Love and Marriage in the Mormon Church

Reguarding to my own experience in relationships, I've found myself at an ends on what to rely on. You see, I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was taught that physical "intimacy" is to only be shared between a man and his wife. However, falling from church activity I found myself stepping over that rule. At first I did feel guilty and scared but as time went on I wasn't feeling so insecure about it. And I even discovered some interesting qualities in myself and what exactly I wanted in a relationship. Do I still think it was wrong of me to break that rule? Yes and no. I've realized that sex wasn't such a big deal that everyone made it out to be but it is something special to share with someone special, someone you are deeply in love with. I found that out the hard way and working on forgiving myself as well as making my peace with my Father in Heaven.

My main point here is to share a different perspective on the church and it's values. Overall, I respect the church highly and the members are generally friendly... that is until I started going to a Young Single Adult ward(Correction, YSA ward in Mesa, AZ). I found the young singles to be very competitive with each other and made a lot of cliques. It was like a battle of engagements, who gets married first for eternal salvation. I've found a lot of young singles getting married just after a couple of months of meeting each other! I know this because I went through the same naive decisions before I became inactive in the church. I almost married someone that I knew nothing about(and almost ruined my life because of it). And now as I watched these young singles with this experience I've realized that there was one thing that was driving them to get married so fast:

Lust.

The very first stage of falling in love is called Lust. Your sex hormones go crazy over someone you meet. And these young singles are 18-30 years of age. Young, horny people left in a congregation with each other where it's a sin to have sex before marriage... That would drive me over the edge to get married as fast as I could, too. I know, I've been through it. However, I know there would be some members of the church reading this and disagreeing with me. Eternal blessings come from a temple marriage and create eternal families. It's a very fancy and tempting idea. I would love to have that one day myself. I would just like to point out that they are just getting married way too fast. 3-6 months NOT a reasonable time to get to know someone as a potential eternal partner (heck, not even a couple of years at times). The worst part is that the church isn't putting a leash on this kinda thing or at least educate these young people on dating, relationship counsel and a proper time frame in getting to know someone completely before making an eternal (possibly regrettable) decision.

Growing up in the church, you are set with the illusion that an eternal marriage is a Walt Disney's happily ever after marriage full of happiness and fluffy pancakes. Until you are tied up with a person you've barely known and realized that a relationship takes hard hard hard work. And it's even harder after knowing that you dug yourself a hole with an eternal temple sealing. The United States divorce percentage rate is nearly 50% and around 40 of 50 divorces are young people around the age of 24 years. Why? What is making these young people divorce so quickly as they get married? Well, it's a little something called...

Maturity

The human brain does not full mature til the age of 25 or so. Granted, I do turn 24 next spring in 2012 and I know for a fact that I'm not ready to get married. Heck, I barely know who I am yet alone trying to figure someone else out. I do know that while progressing through my early twenties that my taste in men dramatically changed as well as what I want to do with my life. This in itself proves that. If there are any young people reading this, please take this advice and just take your time. You are young! Go have some fun! Don't be in a rush to get married (or rush into sex for that matter, accidents happen). Figure out what you want to do in life and think with your head, not with what's below your waist. Good luck out there... and let's try getting to know each other before making a big leap... that divorce percentage is too high for my taste... let's put a little more faith back into happily ever after.