The LDS Guide to Dating and Marriage, Part 4: The Medium Between the Extremes

[Previous entries in this series:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]

The previous two chapters demonstrate, in essence, the inherent difficulty in finding an eternal companion--because it requires you to find the slippery medium between the two extremes.

Imperfections and incompatibilities can lead to marital problems (often serious ones) after you've tied the knot...but you have to accept some imperfection in your spouse because there aren't any perfect people to choose from. Which imperfections should you accept, and which should you stay away from? Where's the happy medium between casually grabbing the first person who crosses your path, and waiting eternally for that Mr or Miss Perfect who never arrives?

See why trying to describe the 'How' of dating and marriage is inherently difficult?  It's like trying to balance an egg on the top of an angled rooftop without having it slide down either side.  Are you forced to either settle for too little, or stand there waiting for too much?

It's easy to list things you want in a companion...

Guys: "She's gorgeous, a great cook, loves giving massages and watching football.  Did I mention she's gorgeous?"

Girls:  "He's tall, dark, handsome, rich, does all the housework, loves romantic dinners, flowers, kisses in the moonlight, and curling up with me on the couch every evening to watch movies on Lifetime..."

...but then you have to ask yourself:
(a) does this person really exist?
(b) and if they did, would they really want to marry me?

Before we head into the rest of this series, let's list some working theories about marriage for future discussion:

In the previous section, I mentioned what we'll now call Working Theory #1: Any marriage can fail--no matter how well matched they are, nor how smoothly things were going at the beginning.

This may sound a little fatalistic, so let's temper that immediately with Working Theory #2: Any marriage can succeed.

This may be harder to demonstrate as true, but looking at it from the opposite angle: what combinations of personality, age, attitude towards religion, culture, or any personal characteristic would make it impossible for a particular marriage to succeed? Remember, impossible is a strong word... No matter how far away you are from the goal to begin with--the distance is still finite and the method of moving towards it is always available. If (and only if) both partners are willing to work at it, why couldn't any marriage turn out a winner?

As the saying goes: "Marry whom you love, then love whom you marry". If we consider (a) each son or daughter of God possesses the same inherent potential to be a celestial husband or wife and (b) we reject "The One" theory, then it seems clear that God may not, in fact, really care who we marry (outside of the obvious religious issue, presumably), but instead care about how we handle our marriage afterwards...

We have friends who have had their fair share of marital problems...yet everytime they go to the temple and pray about it, they receive confirmation that their being together is 'right'.  There are a number of ways to interpret this:
(1) Obviously, God isn't going to tell them to divorce...
(2) God might not have cared whether those two people got married in the first place, but since they did...the answer might be in terms of "You made your choice...now stick with it!"
--or--
(3)  It could be just a gentle reminder that the path to marital success lies directly in front of them, as it does for all couples regardless of the bumps along the way, and all they have to do is keep going...

Next week: How to get to know someone and what to look for...