Latter-Day Marriage

Satan stirs up the hearts of men to anger, to contend one with another. Boy is he having a lot of success with that. We have people being confronted with angry mobs when they go out to eat just because of their political/religious beliefs. I've heard it said that in the last days faithful members would be persecuted worse than the early saints. If that is true it won't be by people of other religions who object to the idea of living prophets etc. it will be by the anti-religious SJW types who can't stand the existence of anybody who objects to them (and especially those who can articulate sound arguments against their views). So, sorry to say, but at some point you are going to lose friends over these trends. You may even lose a job or be rejected from being hired or promoted simply for what your believe. Just look what happened when DC Comics hired Orson Scott Card. As for this particular situation, you are the DM, it is your game. You have every right to lay out boundaries on how your players behave. I would suggest you write out those boundaries, send them to all your players and let them know that they are perfectly welcome to keep coming so long as they conduct themselves as you define as appropriate. Then Penny and everyone else can decide for themselves if they will keep coming or not rather you being the one to decide. Hopefully they all agree and abide by that, but if they don't that is their choice to leave. One toxic player ruins it for everyone. If they say they will respect your boundaries but keep violating them warn them they will not be allowed to keep coming unless they shape up. Say it all nicer than that though. :) BTW, I'm a DM myself. I run two campaigns and both of them are with family and ward members, although we have a non-member friend of one of the players who will be joining us next session. If somebody is not at least vouched for by somebody I know I'm very reluctant to add them as a new player.

This is something you should have both talked through before she left. Is she that serious about you? If she didn't ask you to wait I would assume she isn't that committed to the relationship at this point and may just see you as a possibility. if you happen to become an active member. She is clearly committed to her faith so you need to do some soul searching on that front I think, but don't link being active in the church with your relationship with her. If you decide to become active, it has to be real, even if she leaves you.

Your BIL I assume is an adult and mentally competent. Your marriage is your priority. Help him as best you can without making it damaging to the marriage. You could consider perhaps having him stay for a short period of time but only with a firm move out date and a plan to accomplish that. Having him stay for good doesn't sound feasible. He can go to the church for help as well and he has to be responsible for himself.

I'm sorry it has come to this. It is possible for things to become good between the two of you, but it requires both of you to work for it. If she isn't going to do that, it is not in your power to fix it all by yourself. You can however fix yourself so if you do find yourself single again, you will be far better prepared for your next marriage and better skilled in handling a relationship. Sometimes you just have to start over, and in the long run that can be a blessing.

That's wonderful. When one forgives and the other truly repents, then the power of the atonement can work a mighty miracle.

I have two children with serious mental illnesses. If they don't recognize that they are ill and are not at the point of being a danger to themselves or to others there isn't much you can do other than try and keep a good relationship with them so when they are ready to listen, there aren't hard feelings between the two of you to get in the way. We had to in effect kick out oldest son out of the house for the good of our other children. He spend a couple years couch surfing and even being homeless for a while. Eventually he hit bottom, knew he had to change something and cleaned up his life, accepted treatment, and came back home. He is doing so much better now and is somewhat active in the church as well but it took over 10 years to get to this point from when he first started having issues. Our oldest daughter was more willing to seek treatment but even so she had a number of hard years and mental health crises. She has come back in a big way though. She just got her second college degree, is endowed, and is now engaged. Your relationship is somebody is more important than their behavior. That doesn't mean you give approval or support to actions that don't deserve it, but it does mean you don't destroy the relationship over it. A good relationship is key to helping them change when they are ready.

Nobody wants to be the person their spouse settled for, that is a terrible trap to put somebody in. Let this guy go so that each of you can find somebody who really loves you above all overs forever. My oldest daughter is on the verge of aging out of YSA and expected to become the old cat lady in a few decades, but in May she met the right man and they are now engaged. Don't every buy into the idea that time is up and you have to settle for somebody that you don't love with all your heart.

The church has some really good self reliance courses that are free of course. There is one specifically about job/career advancement, and about managing family finances. I don't think in a case like this is good to force a situation on your spouse, that leads to anger and resentment. You need to persuade him with love, help him see things from your point of view and understand your pain. It may take some persistence on your part to get it across to him.

I'd define it as a couple having intense romantic and sexual feelings for each other when at least one of them is married to another person. Emotional intimacy but no physical intimacy (although that often happens soon enough). A person in such a relationship usually finds themselves in 'the fog' where they can't really recall what drew them to their spouse and think they made a mistake marrying them. They often come to think of the other person in the emotional affair as their true soul mate.

When somebody acts like they are violating your trust it isn't wrong to suspect they might be violating your trust. That is just situational awareness. Better that than being swept away in a flood or hormones and missing a bunch of red flags until it is too late.

Depends on who and what kind of hug. Hugging a mom, sister or other female relative shouldn't be a problem for anybody. As for hugging other women, I most often deliberately don't do it because I feel it disrespects my relationship with my wife. Exceptions may happen when I know for a fact my wife is OK with that and she is there too, and the hug is like when I hug my sister or mom. A long embrace is totally wrong.

If this is a committed relationship, you have every right to set boundaries on stuff like this, and so does she with you. If you both can't feel secure in the relationship then what is the point? What she did was unwise to put it mildly, and my suspicious side would wonder what the change of clothes was for. Since they dated before I think it is fair to say he has a level of romantic interest in her, and he doesn't have an obligation to back off from pursuing her if she doesn't push back. She is beginning to sound like she might be unreliable, first mission/no mission, now this. Watch if this is a pattern with her of going back on her decisions or not committing to them. Have a frank discussion about what does and doesn't cross the line.

I think there is an imbalance, and I think it has a lot to do with what church leaders wind up having to deal with. I expect the number of women that go to their Bishop about spousal abuse is many times larger than the number of men who do the same. Not because men do it so much more, but because running to the Bishop about it is being a wuss in their mind so they just take it. As a result church leaders get a skewed perspective on things and see men as being far more in need of correction than the ladies.

You said you prayed about it and got a solid answer. God knew you would be at this point today and he still gave you that answer. Trust that he knows something about the two of you that you don't and get busy working this out. Love is like a plant in the sense that you have to work at it to keep it alive and make it grow. You want a loving happy marriage full of domestic bliss? You need to make that happen in the marriage you have. Serve her, stop focusing on how happy you feel (or not) and start focusing on her happiness. What can you do or change to increase her happiness, what can you do to put a smile on her face and warm her heart? Do those things, keep doing them. Lock your heart and mind out against all other women. No porn, no fantasizing or dwelling on romantic or erotic thoughts that have anything to do with anybody other than her. Deliberately do fantasize about your wife. If you feel the situation is really bad, go for counseling, even if you have to go alone.

I would say you need to go together to see a counselor. Not somebody who will fix things for you, but somebody who will help the two of you lean how to talk to each other and work things like this out. It may take some trial and error, but there is somebody out there who can help.

I know back in the 80's the numbers were that the divorce rate for temple marriages was way lower then the national average. It may not be as big a difference but I expect it is still a lot better.

You can't force somebody to do what is right, but you can minimize the number and size of the cracks Satan has to put a wedge in and hammer away at. His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Jr. Harley and The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman are a couple really good books that will help you make your marriage stronger. You both need to be as Christ-like as possible, especially when it comes to being forgiving and dealing with confrontation. No matter how faithful your spouse is, they are going to hurt your feelings more deeply than anybody else because you are letting them in past all your defenses and you have higher expectations from them. Things that wouldn't bother you much from a stranger will be quite hurtful from your spouse. They won't mean to hurt you, they just don't know where all your soft spots are so they wind up accidentally poking them. You need to be able to avoid over reacting, be able to talk through conflicts without making it a fight, and to forgive completely after.

I'm sorry you have to go through this. Please recognize that the actions of church leaders do not define how God feels about you. I doubt your experience would have been the same if you were in my stake. As for God, you are his son. How would you feel if one of your kids were struggling with this? Would you cast them off and stop loving them? No, I don't think you would. Neither would God. Everything you have felt, Christ felt when he atoned for your sins. He knows perfectly you pain and your struggle and nobody, not your wife, bishop, stake president etc. can get between you and Christ. He also knows what you are capable of, your hopes and desires, he knows you better than your know yourself. You want your prayers to be heard? Then don't pray what you think God wants you to say and pray what you really feel. Go off to some private place and kneel down and vent it all at God, unload all are hurt and anger on him. Tell him in no uncertain terms what you think of it all. He isn't going to answer a prayer when the prayer is a lie.

I assume by your saying that your dad is a member of the bishopric that he is not the bishop himself, and certainly although they love you and worry about you they are expressing those feelings in a way that is not helpful to you. You need to talk to them. Since you told them what happened I would suggest you ask your dad point blank if he feels you should go see the bishop about it. If he says yes, do it. I don't know exactly what the two of you did, but I'm a bit worried (because of ideas other teens I've encountered had) you might think that since you didn't have intercourse that you didn't break the Law of Chasity. That idea is not exactly correct, the standard is to not have sexual relations outside of marriage, and you can have sexual relations without intercourse. I hope you also understand that with the Law of Chasity (like most things) there are degrees of violations. A moment of weakness is not the same level of sin as willful rebellion. If he agrees that this is not a matter to take to the bishop and you feel the same way, then politely tell your parents what you are telling us here. Tell them the best thing they can do to help you is forgive and move on. They need to give you a chance to prove yourself. Also, you parents may feel some level of guilt over this and blame themselves to some degree for not doing a good enough job as parents. You might want to say something helpful to them about that as well.

Somebody could have shallow reasons or have perfectly reasonable reasons. That's why I said 'IF his reasons are shallow...'

You are reading way too much into what I'm saying. If you don't love somebody enough to desire them as your spouse as they are, flaws and all, then you shouldn't be marrying them. Simple as that. I fail to see what is objectionable about that. I said nothing about sin, and I didn't define what constituted shallow reasons for rejecting somebody so please don't try and put words into my mouth. If you want to assert there is no such thing as a shallow reason to reject somebody, feel free to elaborate on that.

Yes, it is a red flag and somebody should do their due diligence to see if there is an unresolved character flaw or whatever, but you should make a judgement against an individual based on the statistics of a group.

There is always a chance of divorce. In a case like that I would say try and ascertain as best as you can why those marriages failed, what was her role in it if any, and has she changed since then in a way that would make her less likely to repeat any bad pattern from the first two. Context is important. If those two divorces were before she joined the church for example, and she has for years lived as a faithful member with a real testimony her past divorces might not be so relevant.

No, you have it wrong. If he doesn't love her enough to gladly take on whatever changes go hand in hand with marrying her as a result of who she is and what her circumstances currently are, then he should not marry her (because he doesn't love her as a husband should). If his reasons are shallow and superficial then she is better off without him too. But to reject somebody only because of what they USED TO BE when they are no longer that kind of person is hard hearted and unforgiving. The attitude of 'I've kept the LoC so I deserve a virgin spouse and won't 'settle' for something less' is not Christ like at all. Those are not mutually exclusive situation though, a person could be fully forgiving of somebody's past, but still have reasons about the current state of things that make them decide not to marry the person.

Those situations go to what I said about him having to decide if he loves her enough to take on the challenges resulting from her past. If a guy decides he would rather break up with a girl with AIDS than marry her and deal with that challenge, he should do that. But that isn't the same thing as leaving her because she had a sinful past, it is leaving her because of her present medical condition and how that would affect the marriage if they did wed.