The following posts from my personal blog give more detail into the two points above, if you want a fuller picture of my thoughts on them:

I see through my glass, darkly – as I play my saxophone in harmony with the other instruments in God’s orchestra. (h/t Elder Joseph Wirthlin)

Dating sucks

Even if people view many things differently, the core Gospel principles (LOVE; belief in the unseen but hoped; self-reflective change; symbolic cleansing; striving to recognize the will of the divine; never giving up) are universal.

If I were to find myself single tomorrow – I would be just as aweful at it as I ever was. and that is substantially aweful.

Temple marriage in NOT the formula for happiness. But for many Mormons, it IS A PART of the recipe for happiness.

Only you can know if you have enough in common with your BF to offset the religious difference. Only you can know how important different riligious principles are to you or to him.

I say “only you can know” but I don’t believe you can know really. You are making an educated guess about how the rest of your lives might turn out. But nobody knows the future. It would be smart to know yourself and your BF as well as possible before making lifelong committmentsmunicate everything. Hopes, dreams, plans, values.

In the end the choice is yours. The temple ceremony says “by your free will and choice.” My prayer for you is that you will choose your (judiciously and carefully selected) love, and forever love your choice.

P.S. You mentioned that marriage outside the temple might not be forever. I don’t believe that. I believe that God will honor any and all marriages in which the couple has truly become “one.” I do believe that sometimes the belief that one partner must conform to XYZ in order to qualify for an eternal marriage sometimes becomes a wedge in the relationship and becomes a barrier to acheiving “oneness.”

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