We have been married for over 40 years and are lifelong members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Our story together began when we met in Spain as missionaries in 1972, and married a few years later.
We lived the gospel principles to the best of our ability and both of us held many Church callings during the first 30 years of marriage as we raised our children. During that time we experienced health, time, and work pressures similar to many families and struggled to maintain a close relationship.
We gradually came to realize that faithful Church service and obedience to Church principles do not by themselves ensure a thriving joyful marriage relationship. It was clear that we had been in a parallel marriage for some time. Church manuals about marriage and families certainly contained important principles but fell short in helping us apply those principles to complex and emotionally laden situations. We realized that we were missing something important and set out to explore the best resources we could find.
Through that years-long process, we discovered new ways to understand marriage relationships that helped us transform our relationship in multiple dimensions. Better still, we found that the most useful information, whatever the source, was very much in harmony with gospel doctrine. But we also found that the church “culture” has evolved in many ways to create wrong models of key relationship topics such as forgiveness, conflict resolution, and sexuality. Our discoveries eventually led to sharing what we found with members of our ward and stake in sacrament meeting talks, classes, 5th Sunday presentations and training programs.
This website grew out of a desire to provide LDS leaders, teachers, and individual members access to what we have learned and taught. The material is provided in the hope that each user will be able to find specific and practical ways to improve the relationships that most concern them.
We have been married for over 40 years and are lifelong members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Our story together began when we met in Spain as missionaries in 1972, and married a few years later.