Essay

Finding Someone to Marry

You may really want a temple marriage and still look around and think, Where am I supposed to find someone I actually want to marry? Maybe you have gone on dates, tried an app, attended activities, or let friends set you up, and you keep meeting good people without feeling much interest. Or maybe you are wondering whether being more proactive means lowering your standards, forcing attraction, or trying to talk yourself into a relationship simply because you want to get married.

Those are good questions. Let’s start with something important: the restored gospel does not teach that there is one hidden “soulmate” you are supposed to track down. Instead, you are invited to choose wisely and prayerfully, using both revelation and your agency. The goal is to find a good man or woman with whom you can make and keep covenants and build a Christ-centered family—not someone who perfectly matches every preference you may have developed over time.

Look for Someone Who Can Build the Kind of Marriage God Describes

One of the best places to begin thinking about whom to date is actually the part of The Family: A Proclamation to the World that describes what makes family life happy and strong.

The proclamation teaches that “happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.” It then names the principles that establish and maintain successful marriages and families: faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

That gives you a useful way to think about dating. Of course attraction matters. So do personality, friendship, and whether you genuinely enjoy being together. But if you are thinking seriously about marriage, it also helps to notice the qualities that will matter years from now when you are making difficult decisions, raising children, handling money, facing disappointment, serving in the Church, caring for one another through illness, or trying to keep Christ at the center of your home.

Does this person have real faith? Can he or she apologize and repent? Is there kindness when things do not go as planned? Do you respect this person? Does this person keep commitments, work hard, serve other people, forgive, and know how to enjoy life without setting covenants aside?

You are not looking for someone who has perfected all of those qualities. You are looking for someone who is sincerely becoming the kind of person who can build that kind of marriage—and you should be becoming that kind of person too.

What Does It Mean to Be Equally Yoked?

Paul gave Christians in Corinth an image that can help here when he taught, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” in 2 Corinthians 6.

Paul was not writing a modern dating guide. He was teaching disciples who lived among beliefs and practices that could pull them away from their commitment to Christ. A yoke joined two animals so they could pull the same load together. If they continually pulled in different directions, it became much harder to move forward.

That principle matters in marriage.

For a Latter-day Saint, being equally yoked means more than finding someone whose membership record says the same thing yours does. The deeper question is whether the two of you are actually moving in the same spiritual direction. Do you both love Jesus Christ? Do you both want temple covenants? Do you take chastity, repentance, the sacrament, prayer, family, service, and raising children in the gospel seriously?

You do not need identical personalities, careers, hobbies, or family backgrounds. Differences can make a marriage richer. But you do need enough shared faith and shared purpose that you can keep walking toward Christ together.

What 125 Years of Marriage Can Teach You About Dating

That becomes much more concrete in this short LDS Living video featuring three couples with more than 125 years of combined marriage experience.

One woman explains that when she married Jim, he was not a member of the Church. At first, she thought loving him during this life would be enough. After their children came, she began to understand more deeply how much she wanted her husband and children to be part of her eternal family. Looking back on those early years, she says one important reason they made it through was that “we both loved the Lord.”

The other couples talk about qualities that sound remarkably similar to the Family Proclamation: kindness, compassion, patience, respect, and learning how to stay committed through the ordinary difficulties of life. One of them offers especially helpful advice: “You cannot change someone to fit the mold you want.”

That is worth remembering while you are dating. Do not build a relationship around who you hope someone might eventually become. Pay attention to the person who is actually in front of you—their faith, character, choices, direction, and willingness to grow.

You Are Not Trying to Find Your One Predestined Person

President Spencer W. Kimball gave helpful counsel about this. He taught that “‘Soul mates’ are fiction and an illusion” and that many good men and women can build successful marriages when both are willing to do what a good marriage requires.

That does not mean that whom you marry does not matter. It matters enormously. President Kimball also taught that choosing a spouse deserves careful thought, prayer, fasting, and serious consideration because marriage will shape your life, your spouse’s life, and the lives of your future children.

But his teaching can take some unnecessary pressure out of dating. You do not have to keep wondering whether someone slightly more compatible might be waiting around the next corner. And you do not need a revelation telling you that this is the only person on earth you could possibly marry.

Attraction matters. Friendship matters. Shared faith matters. Character matters enormously. But a strong marriage is not created because two finished people happened to find each other. Much of what eventually makes a husband and wife deeply suited to one another develops as they choose each other, worship together, sacrifice, repent, forgive, work, laugh, and grow.

When Standards Quietly Turn Into a Search for Perfection

Dating today can make it surprisingly easy to keep comparing. An app can always show you another profile. Social media can expose you to endless examples of attractive, successful, funny, spiritual people. Romantic entertainment can also create the impression that when you meet the right person, you should know quickly and feel certain almost all the time.

You can understand why that is appealing. You should want to love the person you marry, and attraction should not be treated as unimportant. You should also take serious concerns seriously, especially dishonesty, contempt, sexual pressure, abuse, irresponsibility, addiction, or opposition to your covenants.

But wise standards are different from expecting a potential spouse to arrive without ordinary human weaknesses or uncertainty.

Research from BYU’s Wheatley Institute helps make that distinction clearer. In The Soulmate Trap, Jason Carroll and his colleagues studied 615 couples and found that highly connected couples were especially marked by commitment, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, meaningful time together, and deliberate effort in the relationship. The researchers also warned that soulmate thinking can lead to “dating paralysis” when people keep waiting to find the perfect relationship rather than learning how good relationships are built.

There is something useful in that finding for a single adult. The qualities that make marriage strong later are often qualities you can begin noticing while you are dating now.

So How Can You Be More Proactive?

President Dallin H. Oaks has spoken very directly to young adults about dating. He has encouraged single adults to move beyond patterns of indefinite hanging out and create actual dating opportunities that can lead toward marriage. In a 2023 worldwide devotional, he repeated that counsel, while Sister Kristen Oaks encouraged women who feel as though they are simply waiting for a marriage prospect to “stop waiting and start preparing.”

Being proactive does not mean becoming anxious about marriage or treating every date like an audition for eternity. It simply means using your agency instead of waiting for circumstances to do all the work.

If you are a man, that may mean asking women on real dates before you already know whether you are seriously interested. You can get to know someone without having decided where the relationship is going. You may hear no occasionally. That is part of dating, not evidence that something has gone terribly wrong.

Women do not have to sit back and hope someone notices them either. You can make sincere interest easier to recognize, say yes to reasonable opportunities, ask friends for introductions, spend time in places where you are likely to meet other covenant-minded people, and widen your social circle. You can also initiate conversation and create opportunities to get to know someone better without feeling that you are somehow taking over the entire dating process.

For both men and women, it may help to look at three areas.

First, separate your standards from your preferences. The qualities in the Family Proclamation are a good place to begin. Faith, repentance, respect, compassion, work, forgiveness, and love will matter tremendously in marriage. Then look at the other things you prefer—appearance, height, career, hobbies, personality, social style—and consider whether any preferences have quietly become requirements.

Second, create more opportunities to meet people. Ask someone on a date. Accept a reasonable invitation. Ask married friends if they know someone you might enjoy meeting. Go to institute, service projects, activities, dinners, or gatherings where you can actually talk with new people. If an app expands your dating pool in a useful way, use it intentionally rather than endlessly browsing.

Third, give good people enough time to become interesting. You do not have to keep dating someone you genuinely do not enjoy or feel attracted to. But if someone is faithful, kind, emotionally safe, interesting to talk with, and there is some attraction, you may not need to decide after one date whether you could marry that person. Sometimes affection grows as you see more of someone’s character—how they serve, worship, laugh, handle problems, treat their family, and care about other people.

A Few Questions Worth Thinking About

• Have I turned any personal preferences into requirements that may not matter very much in a happy Christ-centered marriage?
• When I meet someone, am I looking only for immediate chemistry and certainty, or am I also noticing character, discipleship, friendship, attraction, and shared direction?
• Am I creating enough opportunities for the Lord to guide me, or am I waiting to feel certain about someone before I am willing to date them?

Being proactive does not mean you can make marriage happen on your preferred timetable. Your dating pool may genuinely be small. You may meet people who are not interested in you, or you may simply not meet someone compatible for a while. Other people have agency, and some faithful men and women remain single much longer than they expected. Faithful circumstances outside your control will not cost you the eternal blessings God has promised.

But there is still a great deal you can do. You can meet more people, take more reasonable chances, become clearer about what really matters, and keep becoming the kind of husband or wife you hope to find.

Jesus Christ belongs at the center of all of that. As you learn faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, compassion, work, and covenant keeping now, you are preparing not only to find a good spouse but to become one. You do not need to find a flawless person or know the entire future before you begin. You are looking for a good man or woman who wants to follow Christ with you and, through temple covenants and years of faithful choices, build the kind of marriage the Lord has taught can bring deep and lasting happiness.