Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

I've thought a lot about this, and how to phrase it for a practicing LDS audience. Two recent board questions have inspired me.

I'm extremely confused about two things.

A. Why most, or even many, breakups are considered to be precipitated by an outright prayer request (when things were going well!)
B. Why you need to be asking permission to move forward in your relationship from a divine being/Heavenly Father.

This is just so very completely exasperatingly foreign to me. I am not discounting the power of what I would call the conscience: we can want to do very bad things, and some inner voice says "well, maybe not." The reality of hunches and pre-conscious thinking was explored convincingly by Malcolm Gladwell.

But this pattern? I just don't get it. I didn't bust my butt, get a fantastic scholarship to BYU, then say, "well God, here's your chance to crush that dream!" I studied it out in my mind, and got to work. If I had had some dark, overwhelming, unbearable foreboding, yeah, might have looked into the U.

So, the same with relationships. I have broken up plenty, and even usually gotten back together with the guy, but I think both of us would have thought the other was crazy if we said "well, it's just a random happenstance that I need to break up with you. Still love you, though!" If I were in love with someone, and I wanted to marry him, I would do it. Cold feet are normal. Second thoughts are, too. If my family is like, "um, he seems kind of off his rocker," I will examine my feelings.

But it just makes no logical sense for me why you would do this to yourself. It's like the two football teams praying for their victory: logically inconsistent for both to get what they want, and kind of trivial. I was advised pretty strongly about what kind of things are appropriate to pray for, and wish-granting isn't one of them.

The one time I made a fairly serious decision about my life (this was the same month as my Board retirement) and turned to prayer before the fact, the result nearly ruined my life, to put it mildly. Would have been on the level for God to warn me beforehand.

Just seems like a lot of post hoc rationalization going on here, which doesn't seem healthy. Why would people pray when it causes them such terrible psychological pain? Why, when there are precious few chances to find someone compatible, would you dump them over something so irrational and unprovable?

Some interesting quotes I found:

In considering our prayers, our all-knowing Heavenly Father may answer our needs by giving us a greater capacity to solve our problems ourselves.

"Discerning Answers to Our Prayers."

Often when we pray for help with a significant matter, Heavenly Father will give us gentle promptings that require us to think, exercise faith, work, at times struggle, then act.

Using the Supernal Gift of Prayer

And probably my favorite,

And now behold, my beloved brethren, I say unto you, do not suppose that this is all; for after ye have done all these things, if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need—I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith.

I don't think mine is the One Right Way, but I do feel that much more than these somewhat unsettling voices in the head (which would, quite frankly, scare me terribly!), I have developed a "greater capacity to solve problems for myself" as I have grown up and matured. Which makes me happy.

hmm interesting to see your opinions on this. You have a good point. I think for some people relationships are so emotionally involving that they feel like they need some kind of neutral third-party to tell them if it's a good idea?

Whistler wrote:hmm interesting to see your opinions on this. You have a good point. I think for some people relationships are so emotionally involving that they feel like they need some kind of neutral third-party to tell them if it's a good idea?

Hmm. I can see this more early on in a relationship (totally guilty of bargaining), but I think if you've dated for a year and are considering getting married, it's a little late in the game.

I've got two sets of thoughts on this.

One:
My family, and my dad in particular, always taught me that even on something as important as marriage, I'm unlikely get a strong "yes" or "no." It's more likely that I'll get a "sure, that could work," or nothing at all. The thought wasn't that God doesn't answer our prayers, but I think, like you said, he's more likely to help mold us than our situations. And also, that maybe it's not AS important an issue as we make it out to be. Once we get rid of the idea of soulmates, it's more about compatibility, and that's something we're well enough equipped to find out on our own. And, assuming Mormonism is right, and I'm a good enough person to get to heaven, there will be chances to work things out. If my spouse wasn't good enough, I'm sure there will be someone else for me (or the other way around) and if we were both good enough, I assume we can either switch to more compatible partners or we'll eventually get so perfected that we learn how to communicate well and so on and our incompatibilities melt away. Anyway, that's a long way of saying "I'm on board with you: I think most of the time a spouse is something that we can (and should) make the decisions on ourselves."

Two:
That said, I see where the other people are coming from, too. In LDS theology, your choice of a spouse lasts with you not just for the next 60 years, but throughout eternity, too. (That bit about switching around after this life is only my idea--it's just that I don't think that unhappiness is part of heaven, and so I sometimes speculate about how that might work.) Anyway, the eternity-spouse makes marriage seem like one of the most important and lasting decisions you'll ever make, and you tend to make it while you're comparatively young and stupid and inexperienced. Since we believe that God is all-knowing and all-wise, it makes sense to ask him if he sees it ultimately being a good thing or a bad thing. And since people often have the idea that God DOES want them to make decisions themselves, but also believe he wants the best for them, they often adopt a mindset that says "I will do my own thing, but check it with God sometimes, and if he tells me I'm going the wrong way, I'll turn around, but if he doesn't, I'll continue." That is often my own policy.

At the same time, I also believe that part of why we're on earth anyway is to have hard experiences and grow through them. So maybe it's not always in God's best interest to shelter us from that. I'm certainly not going to say that anyone who's had a horrible marriage was a bad person, who didn't deserve God's input on their marriage. I think if we're wise enough in ourselves to avoid a bad situation, that's something he's glad for, and if afterwards we learn wisdom and strength from having to figure out how to get out of one, that's probably something he's glad for, too.

Mostly, I think of God as someone who's got all the facts before him, and wants the best for me. The same thing I would want for myself, if I had all the facts before me. He's like (I was watching Speed Racer, recently) the helicopter above the track, who can see what's coming up, who's talking to the racers down below to let them know when there's real danger. (Except in this situation, no one's driven a car before the race, so he's not going to overload us with every detail, and he is going to let us learn as we go so that we can be a good driver by the end of the race.) That prayer that mystifies you, that "here's your chance to smash everything I've worked for" prayer, actually reminds me a bit of a podcast I was just listening to. They were talking about atomic bombs in WWII, and whether or not they're justified. The people that dropped them didn't know how that would affect the war. It could have changed things in any number of ways. They hoped, probably, that dropping the bombs would ultimately be a good thing--that killing that many people so horribly and at once would make such a big statement that the other side would give up, and it would save the lives of all the people that would have died in fighting in the war that would have stretched out for years afterward. The podcaster asked if we would be willing to make a choice like that ourselves. If we could drop the bomb right at the beginning of a war, knowing that by killing those people right away, we could save that many lives, would we? In that analogy, asking God is like asking a time-traveler from the future (who knows how all possible scenarios could have gone) if it's worth it. If overall, this will be better or worse for the world. I plan to have a "if this is a horribly bad idea, stop me now" conversation with God sometime before I get married. And I know, if I feel strongly that it is, that the results could be devastating to my life. But I also believe that the results for plowing ahead anyway could be worse, somehow, for one or both of us.


So that's what I think. I don't think God DOES have that much he wants to say about most relationships. But I also think that if he actually tells me "get out of this one," there's a dang good reason that I would agree with, if I had all the facts. And so I would (I hope) listen, even if it was hard for me. But still: there are three guys I could have married, and one would have been a terrible idea, one a fairly bad idea, and one might have been all right. Those are things I can see on my own. There was no need for God to hit me with a horrible realization of those facts right before the wedding. Instead, I got an uneasiness and an awareness of our incompatibilities gradually. I don't know if it was totally my brain or if God helped me recognize those things, and it really doesn't matter to me. I'm happy with the result. I honestly don't expect God to do a big dramatic interference when I ask him to let me know if it's wrong. I don't expect to recognize any answer at all, though I try to be open to having one.

Editor's Choice™. That was fantastic, and just what I needed to hear.

I'll second that.

Thanks, guys. I'm glad it made sense.

I should reiterate that it's not any kind of officially-condoned doctrine. But it makes sense to me, and I don't see any ways it goes against lds doctrine as I understand it.

It makes sense. I've been in a relationship before where I clearly needed guidance because it turned out that I wouldn't end up with the guy long term, but I definitely needed the lessons that I learned from that relationship. At the time, I didn't really understand why I needed to get out of the relationship, but over the course of time I've realized some pretty strong reasons why.

I have prayed about my relationship with Marduk a few times, and all were under one of two circumstances: either I had recently had reason to question our relationship (thank you, therapist, for turning one of the sessions into "here are all the red flags that I think I might see in the limited knowledge I have of your relationship!") or I had some vague Mormon-y sense that maybe I should be asking or something because, I don't know, that's what Mormons do.

As far as I can remember I always received one of two responses. If I was asking because Mormon, I got nothing. If I was asking because of actual questions, I was always comforted, calmed, and reassured.

Admittedly I never truly asked "Hey God, I really like this guy, what do you think?" sincerely wanting to get input. I was always either scared or going through the motions of what I think "good Mormons" do. However, I find it telling (for both our relationship and revelation in general) that I never got a response when my prayer wasn't due to actual questions.

I guess my philosophy towards prayer has become: "Here's my plan. If I'm doing something wrong, than I trust that you'll warn me appropriately." And I take that in terms of relationships as well.

I vaguely remember a talk from John Bytheway about this - how when he was dating his wife he didn't really get strong spiritual impressions one way or the other, so basically his entire relationship his prayers were basically "stop me if I'm wrong..."

(I'm totally paraphrasing what I remember...)

So Tally, basically the same approach you're taking.