Contributed by a follower who prefers to be anonymous.

“We need to talk.”

I stared at the screen for a long time before I finally hit send. That text was for my boyfriend of two years, and sending it took every ounce of courage I had. It came right after a General Conference talk—one that answered the exact question I had been too terrified to ask out loud.

Have you ever had that feeling where you know in your gut what you need to do, but you’re just waiting on God to give you the strength to actually go through with it?

That’s pretty much how I’d sum up my story, and how one conference session completely changed the direction of my life.

Growing up in the Church, I thought I had the whole picture mapped out: finish school, graduate, meet a returned missionary, get married in the temple, and start a family. Simple, right?

But life rarely goes point-by-point the way we plan it.

Along the way, I met Mark. He was kind, intelligent, and treated me with genuine respect. We clicked on almost everything. We saw eye-to-eye on life, our goals, and how we treated each other… except for one crucial thing: our faith.

Mark wasn’t a member of the Church. Still, he was always so gracious. He’d listen patiently whenever I talked about my life as a Latter-day Saint and how much being married in the temple meant to me. In the beginning, he’d nod along and seem genuinely interested. But as we got closer to our one-year mark, I noticed that bringing up the temple started making him quiet. He’d sink into deep thought, and the silence began to feel heavy.

I’ve never been the type to push my beliefs on anyone, and Mark never pushed his on me. We had this unspoken rule of mutual kindness and respect. But despite how happy we were day-to-day, a quiet voice in my heart kept nagging at me. It whispered that maybe, this wasn’t what was meant for my future. The vision of an eternal marriage had lived in my heart for as long as I could remember, and the reality I was living in just didn’t line up with it.

One day, I decided to take a small step. “Hey,” I asked, “would you want to meet with the missionaries with me?”

He’d always been so willing to listen to me talk, so I thought maybe he’d be open to hearing more. I still remember his reaction. He just gave me a gentle smile and politely said no. Because we respected each other so much, I didn’t push. I accepted it.

But that night, I couldn’t shake the sadness. I sat in my bedroom, looking around at the pictures of the temple on my walls. The yearning in my heart to make those covenants and build an eternal family felt heavier than ever.

I stayed up for hours wrestling with the Lord in prayer. I basically made an argument in Mark’s defense: I listed all his good qualities, all the reasons he was an incredible partner, and why he’d make a wonderful husband. But the impression that came back was clear and unmistakable: Mark is a good man. But he cannot bring you to the temple.

I felt a strong prompting that night to be completely honest with him about where I stood. But I was so scared. He loved me, and I didn’t want to hurt him.

Trying to hold onto any shred of hope, I brought it up one evening over dinner. “What do you really think about my dream of marrying in the temple?”

He paused, looked down with a sigh, and said, “I don’t think I’m ready for that conversation.”

That broke my heart. It was the confirmation of what the Spirit had already been telling me, but the fear of letting go was paralyzing. What if I never met someone as good as Mark again? What if I walked away from this and spent the rest of my life regretting it?

That exact same week was the April 2010 General Conference.

I tuned into the Saturday session carrying all of that anxiety, with only one prayer in my heart: Lord, what should I do about Mark?

I listened to talks about faith and putting your trust in God, which brought some comfort. But then Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave his talk, “Place No More for the Enemy of My Soul.” In the middle of it, he said a line that stopped me cold:

“If an improper relationship is forming, sever it.”

Now, Mark and I didn’t have an improper relationship in the moral sense. He was honorable, and we treated each other well. But hearing those words felt like a lightning bolt straight to my heart. I knew, right then, that holding onto a relationship that couldn’t lead me to sacred covenants wasn’t right for me. It was the clear, direct answer I had pleaded for.

As soon as the session ended, I called Mark and told him we needed to talk.

When we sat down, I laid everything out. I was honest with him about my goals, and I told him it wasn’t fair to either of us to keep spending time building a relationship when our destinations were so completely different.

Mark, being the good man he was, completely understood. He admitted he’d been doing a lot of thinking about what I’d shared about having an eternal family, and he knew he just wasn’t on that page.

We broke up that day. People call that a “good breakup,” but “good” doesn’t mean painless. For weeks, I carried the quiet ache of missing someone I truly cared about. The only real comfort I had was knowing that Heavenly Father was the one holding me up and giving me the strength to follow through.

A few years later, life looked completely different. Mark moved on, married, and started a beautiful family of his own—and we’ve stayed friends. And three years after that painful decision, I found myself kneeling across the altar in the Philippines Manila Temple, sealed for time and all eternity to an incredible, loving man who shares my faith and walks that path with me.

Looking back now, I knew it was Heavenly Father who gave me the answer. He knew that I would have a hard time letting go. In my simple, mortal perspective, letting go was hard. In His plan, it was necessary. And that answer was beautifully given through a General Conference talk, 

My 22-year-old self had no idea how the pieces were going to fall into place. I couldn’t see past the heartache of that Saturday afternoon. But the Lord could. And I will always be grateful that He loved me enough to give me a clear answer through a General Conference talk—and the courage to trust it.