I had a delicate thought.  Handle with care.

Our current way of being married is companionate marriage.  I don’t hold with those who say its an invention of the modern world.  There has always been that deep emotional intimacy as a possibility for a husband and a wife.  But they are right that we have made it the core of our understanding of marriage.  It is more loadbearing.  For one thing, it seems to be key to good sex.

My mind was drifting around, idly wandering.  I asked myself if there was another marriage model that could also lead to good sex.

I think there is.

In this  model, husband and wife are the representatives of archetypes.  They approach each other in ritual and ceremony and splendor as Man and Woman.  They are high and holy things.  They are notes sounding in the eternal deeps.  They are objects of mystic and magic, because one is man and one is woman.

We say that the marriage is necessary to the relationship because it shows commitment and therefore allows for trust.  They see it as a spiritual act of creation, as a washing clean of the sex of these two people.

This approach to marriage is not our current approach.  But like companionate  marriage in the old days, it is still there, and still available.  Indeed, for Latter-day Saints, our marriage doctrines probably require some glimpse of it.