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.
