REL 200 - The Eternal Family

Readings:

"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. ...

"In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

"Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed."

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

In the three years since I was sustained as President of the Church, I believe the saddest and most discouraging responsibility I have each week is the handling of cancellations of sealings.

Each one was preceded by a joyous marriage in the house of the Lord, where a loving couple was beginning a new life together and looking forward to spending the rest of eternity with each other. And then months and years go by, and for one reason or another, love dies.

It may be the result of financial problems, lack of communication, uncontrolled tempers, interference from in-laws, entanglement in sin. There are any number of reasons. In most cases divorce does not have to be the outcome.

The vast majority of requests for cancellations of sealings come from women who tried desperately to make a go of the marriage but who, in the final analysis, could not overcome the problems.

Choose a companion carefully and prayerfully; and when you are married, be fiercely loyal one to another. Priceless advice comes from a small framed plaque I once saw in the home of an uncle and aunt. It read, “Choose your love; love your choice.” There is great wisdom in those few words. Commitment in marriage is absolutely essential.

The divorce itself does not constitute the entire evil, but the very acceptance of divorce as a cure is also a serious sin of this generation. Because a program or a pattern is universally accepted is not evidence that it is right. Marriage never was easy. It may never be. It brings with it sacrifice, sharing, and a demand for great selflessness. ... [We] have come to realize that divorce is not a cure for difficulty, but is merely an escape, and a weak one. ...

Many of the TV and movie screen shows and stories of fiction end with marriage, and "they lived happily ever after." ... [The] mere performance of a ceremony does not bring happiness and a successful marriage. Happiness does not come by pressing a button ... happiness is a state of mind and comes from within. It must be earned. It cannot be purchased with money ...

President Spencer W. Kimball #2
Self-Analysis Can Avoid Divorce
Marriage and Divorce

Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or the other or both parties to a marriage contract. Someone is thinking of selfcomforts, conveniences, freedoms, luxuries, or ease. ... If each spouse submits to frequent self-analysis and measures his own imperfections by the yardstick of perfection and the Golden Rule, and if each spouse sets about to correct self in every deviation found by such analysis rather than to set about to correct the deviations in the other party, then transformation comes and happiness is the result. ...

There are many pharisaic people who marry who should memorize the parable of the Savior in Luke—people who prate their own virtues and pile up their own qualities of goodness and put them on the scales against the weaknesses of the spouse. ... Sometimes the ceaseless pinpricking of an unhappy, discontented, and selfish spouse can finally add up ... For every friction, there is a cause; and whenever there is unhappiness, each should search self to find the cause or at least that portion of the cause which originated in that self.

President Spencer W. Kimball #3
Independence and No "Other Cleavings" in Marriage
Marriage and Divorce

Sometimes in marriage there are other cleavings, in spite of the fact that the Lord said: Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else. [D&C 42:22]

This means just as completely that “thou shalt love thy husband with all thy heart and shall cleave unto him and none else.” Frequently, people continue to cleave unto their mothers and their fathers and their chums. Sometimes mothers will not relinquish the hold they have had upon their children; and husbands as well as wives return to their mothers and fathers to obtain advice and counsel and to confide, whereas cleaving should be to the wife in most things, and all intimacies should be kept in great secrecy and privacy from others.

Couples do well to immediately find their own home, separate and apart from that of the in-laws on either side. The home may be very modest and unpretentious, but still it is an independent domicile. Your married life should become independent of her folks and his folks. You love them more than ever; you cherish their counsel; you appreciate their association; but you live your own lives, being governed by your decisions, by your own prayerful considerations after you have received the counsel from those who should give it. To cleave does not mean merely to occupy the same home; it means to adhere closely, to stick together ...

President Howard W. Hunter
Key to Success in Marriage
Teachings of Howard W. Hunter, p.130

Being happily and successfully married is generally not so much a matter of marrying the right person as it is being the right person. ... The conscious effort to do one’s part fully is the greatest element contributing to success.

Any man in this Church who abuses his wife, who demeans her, who insults her, who exercises unrighteous dominion over her is unworthy to hold the priesthood. Though he may have been ordained, the heavens will withdraw, the Spirit of the Lord will be grieved, and it will be amen to the authority of the priesthood of that man. Any man who engages in this practice is unworthy to hold a temple recommend.

I regret to say that I see too much of this ugly phenomenon. There are men who cuff their wives about, both verbally and physically. What a tragedy when a man demeans the mother of his children. ...

My brethren, if there be any within the sound of my voice who are guilty of such behavior, I call upon you to repent. Get on your knees and ask the Lord to forgive you. Pray to Him for the power to control your tongue and your heavy hand. Ask for the forgiveness of your wife and your children.

Divorce can be justified only in the rarest of circumstances, because it often tears people's lives apart and shears family happiness. Frequently, parties in a divorce lose much more than they gain.

The traumatic experience one goes through in divorce seems little understood and not well enough appreciated. Certainly there needs to be much more sympathy and understanding for those who have experienced this great tragedy and whose lives cannot be reversed. For those who are divorced, there is still much to be hoped for and expected in terms of fulfillment and happiness in life, in the forgetting of self and the rendering of service to others. ...

Pres. James E. Faust #2
Reasons for Divorce
To Reach Even unto You, pp. 54-55

There are no simple answers to the complex and challenging questions of happiness in marriage. There are many supposed reasons for divorce. Among them are the serious problems of selfishness, immaturity, lack of commitment, inadequate communication, unfaithfulness, and others that are obvious and well known.

In my experience there is another reason that seems not so obvious but that precedes and laces through all of the others. It is the lack of constant enrichment in marriage. It is an absence of that "something extra" which makes married life precious, special, and wonderful, in spite of its being sometimes drudgery, difficult, and dull. ...

There are a few simple, relevant questions that each person, whether married or contemplating marriage, should honestly ask himself. They are:

• (1) Am I able to think of the interest of my marriage and partner first, before I think of my own desires?
• (2) How deep is my commitment to my companion aside from any other interests?
• (3) Is he or she my best friend?
• (4) Do I have respect for the dignity of my partner as a person of worth and value?
• (5) Do we quarrel over money? (Money itself, or the lack of it, does not seem to make a couple either happy or unhappy, but it is often a symbol of selfishness.)
• (6) Is there a spiritually sanctifying bond between us?

What, then, might be "just cause" for breaking the covenants of marriage? ... I confess I do not claim the wisdom or authority to definitively state what is "just cause." Only the parties to the marriage can determine this. They must bear the responsibility for the train of consequences which inevitably follow if these covenants are not honored.

In my opinion, "just cause" should be nothing less serious than a prolonged and apparently irredeemable relationship which is destructive of a person's dignity as a human being.

President Gordon B. Hinckley #2
Roots of Divorce and the Essence of Happiness
Ensign, August 1992

We have many failures in the world, but the greatest of these, in my judgment, is that failure which is found in broken homes. Immeasurable is the heartache.

The root of most of this lies in selfishness. The cure for most of it can be found in repentance on the part of the offender and forgiveness on the part of the offended.

Every marriage is subject to occasional stormy weather. But with patience, mutual respect, and a spirit of forbearance, we can weather these storms. Where mistakes have been made, there can be apology, repentance, and forgiveness. But there must be willingness to do so on the part of both parties. ...

I have learned that the real essence of happiness in marriage lies not so much in romance as in an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one's companion. Thinking of self alone and of the gratification of personal desires will build neither trust, love, nor happiness. Only when there is unselfishness will love, with its concomitant qualities, flourish and blossom.

Marriage, in its truest sense, is a partnership of equals, with neither exercising dominion over the other, but, rather, with each encouraging and assisting the other in whatever responsibilities and aspirations he or she might have.

President Gordon B. Hinckley #3
Respecting Divorced Individuals
Single Adult Fireside Satellite Broadcast, February 26, 1989
Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, pp. 161-162

To you who are divorced, please know that we do not look down upon you as failures because a marriage failed. In many, perhaps in most cases you were not responsible for that failure. Furthermore, ours is the obligation not to condemn, but to forgive and forget, to lift and to help. In your hours of desolation, turn to the Lord, who said: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. . . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28, 30).

The Lord will not deny you nor turn you away. The answers to your prayers may not be dramatic; they may not be readily understood or even appreciated. But the time will come when you will know that you have been blessed. For those of you who have children, and struggle to rear them in righteousness, be assured that they will become a blessing and a comfort and a strength to you through all the years to come. ...

President Spencer W. Kimball #3
Courting Someone Before a Divorce is Finalized is Sin
Faith Precedes the Miracle, p. 143

A husband and wife were quarreling and had reached such a degree of incompatibility that they had flung at one another the threat of divorce and had already seen attorneys. Both of them, embittered, had found companionship with other parties. This was sin. No matter how bitter were their differences, neither had any right to begin courting or looking about for friends. Any dating or such association by wedded people outside the marriage is iniquitous. Even though they proceeded with the divorce suit, to be moral and honorable they must wait until the divorce is final before either is justified in developing new romances.

So long as the marriage covenant has not been legally severed, neither spouse morally may seek new romance or open the heart to other people. After the divorce becomes final, both freed individuals may engage in proper courting activities.

1. According to President Gordon B. Hinckley, where would be the essence for a happy marriage?  (President Gordon B. Hinckley  #1)

2. What did President Spencer W. Kimball identify as another sin against marriage in our generation?  (President Spencer W. Kimball #1)