and I have been married almost 38 years. We know something of the ups and downs of married life. I would like to draw upon my own experience and suggest six ways to keep your marriage bond strong:

1. When you build up your partner, you help yourself. Love comes and love stays when you treat your partner in a loving way. I do not believe that we fall in or out of love--we grow in love and stay in love IF we treat our partner in a loving way. It’s the way we treat our partner that determines how we feel about our partner. There is absolutely no place for grouchiness, unkindness, yelling, browbeating, or any kind of abuse. When we are in our homes and with our family, we need to live the Golden Rule--our Lord’s recipe for successful relationships: ”Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” When you build up your partner, you help yourself to be happier and keep yourself in love.

2. When your partner is acting their worst, they need your strength and your love the most. Everyone has good moments and bad moments. A smart husband or wife is sensitive to the times when their spouse is not at their best, then makes a special effort to be up-beat, loving, patient, and supportive. This evens out the highs and lows and makes for a more positive family life. When your partner is acting their worst, they need you to be extra strong and loving.

3. If things aren’t going right, change yourself. Many marriages have been wrecked by one of the partners being too anxious to change the other. That just doesn’t work. YOU can only control what YOU do, and feel, and think. If the time comes when things in your marriage relationship aren’t going right, change yourself.

4. “I only have eyes for you.” When we were unattached and fancy free, we could be interested romantically in many people. Marriage requires us to focus all of our romantic interest in our spouse. Strong marriages are based on trust. I absolutely trust my wife to be faithful to me and the marriage vows we made. She has lived to earn my trust. I too have disciplined myself to be only attracted to her. With absolute faithfulness and trust, marriages stay strong, and provide a supportive foundation for the success of each of the partners and happiness and development of children. Now that you are making marriage vows, I urge you to only have eyes for each other.

5. As individuals, never, never, never give up on the promises you are each making today. In society today, there are influences that make it easy for persons to rationalize giving up on a marriage. All marriages have challenging times. The difference in whether a couple succeeds in their marriage may be as a simple as each of the pair refusing, no matter what, to break the marriage promises the individual made. I hope that each of your will resolve to yourself, “I can’t control what anyone else will do. But as for me, I am a person of my word. I promised and I will never, never, never go back on that promise.”

6. The strongest marriages take on God as a partner. Marriages succeed best when each spouse has their own strong moral compass, when the couple shares a deep-felt religious conviction, and when each spouse understands their marriage vow as a sacred covenant, not just made with each other but also involving God as a third partner in the marriage. I urge you to add strength to your marriage by making sure that God is a full partner in your relationship. I pray that He will bless you to this end.
Bishop Robert E. Lewis
Taylorsville Gardens 1st Ward
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
April 16, 2003