Magical Thinking

At dinner a few nights ago I asked daughter #3 to say the blessing.  She glumly asked 'Do I have to?'.  Before I could answer, daughter #4 spoke up saying brightly 'Do it!  You'll get boyfriend points!'  at which daughter #3 brightened up and said the blessing.

I asked them what they meant by 'boyfriend points' since I hadn't heard the term before and they explained that by doing good things you get 'boyfriend points' and the more points you get the better a boyfriend you will have.  I made sure they understood that was a game and things didn't really work that way.

What they were doing was an example of 'magical thinking'.  Magical thinking is when you come to believe that certain actions will result in something that is in reality completely unrelated to the that action.  While I'm glad she agreed to say the blessing and will be blessed for it in some way, it doesn't guarantee anything about any future boyfriend.

As it says in the scriptures:

D&C 130

20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—

21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

Unfortunately, we all tend to fall into the trap of magical thinking now and then, especially when we suffer wrongs we don't deserve.  We can even become angry with the church or with God when our personal righteousness doesn't shield us from trials.

In marriage, magical thinking can be a source of hurt, disappointment, and bewilderment.  It can blind us to dangers, preventing us from seeing warning signs until it is too late.  If you think 'that won't happen in my marriage' then ask yourself why you think it won't.  If you think your marriage is on solid ground because you are aware of what you need to do obtain those blessings and are doing it, then you are probably on the right track.  If it is because you go to church and pay tithing and serve faithfully in your calling then you are probably applying magical thinking.  Doing all those things is good and will bring you blessings, but you can do all that and still fail to obey the laws that will lead to blessings in your marriage.

One common example of magical thinking is the belief that by living the law of chastity faithfully before marriage and being married in the temple, we are sure to have a good marriage and a faithful spouse.  Not so.  Living the law of chastity means you come into marriage without the emotional scars and baggage of sexual sins.  That is a wonderful blessing to be free of that and it creates an environment where it is easier to create a celestial marriage after the wedding, but where the marriage goes after the wedding depends on what the couple does in the days, months and years to come.

A spouse who neglects the needs of their companion or conducts themselves in a selfish or unChristlike manner will provoke unhappiness in the home.  A person who was raised with a very negative view of sex will not suddenly become a passionate uninhibited lover just because they are a virgin on their wedding night.

Another common case of magical thinking is that if a man does more housework, his wife will make love to him more often.  It might happen, if it is the housework burden that is holding his wife back from getting intimate more often.  It won't resolve issue unrelated to housework though.  I'm not trying to discourage husbands from helping out as best they can, it is the right thing to do, but don't do it expecting a sexual payoff.  Do it for her, not for you.

We also shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that we can control everything in our lives through obedience to God's laws.  Other people still have their free agency and get to make their own choices, and at time we are called to go through the refiners fire, individually or as a couple. We do have the promise however that God will keep his word, and while blessings may be delayed, they are never denied to those who follow in faith. Miracles can and do happen as well, but we need to recognize those miracles for the gift from God that they are and not credit ourselves.  Then we can feel the joy of His love.

I hope my daughters do find good boyfriends someday down the road.  If they've listened to what I've taught them about dating and what to look for in a guy they will.   I hope they will still bless supper too, even though they know 'boyfriend points' aren't real.

Fear, the intimacy killer

Intimacy and vulnerability seem to go hand in hand.  Physical intimacy requires making ourselves physically vulnerable to our partner, trusting that they will seek our pleasure.  Likewise with emotional intimacy, it requires we make ourselves emotionally vulnerable.  For some reason emotional hurts go much deeper and last much longer than the physical kind.  They are also much easier to cause, unintentionally or not.  This can create fear that will limit our closeness and fear is the intimacy killer.

I confess that have given in to that fear a lot.  There were things my wife did that hurt or bothered me and I never discussed them with her in order to avoid conflict.  Because I stayed silent, she didn't know she had hurt me and had no reason to change her behavior.  There were things I wanted to try in the bedroom that I was afraid to ask for in case she thought less of me for wanting them, or in case asking would make her feel inadequate or think that I was ungrateful for what she was already doing.  My wife has done the same thing too.  She happens to love hard rock music but she hid that from me for many years fearing I would disapprove and look down on her for it.

Giving into that fear makes bottle up feelings and desires and personality.  We hide who we are and start playing a role rather than being ourselves. Secret hurts are never resolved, secret desires are never fulfilled, secret interests are never fully explored, and you can`t get to really know somebody who is not being genuine.  Those secrets create a barrier to intimacy, and they can also make us vulnerable to temptation when we encounter somebody who accepts the parts of us we are afraid to show our spouse.

Years ago my wife and I were in the process of working out longstanding issues in our marriage and just starting to really open up to each other.  At the start of that journey I though the only thing that needed to change was our sex life, but soon found that I needed to change and stop letting fear shut me down and isolate me from her.

On our anniversary that year we wound up going places we never went before, doing things we never did before, trying foods we never tried before.  Nothing wild or crazy, we just crossed off a few easy bucket list items.  It became a night of firsts.  When we got home to conclude our celebration, I mustered the courage to ask for something I've always wanted to do with her.  I was prepared for the worst, but to my joy and amazement she was perfectly happy to go ahead and it became the perfect end to the night and a new entry on our intimacy menu.  I now kick myself for waiting so many years to ask.

On the other end of the scale, learning I needed to open up to my wife also meant letting her know about some deep wounds inflicted long ago that had not healed.  That was the start of a painful emotional process of reconciliation.  Tearful conversations late at night behind closed doors, struggles to turn feelings into words, questions that were hard to ask and harder to answer.  None of it was fun but opening up and facing it together has deepened our attachment and cleared the air on things that hung around unsaid for far too long.

It is also important that we do not give our spouse good reason to fear being open with us.  If we have a habit of reacting in judgmental and critical ways it discourages our spouse from letting us see who they really are.  Likewise if your spouse can`t be trusted to handle your heart with care, focus on resolving that.

Empathy and charity for our spouse will invite them to be open with us.  They create a warm loving atmosphere where it feels safe to let down the defenses and expose our true, weak self.  Opening up to ours spouse is something else that can encourage them to respond in kind. 

There is nothing so wonderful and so powerful as to know that your spouse really knows who you are, warts and all, and still loves you deeply.

Moving towards sexual fulfillment - Part 2

[Click here for Part 1]

So, you know what your spouse needs to be sexually fulfilled, and you know what you need, and you've communicated that to your spouse.  You've fostered empathy for your spouse so you understand that their needs are real and valid.  What next?

Submission
Submission is not a popular word in our culture, especially with respect to relationships between husbands and wives.  It brings to mind images of an oppressed housewife from decades past, quietly enduring their husband treating them like doormats or worse.  That isn't what I'm talking about.

Submission in marriage should be mutual (as most everything in marriage should be).  Paul taught the saints at Corinth that husbands and wives both should "render due benevolence" to each other (1Cor 7:3).

Benevolence is a desire to do good, charitableness.  In other words, both husband and wife should serve each other.  While we tend to readily understand this in terms of our actions outside the bedroom, Paul goes on to link it directly with each spouse having claim on the very body of their spouse in a sexual context.

Sexual benevolence looks outward with love toward meeting our spouse's needs, not inward to our own selfish satisfaction.  It demands more than just a good intentions or lip service, it requires us to act, even to expand our horizons.  It goes beyond doing the bare minimum and instead glories in going the extra mile.

It is not submitting to the will of your spouse but submitting to your divine role and calling of husband or wife. In doing that you are submitting to God's will and honoring honor temple covenants.

Pride and fear are obstacles to all righteous submission, and submission in marriage requires so much emotional vulnerability that it may take time to learn to let the walls down, but it will be worth it.

Unity
One of the purposes of the sexual relationship in marriage is to create unity and oneness between the husband and wife.  It makes no sense then to pursue sexual fulfillment in a manner that harms that unity.   Every couple will have differences between between their needs that have the potential to become points of contention in the relationship


If trying to reach sexual fulfillment is creating friction in the relationship, something is out of balance.  By nature we resist change and it is easy to say "Why should I be the one to change, you should change instead."  Before saying that, ask yourself what change would bring the marriage closer to mutual fulfillment and which seeks for self fulfillment?  Which one requires somebody to grow and expand their horizons and which one requires somebody to live with an unmet need? What change reflects empathy and submission for the spouse and which reflect defensiveness and self-centered control?  Which change is being requested out of a desire for greater joy, and which our of pride or fear?

Hopefully those questions will lead to you having a common direction with your spouse.  After that it mostly a matter of finding creative ways you can both happily move in that direction.

Pressure is caused by resistance to a force, and stress is caused by forces acting in differing directions.  No spouse should ever feel pushed into doing something they do not want to do.  Voluntarily pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, overcoming your own internal resistance to better meet your spouses needs, is an act of love and charity that leads to growth.  Pushing your spouse is unrighteous dominion and selfishness that will harm the relationship.

Vigilance 
Don't you wish your spouse was so in tune with you that they always gave you the attention and affection you wanted from them as if they could read your mind?  Do you realize they wish the same thing from you?

We can't read minds, but we can pay attention to our spouse for signs of unmet needs.  We can ask them from time to time how we can better meet their needs, and we can pay attention to our own efforts and do our best to proactively provide for their needs.

To maintain sexual fulfillment long term there must be ongoing introspection and communication so that each spouse is up to date on the other.  Needs change over time.  Men who were ready to go at the drop of a hat in their 20's may find that they need foreplay as much (or more) than their wife when they hit middle age.   Other biological changes and health issues may likewise alter a spouse's needs.

We also change emotionally and may experiences times where our intimacy needs also change.  This can manifest itself in any of our needs, increasing or decreasing their importance.  Or we may develop new needs, and something that was once a need may not be important any longer.

Sexual fulfillment is not a one time achievement, it is a constant quest.  There may be dragons to slay, traps to avoid, and wildernesses to cross, but there are treasures beyond compare as well.

Moving towards sexual fulfillment - Part 1

It's all well and good to say that sexual fulfillment is important in a marriage, but that doesn't really help much if there isn't agreement on what that means.  Conflict and frustration are usually close at hand when each spouse has a different picture in their mind of what fulfillment looks like.  If they have conflicting views it can become a big problem in the relationship if left unaddressed.


Sexual fulfillment is achieved over time, sometimes a long time.  It is the result of each spouse doing their best to provide their mate with the a satisfying intimate physical relationship, and helping their spouse do the same for them.  The focus needs to be on serving your spouse, fulfillment is a gift you can only give, not take.

It is important to realize that the objective here is mutual fulfillment. Neither spouse should be left feeling neglected, used, taken for granted, unsatisfied or unappreciated.  In an ideal marriage, fulfilling your spouse sexually is a big part of your own sexual fulfillment.

Over the next few posts I'll go over what I've found to be some key steps that will help in achieving mutual sexual fulfillment in marriage. I don't suggest this the be-all-end-all on the subject, but I hope they will be helpful at least.

Knowledge
What would the perfect sexual relationship look like to you, what would it look like to your spouse?  My wife and I didn't really talk about that at all before or marriage, or after it for many years.  Big mistake. It is really hard to meet the needs of a person when you do not know what their needs are.  It is really hard to tell your spouse what your needs if you don't know what they are yourself.  The clearer you can make the picture in your spouse's mind of what fulfillment means for you, the easier it will be to make that picture a reality. 

Each spouse ought to look inside themselves and determine as clearly as possible what they need to feel satisfied sexually.  What do you need in terms of frequency, enthusiasm, variety, order, adventure, playfulness, fantasy, flirting, safety, risk, foreplay, affection outside the bedroom, pillow talk,  respect, control, submission, privacy, spontaneity, aggressiveness etc. to feel satisfied?  How important are each of these needs, which are vitally important, which ones are desirable but less important? 

Once you have a firm grasp on what your own needs are, then you need to share them with your spouse.  It would be wonderful if we could all read each other mind's and know what to do when to make our spouses feel loved and happy, but it doesn't work that way.  We need to teach our spouse about the person they married.  Tell your spouse what your needs are, perhaps in a letter or email that they can refer back to.  Discuss them together to ensure they are correctly understood. Get the same information from your spouse and become a student of their heart.

Also be aware that a person's needs can change over time, and it is our responsibility to update our spouse as needed.

Empathy
Making your needs known to your spouse can be frightening, it requires making ourselves emotionally vulnerable like nothing else does, and with vulnerability comes an intense fear of rejection.  This is what kept me silent for many years, the fear that if I requested *that*, she may think less of me for it, push me away and desire me less.

It is very important when your spouse is sharing something like this, they are trying to help you both find greater sexual fulfillment.  Do not react by judging them, making them feel ashamed, invalidating their feelings or rejecting them in some other way.  Do that and you will find it very hard to get them to open up to you like that again and instead of drawing closer you'll create a wall.

Shared needs are easy to deal with but the chances are pretty good that your spouse will also have some need that will take you outside your comfort zone.  Likewise you will probably have to stretch yourself to meet their needs.  I'm not talking about things that would harm somebody's worthiness before God, risk landing somebody in jail, or cause physical or emotional trauma, I'm talking about things that are common in healthy sexual relationships but one spouse gets nothing out of, or even feels deeply uncomfortable with doing for other reasons.

It is tempting to try and get your spouse to alter their needs so things are easier for you, but is that how you would like them to behave when it comes to your needs?  No. Also, there is no mutual fulfillment in one spouse engaging something (or doing without something) out of a feeling of duty or obligation.  What is called for is empathy.

Empathy is a form of compassion that enables you to relate to how another feels about something even if you yourself do not feel that way about the same thing,.  It is not pity or sympathy, those are feeling for somebody, empathy is feeling with somebody.

Having empathy for your spouse allows you to draw on your love for them expand your comfort zone so you can meet their needs joyfully, with no resentment. Understanding why that need exists (if possible), or what meaning your spouse attaches to having that need met can help develop that empathy.

Empathy is also a two way street in a situation like this.  One spouse needs to cultivate empathy for the need held by the other, and the other must cultivate empathy for their spouse's inhibition. Then you can take a step back and start taking a deeper look at both the desire and the inhibition.

What about it makes it desirable or undesirable?  Is there a way it could me made more desirable?  How important is fulfilling that desire?  How deep does the inhibition run?  What experiences have contributed to these feelings?  Is it need really just a means of meeting some deeper need?  Is there some other way of meeting that need, a win-win solution? 

It may wind up with somebody growing sexually, overcoming an inhibition and expanding their comfort zone.  It may wind up with somebody having enough empathy for their spouse that their own need is eclipsed by their compassion for their spouse's challenge.  It may be something in between, or move from one to the other.  What is important is that both spouses know that their mate understands and accepts their needs, has empathy for them, and will do the best they can to fulfill those needs.

[Click Here for Part 2]

Is sex really that important?

Obviously, a blog about marriage is going to wind up talking about the sexual dimension of marriage.  Some people might have a hard time with that.  While we proclaim marriage to be a divine and eternal institution, all too often we feel fear, embarrassment or guilt discussing sexual intimacy, even with our own spouse.  I'm sure some people will find this blog and pass by never to return again as soon as the encounter a sexual topic.  If you are tempted to do that now, please stay a bit and let me plead my case to you.

The sexual dimension of marriage is what sets marriage apart from all other relationships.  Every other aspect of a marriage is something you can have in a relationship with a friend, or sibling, or parent.  Sex then is the defining characteristic of marriage.  When God married Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the fall had not yet taken.  They were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth, to become 'one flesh', to cleave unto each other, all before sin entered the world.  The idea of sex being some 'dirty necessity' because of the fall is false.  Married sex was part and parcel of Paradise as God intended it.

Furthermore, The Proclamation on the Family states "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."  We were male and female in the beginning, and will remain so in the resurection as well.  Those who are faithful will have the opportunity to continue their marriage in the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom.  With sex the defining characteristic of marriage, and gender part of our eternal identity and purpose, the reasonable conclusion is that the sexual relationship between a husband and wife will also continue in the Celestial Kingdom for those couples in the highest degree.

Our mortal life is a probationary period, and everything we have in mortality is a stewardship.  For example, parents have a stewardship over their children, not ownership.  We have a stewardship over our time, talents, our body, our life, and our possessions.  If we are good stewards, then the parable of the talents works in our favor.  Having been faithful with few things, we are given much.

The sexual relationship of a marriage is also a stewardship, and the parable of the talents applies to this area of your life.  Those who abuse their sexuality, either by engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage, or by neglecting and starving the sexual relationship they should have with their spouse, will have taken from them even that which they have, and find themselves consigned to state of eternal celibacy if they do not repent.  Those who make better choices shall have eternal lives, and continue to expand their family for all eternity together with their spouse.

There is a cost in mortality to neglecting this stewardship.  A marriage that lacks mutual sexual fulfillment, or any progress towards it, is a source of emotional pain and distress for at least one spouse.  Rather than enjoying the strength and peace that comes from mutual sexual fulfillment in a marriage, they often find themselves in a state that leaves them vulnerable to temptation, depression, anger.  Rather than feeling the closeness of being 'one flesh' there is a gulf of rejection between them.  Left unaddressed, resentments can build up, turn into hostility, rebellion or coldness, and poison even the best relationship to death. 

It's important to note in the parable that not everybody starts off with the same stewardship, and so it is with our sexual stewardship.  Some couples may find their way to mutual sexual fulfillment with relative speed and ease, while another may go through many painful years, even decades, to learn and change so they can get to that same place.  In the end what is important is the direction of the relationship.

So yes, sexual intimacy is important.  Both for the happiness of both spouses during life, and for determining their place in the eternities.  Seeking to get to the point of mutual sexual fulfillment is not just a righteous goal, it is part of your eternal progression.

Bedding down

Our bed gets a lot of use.  There is the sleeping of course, and the times where we put out the 'Do Not Disturb' sign and lock the door.  But it is also where we gather for family prayer and family scripture reading.  It was where my wife would nurse our babies, where young children would come for comfort after a nightmare or when feeling ill.  It is where my wife relaxes with a good book or draws up plans for her garden or designs a new home.  It is where my wife and I have had some of our deepest joys and our hardest battles.  Where we have struggled with our hurts, where painful moments have slowly blossomed into new understanding and greater appreciation for each other.  Where Christmas presents have been wrapped and hidden. 

In our time we have gone through a few beds.  As newlyweds we went right from our honeymoon into the married student housing for the university I was attending.  It came furnished, but the bed was an old double mattress over a frame that had no box spring or platform.  The mattress was supported by springs that went side to side across the frame.  When we lay down it felt like we were the meat in a very large soft taco.  That night the frame was removed and the mattress put on the floor. 

We began a quest to find a bed of our own as soon as possible.  I've come to think that having the right bed is important to the intimate life of the marriage.  Here are my observations on the different types of beds we've had:


The Waterbed
Waterbeds are not a very popular choice these days, and if you want one you may have to do some looking for it.  If you are going to get one, get the very best motion reduction you can afford, and don't even think of getting a mattress with no motion reduction.

We had a king sized waterbed for many years. It was nice, especially in winter, to climb into a bed that was already warm, but it also was that much harder to climb out of it in the morning.  You had to get yourself up and over the side of the box holding the mattress.  That was one more reason to hit the snooze button.

There is some maintenance involved, including adding chemicals inside the mattress to help keep the vinyl in good shape, and finding and sealing the occasional small leak (then changing the damp bedsheets).  Any air bubbles in the mattress were a noisy nuisance and getting them out was a two person job.

Moving a waterbed is a big job of disassembling the frame after draining the mattress then moving all the pieces to the new home, putting the frame together and filling the mattress.  By the next day it would be warm enough sleep on.  A cold waterbed mattress is no fun at all.

As far as intimacy went, if you like variety, this is not the bed for you.  It was fine for the missionary position, but other positions were more awkward or even unworkable.  I have no idea if it was coincidence or if the magnetic field of the waterbed heater did something, but every child we conceived in that bed turned out to be a girl.

As we both added on a few pounds we reached a point where our combined weight when together would have us sink to the bottom which was not comfortable, and so decided it was time for a new bed. The mattress of a king sized waterbed is not the same dimensions as a king sized coil spring mattress so we got rid of the entire thing.

Coil Spring
Our next bed was a regular coil spring mattress, still king sized, but not exactly top of the line.  The frame was a metal platform frame so there was no box spring, just the mattress.  The platform part itself was a heavy gauge wire mesh but that had too much flex it in, so I got some 3/8 plywood sheets cut to the right size to drop into the frame and the mattress rested on that.  Problem solved.

Since I expect most of you have experienced coil spring mattress I won't go into detail on that, but the bed frame was very noisy during those intimate moments.  We were not bothered by that too much, but as the kids got older and realized what that noise meant they certainly complained, which gave us a chance to teach them a bit about the importance and rightness of intimacy in marriage.  They complained about that too.

Our mattress began to show a lot of uneven wear, creating a surface with high and low points resembling a map of Middle Earth.  I was getting a sore back from sleeping on it and it was time again to make a change.

Memory Foam
A few months ago we replaced our coil spring mattress with a new memory foam mattress.  The soft and medium mattresses were wonderful to lay on in the showroom, but to roll over felt like rolling uphill due to how deep we sank into the foam. Neither one of us spends the whole night in the same position so we went with a much firmer mattress.  We also made sure that the edges of the mattress held up,  we didn't want to roll over to be near the edge only to sink in to the point where we wind up getting dumped off the bed in our sleep.

We kept the metal frame but because motion is so well absorbed by the mattress, the frame makes practically no noise at all now even when we are at our most energetic.  That also means my light sleeping wife is not disturbed when I roll over or come to bed after she is already asleep.

In most cases there is no significant difference between a coil mattress and a firm memory foam mattress when being intimate, except that it is far more comfortable to kneel on.  The mattress change also added a couple inches of height to our bed, and that has proven advantageous as well but a thicker coil mattress would have given us that too.

In terms of moving, our memory foam mattress is much heavier than our coil spring mattress was, and not as flexible bending around corners as it was brought inside.  I expect softer memory foam mattresses would be more flexible than ours.



The next time you find yourself shopping for a bed, be sure to take into account how you and your spouse sleep.  Do you spoon through the night or each keep to your own side?  Do you stay in one position all through the night or do you move around a bit?  Are either of you prone to be woken up easily if the other rolls over?  But also take into account the impact the bed will have on your sexual relationship.  Does it open up new possibilities or close some off you would like to keep open?

Since you can't test all those things in the showroom, be sure the return policy will allow you to change your mind and be aware of how long you have that option before you make your purchase. 

Soul mates, by choice.

There is a popular romantic notion that each person has a 'soul mate', some special one and only person with whom they can have a perfect, life long romance.  Find and marry this person and you will live happily ever after, marry somebody else and it will end badly.  It helps create drama in romantic comedies, but as a guiding principle of relationships here in the real world it can be a hindrance, or even a destructive force.

There are 7 billion people in the world, the vast majority of them you will never ever meet.  Most of those you do meet will be in fleeting, short term encounters.  The person driving your bus, that stranger that asked for directions.  Only a tiny percentage of humanity will ever establish some kind of relationship with you, so from a statistical view, if there were soul mates almost nobody would run into them let alone marry them.

Of course you could take the view that an all knowing Heavenly Father will arrange things so soul mates do meet.  Fine, what happens then if this person dumps you, or is hit by a drunk driver and killed?  How do you cope with failing your one and only shot at bliss?  You could take Heavenly Father's intervention even further, claiming that He would set things up so you are sure to not fail or be thwarted, but that takes you into the territory of mimicking Satan's plan,  restricting everybody's freedom to choose so that specific outcomes are achieved.

The danger lies in the fact that there is no objective way of determining if somebody is your soul mate or not, it's purely emotional.  It can be amusing when some teenaged girl makes monthly announcements of finding her new soul mate, but more than one marriage has ended because one spouse came to believe that the person they married was not actually their 'soul mate' and somebody else was.  That opens the door to having an affair, and even feeling justified in doing so. 

The Church actively discourages the idea of soul mates as well.  President Kimball stated: "‘Soul mates’ are a fiction and an illusion" and Elder Boyd K. Packer said: "I do not believe in predestined love... You must do the choosing, rather than to seek for some one-and-only so-called soul mate, chosen for you by someone else and waiting for you."

At the same time however, many married couples, both in and out of the church, have experienced being directed toward marrying a specific person.  I've experienced this myself.

I met my wife at a Youth Conference dance when we were both teenagers.  Neither one of us knew many people there so she was trying to meet as many guys as she could, and I was trying to dance with as many pretty girls as I could.  I hadn't noticed her at any of the events before the dance, but the second I laid eyes on her that still small voice told me very clearly that I should go and meet her, which I gladly did.  There was an instant connection and we hung out with each other for the rest of the dance and talked about everything. By the end of that dance we were in love.

As I watched her leave, that still, small voice interupted my thoughts again and told me "She is the one".  I really liked the idea of things turning out like that, but I didn't want the pressure of knowing she was 'the one', especially since she lived a hundred miles from my home in another Stake.  Not ideal conditions for a long term relationship.

I had to be told she was the one three times that night to get past that fear. My fear of failure made me refuse to take it as guaranteed that we would marry, instead I took that revelation as an obligation to do all I could to pursue that outcome, which I did.  After years of dealing with the obstacles of a long distance relationship I popped the question soon after I returned home from my mission nearly 25 years ago.

So, how is it that I can be told she was 'the one' when there is no such thing as soul mates?

The answer is in the difference between predestination and foreordination.  I have no doubt that my wife and I are continuing a relationship that began before the world was, but if I had chosen to jump off the straight and narrow, or if she had, then she would not have been the one for me and I would not have been the one for her.  Instead we would both have been 'the one' for somebody else.  Both of us had our agency, but we both chose paths that made her the one for me and me the one for her.  We are soul mates by choice, not by destiny or fate.

The same can be true of any couple that strive for that kind of relationship in their marriage.  Nobody is a victim or pawn of fate, we are all agents in our marriage.  The choices we made resulted in the marriage we are in, and the choices we make will shape that relationship for good or ill.  While this gives each spouse the power to harm the marriage, it also gives each spouse the power to make the marriage better.  If the feeling that your spouse is 'the one' has been absent lately, perhaps it is time to make some new choices and bring that back.