I was married in a Latter-Day Saint temple, where we believe allows your marriage to be eternal. However, simply having my marriage ceremony within my religion doesn’t mean I’m guaranteed to have a happy and healthy marriage! Believing you’ll have a forever marriage is different from actually creating one.

Principles to follow

I firmly know that the principles taught in my Latter-Day Saint faith and many other faiths directly coincide with principles you should follow for a strong and happy marriage. Many religions encourage selflessness, humility, and compassion towards all men, and I believe these qualities can take your marriage leaps and bounds if you apply them to your marriage! But two points I want to make here are:

1) Just because a couple is religious though, it doesn’t mean they adequately apply those important qualities, or even use them at all!

2. Although great marriage principles are heavily found in religion, it doesn’t mean a non-religious marriage won’t know those principles as well! Anyone can know and apply these qualities to their marriage and work at it.

Religion is there to guide you on an ideally set pathway you should follow for happiness. But religion doesn’t do all the work for you!!! Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a Latter-Day Saint leader, echoes this saying,

“strong marriages and family relationships do not just happen because one is a member of the Church. They require constant, intentional work. The doctrine of eternal families must inspire us to dedicate our best efforts to saving and enriching our marriages and families.”

No matter what kind of marriage you have, it takes work to keep it happy and healthy. It takes work to keep your marriage together now and always. But if you’re not working at it, don’t blame your unhappy marriage on religion or anyone else because it’s all up to YOU.

YOU choose whether to follow basic marriage principles or not. YOU choose if you want to uphold these forever or not.

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