As a pastor I have seen it all! Well, not really all, but between what I hear and what I see in people it feels that way at times. When it comes to how people approach the concept of marriage, it is no different. Frankly, most people in the LGBT community ignored it because they could not legally marry, and those who did often downplayed its significance when the spiritual marriage was falling apart.

Now that we seem to be pressing toward nationwide legalization—with thirty-six states (either by choice or force of law) having legal wedlock in place for LGBT couples—we seem to be giddy about the prospects of it coming to Tennessee. But marriage brings potential perils for our own joy and long-term well-being: look at the very high rates of heterosexual divorce that led to more pain and poverty than if the couples had never married, often hurting innocent children and family members in the process.

The cost of seeing marriage as nothing more than legal can be staggering. So, over the years, I have learned some things that are needed to make marriage—whether same or opposite gender—productive in every way.

What I learned early on is that people so “fall in love” that they miss out on significant discussions about values, finances, faith, family, goals, and dreams. If you want to be the next Nashville billionaire, your values will be very different than those of a person who wants to live in a micro-home made of and filled with recycled materials. Neither is bad, but each has a very different destination.

Likewise, not understanding, appreciating, and supporting your partner’s spiritual life means that you are ignoring a full third of the person (we are Mind, Body, and Spirit). To make a choice of partner based on just one or two of those will lead to disaster every time. The couples that make it have a rugged honesty about themselves and a willingness to compromise on values that are not core, precisely because they share their core values.

I remember one couple that came to get married in a religious ceremony that had not had any of these talks. They seemed very much in love, and they tried to paint a picture of “all is perfect in paradise.” Yet, as we talked more, it became evident that though they used the same words, those words had very different meanings to each of them. Over the months of meetings in preparation, they finally realized that what they thought were common beliefs were actually just common words: Being from different social spheres, they had very different understandings of them. They postponed their joyous occasion to spend a full year discussing and exploring with each other what they jointly wanted life to be like when they got married. This process, I believe, has made them one of the most successful couples I have known.

The other piece that I think people miss is that marriage is not about making you happy. Happiness comes and goes. I tell people that marriage should make you holy (as in a better, kinder, gentler, more generous person) and that, from that, happiness and joy will flow. You can never out-give God and you can never overestimate what God will do through you if you view marriage as more about becoming better than about becoming happy. You see, if you think it is about happiness, you are setting yourself up for constant disappointment, whereas if you are focused on getting better, you will always find more joy in the next day.

We think of marriage as “unto death do us part,” and it is good that we do. Yet that death need not be a mental or spiritual one, if we do the initial foundation work on values and spirit—work that was needed to begin with. My prayer is that your marriage be not merely legal, but more importantly a spiritual union between two people with compatible values, shared goals, and interdependent dreams, for that is what will make your marriage truly “unto death do us part.”