Happily Ever After

...does it exist?  Heaven?  Hell?  Fairytale weddings?  Picture perfect marriages without divorce?  YES!

50/50 chances...Divorce! Flipping a coin! Finding an IED! Choice! Happily ever after!

Truthfully, your odds are that if you're married and both people are giving their 50%...that makes 100% effort.  Right?!  And things go right! Right?!

I mention this because you don't have to give 100%. 

"Marriage brings greater possibilities for happiness than does any other human relationship. Yet some married couples fall short of their full potential. They let their romance become rusty, take each other for granted, allow other interests or clouds of neglect to obscure the vision of what their marriage really could be. Marriages would be happier if nurtured more carefully." -- Russell M. Nelson, Ensign April 2006.


If each devotes only 50% to marriage & their spouse, and is free to choose the other 50% of their energy to everything else, that is realistic.

Because giving 100% to something is impossible and ends in what our boys like to spell out as F-A-I-L and sometimes they even mention the horrid "epic failure" during games.

I read in the news about marriages ending and one partner saying "I gave 100% and so-and-so gave nothing, I'm done!"  Hmmm....sorry!  But you're lying!!!  At best you probably gave 50% maybe more, maybe less...maybe far less!

The problem is that your vision of "happily ever after" is a marriage scale where the husband is on one side and the wife is on the other...it's not a game where the two compete to be equal. 

Because together (married man and woman) they are already equal (although different roles, not less than the other). 

So the marriage scale is more effective when viewed with both the husband and wife side by side and the Lord on the other...when everyone is aligned with His purposes, both will succeed eternally and balance achieved.  Both working together on an eternal marriage.

"Your eternal helpmate will gently hold you to your potential"-- James E. Faust, Ensign May 1988.

So...hold steady...put in your 50+ percent and feel the weight off your shoulders because you can have HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!  Yes, you can!!