The Law of Chastity After Marriage

Readings in the Student Manual:
 

Readings in this Page:

Pres. Spencer W. Kimball
Dangers to Marriage in Unwise Behaviors and Associations
Faith Precedes the Miracle, p.146

There are many tragedies affecting spouses, children, and loved ones. Even though these "affairs" begin near-innocently, like an octopus the tentacles move gradually to strangle.

When dates or dinners or rides or other contacts begin, the abyss of tragedy opens wide its mouth. And it has reached deep iniquity when physical contacts of any nature have been indulged in.

Many women also justify themselves in irregularities; they often invite men to sensual desire by their immodest clothes, loose actions and mannerisms, their coy glances, their extreme make-up, and by their flattery.

Parents who hold, direct, and dictate to their married children and draw them away from their spouses are likely to regret the possible tragedy. Accordingly, when two people marry, the spouse should become the confidant, the friend, the sharer of responsibility, and they two become independent. No one should come between the husband and wife, not even parents.

To those who claim their love is dead, let them return home with all their loyalty, fidelity, honor, and cleanness, and the love that has become but embers will flare up with scintillating flame again. If love wanes or dies, it is often infidelity of thought or act that gave the lethal potion.

... light regard for marriage and becoming too familiar with someone other than one's marriage partner are dangerous waystations on the road to disaffection and infidelity.

A man who has entered into a sacred covenant in the house of the Lord to remain true to the marriage vow is a traitor to that covenant if he separates himself from his wife and family just because he has permitted himself to become infatuated with the pretty face and comely form of some young girl who flattered him with a smile. ...

[We] are to ... warn these men ... who, after having lived with their wives and brought into this world four and five and six children, get tired of them and seek a divorce, that they are on the road to hell. It is unfair to a woman to leave her that way, merely because the man happens to fall in love with some younger woman and feels that the wife is not so beautiful or attractive as she used to be.  Warn him!  Nothing but unhappiness for him and injustice to those children can result.

Pres. Spencer W. Kimball
Unlawful Associations Prior to Divorce
Faith Precedes the Miracle, p.144

Home-breaking is sin, and any thought, act or association that will tend to destroy another's home is a grievous transgression.

A certain young woman was single and therefore free to properly seek a mate, but she gave attention to and received attention from a married man. She was in transgression. She argued that his marriage was "already on the rocks" and that the wife of her new boyfriend did not understand him and that he was most unhappy at home and did not love his wife. Regardless of the state of the married man, the young woman was in serious error to comfort him, listen to his disloyal castigation of his wife, and entertain him. The man was in deep sin. He was disloyal and unfaithful. So long as he is married to a woman, he is duty bound to protect her and defend her, and the same responsibility is with his wife.

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.

There are those who look with longing eyes, who want and desire and crave these romantic associations. To so desire to possess, to inordinately want and yearn for such, is to covet, and the Lord in powerful terms condemns it: "And again I command thee that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife; nor seek thy neighbor's life." (D&C 19:25.)