Boyd K Packer wrote in his book ‘Memorable Stories With a Message’:
I had a young man come to my office. He was a returned missionary—one of my missionaries. He was very sober when he came in. He said, “President Packer, I have a very serious problem. Can I talk to you?” I asked him, “So you want counsel?” And he said, “Well, yes, that is what I have come for.”
Then he began to tell me about going to BYU and coming from his mission. He met a beautiful Latter-day Saint girl. They had been courting for a year and a half, and she was an ideal… girl.
He said, “I’ve got to decide whether I should marry this girl of I’ve got to look elsewhere. I’ve just been spending too much time in this courtship.” He extolled her virtues and then said, “There is only one thing wrong with all of this….We just don’t seem to like one another.” He said, “We’re miserable when we’re together, and we’re miserable when we’re apart.” And he continued, again describing her as the perfect … girl, President Packer, you tell me that it is all right to marry her and we’ll schedule the marriage. You tell me that I shouldn’t and I won’t. I’ve come for that counsel.
Then I asked if he follows counsel. He said, “Yes.”
So here is my counsel. “You go home this weekend and you go to your father. You get alone with your father and you tell him what you told me; and you do what he says. That is my counsel to you.
He turned pale and said, “But Brother Packer, this is a serious problem.” I told him I had no other counsel for him.
That next weekend he went home to his father. Incidentally, his father is a bishop, but even given these circumstances, the young man hesitated to go to his father. So he told his father about this courtship. She was everything his mind said he ought to want, except that they didn’t get along. Then a wise father gave him some counsel that I can pass along.
“David,” said the father, “do you know what is wrong with this courtship? Every time you go out with this girl you go just as though you were going to buy a horse. You have a set of specifications, and you are testing and looking and seeing. You’re measuring every particular to see whether she will measure up and be good enough and meet all of your specifications.” This wise father said, “David, the thing that is wrong with you is that you are selfish. If you would worry half as much about whether you were meeting her specifications as you worry about whether she met yours, you’d find your answer.”
Not long after this we gathered in the sealing room of the temple to seal this fine young man and this lovely young Latter-Day Saint woman together as husband and wife for time and for all eternity. And there began, in that counsel with that father, a beautiful, romantic, poetic, star-filled courtship because the principles of unselfishness had been observed. ~ Boyd K Packer, Courtship ad Counsel, ‘Memorable Stories With a Message’, Deseret Book 2000, p.43-45
