The following posts from my personal blog give more detail into the two points above, if you want a fuller picture of my thoughts on them:
I see through my glass, darkly – as I play my saxophone in harmony with the other instruments in God’s orchestra. (h/t Elder Joseph Wirthlin)
Dating sucks
Even if people view many things differently, the core Gospel principles (LOVE; belief in the unseen but hoped; self-reflective change; symbolic cleansing; striving to recognize the will of the divine; never giving up) are universal.
If I were to find myself single tomorrow – I would be just as aweful at it as I ever was. and that is substantially aweful.
Temple marriage in NOT the formula for happiness. But for many Mormons, it IS A PART of the recipe for happiness.
Only you can know if you have enough in common with your BF to offset the religious difference. Only you can know how important different riligious principles are to you or to him.
I say “only you can know” but I don’t believe you can know really. You are making an educated guess about how the rest of your lives might turn out. But nobody knows the future. It would be smart to know yourself and your BF as well as possible before making lifelong committmentsmunicate everything. Hopes, dreams, plans, values.
In the end the choice is yours. The temple ceremony says “by your free will and choice.” My prayer for you is that you will choose your (judiciously and carefully selected) love, and forever love your choice.
P.S. You mentioned that marriage outside the temple might not be forever. I don’t believe that. I believe that God will honor any and all marriages in which the couple has truly become “one.” I do believe that sometimes the belief that one partner must conform to XYZ in order to qualify for an eternal marriage sometimes becomes a wedge in the relationship and becomes a barrier to acheiving “oneness.”
“It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness.” C. A. Elwood
“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223
“I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene” Heber13
Re: Dating a non member
I can share my experience. I limited myself to Mormon dates. This narrowed the available population of suitable marriage partners considerably, and it took me until I was 28 to get married. It’s been a tough marriage but one in which I’ve grown progressively happier over the years as we’ve adjusted to, and accepted each others’s personalities. If you find yourself short on suitable people with similar values, move into some area where there is a lot of choice.
My advice is NOT to fall into the trap of thinking that if you don’t marry an RM in the temple immediately your life is doomed (scorched earth policy romans turer till Costa Rica, as DA said recently on this site). Also, learn about the dynamics of healthy marriages. An INVALUABLE site is marriagebuilders. A Harvard PhD holder and marriage counselor, Willard Harley Junior brings a practical theory of what makes a happy marriage. Try to find someone who meets those needs without even trying to be anything but themself. And then, make sure you naturally meet their needs by being who you are. This will mean observing their family, getting to know them VERY well in all sort s of situations, and observing their own family dynamics. There are a ton of clues.
