Essay

What If Marriage Hasn’t Happened Yet?

If marriage and family are central to God’s plan, what should you be doing before marriage comes? Maybe you are dating and hoping to marry soon. Maybe you have been single longer than you expected. You may be divorced, widowed, or experiencing same-sex attraction while trying to live faithfully and wondering where you fit in a gospel that teaches so much about eternal family.

These are important questions. The answer is not to put your life on hold until marriage happens. Marriage is part of God’s eternal plan, but you do not have to wait for marriage before you can grow, serve, build meaningful relationships, keep your covenants, and experience real joy. You can prepare for marriage while also building a good life with Jesus Christ now.

The Lord taught the early Saints not to wait for instructions about every good thing they could do. He told them to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause” and to act for themselves because “the power is in them” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:26–28).

What If Christ Becomes More Important Than Anything Else?

Christian author Becket Cook speaks openly about experiencing same-sex attraction and choosing to live a single, celibate Christian life. In this video, he describes how following Jesus changed the way he understood his identity, desires, and future.

Marriage Is Central to God’s Plan, but It Is Not the Beginning of Your Identity

The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God” and that “the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”

It also teaches that every person is a “beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents” with “a divine nature and destiny.”

These teachings explain why marriage and family matter. They also remind you that your identity and purpose did not begin when you married. You are already a child of God. You already have people to love, gifts to develop, covenants to keep, and meaningful work to do.

When Culture Gives You Only Two Choices

Popular culture often offers two incomplete messages.

One says that marriage and children are the only things that make life meaningful. If you are not married, something must be wrong with you.

The other says that marriage and family are unnecessary—that independence, career success, personal freedom, or self-fulfillment should be enough.

Both messages contain part of the truth. Marriage is not the only source of meaning, and single adults can live rich and purposeful lives. But marriage and family are still completely central to God’s plan.

The difficult part is allowing one true idea to become the whole truth. Independence can become isolation. Protecting yourself from disappointment can become an unwillingness to hope. A meaningful single life can slowly become a reason to stop leaving room for marriage, family, or another person.

The gospel offers a wider view. You can live fully now while still believing that marriage and family matter.

The Lord Has Given You Work to Do Now

The Lord taught the early Saints not to wait for instructions about every good thing they could do. He told them to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause” and to act for themselves because “the power is in them” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:26–28).

That principle applies to this season of adulthood.

You can look at the life God has already given you and begin doing good with it. You can develop your gifts, strengthen relationships, serve others, deepen your testimony, and become the kind of person who is prepared for covenant love—whether or not marriage comes according to your timeline.

Build a Full Life Without Closing the Door to Marriage

Building a meaningful single life does not require deciding that marriage no longer matters. It also does not mean pretending that being single is always easy.

Sheri Dew has spoken honestly about wanting marriage and family while also living a full life of Church service, work, friendships, teaching, mentoring, and temple worship. In a Q&A conversation, she responds to a question about how single women can value marriage and family while also pursuing education and a career.

Her example shows that two things can be true at the same time: marriage can be a sincere desire, and life can still be meaningful, productive, and spiritually rich before marriage comes.

Purpose Can Help You Build a Meaningful Life

Research offers an interesting parallel.

A longitudinal study of more than 6,000 young adults examined what researchers called a “sense of mission”—the feeling that life has meaningful direction and that you have something worthwhile to contribute.

Young adults with a stronger sense of mission later reported greater life satisfaction, more positive emotions, higher self-esteem, greater emotional well-being, and more involvement in volunteering. The study does not show that purpose removes loneliness or guarantees marriage. It does suggest that meaningful direction and service to others can support well-being during young adulthood (read the study).

This connects with the Lord’s invitation to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause.” Your life is not simply preparation for the day marriage begins. The way you serve, love, work, worship, and develop your gifts now is part of who you are becoming.

You Can Strengthen Families Before You Have One of Your Own

Many opportunities to strengthen families may already be close to you—in your ward, extended family, neighborhood, workplace, and friendships.

You might notice a teenager who often feels left out. You could become a dependable aunt, uncle, teacher, ministering brother or sister, neighbor, or family friend. You might help a young family, serve in the temple, participate in missionary work, invite people into your home, teach a class, use your professional skills to help someone, or simply become a person others know they can count on.

As you serve, you grow too. You learn to work with people whose personalities and needs differ from your own. You become more patient, dependable, generous, observant, and willing to make room for others.

These qualities bless people now, and they can also prepare you for marriage and parenthood if those blessings come.

What If Your Circumstances Are Complicated?

Alex Lindstrom offers another Latter-day Saint perspective. Alex is single and experiences same-sex attraction. In “Seeing Myself in the Family Proclamation,” he writes about wondering where he belongs in a proclamation that speaks so strongly about marriage and family.

As he studied the Proclamation, he began with its teaching about identity. He is a son of God with a divine nature and destiny. That truth did not answer every question about his future, but it helped him understand that he had a place in the gospel.

He could keep his covenants, worship in the temple, serve, build meaningful friendships, support God’s teachings about marriage, and continue following Christ.

The same principle applies if you are divorced, widowed, or living through circumstances you did not choose. You do not need to know exactly how your future will unfold before your life can have purpose.

Heavenly Father knows your desires, your circumstances, and the difference between what you can choose and what you cannot.

No faithful disciple is forgotten because his or her life does not currently look like the ideal described in the Proclamation. God knows what you desire, what you have lost, what you have been denied, and what you are still trying to understand.

Questions to Consider

• Am I waiting for marriage before allowing myself to grow, serve, or experience joy?
• Which messages about singleness, marriage, and independence have been shaping the way I see my future?
• Have disappointment or fear caused me to stop hoping for something I still want?
• Who has God already placed in my life whom I could strengthen or serve?
• Am I building a meaningful life while still leaving room for marriage, family, and another person’s needs?