“My Advice to Young Adults about Dating and Marriage,” Liahona, July 2025.
Young Adults
My Advice to Young Adults about Dating and Marriage
Dating is one way to figure out if someone is the right person to start a longer journey with.
Illustrations by Stephen Neilsen
I like to think of dating as a tool.
Tools help you achieve a specific purpose. The purpose of dating is to develop relationships that lead to marriage and, by extension, bring to pass God’s plan for His children.
Dating is one way to figure out if someone is the right person to start a longer journey with. As President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency, taught, “My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage.”
When we talk about the “why” of dating, we’re talking about building a lasting relationship together. We’re talking about connecting ourselves and each other to the Savior. But sometimes, if we’re not careful, we can become so focused on going on dates and getting to know people that marriage becomes an afterthought.
I’d like to offer you some advice on how you can improve your dating experience. Most of my advice comes from my own personal experience, and I hope it will be helpful to you.
Make Dating Deliberate
If you’re ever asked how you’re dating, I hope that “intentionally” is one of your first responses. Let me try and illustrate this with an example.
More than half of my and my wife’s time dating was long-distance. I met Catherine while we were in school in Santiago, Chile. We started dating, but she moved back home to Antofagasta before I finished my degree. Because we wanted our relationship to develop, once or twice a month, I made the 20-hour bus ride back to Antofagasta on Thursday afternoons, spent weekends with Catherine (including church services), and took the bus another 20 hours back to Santiago to be at my 8:00 a.m. class on Monday morning.
On the days we couldn’t be together, we talked on the phone. Since we didn’t have cell phones at that time, I bought a phone plan that allowed me to make unlimited calls on public phones. I spent hours tethered to a phone booth, and if anyone else needed to use it, I would have to hang up and call Catherine back as soon as they were done.
Throughout this experience, because of the many obstacles in our relationship, I had to learn to be intentional about how I communicated with Catherine.
I invite you to make dating deliberate and intentional. President Russell M. Nelson has asked us to be intentional with our discipleship. We can also seek to be intentional in the way we date.
We should ask important questions:
-
What do you think about life, family, and most importantly, the Savior?
-
I know what kind of things you do and don’t like to do, but what are your feelings about the gospel?
-
What are your standards and morals?
Intentional questions should be accompanied by doing a variety of intentional activities. Have fun, but be sure to do spiritual things together too. Do activities that will help you understand and truly get to know each other.
Faith over Fear
After you’ve been dating for a while, it can seem like a daunting decision to choose to get married. I was still nervous right up until the moment Catherine and I were married!
Choosing to get married might be a hard decision, but it’s not a decision you make just one time. Choosing to get married means choosing to recommit to your eternal companion throughout your life and strengthening that commitment together.
When you have questions about marriage or the gospel, you should “study it out in your mind; then you must ask [the Lord] if it be right” (Doctrine and Covenants 9:8) You should also ask yourself, “Am I willing to choose to be part of this for the rest of my life?”
When I got married, some people asked me if I was nervous that I would end up getting divorced like my parents. My answer has always been no. When I got married, I decided that I would do whatever it took to make my marriage work out. That meant choosing every day to follow the Savior and be joyfully married to my wife. I chose not to let fear of divorce drive me away from a good and righteous decision.
President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said: “Once there has been genuine illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. … Face your doubts. Master your fears. ‘Cast not away therefore your confidence.’”
Don’t Wait for Happiness
The reality is that there are many of you who have very good and sincere desires to find a companion. You know this is a good and righteous desire, but when you’re struggling to find someone you’re compatible with, you feel stuck in your progress on the covenant path.
Regarding this, Sister Kristen M. Oaks said: “If you find yourself marking time waiting for a marriage prospect, stop waiting and start preparing. Prepare yourself for life—by education, experience, and planning. Don’t wait for happiness to be thrust upon you. Seek out opportunities for service and learning. And most important, trust in the Lord, ‘calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come’ [Mosiah 4:11]. And I promise as you do, happiness will come to you.”
Your journey on the covenant path has not stopped because you are not married yet. You still have your covenantal connection with the Savior. If you are struggling with rejection, loneliness, or fear, bring Him into your struggles. He will succor you. He will help you.
For some, dating with the intent to find an eternal companion will not bear fruit immediately. For others it will. No matter what, I know that God will fulfill every single promise He has made to us if we are intentional and trust in Him.
No matter where you are in the world or what is happening or not happening in your life, because of Jesus Christ, you can have joy in all circumstances. He and His teachings are always the answer.