Live Love Laugh

Here are Harold B. Lee’s thoughts on marriage:

The ideal partner may not exist. The ideal man or woman of your dreams that you plan one day to select as your life's companion very likely really doesn't exist, although you may think so when you fall in love, for your ideal is probably a composite of the best qualities you have observed in any number of your choice associates.

Resolve to sacrifice for each other. If [young people] would resolve from the moment of their marriage, that from that time forth they would resolve and do everything in their power to please each other in things that are right, even to the sacrifice of their own pleasures, their own appetites, their own desires, the problem of adjustment in married life would take care of itself, and their home would indeed be a happy home. Great love is built on great sacrifice, and that home where the principle of sacrifice for the welfare of each other is daily expressed is that home where there abides a great love.

Wives and husbands need love to be happy. What is our relationship with our wife? Someone has said the opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is apathy. And I say to you brethren, the most dangerous thing that can happen between you and your wife or between me and my wife is apathy—not hate, but for them to feel that we are not interested in their affairs, that we are not expressing our love and showing our affection in countless ways. Women, to be happy, have to be loved and so do men. Someone has said that little children soon outgrow their love or their need for the love of a mother, but husbands never do. We need that, but we have to give love; we have to express love to our wives if we expect it in return.

Developing love in marriage takes effort. In answer to the teenage daughter who asked: "Mother, how do you fall in love?" the wise mother had answered: "My darling, you don't fall in love, you must keep working at it all the time." Yes, love is like faith, it isn't something you can capture today and it will remain with you always. It must be nurtured day after day by a husband who continues to "court" his wife after marriage by studiously trying to do the things that will make her happy. Someone has aptly said that "a woman happy with her husband was better for her children than a hundred books on child welfare." The flame of romantic desire in marriage is fanned each day by a wise companion who wins her man every day she lives with him. Marriages are not successful merely because these couples have fewer problems than others, but they are successful because, when problems come, as come they will, a husband and wife sit down together to solve their problems like grown-up, mature individuals, rather than with the immaturity of adolescence.

A wife should sustain her husband. Several years ago when Sister David O. McKay, the wife of our President, was in the hospital, I called to see her just after the President had been there, and she said in her sweet way, "You know, I think he misses me." And I replied, "I am sure he does." Then she said with a smile, "I have always tried to be where I thought he needed me the most." There you are, you sisters, try to be where you feel your husbands need you the most.

Wives, have your family prayers, even when you must take the lead. See that your husband takes the lead in that, if you can. See that he attends his priesthood meetings, that he responds to the call to do home teaching, and then do everything you can, lovingly and patiently, to help him to perform and magnify his duties".
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What springs to mind is: “As I have loved you, love one another” (John 14:15). That holds true for all relationships we have. The Saviour is our perfect example of how to love.