Equal Partnership between Men and Women

     Going off of y last post a bit about spending quality family time together, who should initiate the time spent together? Should the father because he's the head of the household? Or should the mother because she spends the most time with the kids? There are so many different possibilities that could happen that you can't just pick one. But you should counsel together and share the amount of responsibility together and this applies to anything that happens in marriage.



     As quoted in Successful Marriages and Families, Elder Earl C. Tingey said, "You must not misunderstand what the Lord meant when Adam was told he was to have a helpmeet. A helpmeet is a companion suited to or equal to us. We walk side by side with a helpmeet, not one before or behind the other. A helpmeet results in an absolute equal partnership between a husband and a wife. Eve was to be equal to Adam as a husband and wife are to be equal to each other (Hawkins, Dollahite, Draper; 2012). Elder Tingey, now an Emeritus Seventy, was the sealer at my wedding a little over a year ago and I remember the feeling that I had as I listened to him speak about marriage and the blessings that come from living the commandments.

     Elder Tingey talked about the Plan of Happiness and the act of Eve in partaking of the forbidden fruit. It was not a folly of her choosing, but a wise choice that she made in order to make sure that we had the opportunity to come here to earth and experience life. In the scriptures it does not directly state that Adam and Eve were married, but we know that during their relationship/marriage, they made sure to keep the Lord in every counsel they held.

     By doing this in our marriages/relationships, we are opening the door to revelation and help within our marriages/relationships. We cannot rely merely alone on our own knowledge as we go through this life. For example, you need both spouses receiving revelation when you have a family and this allows you to determine what is best for your family because Heavenly Father won't leave us empty-handed.

     So when you feel like your marriage/relationship is suffering, make sure that you both sit down together and discuss what it is you feel is going wrong and work out a plan of how to help each other. If this doesn't work, make sure to go and ask Heavenly Father about what you think you should do to help your marriage/relationship. Heavenly Father is always there to help us in our times of need and we need to make sure that we keep him on the loop of our relationships and he will always steer us in the right direction. Just keep that in mind.