Marriage Commitment Levels

The month of July seems to be wedding month. We've been invited to two weddings of neighbors and three family weddings. As we drive in the car to all these weddings, it's been an awesome opportunity to talk to the kids over and over again about the importance of temple weddings. We talk about what actually happens in a temple wedding. You know the couple promises with God to take care of each other and God will help them. Then, we talk about how a couple gets sealed together like a chain with the opportunity to be linked together forever.


That's all we see at first. But, if we look closer we realize that when those two links are chained together they link the parents and grandparents that came before. If you keep looking,  you realize that the future children that aren't even a glimmer in their parents' eyes yet, are linked too. It's a beautiful, eternal view of what marriage should be. I like to think of it as the ideal.
This way is the perfect set up to foster complete: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, etc, attachment. In this way as you commit completely, you really "cleave unto one another and non else". It's the most fulfilling for all needs when done right. We're big proponents of this type of marriage.

We always spend some time comparing a temple marriage to a marriage outside the temple. Any marriage between a man and woman is a wonderful thing in the eye of God. It's how it should be. We talk about all the benefits of the form of commitment that marriage is.
A married couple(married in the temple or not) is so much more likely to save money for the future, buy property together, set goals to achieve and work towards together then a non-married couple. Of course a married couple is the best way to raise the next generation. We hope by the end of talking about all that, that the kids are getting an idea of the "best" and "better". The main thing missing from a marriage outside the temple is the covenant with God to do our best in our marriage and to be able to stay married together after death and the family links from this.

Since, we know that eventually are kids will realize this is happening, we compare the option of living together as a couple instead of marrying. We always talk about abuse being more likely in this situation. We talk about the opposites of above. We mainly say, if a couple isn't willing to commit formally to each other like in marriage, then it's unlikely they'll commit in a lot of ways. They're less likely to commit financially, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. It seems they're less likely to have children by choice. They're also less likely to both be around to raise the children together if they do have any. Then, here's the part we don't mention if the young kids are in the car. They're putting their physical needs way above the rest of their other needs. Thus, their person becomes out of balance and can't actually be as complete and whole as it could have been, if they had just committed to take care of all each others' needs instead of just trying to take care of one physical need. I don't particularly support living together instead of marrying, can you tell?

Anyway that's the way I see it. Marriage by Leah

Abuse

Some men who are evidently unable to gain respect by the goodness of their lives use as justification for their actions the statement that Eve was told that Adam should rule over her. How much sadness, how much tragedy, how much heartbreak has been caused through centuries of time by weak men who have used that as a scriptural warrant for atrocious behavior! They do not recognize that the same account indicates that Eve was given as a helpmeet to Adam. The facts are that they stood side by side in the garden. They were expelled from the garden together, and they worked together side by side in gaining their bread by the sweat of their brows. ---

President Gordon B Hinckley