We place a lot of emphasis on getting married in the temple. We teach about it in Family Home Evening, Primary, Young Men’s and Young Women’s. Our focus as an LDS people is to be temple worthy and remain temple worthy throughout our lives. Unfortunately, as we talk about temple marriage, sometimes we forget one very important thing – temple marriage gives us the opportunity to be together forever. It is not a guarantee.
My parents were divorced when I was a teenager. They had been married in the temple and my sisters and I were all born in the covenant. When I told my friends that my parents were splitting up, the response was: “But they were married in the temple, weren’t they?”
A temple marriage is not a magical charm that you wave over your relationship to make all your problems disappear. You will still have arguments. You will still get irritated at the way he will not pick up his towels. You’ll even have bigger fights, over finances or hurtful things said. You’ll go through times when you wonder if you really should have married this person.
But there is a difference.
When you’ve been married in the temple, you know you’re working toward something eternal. You’re willing to compromise and to work things out because you know the promise of forever exists. You can return to the temple and remember all the wonderful reasons why you chose to be married in that holy place. You will have direction and focus for your relationship.
And, if you choose to live your lives righteously, as a couple and as individuals, you will be married eternally, never to be separated, even at death.
Free agency comes in to play here just like it does in everything else. The Lord is not going to make you be married to that person forever if you decide you need to end the relationship. If circumstances become such that you realize you cannot attain happiness with your spouse, despite all your trying, you can have the temple sealing removed.
Should we still aim for temple marriage? Of course. But we need to realize that a lot of work, effort, selflessness, and cooperation go into a marriage. The temple sealing alone is not enough to make a marriage work, and if you expect that sealing to erase all your problems, you will be very disappointed.
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Committing to Eternal Marriage