Dating while trying to be worthy?


moocow
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Will I get sealed eventually?  

19 members have voted

  1. 1. Will I get sealed eventually?

    • Yes - just keep trying
    • Yes - but only after a civil marriage
    • No - you will never be worthy long enough
    • No - you will run out of chances
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My boyfriend and I can't seem to stay worthy long enough to get recommends. But we don't want to just get married civilly because that's more of a cop out.

What would any Bishop say?

In my opinion, he would say get married now and then go to the temple in a year.

If you cannot sustain your Bishop over this, then you may wish to fast and pray.

All my best,

Michael

http://www.lds.net/forums/picture.php?albumid=9&pictureid=78

(First LDS Romance Novel I read as a new convert)

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I got married beofre i could repent. my wife and i were living together when i decided to re-activate in the church.

My bishop's counsel to me was that marriage can help because then you have one less thing to worry about.

We recently were able to go to the temple and get married last month

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My boyfriend and I can't seem to stay worthy long enough to get recommends. But we don't want to just get married civilly because that's more of a cop out. Because yes, a year after a civil marriage you can get married in the temple. But there's no real "repentance" when you can have sex every day without guilt, you know? This has been going on for like 2 years. We've been dating for 3 years. We just can't stay worthy for more than like 6 months. For the past year and 3 months we've only messed up 3 times with "petting". but i mean, we've never gotten our temple recommends because we were waiting for a year for something else. Doesn't it seem hard to postpone marriage for worthiness while being extremely tempted with someone you have been dating 3 years? Does anyone know what it's like? How can we just freaking stop sinning so that finally we can just get married like we've wanted to all along?!!! It's like doubly hard. An uphill battle, it feels like. BTW, I've gone to my bishop quickly for each of these offenses. And I pray every night and read scriptures and such.

Bonus question: Is it possible to run out of second chances? Cuz I've been to my bishop a lot since I keep repeating my offense. Although I am getting better overall. Will it ever get to a point when I will no longer be eligible for eternal life and those things? I'm 22.

Herein lies the trouble: We human beings are pre-wired to fall in love, to make love and to procreate.

My recommendation would be to make decisions together.

1.) Are the two of you going to get married or are you not? If you are not, then break off the relationship. If you are going to marry him, then:

2.) Get married already!! A civil marriage is not a cop-out. It takes your natural physical attraction and behavior and flips it from "thou shalt not" to "thou shalt" and that is the way God intends it for the rest of your life together. "Thou shalt make love." If you are prepared in every way for marriage other than temple worthiness, then this is just common sense to go ahead and marry. Having sex and sexual relations is not a wicked thing. But doing it without being married is what was extremely bad. For a couple who intends to marry anyways, the shortest and surest pathway to not sinning anymore is to marry. By talking yourselves out of civil marriage, you're setting yourself up for repeated failure unnecessarily.

3.) Go through the repentance process and see it through to completion. It is not a year to do as you dang well please, it is a year to think very seriously about your actions. And when you've gone through true repentance -- anguish of soul followed by the powerful and beautiful healing coming through the Atonement of Christ -- then you will be ready to go to the Temple. I think your thought process is misdirected, but good in that it should help you repent fully and completely and not short-change the process. And you cannot short-change repentance by civil marriage. But by avoiding it, you can put yourself in a battle you may not be able to win.

4.) As some respondents have rightly pointed out, the next enemy to overcome is complacency. So as a wedding gift to each other, buy a large picture of the temple you intend to go to. Put it somewhere you will each see it every day. You could stick a calendar underneath it and start crossing off days. The point is to create a solid reminder for yourself that your goal is temple marriage.

5.) Get married in the temple. If you hold this as your absolute end-goal, then everything else will work out right. It is quite likely that by having to wait a year, you will both learn to appreciate the Temple more and that you will have the opportunity to truly reconcile yourselves with God before entering His house.

More than anything else, pray about it. Sexual sin dulls the spiritual senses, so you will have to pray very hard to get answers, but you need the Lord's guidance here. Any advice from anyone else is going to fall short of perfection. His guidance is perfect.

Edited by Faded
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thank you for all of your advice. i've gotten a good mix of different answers. right now i don't know what exactly i'm going to do. honestly, i would rather get married and then go to the temple. but... it's so awkward since my family and friends would judge me. my sister did that and eloped in vegas! she told us 2 weeks later, then she was sealed a year later. but her and her fiance were having sex regularly. just to clarify to some of you, i've never had sex. just the things that lead up to it. and those "things" happen like every 3 months or so. i know, it's still bad but i've never gone "all the way". i'm sure details make no difference. but yeah.

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thank you for all of your advice. i've gotten a good mix of different answers. right now i don't know what exactly i'm going to do. honestly, i would rather get married and then go to the temple. but... it's so awkward since my family and friends would judge me. my sister did that and eloped in vegas! she told us 2 weeks later, then she was sealed a year later.

Isn't that always the case: It's hard to do what is right when you will look like a bad person for doing the right thing, right? My advice would be to pray for the courage to do the right thing anyways.

but her and her fiance were having sex regularly. just to clarify to some of you, i've never had sex. just the things that lead up to it. and those "things" happen like every 3 months or so. i know, it's still bad but i've never gone "all the way". i'm sure details make no difference. but yeah.

Does it matter that you've had more self restraint than your sister? Of course it matters! Does it matter enough to make you worthy to go to the temple anyways? No, it does not. The fact that you have not had sex MIGHT mean that it's not a full 1 year wait though. It's possibly a shorter wait. Also, you don't need to run off to Las Vegas and elope. You are not your sister and you can choose your own path. You get to write your own story.

The only thing I wasn't clear on: You know that you want to marry this guy, right? I wasn't sure if that was 100% established or not.

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I'm almost 100% sure I want to marry him. Our relationship has had some bumps along the way. He isn't as quick to go to his bishop as I have been. But when I talked to him, he said he really didn't want to get married civilly because he would be letting down his family. And my family, who doesn't know about our worthiness issues, already don't really like him because they think he is just "not proposing". He feels that that would add to their dislike of him. But we do want to get married. To make sure he is going to be a good fit for me, I need to see if he will do what he needs to do repentance-wise on his own, without me bringing it up. That's the only way I will know for sure if he really wants to go to the celestial kingdom with me or not.

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