In the past week I've found myself discussing a certain General Conference quote with two different people in two different situations. You may have guessed that it's the one above.
I love this quote!
I also really, really hate it.
I'm going to go off of that for a bit, but I promise I'll get back to the quote.
Dating in the church can be super confusing I think. On the one hand, we see examples of amazing couples in the apostles and their spouses. We listen to talks where people praise their eternal companions and talk about how God brought them together in a specific way. We start to feel like there is one single person that is right for us and that we need to know by revelation that we've found them. And then we expect everything to be wonderful.
On the other hand, we also hear things like "any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage" which gives the idea that maybe we need to stop being so picky and just choose someone to love and stick with them.
Both of these ideas have value. I definitely believe that God should be included in your decision of who to marry and that He can help you to find a good spouse. I don't think that He wants you to "settle" any more than you do. I also believe, though, that there is so much more to finding a spouse than falling in love, praying about it, and getting married and living happily ever after.
I felt really good about marrying my ex fiance. I loved him deeply, was willing to work through any hardship, and prayed fervently to know that he was the right choice. In moments of doubt, I was reassured by the Spirit that he was the right choice for me. I was fully expecting my happily ever after.
That didn't happen. And I don't think that it didn't happen because it couldn't have been good. As expressed in my most popular post, I really do think that things could have worked out for us. We wouldn't have had a perfect marriage, but we could have worked through anything together with the Lord.
It didn't happen because he made decisions that made it wrong. And once he used his agency to do that and rejected every opportunity to improve (and he definitely had the opportunity, trust me), then it was made clear by his arrest that he was not the right one for me after all.
I am now married to a wonderful man who I love dearly. And we were definitely brought together in an unusual way that was highly influenced by the Holy Ghost.
When I met Jonathan, I had no desire to date him. For one, I simply wasn't interested in him, but more than that, I was simply terrified of dating at the time. Plus he was someone new and that was especially scary. Even when I did kind of start to like him, and even once we actually started dating, I was constantly contemplating an out. I didn't want to hurt like I had (and still was) again. And he was going to be leaving at the end of the semester and long distance had been hard enough when my life was going well. There was NO WAY that I could handle it with my life in shambles. So while I liked him a lot, I figured we'd break up at the end of the semester. If we got back together when he got back in five months, great! If not, that was fine too. I just couldn't handle any more stress and pain.
Over the five weeks that we dated before he left for Ohio, I had a realization that I wanted to keep dating him. I really, really didn't want to do that because of the aforementioned long distance, but I also really, really did. I didn't even totally know why I did. It simply felt like the right thing to do.
And then Heavenly Father made it clear that I was going to marry this guy. Again, I wanted to marry him, but I also wanted to take alllllllllll of the time to do it. I had been engaged before, been so close to having everything that I had ever wanted (or so I thought), and I did NOT want to put myself back in that position only to have my heart ripped to shreds a second time. No, I was more than happy to do the dreaded long distance thing again, then date Jonathan some more when he got back. And THEN, and only then, could we get engaged.
But God had other plans and let me know very clearly that that wasn't what He had in mind for us. And so we got engaged before he left for Ohio and got married before summer ended.
Now let me tell you something:
Marriage is HARD. And getting married so fast has made it even harder. We didn't get the time that I wanted to get to know each other better, see each other in every situation, and make sure that we really were compatible. We didn't get the time to see if we were really capable of helping each other get what we each want to out of life.
Our long distance relationship was made even more difficult by the fact that due to Jonathan's summer job, we literally had hardly any time at all to talk. So we didn't have all of the conversations that I would have liked to have had.
Our wedding day really was one of the happiest days of my entire life, but I really was marrying a virtual stranger.
We've been married for a year and a half now and in some ways, it's been the hardest year and a half of my life. Which is saying something considering all that I've been through.
But let me get back to that quote.
I didn't marry the perfect person for me. I married someone with the potential to be the perfect person for me.
Jonathan and I both have many, many things that we need to work on both individually and as a couple. But what's important is that we both desperately want to be the best person for each other. We both recognize that we have faults, have made mistakes, have our own brands of brokeness, and that we've got a long way to go. And we're willing to take the time to work on all of those things.
I don't expect Jonathan to be perfect right now, but I do see so, so much potential in him. And in the meantime, he's a dang good husband in SO many ways.
Potential, mixed with a sincere desire to reach said potential, is a wonderful, powerful thing!
The problem is that as we are looking for a spouse, it can be only too easy to focus a little bit too much on the potential and not enough on what is currently in front of us. We're not going to find a finished product, but there are varying degrees of being a "work in progress" and they matter.
My ex had, and still has, amazing potential! And this was a really tricky case because it really did seem like he was working hard to reach it. But in all reality, all of those efforts were a facade hiding all of the horrible things that he was actually doing.
Much of the time though, there really doesn't seem to be much effort going into becoming a better person, but we still hyper-focus on the potential that we saw when we first fell in love with them. We tell ourselves that it's unreasonable to expect perfection right away, which is true, but then we get into the dangerous territory of potential. It is good to see potential in others, but at the same time, it's not good to go into a relationship- or stay in a relationship -expecting the other person to change in a big way.
There were so, so many red flags with my ex. But I sincerely believed in his potential and that things would get better as time went on. That he would change.
What happened instead is that he manipulated me into compromising to accommodate the red flags. He gas lighted me over time and broke me down so much that I went along with whatever he wanted. All while still telling myself that the potential that I had seen was still there and that he could still reach it if I was just patient and loving enough.
And that is the danger of potential.
You should never marry someone expecting them to change. Or worse, expecting to change or "fix" them.
Not that you should expect everything to be perfect right off the bat or not believe that they have the potential to be better, but that just because someone could be great doesn't mean that they are going to be.
There's a balance that needs to be met; potential and a desire and willingness to improve. And I'll be honest, in abusive relationships, it's really easy for the other person to convince you that they really are trying. It's easy because you want so badly for it to be true. But then there's just this vicious cycle of being convinced that things will get better, then things getting way worse again, then them convincing you again that they love you and will be better. So this balance is easy to talk about and extremely difficult to actually identify at times.
My point is, we absolutely do marry potential. But we need to be so aware that potential isn't everything. Compatibility, intent, and a sincere willingness to work through any hardship together, still need to be in the equation.
Can any good man and any good woman make it work? I guess so. But are we really expected to just find someone to love and then stick with them no matter the cost? Not exactly. Not if you are not both putting in the work. And that's exactly what tends to be missing from the "any good man" quote when people talk about it. I've heard it referenced many times, but writing this post is the first time that I actually looked it up myself. This is the whole quote:
“Soul mates” are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.
There are some really, really important parts left out when we talk about that quote. It's not just "any", it's "almost any". And it's only if both people are willing to put in the work.
I was more than willing to put in the work with my ex. And I did. I put in all of the work. But that's not enough. He needed to meet me halfway and he didn't.
This whole potential thing only works when each person recognizes not only the potential in the other person, but also the potential in themselves. When we choose to work on reaching our own potentials as well as supporting and encouraging the other person to reach their's.
I was talking to a friend recently who is a recovering addict and has been doing really well for a while now. I asked him what the best thing that his wife has done that has helped him in his recovery and his answer really stuck with me. He told me that what helped him the most is when she started to work on her own recovery. Not that she was an addict, but she suffered from the effects of being married to one and that requires it's own recovery process.
He had started going through the motions of recovery previously, but it wasn't until he saw her putting in the work on herself that he was really spurred into working on his recovery with real intent.
In order for a marriage to work, it's important to recognize that no, your spouse is not perfect; but neither are you. Then once you've acknowledged that, get to work. Work on yourself and becoming the best you that you can be. And support and encourage your spouse to work hard and become the best person that they can be. Some goals can be worked on as a team, but some will need to be worked on individually. What's important is that you are BOTH putting in the work.
Every marriage has the potential to be amazing if a good man and a good woman love each other, and themselves, enough to work hard to make it amazing.
So yeah, you don't marry perfection and you should definitely not expect to, even with all of the revelation in the world telling you that that person is a good fit. I was definitely strongly guided to marry my Jonathan. Not because he's perfect and has been exactly what I've needed at every juncture, but because we have the potential to make a great life together.
Absolutely marry potential, but absolutely be ready to work hard on your own potential and make dang certain that the other person is ready to work on their's too. Neither of you are going to reach those potentials right away. So don't expect that. But expect constant effort from both. It's going to be trial and error, success and failure, but with time, and with the Atonement of Jesus Christ, you really can reach perfection someday. Not in this life, but in the next. But only if you work with your spouse, they work with you, and you both work with God.
Potential is a really beautiful thing. It's the knowledge that no one is stuck the way that they are; that we all have the opportunity to be better than what we are today. And I am so grateful that the Atonement of Jesus Christ gives us that opportunity to improve. Just remember that while everyone has the opportunity, they also have the choice whether or not to take it.
Be willing to take it and then find someone who is also willing to take it.
The rest of the paragraph from which the infamous "potential" quote comes says it all:
That said, none of us marry perfection; we marry potential. The right marriage is not only about what I want; it’s also about what she—who’s going to be my companion—wants and needs me to be.
If you find someone that you love, who loves you, who you are willing to strive be the best for, and who is willing to strive to be the best for you, marry them. That's the kind of potential that we're looking for here. You're not going to find someone that is perfect. And heck, you're not perfect, so why should you expect to marry someone that is?
No, you're going to marry someone that has the potential to progress towards perfection as you do the same. And if you find that person, life is going to be challenging, but it will also be wonderful. Reaching our full potentials is an arduous effort, but it is worth it. And when you do it together with someone you love, it is a beautiful thing.
Ps- The talks that I referenced in this post are Meetings the Challenges Today's World and Oneness in Marriage
