I've been thinking about this lately because it seems like I know very few happy Mormon marriages. There are some, don't get me wrong, but the average one I see either has two people living parallel lives who hardly know what is going on with the other ... or one where the wife (usually) is totally fed up with the husband. This is hardly a Mormon phenomenon but I have a theory about why this happens in Mormon marriages.

First of all, Mormons don't tend to grow up. They tend to look to their church for parenting and strive to be a "child" of God, not an "adult" of God. Taking the child position is taught by their religion as somehow a good thing so it would be natural to look for a child/parent relationship of some sort in their marriage.

Secondly, a lot of Mormon parents are so involved with their church, their kids take second place. A dad who is working 40-50 hours a week and putting in 20 more on callings/temple attendance/personal scripture study etc. is not going to have those 20 hours to be with their child. They also have to split the few hours they do have between more kids than average. And the moms are often barely grown up themselves and spend a lot of time worrying about callings, looking good for their husbands, trying to bring in a few extra dollars with no job training. They are often so busy with church that they don't have time to sit down and really be with the kids. So when those kids grow up, they often have a certain "parent needyness" that they think will be met by a spouse. They need the sort of attention they never got from their parents. When the spouse comes in looking for the same, all kinds of problems will arise.

A good marriage requires two people who are reasonably mature and self-determining. No one healthy really wants to marry a child whom they have to parent. When they find themselves with a needy child for a spouse, it explains a lot about why they separate and go on their own parallel lives or simply get fed up with their spouse and act like they are tolerating their "child", wishing there was a way they could do better but knowing that marriage is eternal and they are trapped.

I think that's a big factor.

Another factor is that mormons place too high an emphasis on sex when it comes to chosing a mate. Yes, I know, mormons will say they do the opposite because they expect people to be perfectly chaste before marriage. However, this has the reverse effect of what they think it does. To mormons, marriage becomes the point when they go from not being allowed to have sex, to the point that they are. The privacy of the ceremony furthers this effect by removing the more american perspective of marriage being a public announcement of commitment to each other.

In addition, engaged mormons begin to have their judgment about marriage clouded by their desire for sex. Sex is a natural desire, and if the only way they are going to satisfy it is through marriage, then they are not going to be capable of making rational decisions when it comes to marriage.

The euphoria of sexual love wears off in less than three years. At this point, if sex has played such a big role in the marital decision, it is likely that the spouses will find themselves incompatible in non-sexual ways. However, since the commitment has already been made, and children are likely present (thanks again to mormon teaching), the spouses need to find a way to stay together. This usually means creating a distinct space between them where they can pursue their own individualy interests without getting in the way of their spouse's happiness.

If they had had sex before marriage and spent a long time living together, they would have had a chance to experience the post-euphoria phase, or at least a glimpse of it. It's amazing what we learn about our partners when our minds are not clouded by sexual desire. I got lucky myself. Pure, dumb luck.

The rules are too stringent to succeed. Kick the tires and living together are not recommended.

Yes, very good points. They don't really get to know each other or even get to know how a relationship works in real life. They only have the package they are sold, and sold when they are too young to make good decisions. My 13 year old came home from science class explaining how a teen brain works and how it's more based on emotion than logic until well into your twenties. I told her that is why you don't marry as a teenager, like some of the Mormon girls she knows. Not that it makes sense to her, she is much more likely to wait to marry because my dd loves science. But other girls are sold the marry early in the temple crap and that clouds their judgment with emotion as much as sexual desire. They aren't as equipped to make a well-thought-out decision as someone older and more experienced.

and we all moved to Utah, me, SLC, they Provo.

He was a counsellor to the Bishop and one time we were talking about marriage and relationships and he said that he had counselled many young couples in their ward and he personally thought the church doesn't do enough to prepare couples for marriage. He said sex was the number one issue of the couples that came to him.

I had to add my more than two cents worth and said that it was too bad the parents didn't teach them about sex or at least let their children get sex ed at school since the church does such a lousy job. I said it's kinda' difficult when right up until their wedding night they are taught the evils of sex outside of marriage but nothing else about sex and then on their wedding night what was considered evil and dirty the night before is all of a sudden suppose to be this most beautiful experience and when they don't experience it that way they think the problem is them when the problem is lack of sexual education.

I think that's more a function of marrying too young than being in the church, although, obviously, the church encourages people to marry too young with insufficient information about their betrothed.

I'm sure that's what I was looking for in my 20s and I'm really glad I didn't marry anyone back then. It took until well into my 30s before I figured out that I was never going to get Daddy's love from any boyfriend. Those days are over and Daddy did the best he could, but he's just not an emotionally available person. Now I run for the hills if I encounter a man who's looking for his mommy, ya know? When I was young, I would have relished the role of caretaker, but I can see now that would have gotten old fast and then I'd be stuck in a miserable marriage like a lot of people.

One of the best bits of advice my dad ever gave me totally strayed from the party line and I thought it was risky for him to say this to me. He told me to wait until I was at least 25 before marrying because you don't know who you are and what you want in life before then. The person who is right for you at 20 is probably not the same person would be right for you at 30. I thought that was such great advice, I started to not be able to see the point of marrying at all.

Yes. The brain isn't mature until about 25 but the sexual system is mature at about 14. It is rare that a couple, under the mormon marriage paradigm, to be intellectually, emotionally, spiritually mature on their wedding day.

Fight biology and millions of years of evolution at your own risk...

In a temple wedding a couple makes their vows to THE CHURCH!
NOT to each other like everyone else does.

Easy to see who comes first and it ain't yer spouse.

NO! For me and my not so DExW the problem came from expectations. She learned in YWMIA that sex was bad and only acceptable for the making of babies. I, on the other hand was told to keep my lil factory free from manual manipulation. The pay off, at least implied, was that once sealed there would be lots of connubulations. These two views made it impossible for us ever to find peace with one another. For me waiting for the multiple baby factory in the ck was just not the same.

CA girl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Secondly, a lot of Mormon parents are so involved
> with their church, their kids take second place.
> A dad who is working 40-50 hours a week and
> putting in 20 more on callings/temple
> attendance/personal scripture study etc. is not
> going to have those 20 hours to be with their
> child.


I can only speak from my own experience, and it's probably a bit atypical of many ex-Mos, in that I'm from a 4th or 5th generation, though relatively late pioneer family, but despite the huge families, I never really felt deprived of parental attention. Now granted, I was the eldest of 5 living children (so by Mormon standards, practically an only child). My mother also had a late term miscarriage that I understand would not have been viable even taken to term a few years before my youngest brother was born, when I was 12. And I do feel in some ways I may have served as a surrogate parent at times, as a lot of health issue came up, especially for my mother during my teens that put me in a spot of being expected to take on a lot of responsibilities usually reserved for parents, at least in the culture at large.

But that was a pattern that was pretty common in our extended families, too, so not necessarily something I felt as a loss or an imposition... in many ways it was something I felt some pride in, in rising to the challenge, though it was also in the context of a lot of social change in both the larger culture and among Mormon families that I knew more as friends and fellow members than on any deeper basis.

I wonder how much of this reflects changes in the larger culture? Impacts that a "post modern" and "post Watergate" culture has had on everyone, Mormons included?

What you're describing is something I can't necessarily deny, even if it doesn't really jibe with my own experience. And I really don't have my own experience with Mormon marriage, as it didn't seem like something I was likely to have myself, since my conflicts with the culture were pretty undeniable in my own eyes even before I cut the cord at 16.

I do think some of the observations about a sort of learned helplessness might be a good description of some of what is dysfunctional in the assumptions that were being conditioned into my peers in terms of their expectations, but so much of that was part of what was disorienting to me... I really need to give this more thought, and probably a few days to digest before responding further.

Most of my mother's family are or were educators... teachers, school administrators, and a few college professors, including one BYU faculty member (no longer living). They never really struck me as childish, but they might well have been exceptional. I know my grandmother was, but then she was also a state legislator for a term or two, and considered unusual for insisting on reading the bills she was being asked to vote on.

And so much of what I do know of this I know from quite a distance.

Thank you for drawing this picture, at least. Perhaps it will help me to reach some kind of closure on that part of my life, which mostly exists in some sort of fantasy world, or an alternate reality where I somehow managed to "fit in."