11 Prophetic Tips for a Happy Marriage

Everyone wants a happy marriage!

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that happy marriages are not only possible, but an important aspect of God’s plan for families. Living prophets share God’s word to the world and often focus on happy family relationship and how couples and families can work individually and together to achieve happiness.

Sense this is a topic so often talked about, we decided to put together a list of advice tips for a happy marriage brought to you by the words of 11 recent modern prophets.

1 – Equality Between Partners

Choose a companion carefully and prayerfully; and when you are married, be fiercely loyal one to another. Priceless advice comes from a small framed plaque I once saw in the home of an uncle and aunt. It read, “Choose your love; love your choice.” There is great wisdom in those few words. Commitment in marriage is absolutely essential. Your wife is your equal. In marriage neither partner is superior nor inferior to the other. You walk side by side as a son and a daughter of God. She is not to be demeaned or insulted but should be respected and loved. Said President Gordon B. Hinckley: “Any man in this Church who … exercises unrighteous dominion over [his wife] is unworthy to hold the priesthood. Though he may have been ordained, the heavens will withdraw, the Spirit of the Lord will be grieved, and it will be amen to the authority of the priesthood of that man.” President Thomas S. Monson

2 – Anxious Concern for Each Other

A happy marriage is not so much a matter of romance as it is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one’s companion. ~President Gordon B. Hinckley

3 – Share Responsibility-Do One’s Part

Being happily and successfully married is generally not so much a matter of marrying the right person as it is being the right person. The conscious effort to do one’s part fully is the greatest element contributing to success. ~President Howard W. Hunter

4 – Complete Unity and Fidelity

A husband and wife must attain righteous unity and oneness in their goals, desires, and actions. Fidelity to one’s marriage vows is absolutely essential for love, trust, and peace. Adultery is unequivocally condemned by the Lord. Husbands and wives who love each other will find that love and loyalty are reciprocated. This love will provide a nurturing atmosphere for the emotional growth of children. Family life should be a time of happiness and joy that children can look back on with fond memories and associations. The secret of a happy marriage is to serve God and each other. The goal of marriage is unity and oneness, as well as self-development. Paradoxically, the more we serve one another, the greater is our spiritual and emotional growth. ~President Ezra Taft Benson

5 – Forgive and Forget

Marriage partners must be quick to forgive. If we will sue for peace, taking the initiative in settling differences—if we forgive and forget with all our hearts … if we forgive all real or fancied offenses before we ask forgiveness for our own sins—if we pay our own debts, large or small, before we press our debtors—if we manage to clear our own eyes of the blinding beams before we magnify the motes in the eyes of others—what a glorious world this would be! Divorce would be reduced to a minimum; courts would be freed from disgusting routines; family life would be heavenly; the building of the kingdom would go forward at an accelerated pace; and the peace which passeth understanding would bring to us all a joy and happiness which has hardly ‘entered into the heart of man.’ ~President Spencer W. Kimball

6 – Marital Intimacy

Marriage is fraught with the highest bliss and yet attended by the weightiest responsibilities that can devolve upon man and woman here in mortality. The divine impulse within every true man and woman that impels companionship with the opposite sex is intended by our Maker as a holy impulse for a holy purpose—not to be satisfied as a mere biological urge or as a lust of the flesh in promiscuous associations, but to be reserved as an expression of true love in holy wedlock. ~President Harold B. Lee

7 – Mutual Respect

Parents … should love and respect each other, and treat each other with respectful decorum and kindly regard, all the time. The husband should treat his wife with the utmost courtesy and respect. The husband should never insult her; he should never speak slightly of her, but should always hold her in the highest esteem in the home, in the presence of their children. … The wife, also should treat the husband with the greatest respect and courtesy. … The wife should be a joy to her husband, and she should live and conduct herself at home so the home will be the most joyous, the most blessed place on earth to her husband. This should be the condition of the husband, wife, the father and the mother, within the sacred precinct of that holy place, the home. ~President Joseph Fielding Smith

8 – Continued Courtship

I should like to urge continued courtship, and apply this to grown people. Too many couples have come to the altar of marriage looking upon the marriage ceremony as the end of courtship instead of the beginning of an eternal courtship. Let us not forget that during the burdens of home life—and they come—that tender words of appreciation, courteous acts are even more appreciated than during those sweet days and months of courtship. It is after the ceremony and during the trials that daily arise in the home that a word of “thank you,” or “pardon me,” “if you please,” on the part of husband or wife contributes to that love which brought you to the altar. It is well to keep in mind that love can be starved to death as literally as the body that receives no sustenance. Love feeds upon kindness and courtesy. It is significant that the first sentence of what is now known throughout the Christian world as the Psalm of Love, is, “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” [See 1 Corinthians 13:4.] The wedding ring gives no man the right to be cruel or inconsiderate, and no woman the right to be slovenly, cross, or disagreeable. Marriage is a relationship that cannot survive selfishness, impatience, domineering, inequality, and lack of respect. Marriage is a relationship that thrives on acceptance, equality, sharing, giving, helping, doing one’s part, learning together, enjoying humor. ~President David O. McKay

9 – Kindness

Live in such a way, in love and kindness, that peace and prayer and thanksgiving will be in your homes together. Do not let your homes just be a place to hang your hats at night and get your meals and then run off some place else but let your homes be the abiding place of the Spirit of the Lord. Many of us live in such an atmosphere that we are almost dumb when it comes to praising somebody else. We seem unable to say the things that we might say … to the blessing of others. Let us look for the virtues of our associates and observing them make them happy by commending them. I pray that the love of the gospel of our Lord will burn in our souls and enrich our lives, that it will cause husbands to be kinder to wives, and wives to be kinder to husbands, parents to children, and children to parents because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a gospel of love and kindness. ~President George Albert Smith

10 – Make and Keep Covenants

I believe that no worthy young Latter-day Saint man or woman should spare any reasonable effort to come to a house of the Lord to begin life together. The marriage vows taken in these hallowed places and the sacred covenants entered into for time and all eternity are [protection] against many of the temptations of life that tend to break homes and destroy happiness. … The blessings and promises that come from beginning life together, for time and eternity, in a temple of the Lord, cannot be obtained in any other way and worthy young Latter-day Saint men and women who so begin life together find that their eternal partnership under the everlasting covenant becomes the foundation upon which are built peace, happiness, virtue, love, and all of the other eternal verities of life, here and hereafter. ~President Heber J Grant

11 – Teach Children the Gospel of Jesus Christ

The home is what needs reforming. Try today, and tomorrow, to make a change in your home by praying twice a day with your family. … Ask a blessing upon every meal you eat. Spend ten minutes … reading a chapter from the words of the Lord in the [scriptures]. … Let love, peace, and the Spirit of the Lord, kindness, charity, sacrifice for others, abound in your families. Banish harsh words, … and let the Spirit of God take possession of your hearts. Teach to your children these things, in spirit and power. ~President Joseph F. Smith