Any advice on how to be a good and supportive wife?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TarAshly
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TarAshly:
im not going to counseling! i dont believe in it.
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Wow! What a great attitude!

It’s interesting that someone coming from a long line of divorces with admitted control and trust issues and a quick temper and desperate sounding posts would so vehemently and quickly toss aside the possibility of exploring and resolving your issues.

Maybe you don’t want help? Do you think you are just looking to vent about your problems?

Sorry if that sounds rude.
If you want to be a good wife, put your husband and his needs above your own. I’m not talking about being a door-mat. But consciously think about what is going to make him happy and bring him joy. Before you speak, ask yourself if what you’re about to say is going to lift him up or bring him down.
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Scout, true advice, but sometimes so hard! It can really be a challenge at times to put your spouse first, but when I do it, I feel good afterwards.

Also, the poster who said that you’ll need to forgive your spouse and not revel in "I told you so"s, you are so right. With all my mistakes and poor decisions, my husband never says “I told you so” or makes me feel bad, and it is truly a gift. I hope I do the same for him.
 
I hope you’re not feeling like you’re under attack, TarAshley. I think everyone means well with their comments. Maybe a case of “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!” 🙂

BUT, I know God loves you and will walk with you through any problems if you just ask him to and let him in the same spirit as a child giving a broken toy to their parent to mend.
That said-- I’d personally be interested in hearing some personal anecdotes/wisdom from the married folks out there too.
 
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TarAshly:
i have and he just says that i dont mother him, and that i am loving and supportive. these are faults i see in myself. he wont even tell me if my hair looks bad, let alone if im a bad wife or not. hes very kind, and thats just a part of it. he wont tell anyone anything mean wether its the truth or not.
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Maybe he realizes that judging other people really isn’t his job, but loving them as they are is. Maybe he realizes that you matter to him more than your hair. If you spend all day judging yourself, he may be wise not to pile on where you’re overdoing it already.

On the other hand, if he is so afraid of conflict that he won’t even raise his voice against what is unacceptable – like perhaps your judgemental and controlling attitude–then maybe he has something to work on. I will warn you, by the way, that in my experience you are describing yourself as a woman sitting on a volcano. I think he may well surprise you, and if he does, you are really going to get it, my dear. Out of the blue, and hit out of the park.

But these are all guesses. Ask the person (or people) you are seeing for pre-marital preparation, people who know you and have observed you as a couple, if you would benefit from more in-depth counselling… and resolve to take their advice, whether you like it or not. Being too proud to take help you need is not a Christ-like attitude.
 
Hi TarAshley! 👋

Statistically 50% of marraiges fail, which you probably already know. Statisitcally, those who cohabitate before marraige are 50% more likely to divorce than those who don’t. I know many think of it as a trial run, but marraige is permant and it’s impossible to temporarity practice something that is permenant.

I agree with those who recommended counseling. Counseling is not only for couples on the verge of a break-up who use it as a last resort. Pre-marital counseling is really very common and in my opinion, very smart. Especially today when the cards are stacked against you the way they are.

What seems like a little thing before you marry can seem like a big huge deal after 5,10,15 years of marraige. Taking care of it now is not a sign of failure but a sign that you love each other and want to get yourselves off to the best start possible. I bet if you ask those here who have been married a while they will be able to tell you that even some little things from the beginning of the marraige grew into major irritations later on.

God bless you!

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
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TarAshly:
Barrister,
i understand that youre trying to help me however i cannot for the life of me understand why people get so hung up on the fact that we’re living together. and God IS first in our relationship, we attend mass and pray and pray the rosary together. He is a constant presence in our lives.
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Hey Tar,
I think the people here are not interested in pointing fingers. They’re interested in helping you and your fiance strive for holiness. I think you and your fiance make great efforts in your life to include God in your relationship. However, being Catholic requires one to constantly challenge themselves, sometimes doing what might not seem ‘practical’, but what is required of us according to God’s commandments. In other words, there are always ways we can improve our spiritual life and make God an even more important part of our lives.
I don’t know you, but i know my own situation. I’m engaged, and together my fiance and I are in debt over $50,000. Both our families are in bad financial situations, and neither of us have rooms at home anymore (we live away from home in toronto where we go to school). Several people have bugged us that we should live together. Yet we are not living together. Want to know why? Because we look at it like this:
1.For one thing, anything could happen before we are married. Heck, one of us could get in a car accident and die. So although we recognize that we are engaged, we don’t look at this stage of our relationship as ‘basically married’. This is a secular view, one that the Church does not support. And because we are Catholic, we also do not support it.
2. If i were making an investment of my life savings in stocks, there is no way i would go without doing some heavy duty research to make sure i wasn’t going to blow my money away. i would want to make sure i had made the best possible decision. Well, i view marriage the same way. take a look at this article: catholic.com/chastity/q7.asp

I have three questions:
  1. After reading the link i have sent you with published studies cited, and the advice of other forum dwellers, do u deny that living together before marriage increases your chances of getting divorced and is also against Catholic Church teaching?
  2. Do you want to make the best investment possible in this marriage so that it lasts forever?
  3. Have you not even one friend or family member that you could live with for the next month until you get married? I am in a similar boat to you (from what i can tell), and i managed to find a couple of friends to help me out.
Please answer each of these questions honestly, and don’t feel you have to report your answers on the forum.

In short, i want you and your fiance to have a true God centred engagement, and a God centred marriage that lasts forever. I want it for myelf, too! And, it’s not too late to make this month long effort. I would think of it as a fantastic sacrifice you could offer up for your first child by not living together from this moment on until you are married. after all, u demonstrate that financial issues exist, making the decision to live together harder to resist, and making it an even greater temptation to overcome.
God Bless!
 
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TarAshly:
why is it with so many of you that a small problem means that this is the end and hes not the right one? i AM ready to be married and i WILL marry him one month from tomorrow. and in my own personal belief, our living together will not affect our marriage. so if youre gonna harp on me for that and not offer and advice on the question i posed then i would deeply appreciate it if you would keep the unnecesary rude and mean remarks out of it. youre right you dont know me. i asked for advice hoping to get good sound advice from wives who can help with this sort of situation. and even husbands who can too.
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I’m going to “say” something, and I’m sorry if it’s not what you’re looking for, but I just feel the need.

From what I’ve read in this thread and in some others, I don’t think you’re ready to get married. You describe your husband as being almost wimpish, as if he has no back-bone whatsoever. You talk about how you love him and then speak of his actions as if you have no respect for him whatsoever. You know living with him before marriage is wrong and against Church teachings, and yet you make excuse after excuse for doing it anyway. You ask for advice about how to be a good and supportive wife, and then when you don’t get the advice you want you get angry and defensive.
Maybe you should re-think your question and decide if you really want people’s help or if you just want people to accept your actions and validate your situation.

Scout :tiphat:
 
  1. After reading the link i have sent you with published studies cited, and the advice of other forum dwellers, do u deny that living together before marriage increases your chances of getting divorced and is also against Catholic Church teaching?
yes i deny that it has an increasive affect. no i dont deny that it goes against church teachings.

yes i want this to last forever.

and no, i dont have anyone to live with. my mothers got her hands full as it is, and my friends live with their parents or in dorms.

i want to know WHY the divorce rate is higher? someone give me a reason why, not that its against church teachings, but a real answer as to why.
 
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Scout:
I’m going to “say” something, and I’m sorry if it’s not what you’re looking for, but I just feel the need.

From what I’ve read in this thread and in some others, I don’t think you’re ready to get married. You describe your husband as being almost wimpish, as if he has no back-bone whatsoever. You talk about how you love him and then speak of his actions as if you have no respect for him whatsoever. You know living with him before marriage is wrong and against Church teachings, and yet you make excuse after excuse for doing it anyway. You ask for advice about how to be a good and supportive wife, and then when you don’t get the advice you want you get angry and defensive.
Maybe you should re-think your question and decide if you really want people’s help or if you just want people to accept your actions and validate your situation.

Scout :tiphat:
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you are 100% wrong. and thats all i’ll say about that.
 
Hi TarAshly! 👋

TarAshly said:
1)
After reading the link i have sent you with published studies cited, and the advice of other forum dwellers, do u deny that living together before marriage increases your chances of getting divorced and is also against Catholic Church teaching?
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yes i deny that it has an increasive affect.
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How can you deny something that’s provable? That’s like those people who deny that men have walked on the moon.
no i dont deny that it goes against church teachings.
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That’s great! Then you wouldn’t want to start your relationship off in disobedience to God!
yes i want this to last forever.
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All couples who get married want and expect their marriages to last forever, yet half don’t, fewer if the couple has lived together first. I know you’d want to do what’s best for your marriage, to do what God would want you to do even if it’s not what you want to do.
and no, i dont have anyone to live with. my mothers got her hands full as it is, and my friends live with their parents or in dorms.
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Then you may need to live by yourself or advertise for a roommate. God will help you find a solution.

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
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TarAshly:
i want to know WHY the divorce rate is higher? someone give me a reason why, not that its against church teachings, but a real answer as to why.
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How can you call yourself Catholic and brush off Church teachings like that? You say, “not that its against church teachings, but a REAL ANSWER”. What is more REAL than the Church GOD HIMSELF established?

Furthermore, if you were REALLY serious about knowing why it raises divorce… you would can EASILY find these answers yourself rather than rely on people getting them for you. The answers are everywhere… It would take a person not willing to see the truth about this matter to not easily find this information. I just took a Sociology class at my university that spoke of this very subject and we studied in depth the reasons this raises divorce. Also, links with creditable sources were given you.

I am a college student right now engaged as well, and I would never ever risk my future marriage by moving in with my fiance. I moved 1,500 miles to live NEAR her not WITH her. We plan to be married by June next year.

The Catholic Church instituted by God says cohabitation is sin. Christ says He who hears you hears me. Thus, if you are to brush off the Churches teachings on this, you are essentially looking Christ in the face and saying, “NO”.

I takes 3 to get married not two, and you are excluding the 3rd party.
 
You ask for people’s opinions and then you get upset when they start saying stuff that you DONT want to hear. If you just want people to tell you what you want to hear then why ask?
 
Dear TarAshly,

When you first started posting here I really admired your spunk and your abililty to speak your mind without worrying about what anybody says.

Now after following this thread, I have to ask, what did you expect? You have proven why your fiance does not raise any issues with you. I can understand if you don’t agree with, understand, and/or like the advice you get, but what I don’t get is how quick you are to impugn those who, as far as I can tell, are offering you honest and kind advice.

What do you want anybody to tell you? Why don’t you just make it easy for everybody and tell us what you want to hear?

Your tale reminds me of one of my friend’s lament with his wife.
He: Where would you like to go for dinner?
She: anywhere’s fine with me, you decide.
He: are you hungry for anything in particular.
She: no, just anything.
He: How about Wendy’s
She: you’ve got to be kidding. make me barf.
He: sorry. where would you prefer?
She: anywhere. just not Wendy’s
He: Well, you like Aurelio’s, don’t you? It’s been a while.
She: That takes too long. I’m hungry right now.
He: Please just tell me what you’re hungry for.
She: just anything we can get quickly
He: Spangles?
She: I’m sick of that place, we’ve been there twice this week.
etc.

Strangely, she gets on his case for not opening his mouth and never making a decision. She talks about how, if her finances were better, she would leave him.

Alan
 
If he won’t give you the straight skinny and you don’t believe in counseling, you’ve got big problems if you eventually do marry a man who doesn’t communicate and doesn’t have much of a spine.

Put off the wedding and if you’re cohabiting, one of you needs to move into their own quarters immediately.
 
Let me be frank. You are an emotional trainwreck highly likely to get divorced yourself.

You are clingy and disobedient to God’s teachings.

If you disregard Jesus’s law - the teachings of his Church on cohabitation, I suppose you will contracept as well. I suppose your children will cohabit.

You go on the internet asking advice from strangers about a wedding one month from now???

You need serious professional help.

And if you are a Catholic you would care more about pleasing God than pleasing your husband - that would include not living in sin and not telling the world about that on the internet.

Do you have no shame?

Follow your Deacon’s advice, follow your priest’s advice, follow the Church’s advice - move out and stop living in sin. Also stop telling other you are doing it - that is the added sin of scandal.

You keep fishing for advice that will assuage your poor conscience.

You are not getting it from me.
 
You come across as really desperate to be married and you don’t care how you get there or who with or how many of the Church’s laws you’re breaking.

You bellyache about your prospective husband but you won’t push him to settle whatever issues he has then blame him for being wimpy. He’s probably afraid of your pouting and petulance if he does tell you.

Plus you ask for advice but when it isn’t what you want to hear, you ignore it or tell the people YOU ASKED FOR ADVICE FROM how wrong they are.

If want you want is for people to tell you what you want to hear, go to a support group. And if you keep on this path, I suspect the support group you’ll end up at is a divorce support group.

Good luck because you’re going to need it.
 
  1. Tar did not ask if she should get married.
  2. Nor did she ask if it was ok that they are living together.
She has made up her mind, this is the man she will spend her life with.

Now, what i would advise is always be open to things that can improve your marriage. A marriage encounter weekend for you 1st anniversary would be great. Even if you have a great relationship there’s always room for improvement.
I would seek out marriage enrichment through out your married life. Good marriages don’t just happen, it takes lots of work.

The book Men are from Mars, Women are Venus was great in understanding how men and women relate differently, I wish I would have read that book earlier in our marriage.
Greg Popcak books are great, the book the 5 love languages is good also.

I try to think of my husband as a friend first, husband second. Before people get upset what I mean is we cut our friends alot more slack, we allow them to be who they are. When our friends make mistakes we don’t rant at them we usually lend a sympathetic ear.

It is good you are aware of your contol/mothering issues. It must be something you keep at the fore front of your mind. It may not bother him now but trust me it eventually will. Work on encourageing (not nagging) instead of controling-be positive. If you feel like you are going to be critical bite your tongue, he will not retaliate because he is passive (it may not even seem to bother him) but you will be storing up hurts that can be very distructive.

I’m married to a passive guy and after 7 years of not complaining he rolled over in bed one night and said “I don’t think I want to be married to you anymore.” Granted we had other problems, but they were his issues (alcoholism-he was in recovery at this point). I was willing to stick by him. I was horrified and thought my God I’ve stuck with you through all this and your leaving ME! My strong will went into over drive and I fought like hell to save my marriage. We did Retrouvaille and what I found was I needed to make some major changes in my ownself to save my marriage. And with the grace of God we are very happily married today.

At least you guys are starting off better than we did. We were just out of highschool. Didn’t marry in the chuch. We aren’t living together but I would have, I didn’t see any problem with it at the time. The reason why the divorce rate is higher is because generally speaking those who don’t live together tend for one to be more religious. Also they tend to see marriage as a permanent relationship, not something to experement with first by trying it out. That doesn’t mean that you feel that way.

Marriage is tough at times, divorce rate is high. What people are advising you is to give yourself the best odds possible.

When I got married my cousin (10 years my senior who lived in another state and I only saw less than once a year) told me over the phone the week before I got married I was breaking my parents hearts and would probabley end up divorced. Well he married seven years after I did and divorced after one year and my husband and I are still going strong.

You sound like a fighter, your both walking into this marriage with your own issues. Do not be closed off to counseling if you run into difficulty, after all what ever helps your marriage- that is the most important thing. Right now your so excited to be married and share your life with this man. Remember there will be days when get up in the morning and think what the heck was I thinking. That doesn’t mean you don’t love him or you have a bad marriage. There will always be ups and and downs.

And remember when you walk down that aisle, it’s forever, forkeeps, no looking back. You have to both believe that divorce is simply not an option. Then you’ll realize it’s better to compromise then be right. Trust me I’ve been there. God bless!
 
TarAshley,

If you’re unable to geographically change your living arrangements then maybe you two could just sleep separately. Live as brother and sister until the wedding.

Take it as a challenge if you want. If you can’t be chaste from now until the wedding, how can you be prepared to be chaste for an entire marriage-- until death do you part??

Barrister is right. Put God First. That is the only way to have a healthy and truly commited marriage. Yet by living in sin-- you are thumbing your nose at God. Admit your error. Confess.

God doesn’t want you to accept anything less than the true fullness that the sanctity of marriage can hold. Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t marry if you aren’t even willing to start it out on the best possible footing.

Peace and God’s love to You.
 
Rayne, you missed the point. She is a Christian first, a wife, an American, a daughter etc. second.

She is first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ. Your good advice about marriage notwithstanding, any Christian here is obligated - yes obligated - to remind her that she is sinning, and committing the sin of scandal.

This young woman is seriously confused. She does not understand her own Church’s teaching or tries to explain that she is disregarding it now but won’t later.

She thinks that she can get advice about whether to marry a man from complete strangers on the internet??

She needs professional counselling.

She should call off or postpone the wedding, until she is more mature, each are financially independent of each other and not living in sin.

She should not, while she is living in sin, downplay it’s seriousness on a public forum and you should not defend her doing so.

She has no right to do what she is doing. We have every right and indeed a duty to Jesus to remind her.

If she wants to ignore Christ, then that is her problem.

She might be able to have a good marriage avoiding Christ but she would defininitely have a great marriage if she included Him in her preparations, the sacrament and daily life.

Right now all I see are the petulant posturings of a pouting princess.

She does not represent my Church and I wish she would take her scandal off these boards.

I hope she gets the help she needs and I hope she understands that you don’t ignore Christ now and promise to stop in the future. These teachings exist for our own good.

If she does not understand that, she might learn the lesson painfully later. She is buying into modern secular logic, not instead following the teachings of the Holy Mother Church.

That she does at her soul’s peril.
 
George2 I feel your frustration but maybe we should all cool this thread a bit and let TarAshley chill out and i hope she’ll read over our viewpoints and the links on chastity and Church teachings from a less-defensive stance.

That’s my prayer.

Peace.
 
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