I Took Notes on Marriage Long Before I Was Married

By Crystal Virgin

"A good marriage is not self-centered. The moments I have felt most at peace are the moments I was genuinely thinking about him."

At the end of a hard day, my husband and I end up in the same place.

In bed, side by side. Sometimes watching our show. Sometimes reading. Sometimes just holding each other in the quiet after the kids are finally asleep. It doesn't look like much from the outside. But it is my favorite part of every day — the moment when I don't have to hold it together anymore. When I can just be myself, with the one person who knows exactly what the day cost me and doesn't need me to explain it.

That is our reset. And I think it might be the most important thing we do.

What I Was Watching Before I Got Married

I am the sixth of eight children. By the time I got married, I had watched most of my siblings get married before me. And being the observant introvert that I am, I was paying attention.

Not in a critical way — my siblings have good marriages and they are good people. But I noticed things. The way spouses spoke about each other when the other wasn't in the room. The way disagreements played out in public. The small moments of being dismissive or disagreeable that accumulate over time into something larger than any one moment.

I was young, but I was taking notes. I was quietly building a picture of what I wanted — and what I didn't — long before I knew who I was going to marry.

When I met my husband, I knew. Not just that I loved him, but that he was someone I could build the kind of marriage I had always wanted. Eight years in, I still believe that.

Walking Side by Side

A few days ago I was reading in the Gospel Library and came across a talk by Elder Ulisses Soares that stopped me completely. In his October 2022 General Conference address, In Partnership with the Lord, he said:

"There is no superiority or inferiority in the marriage relationship, and neither [spouse] walks ahead of or behind the other. They walk side by side, as equals, the divine offspring of God. They become one in thought, desire, and purpose with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. … [Such couples] walk together with respect, gratitude, and love, forgetting about themselves and seeking each other's well-being on their journey to eternity."

I read that and thought: that's what we're trying to do. That's the thing I was watching for in all those years of observing marriages before my own.

Not perfection. Not a marriage without hard days or miscommunication or seasons where we are both running on empty. But a marriage where neither of us is walking ahead of or behind the other. Where we are genuinely trying to seek each other's well-being — not just our own.

I encourage everyone to read that talk in full. It is worth your time.

What a Good Marriage Actually Requires

Here is what I've learned in eight years: a good marriage is not self-centered. It cannot be.

The moments where I have been most unhappy in my marriage are the moments where I was most focused on myself — on what I wasn't getting, what wasn't being done the way I wanted, what I felt I deserved. And the moments where I have felt most at peace are the moments where I was genuinely thinking about him. About what he needs. About how I can make his day lighter.

That is not martyrdom. It's not losing yourself. It's the simple, daily practice of caring about someone else as much as you care about yourself — which is, not coincidentally, exactly what the gospel asks of us in every relationship.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said it simply: "Great marriages are built brick by brick, day after day, over a lifetime." Not in the grand gestures. In the accumulated small ones. The reset at the end of the day. The thank you for the ordinary things. The choice to speak well of your spouse when they aren't in the room.

Brick by brick. Day after day.

What Makes Ours Feel Special

I don't say this to brag — I say it because I think it's worth naming what you have when you have it.

My love for my husband is sure. His love for me is constant. We are not always happy — marriage is too long and too real for that. But underneath the hard days and the exhausted evenings and the seasons where we are both giving more than we have, there is something steady. Something that doesn't waver.

We respect each other. We are grateful for each other. We do big and small things to show it. And at the end of every day, no matter what the day held, we find each other in that quiet place and exhale.

That is the Lord in our marriage. I believe that sincerely. Because the kind of love that stays — that resets, that returns, that chooses the other person again every morning — doesn't come from nowhere. It is cultivated. And it is sustained by something larger than just the two of us.