Chapter 19
Sanctification and Cooperation:
How Prayer Helps Strengthen Relationships in Good Times and Heal Relationships in Bad Times
Nathan M. Lambert
Quotes and passages to focus on from chapter 20 -
Drawing on the powers of heaven through prayer is a powerful resource available to couples that can make a good relationship better and can heal a faltering marriage. Prayer is included as a key principle for building a successful marriage and family in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” The objective of this brief chapter is to describe two models in the social science literature that depict how prayer can strengthen a relationship when things are going well or restore love and unity during conflict: sanctification and cooperative goals. When people perceive something as sacred, it changes the way they treat it. For example, workers who defined their work as a “calling” reported missing fewer days than those who defined it as a “job” or a “career” (Wrz-esniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997). Also, Mahoney and colleagues (2005) reported that those who viewed their bodies as sacred placed a higher priority on daily physical exercise.
Mahoney and colleagues (1999) introduced the idea of “sanctification of marriage” as perceiving one’s marriage as being holy and sacred. They defined sanctification of marriage as a process by which secular aspects of one’s relationship are perceived as having spiritual significance (Mahoney, Pargament, Murray-Swank, & Murray-Swank, 2003). For example, a wedding ring in the secular world represents commitment, but a sanctified view of the wedding ring could symbolize an eternal union between a man and a woman. A “sanctified” relationship ought to be a happy relationship as people go to great lengths to protect and preserve that which they perceive to be sacred (Pargament & Mahoney, 2005). In fact, Mahoney and colleagues (1999) found that the perception of marriage as holy and sacred was related to greater global marital adjustment, more perceived benefits from marriage, fewer communication problems, and less overall conflict. Other researchers have found that perception of the relationship as being sacred was related to enhanced fidelity for married couples (Dollahite & Lambert, 2007) as well as for young adult romantic relationships (Fincham, Lambert, & Beach, 2010).
A key aspect of coming to view a relationship as sacred is to first include God as an active member of the relationship. Ecclesiastes 4:12 refers to a type of “threefold cord” bond that is established when God is included in the partnership when it states, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Many couples report such an inclusion of God in their relationship. Butler and Harper (1994) found that for some religious couples, God is more involved in the marriage than any mortal individual. Other couples described God as a “crucial family member” (Griffith, 1986) with whom the couple has a personal and often a daily relationship (Butler & Harper, 1994). In one study, highly religious couples reported that including God in their marriage enhanced and stabilized marital commitment (Lambert & Dollahite, 2008). Thus, several studies support the hypothesis that religious individuals tend to include God in their marriage, but what might couples do to include God in their relationship and how might doing so affect how they view their relationship?
Prayer is the means by which individuals may invite God to play an active role in their relationship. Including God in a relationship as one of the “threefold cords” through praying for one’s partner should imbue the relationship with perceived sacredness. As individuals pray specifically for the well-being of their partner, they come to perceive their relationship with this per-son as being holy and sacred (Fincham et al., 2010).
Prayer can be a key component in coming to perceive a marriage relationship as sacred. Coming to view the relationship in this way can be a protective factor, buffering the marriage against certain challenges (such as infidelity) that can diminish or destroy a marriage. Christ advised his Apostles to “watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). Hence, praying is one way that we can defend ourselves against the temptations that can tear a marriage apart.
Conflict is a universal part of marriage. For many, unresolved contention eventually leads to the dissolution of the marriage. Prayer, however, can help protect couples from divorce by healing the relationship and restoring harmony to the marriage. Elder Dallin H. Oaks (2007, p. 72) advised:
If you are already descending into the low state of marriage-in-name-only, please join hands, kneel together, and prayerfully plead for help and the healing power of the Atonement. Your humble and united pleadings will bring you closer to the Lord and to each other and will help you in the hard climb back to marital harmony.
According to Goal Theory (Fincham & Beach, 1999), two primary goals exist in any relationship: cooperative goals and emergent goals. Cooperative goals reflect a win–win mentality in which couples are actively helping each other to succeed. Conversely, emergent goals reflect a win–lose mentality and commonly surface during times of conflict. For example, rather than focus on generating a solution to the problem at hand, partners locked in conflict may find themselves focused on getting their way—or at least focused on not getting proved wrong or losing the argument to the other partner. Prayer may be a medium that transforms emergent goals and restores cooperative goals to the relationship.
Some preliminary research suggests that prayer has a transformative effect on goals by deescalating conflict. For instance, Butler, Gardner, and Bird (1998) interviewed several couples who reported that prayer invoked a couple–God system, or partnership with God, that helped them during situations of conflict. For instance, couples reported that including God in their marriage through prayer appeared to be a “softening” event that facilitated problem-solving and reconciliation. This couple–God system mentioned by Butler and colleagues is similar to the “threefold cord” metaphor mentioned previously.
A qualitative study found that religious practices such as prayer helped couples to manage their anger during marital conflict (Marsh & Dallos, 2001). Furthermore, couples in another study reported that prayer alleviated tension and facilitated open communication during conflict situations (Lambert & Dollahite, 2006). Results from these studies indicate that prayer can help couples manage the escalation of emotions typically experienced during conflict, suggesting that emergent goals are mitigated by prayer. However, given that all of these studies relied on retrospective reports of the helpfulness of prayers, they could be biased (for example, religious couples wanting to make a case for beneficial effects of their religion). The next section describes a set of studies that did not rely on retrospective reports but rather tested the theoretical model more directly.
Elder Russell M. Nelson (2006, p. 38) said, “Good communication is also enhanced by prayer. To pray with specific mention of a spouse’s good deed (or need) nurtures a marriage.” Thus, according to Elder Nelson, praying specifically for a partner’s well-being is especially good for communication. A research team that I have been a part of examined this type of prayer in a series of studies. Given that feelings are often hurt during conflict, necessitating forgiveness, we hypothesized that praying for a partner would increase forgiveness. Also, in these studies we examined not just any kind of prayer, but specifically the impact of praying for a partner’s well-being (Lambert, Fincham, DeWall, Pond, & Beach, under review).
In the first study, participants reported how much they
prayed for their romantic partner’s well-being. Three weeks later they came to our research lab and were told to discuss something their partner had done to annoy or upset them. Objective coders, blind to study hypotheses, rated how vengeful participants acted toward their partner as they talked about the upsetting incident. Consistent with our hypothesis, participants who prayed the most for their romantic partner were rated as being the least vengeful during their interactions, indicating that praying for a partner seemed to facilitate forgiveness.
In the second study, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: partner-focused prayer or partner-focused positive thought. Participants were required to engage in their assigned activity every day for four weeks and to report their compliance twice a week in an online log. Meanwhile, the romantic partners of the participants completed a forgiveness measure about the participants before and after they engaged in their assigned four-week activity. We predicted that praying for one’s romantic partner, compared to simply thinking positive thoughts about one’s partner, would generate behavioral change with respect to forgiveness that would be evident to romantic partners. As hypothesized, the partners of participants who had engaged in partner-focused prayer noticed increased forgiveness in their partners relative to the partners of participants who were assigned to think positive thoughts about their partner.
In the third study, we wanted to examine how praying for one’s partner would affect cooperation during the heat of an argument. Participants arrived at the research lab together with their partner and were put in separate rooms. Each received a blank piece of paper and was instructed to complete a drawing that would be rated for creativity by their partner. The research assistant took participants’ drawings as if to give them to the partners to rate, but did not actually show the partner the drawing. A few minutes later, the research assistant returned with an envelope containing a false rating sheet with the number “1—not at all creative” ostensibly circled by the partner. By random assignment, they were then instructed to either pray for their partner or to answer a philosophical question about God.
Finally, participants completed a game that they thought they were playing with their partner. In this game they could choose to cooperate with or antagonize their partner to win differing amounts of points depending on their choice. We were especially interested in how participants responded toward their partner right after their partner seemed to have behaved in an insulting manner. We found that compared to participants who contemplated a philosophical question related to God, participants who prayed for their partner cooperated more often during the game.
In the final study, we tested whether cooperative goals would mediate the relationship between partner-focused prayer and forgiveness. Participants reported their partner-focused prayer, cooperation with their partner, and forgiveness of their partner three times a week for three weeks. We found that on days when there was conflict in the relationship, participants who prayed for their partner reported higher cooperation with and forgiveness of their partner. As predicted, reported cooperative tendencies mediated the association between partner-focused prayer and forgiveness. In other words, prayer for a partner predicted more cooperation with that partner, which predicted more forgiveness of that person.
These studies suggest that, consistent with Goal Theory, partner-focused prayer transformed relation-ship goals, even in the heat of an insult or conflict, and that this transformation of goals facilitated forgiveness (Lambert et al., under review). Inviting God into the relationship through prayer can alleviate anger and restore harmony and cooperative goals to a relationship. Satan strives to “[stir] up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another” (3 Nephi 11:29), to disrupt the holy union of marriage in a blatant attempt to make us “miserable like unto himself” (2 Nephi 2:27). How-ever, when contention occurs, prayer can heal hearts and unite couples in love and harmony.
The growing literature on prayer provides scientific support for President Monson’s suggestion that couple prayer is one of the hallmarks of a happy home. Indeed, prayer helps couples in good times and bad times. During the good times, including God in the relation-ship through prayer helps people to view their partner through God’s eyes and come to view the relationship as holy and sacred. This outlook can protect a couple from the fiery darts that the adversary throws at relationships (D&C 27:17; Ephesians 6:16).
Prayer can also be helpful during the bad times or times of conflict. Goal Theory suggests that couples typically demonstrate cooperative (win–win) or emergent (win–lose) goals in their relationship. During times of conflict, when emergent goals typically prevail, prayer can restore harmony and promote a greater desire to work together. Prayer can aid us in both strengthening and mending our eternally important relationships.
Personal Thoughts
My husband Gabriel is my handsome prince (as I’m sure most women would describe their husbands). But I sometimes forget how wonderful and kind he is and now and then I get after him for his forgetfulness. I am a cliche redhead when it comes to my temper – it flares up quickly. But anyone close to me knows that it will burn out quickly and then I am immediately sorry and repentant. There is a popular quote attributed to J. Golden Kimball (a former LDS Church apostle, fondly referred to as the ‘swearing apostle’): “I’ll never go to hell. I repent too damn fast.” Repentance is good – it shows humility and a lack of pride. But surely it is always better to behave in such a way that you have no need for repentance. Lately I have tried a new approach when I get angry or frustrated. I tell my long-suffering spouse (in a gentle tone) that I am upset about something and we have a hugging conversation. Basically I tell him what is frustrating me while wrapped up in a hug and we start our conversation that way. It is a wonderful deterrent to loud speaking and hurtful words. It really does take a kind of courage to let your pride go. We all want to be ‘right’, but surely it is more important to us to be kind to those we love. I am slowly working towards that end and if I can remember Cinderella’s iconic line to “have courage and be kind” then I am already on my way to being worthy of my prince.
This Week's Goals
This week I ask that when you kneel in prayer, both together and on your own, that you ask the Lord to help you find ways to bring you closer as a couple to him. We all need our own personal relationship with the Lord. But when couples are able to build a relationship together with their Savior they build a strong foundation for their own marriage. At the end of this week please sit together and discuss how it felt to ask the Lord directly to be a part of your marriage, any thoughts you have had during the week and if you feel including this in your prayers would help in the future.
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