Covenant or Contractual Marriage

This week I read a talk by Bruce C. Hafen on Covenant Marriage. I was very impressed with the difference between a covenant marriage and a contractual marriage. How many of us go into a marriage knowing that there is a back door if we are not happy?  How many of us go into marriage planning to work through our problems, not looking for an escape route? How many of us truly feel that we are in this for better or worse and mean it? Do we really think about what worse might mean? 

In a contractual marriage the people come into the marriage with the attitude of when things get hard and I am not getting anything out of this relationship, I can back out of it. When we think about contracts, they are written so both parties are receiving something from them. When we think about a contractual marriage we think about each person giving their fair share or 50%. So what happens when one person feels like they are giving more, the contract is broken and the parties move on.

In a covenant marriage we are making promises and both parties are giving 100% to the marriage. There are times in a marriage when the split will be one person giving more than another. Taking care of each other is part of marriage and learning to give and take is what happens when you make covenants. Each party is giving the best that they have to the marriage at all times. If one of them slips then they work together to get back to being a couple. There are of course exceptions to this, but I want to concentrate on how most marriages can work. Most couples are capable of forming a covenant marriage.

I know that I am going to strive to give 100% to my marriage and I hope that I may have inspired some of you to do the same. We can all be part of a covenant marriage if we work at it. May the Lord bless us all as we strive for a covenant marriage.

References

Hafen, Bruce C. - https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1996/10/covenant-marriage?lang=eng