This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Editor's note • Robert Kirby is off this week. This is a reprint of an earlier column.
It's no secret that Mormons believe in eternal marriage. The big mystery to a lot of people is why anyone would want to be married that long.
There was a time when I thought everyone would be wowed by the idea of being hitched forever. This is understandable considering that the main reason most people get married in the first place is because they're in love, even if it was an obstetrician who told them.
I mostly had this idea when I was an LDS missionary tramping around South America. Because we were the only church offering this option, my companions and I made some serious headway with "Families are Forever."
Came the day, however, that we knocked on the door of an older widow. We gave her the standard spiel and waited for her to weep with joy. Instead, she flew into a rage.
I won't quote the woman verbatim here, mainly because she was speaking Spanish, but also because she used the espanol equivalent of "sonuva—" about 40 times in reference to her dead husband.
It made my companion start singing a hymn.
She basically said that eternal marriage didn't sound like her idea of a heavenly reward. Her 28-year marriage worked out to be 27 years longer than she needed to find out that her husband was a stingy, perverted, lazy and abusive drunk.
Before slamming the door, she added that the only bad feeling she had about her husband's death was that she hadn't killed him herself.
Needless to say, this put a wrinkle in our gospel marketing methods. Thereafter, we weren't so quick to tell people that Mormons offered a doozy of a wedding plan. In a Catholic country where divorce was illegal, it turned out that not everyone was keen on being with their significant other forever.
However, I'm happy to point out that some good did come of this experience. When I got a Dear John letter from my girlfriend the following week, it didn't bother me as much as it might have before.
I remember thinking, "Hey, better now than in 14.7 bajillion years."
But just because some people hate being married doesn't mean everyone else does. Plenty of people out there like the idea of being married, so much so that eternity seems pretty pointless if they aren't going to spend it with their spouse. I'm one of them.
I've been thinking that maybe what Mormons need is an eternal-marriage prenuptial agreement. That might make a temple marriage more attractive these days. Something like this:
We the undersigned agree to marry for the purposes of eternity provided that in the event of a divorce, the following stipulations are adhered to jointly, individually and eternally.
• Should a divorce be sought, neither party shall retain Satan as legal counsel.
• Both parties agree not to lay legal claim to any portion of the other party's celestial reward that existed prior to the marriage.
• The children of the union shall be divided evenly between both parties with the exception of those children currently in hell.
• Neither party may subpoena God as a character witness.
• The halos of both parties shall be sold and the profits therefrom divided evenly between the separating parties and their respective lawyers.
There, that oughta do it.
Then again, couples who actually get to stay together for eternity must first dump the earthly meanness that makes divorce such a land office business in the first place.
Never mind.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.