We seek to treat responsible, loving relationships tenderly and respectfully. We seek to hold each other in the light of our ideal that Spirit-filled covenant relationships are the one sure basis for love and sexuality.

In prayer and worship, each meeting can speak truthfully to the particular needs and difficulties of its members and their relationships. Through committees of clearness, for example, a meeting can respond with great care and concern to the requests for marriage that come before it, following the marriage procedures described in the Practice and Procedure section of this book of discipline. The monthly meeting can also advise and counsel those who are overwhelmed by social pressures and confused by our culture's conflicting attitudes toward sexual morality.

Marriage is a covenant intended for life, and it is with deep sorrow that we note divorce among members. Separation and divorce are spiritually, psychologically, and sometimes physically devastating for children.

Families need the support of monthly meetings and their marriage-oversight committees long after the wedding vows are spoken. These groups can support the couple, offering to help explore options and seek constructive solutions with waiting and prayer. The partners should be encouraged not to give up their commitments easily. However, some relationships can be unwise or become unhealthy, even psychologically or physically abusive. We urge Friends to treat conflict in relationships, separation, and divorce among members with the same careful concern for clearness as they use before marriage.

Care and concern are especially necessary during difficult times, such as illness or death, when friends and family may need expressions of love, prayer, meals, conversation, and companionship. We also urge Friends to be sensitive to the special needs of children at such times; meetings can nurture children who feel bereft or disturbed.

We pray that our individual covenants with one another mirror the love that Jesus gave to us as part of his blessed community. In our concern for a definition that encompasses our marriage relationships, we also remember how God's covenant embraces each of us and commits us to each other as part of a universal covenant of trust, discipline, and love.

Put on, then, garments that suit God's chosen and be-loved people: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Be tolerant with one another, and forgiving, if any of you has cause for complaint: you must forgive as the Lord forgave you. Finally, to bind everything together and complete the whole, there must be love. Let Christ's peace be arbiter in your decisions, the peace to which you were called as members of a single body. Always be thankful. Let the gospel of Christ dwell among you in all its richness;