A facebook friend posted her answers to the "give me a number and I'll tell you that many things about myself" weird game. One of hers was:

"(Husband) and I dated for 7 days before deciding to be married. Engaged at 30 days and an 11 week engagement before we were sealed."

Umm... I'm pleased they get along well and have a mostly good relationship, but yikes! Deciding to get married after one week!

How is that not the same as sleeping with a stranger.

I kind of wonder the same thing. Sure, there's an 11 week engagement period, but how well do we actually get to know people over 4 months? It's easy to maintain a facade for that short of a time. I can't imagine marrying someone with out knowing how they respond to real life. To get married so quickly and then have to deal with sex, babies, bills, work, school... with a relative stranger!

Your friend beat me by 2 days - DH and I dated 32 days before getting engaged. We got married 4 months later but my parents told all their friends we'd been together a year, since we met almost a year before we married - we just barely knew each other in the ward and so didn't go out on a date for months. After the first date, it was 32 days.

And it's different than sleeping with a stranger because you aren't STUCK with the stranger for eternity. You still own your life and can walk away. And I'm guessing in real (i.e. non-LDS life) if you date a guy you really like for 32 days, you have probably gotten around to sleeping with them, and don't consider them a stranger. However ...

In a related story, I can beat the OP's shortest dating period. When I was in a singles' ward in CA, I hung out with a group of other single women. One of them got engaged on their first date to a guy they hadn't particularly known well before that first date. They went on an all-day date to the Bay Area and decided to stop at the Oakland Temple before the grounds shut down that evening. They said they felt the spirit so strongly they knew they were meant to be married. I don't remember how long they were engaged but since I was an RM at the time, I got to attend their temple wedding. I lost touch with them ... but I'd love to know how that worked out, almost 20 years down the road.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2013 05:21PM by CA girl.

Oye, engaged on the first date!

Yep. Two former friends were engaged by the end of a YSA dance. He proposed after 6 hours, as they sat and talked after the dance and he realised they were meant to be together. The ring was bought two days later, and they were married 30 days later (the shortest possible engagement tie in Australia).

Which city..prepared to kick in a name, or even a spelling?
Or, you give me a city and a year, I'll guess a name

I worked with a girl who got married on day 7. They met on Monday, got married on Sunday. No prior talking online or anything. They met at a bar, spent most of the next week together, got "engaged" on Thursday, married on Sunday. None of their friends or family were there. She had a full on wedding dress and everything, but you can tell from the pics it wasn't fitted to her.

Neither of them are AT ALL religious. But they said that they hit it off, and marriage is hard no matter who you marry so why go for it? They were both committed to each other, so why not just get going with it?

Personally I think they are nuts, and not telling the entire truth about their story. But she swears by it.

Sometimes when it is right it is right. 30days engaged, 12 weeks married, 28 yrs.later I love her even more and would do it all over again.

Awesome!
Congrats.

2 weeks and 6 days after we met we were engaged. Married almost 30 years. If it works, it works.

We did, however, tell our kids that they should probably not do the same thing.

I don't recall how many days it was, I know it was only a handful. They decided to get married after the SECOND date. They got married 3 months later

met him during his mission ten month before he finished ... doesent count as dating time - went home and returned three weeks later kneeling down at the airport and asked for my hand now he is holding it for 13 years. We married five weeks later after gathering the papers quickly because we could not wait longer to discover each other

They were engaged off and on for 7 of those years. It was the Depression, they had to help the families etc. They were married 64 years when Dad died.

They were not particularly happy, especially during the last 25 years, but they stuck it out. Long engagements don't guarantee a happy marriage either.

One encounter between a nice looking young man and myself at work ending in him asking me out.

One week later we went on a first date (Saturday).
Spent Sunday afternoon together.
Tuesday he asked me if I would be his steady gal.
Wednesday we were engaged.

Two months later we were married.

Been married for 29-plus years. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

Met my ex on a blind date on the 4th of July, engaged informally 3 weeks later, sealed on the 4th of November. Kudos to those who had very short dating and engagement periods and stayed happily married. However, its a crap shoot and I lost; lousy marriage within 3 years, divorced after 11 years.

My wife's uncle was shipping out to chase Rommell all over Africa in a P-38 and decided that he didn't want to die single. He met and married a lovely young lady all in one weekend in May of 1942.

They were married until her death 2001. They only missed making it 60 years by six months. He still misses her terribly.

That was me too.

First date. Next DAY second date - engaged. Married just short of 3 months.

I would have been mortified if my daughter did that. I was lucky.

11 weeks sounds close to what my TBM brother and his wife did this year. They met in January. I was talking to him the other day while he was parked in his driveway. I heard a long car horn. It was his wife in the garage. He said "I'd better go." I made the crack-the-whip sound.

I should have been institutionalized!! After 18 years and several children later -- divorced!

One of my friends met a guy only once at some fireside, never saw him again because he went on a mission.

But they wrote and he asked her via letter to marry him in the temple.
Which they did within a few weeks of his return.

Seven kids and 20 years of misery later, their divorce is now being finalized.

I can't remember if I heard this at a GC or a WC or WTFC. One of the leaders claimed he knew an RM that met a Mo woman at some Mormon party and hit it off...They spent ALL night talking into the wee hours of the morning and decided to get engaged that day. He said they were married for decades and had 5 kids and were still in love.

Odd, destructive lessons to impart on impressionable minds.

I don't think you can know someone under a year; Even after that time period, you should try living with the person first to see how that goes before a serious, legal commitment.

+1

Yeah. I knew a young woman when I was in young adults, living in Southern California, in the 1970s. She met a guy (at a church dance) on a Friday night. They were engaged on Sunday, and were married within the month. No idea how it worked out; I moved away shortly after that. But it seemed like they were moving really quickly, even for Mormons.

My recommendation: If a short courtship, go for a long engagement. If a long courtship, then a short engagement.

Of the two, I recommend the latter. If things are getting dicey, it's easier to back out of a courtship than an engagement.

Dh and I got married 3 days after we met, and we're still happily married more than 20 years later. Best decision I ever made.

I actually don't think the amount of time you know someone before marriage has anything to do with anything. I know plenty of couples who knew each other for years before getting married, but still ended up divorced. I don't know if it's random luck, or if it's the level of commitment to the relationship, or if it's something else entirely. Maybe all of the above. But length of courtship is definitely not what makes or breaks a marriage.

There is no rule of time; as many have posted here, some of the short engagements worked out great, some longer ones not so much, and vice versa. there is no rule, everyone is different and each situation has its own merit and is up to the two people involved.

where the danger lies is in encouraging very short courtships and putting on outside pressure, as TSCC tries to shove everyone into marriages, as then people who haven't gotten to know each other properly and aren't ready for that could wind up in disaster.

the other thing, that I find hypocritical about the bullsh!t law of chastity, is that how is having 2 kids who get married after knowing each other less than a month making it ok for them to have sex,

but people like the many I've known -

i'll pluck one happy example out here - both middle age, who knew each other for 4 years as friends, then began dating and have been together for 3 years since, have a child and a great loving relationship -

are committing a sin by having sex because they decided, as only they can decide, that they didn't need that sheet of paper to confirm they are in a loving relationship? cos ya, those happen with people who don't get married.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/2013 12:31AM by wideawake.

I think you are missing the point. Marriage and sex isn't about having a loving relationship, you need to get married so that God knows to waggle his fingers to change your unmarried genitals into married genitals. If unmarried genitals meet, then all manner of havoc will ensue in your life, but genitals magically change to something different AFTER marriage. This is an important distinction. It is probably Mo doctrine, look it up in some ancient general conference somewhere.

Yep. Two former friends were engaged by the end of a YSA dance. He proposed after 6 hours, as they sat and talked after the dance and he realised they were meant to be together. The ring was bought two days later, and they were married 30 days later (the shortest possible engagement tie in Australia). Still together as far as I am aware.

The first time I saw him, he was talking to a girl friend of mine, at the university bookstore, and I ran over to them to rescue her. I thought he was a thug, trying to pick her up. He was large, with shifty close-set eyes, and a smile that was too eager. He looked exactly like Channing Tatum. I had to be talked into going out with him. On our third date, we became "exclusive", and I broke up with the other boys I was hanging out with. I didn't meet his parents or siblings until after we were married. (His father was a mission president in a foreign country, and his family was there, too.) We were engaged in 6 weeks, and married 4 months later. For 2 months of that time, we were separated by school. When I met him at the airport three days before our wedding, I actually turn around to run away--but it was too late, because my family and 350 other people were expecting to show up at my reception. Maybe it was "wedding jitters."

1. Follow your heart, and your deepest gut-reaction. The Mormon church teaches that any "intuition" or reactions that go against the church (or against RM's or temple marriage) is wrong, and of the Devil.

2. Some people take longer to truly know what they want.

3. Some people are immature, and don't even know themselves, let alone the other person.

4. Who knows? Maybe it is not a mistake to marry someone you are truly in love with--before you can be talked into or out of something. I fell in love at first sight, with my Atheist boyfriend, and loved only him for 10 years, until graduate school. My TBM parents told me not to marry him, and to marry the RM instead.

5. Always meet a person's parents and siblings first, before you get married. His sisters told me that he had beaten them up, and that he had assaulted others, as well. But, by that time I knew what a monster he truly was, because he beat me, a few hours after we were married.

I can't believe people take marriage so lightly.

A few of my siblings did the under a year thing: one brother got off his mission in march, met a girl in june, married in october, divorced after 20 years and 5 kids.

One sister met and married her RM in less than 8 months, divorced after 5 years and 2 kids.

Another brother got off his mission in August, met his wife in october, proclaimed his love for her one week later, got engaged the week after that, and got married three months later. In the first two months of marraige she gained over 60 pounds. Everyone expected my brother to divorce her (he used to be quite shallow about looks) but they have actually stuck it out and have been married 10 years.

I dated my nevermo husband for 2 years and we lived together for 6 months before we got married. I was told numerous times that our marraige would never last because we lived together before we got married and our relationship was full of sin. We're still going strong after 7 years.