Anyone feel like they won't ever get married?

[agapewolf]

I will not respond to the questions, as they are no ones business. I simply shared a bit for an example of some points. What I have said is quite enough.

Stop psycho analyzing me. I have worked in ministry for over 10 years. I work in MARRIAGE PREP. I know the ramifications of marrying for wrong reasons, completion, whatever.

You are still making MAJOR assumptions about my life trying to tear apart what I have said, when what I have said stands for itelf, and is a very healthy life.

Your presumtiousness of stretching the fact that by me saying I have a call to marriage because I actually have facets about my life that would work better…hence MY VOCATION!!! …to something about feeling not complete or something is exaclty what I am talking about. You have proven my point.

This isn’t neediness. This is a fully discerned vocation and understanding of how it fits in my life. You would do well to mind your own business and stop trying to psycho analyze me over the internet. I do not have the energy nor desire to explain myself to you.

and another thing, this is to everyone. I’m not sitting here complaing or crying over it. I’m happily well adjusted, and praying for my future vocation. My point in the beginning is that I’m filling the needs I have, the best I can until it comes.

 

[Norseman82]

Please tell me where I faulted anyone for wanting to marry.

Well, you are second-guessing her motives and accusing her of looking for a geisha and implying she is desperate and accusing her of not accepting God’s will:

Marriage is not a solution here. Acceptance of God’s will for you at this moment is the solution.

Maybe I was wrong: maybe instead of running away from quiet self-examination with only you and God participating, you are running toward some unrealistic fantasy with your partner being nothing but a geisha.

I’m suggesting that desperation, and the hidden agenda that is driven by it, kills a relationship almost as fast as money problems.

I’m talking about characteristics in one person which could be improved upon before entering into an already demanding relationship. To say, “Well, that’s just the way I am - can’t do anything about it!” is lame. We shouldn’t ask our partners to do our legwork for us.

First of all, who doesn’t have any characteristsics that cannot be improved upon? I think we will be improving until our last breath - and even beyond, in purgatory. I agree that there may be cases in which there are problems that may be red flags, such as substance abuse, and that some people may make hasty decisions that they will later regret, but a simple desire for marital companionship does not in and of itself qualify as a red flag, considering that it is only a natural desire. This leads to my second point:

I find the whole mystique which surrounds the courtship, the wedding, the honeymoon - the idea that “He (or she) completes me!” infuriating. If one is entering marriage feeling incomplete, then, in my opinion, the marriage will not survive.

In all charity, I must ask you to reconsider this statement and ask yourself if the Bible also infuriates you:

The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” Do the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of teh air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none of them proved to be the suitable partner for the man.

So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.When he brought her to the man, the man said:

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”

Genesis 2:18-23

Additionally, CCC 1603 quotes Gaudium and Spes in stating that “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life”.

Again, do these infuriate you as well?

Think about it, as well as what agapewolf has posted in her last paragraph.

 

[Lady_Bug]

In describing your husband or wife, it is not unheard of for the husband or wife to describe their spouse as their other HALF.

that’s a very important term to consider. Are all of us who have the desire in our hearts for the vocation of marriage HALVES of ONE flesh?

It is natural to feel less complete if you are single and wish to be married. No, marriage is not the end-all to total completeness but yes, I do feel it will make you feel MORE complete than if they were single. Ask any happily married person if they would feel empty without their spouse. Ask them if they would feel that life would be exactly the same in terms of completeness if their spouse died or abandoned them.

While we are not married, but desire to be, we will always feel like HALVES. Simply because in the course of marriage, two HALVES become ONE.

 

[Tracy10]

Some people don’t want to get married because deep down they don’t feel they are ready for it. Those who do are best not just sitting around waiting for the magic to show up on their door steps.

Singles might want to go to as many events as possible (or even do volunteer work) where they will be most exposed to the types of individuals they WANT to meet. (Bars and dance halls aren’t generally the best places.) Even the Internet can be extremely dangerous, although it has worked for some. Too often Internet connections result in little more than lustful sexual connections mistaken for love, and once that starts it can be tough (and often nearly impossible) for a mind-to-mind/heart-to-heart relationship to develop afterward.

Just as the thread title says. Also, some married people now, did you have such thoughts when you were younger. I do not mean this in a way such as a vocation regarding celibacy, but rather that they won’t ever find someone and doomed to live a single life.

Of course this depends on whether you feel the ‘single life’ is ‘doom’ - Personally, for me, I do.

 

[agapewolf]

Oh, and by the way. Wolf is my last name. I will not be changing it to the female version. Stop making presumptions.

 

[marietta]

agapewolf:

You have worked in marriage prep for 10 years. You have a profound desire to be married. And yet you are not married. Why?

“Your presumtiousness of stretching the fact that by me saying I have a call to marriage because I actually have facets about my life that would work better…hence MY VOCATION!!! …to something about feeling not complete or something is exaclty what I am talking about. You have proven my point.” I cannot understand this passage, philosophically or grammatically.

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

Norseman82:

None of the quotes you have isolated from my post points at my faulting anyone for wanting to marry. I have questioned the seeming desperation to hook up with a partner for what seem to me to be superficial ideas of what real partnership could be. That in and of itself does not criticize anyone for wanting to marry.

Of course, we all have facets of our lives which can stand improvement. This does not allow that my spouse is responsible for making me well, whole, clean, whatever. That’s my job.

Your Bible passage, though naturally archaic, does not infuriate me. We are saturated with media invitations to the inner sanctum of wedded bliss - just to sell $18,000.00 wedding gowns and cases of Dom Perignon. Little girls are still sold that bill of goods about Prince Charming. My own mother tried to brighten up my solitary nature with this crock. Why do we believe it? Why do we think some guy is going to straighten our lives out? When do we become no longer responsible for our own happiness?

Yes, I have many, many moments of feeling resentful about the way God designed man and woman. Here’s my blasphemy: I think the system is faulty or, at least, the men and women who enter into it bring so much expectation that over time they can’t help but become resentful.

“The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life”." In all my travels around the world, in all my relationships, in all my extended families, I think I have seen two marriages which could even try to measure up to “the healthy state of conjugal and family life.” I believe that in order to save their sanity, lots of people downplay their misery. I know that Catholic marriages fall apart just the same as Jewish marriages or Protestant marriages. So, in answer to your question, yes, this passage infuriates me. I would rather die young and unencumbered with a husband I despised than drag out a marriage pretending that all is well when it is rotten to the core.

You tell me there’s a third relationship alternative - healthy and happy? Not in my world, not in this life.

marietta

 

[agapewolf]

agapewolf:

You have worked in marriage prep for 10 years. You have a profound desire to be married. And yet you are not married. Why?

“Your presumtiousness of stretching the fact that by me saying I have a call to marriage because I actually have facets about my life that would work better…hence MY VOCATION!!! …to something about feeling not complete or something is exaclty what I am talking about. You have proven my point.” I cannot understand this passage, philosophically or grammatically.

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

Norseman82:

None of the quotes you have isolated from my post points at my faulting anyone for wanting to marry. I have questioned the seeming desperation to hook up with a partner for what seem to me to be superficial ideas of what real partnership could be. That in and of itself does not criticize anyone for wanting to marry.

Of course, we all have facets of our lives which can stand improvement. This does not allow that my spouse is responsible for making me well, whole, clean, whatever. That’s my job.

Your Bible passage, though naturally archaic, does not infuriate me. We are saturated with media invitations to the inner sanctum of wedded bliss - just to sell $18,000.00 wedding gowns and cases of Dom Perignon. Little girls are still sold that bill of goods about Prince Charming. My own mother tried to brighten up my solitary nature with this crock. Why do we believe it? Why do we think some guy is going to straighten our lives out? When do we become no longer responsible for our own happiness?

Yes, I have many, many moments of feeling resentful about the way God designed man and woman. Here’s my blasphemy: I think the system is faulty or, at least, the men and women who enter into it bring so much expectation that over time they can’t help but become resentful.

“The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life”." In all my travels around the world, in all my relationships, in all my extended families, I think I have seen two marriages which could even try to measure up to “the healthy state of conjugal and family life.” I believe that in order to save their sanity, lots of people downplay their misery. I know that Catholic marriages fall apart just the same as Jewish marriages or Protestant marriages. So, in answer to your question, yes, this passage infuriates me. I would rather die young and unencumbered with a husband I despised than drag out a marriage pretending that all is well when it is rotten to the core.

You tell me there’s a third relationship alternative - healthy and happy? Not in my world, not in this life.

marietta

It is now obvious where you are coming from. You will sit back and make fun, demand responses to personal questions which you have no business asking, and psycho analyze people, yet you have obvious issues yourself that have put up a huge filter of seeing things in reality.

Do not ever speak to me. Your insults will not be tolerated.

 

[Norseman82]

Your Bible passage, though naturally archaic, does not infuriate me. We are saturated with media invitations to the inner sanctum of wedded bliss - just to sell $18,000.00 wedding gowns and cases of Dom Perignon. Little girls are still sold that bill of goods about Prince Charming. My own mother tried to brighten up my solitary nature with this crock. Why do we believe it? Why do we think some guy is going to straighten our lives out? When do we become no longer responsible for our own happiness?

Yes, I have many, many moments of feeling resentful about the way God designed man and woman. Here’s my blasphemy: I think the system is faulty or, at least, the men and women who enter into it bring so much expectation that over time they can’t help but become resentful.

“The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life”." In all my travels around the world, in all my relationships, in all my extended families, I think I have seen two marriages which could even try to measure up to “the healthy state of conjugal and family life.” I believe that in order to save their sanity, lots of people downplay their misery. I know that Catholic marriages fall apart just the same as Jewish marriages or Protestant marriages. So, in answer to your question, yes, this passage infuriates me. I would rather die young and unencumbered with a husband I despised than drag out a marriage pretending that all is well when it is rotten to the core.

You tell me there’s a third relationship alternative - healthy and happy? Not in my world, not in this life.

marietta

Again, I’m sorry that something was wrong in your marriage. However, it seems that in all the talk about creating healthy marriages and how to avoid divorces that I’ve heard both online and in many young adult/singles groups talks, the emphasis is a knee-jerk reaction “you are getting married for the wrong reasons” instead of “don’t break up over small stuff” or “don’t let small stuff fester into big stuff”. My grandparents were married 58 years until my grandfather’s death, and of their 7 of 9 children that survived until adulthood, 6 married and none divorced. Perhaps what you call “downplaying misery in order to save sanity” is nothing more than exercise of the virtues of fortitude, patience, bearing with one another over the small stuff so that it does not grow into something major (and no, I’m not advocating toleration of adultery or abuse, whether physical, substance, or emotional). I know a lot of people have not grown up within stable marriages as an example to follow, and I myself do not come from the traditional two-parent family as I lost my dad when I was nine and my mother 5 years thereafter, but I do try to see what works in other marriages that do work, and I have seen that even though there are arguments and aggravations, they did not let it grow and get out of hand.

 

[marietta]

Norseman82:

Your grandparents were married for 58 years. I am guessing that they were married at the very latest around 1930 (allowing for both to be approximately 20 years of age when they married.)

Do you understand what the world was like in 1930? Vastly different than the world of today. Men’s and women’s roles in society were very clearly defined. Far fewer women went to college or entered the workforce in 1938 in comparison to today’s women.

My parents were married in 1945. I believe that generation had the best this country had to offer its citizens. We are fractured today. Men and women live very different lives now and, for better or worse, you can’t unring the bell. Most women I know want to live some before they knuckle under to family life. Women’s expectations from a spouse are higher today than they were 70 years ago.

I came from a Catholic home. My parents did not divorce over the rampant alcoholism, but they should have. Of the four children, three are alcoholic, two are divorced, two have had abortions and one adamantly refuses to marry (he is the baby at 51). We are the walking wounded, byproducts of “the best this country had to offer its citizens”.

At least fifty percent of marriages which take place today will end up in the dumpster. I am not impressed with the odds.

marietta

 

[Larowyn]

Norseman82:

Your grandparents were married for 58 years. I am guessing that they were married at the very latest around 1930 (allowing for both to be approximately 20 years of age when they married.)

Do you understand what the world was like in 1930? Vastly different than the world of today. Men’s and women’s roles in society were very clearly defined. Far fewer women went to college or entered the workforce in 1938 in comparison to today’s women.

My parents were married in 1945. I believe that generation had the best this country had to offer its citizens. We are fractured today. Men and women live very different lives now and, for better or worse, you can’t unring the bell. Most women I know want to live some before they knuckle under to family life. Women’s expectations from a spouse are higher today than they were 70 years ago.

I came from a Catholic home. My parents did not divorce over the rampant alcoholism, but they should have. Of the four children, three are alcoholic, two are divorced, two have had abortions and one adamantly refuses to marry (he is the baby at 51). We are the walking wounded, byproducts of “the best this country had to offer its citizens”.

At least fifty percent of marriages which take place today will end up in the dumpster. I am not impressed with the odds.

marietta

That 50% of marriages fail statistic once bugged me and questioned my desire to want to marry, but then it occurred to me: that statistic is not based on a coin flip. Priests, ministers, preachers, Elvis impersonators, and druid priestesses do not flip a coin after the bride and groom kiss and say “well don’t get too cozy because you’re going to be divorced.” I’m sure the 50% of marriages that do succeed have that success because of the attitude of the husband and wife. Perhaps they were mature adults before the engagement and after the honeymoon and understood the fundamental requirements of a successful marriage and did not compromise the integrity of that marriage with infidelity or dishonesty or a failure to compromise or reconcile or by allowing the “magic” to fade.

It’s a sad thing but too many people have the attitude that they are having a trial marriage and that it doesn’t have to work, or that they need to “test drive” every pretty boy/girl they can like they are shopping for cars to see if the sex life in marriage will be good. Some people can’t even imagine life in a monogamous relationship and can’t give up their life of polyamory, or they expect that their married life will be a lot like their single life but with a spouse that they can go home to if they don’t score at the bar. It is these people who constitute the 50% of failed marriages, and the reasons people divorce are not limited to these.

 

[agapewolf]

3% Catholic marriages that practice NFP end in divorce
1 % Cath marriage, practice NFP, and go to Mass end in divorce
.09% (yes, that is POINT ZERO NINE)% divorce who practice NFP, go to mass, and pray at home together.

I like those odds.

 

[Larowyn]

I wonder why the .09% divorce.

 

[agapewolf]

I wonder why the .09% divorce.

You mean…why any? well, there are actually annullable issues… I know of one who the woman was pschizophrenic, and did not reveal that to her husband until after marriage (don’t even know if she revealed it on purpose). They did the whole praying/Mass/NFP/chastity catholic thing going into it too.

Not many of those though

 

[Norseman82]

3% Catholic marriages that practice NFP end in divorce
1 % Cath marriage, practice NFP, and go to Mass end in divorce
.09% (yes, that is POINT ZERO NINE)% divorce who practice NFP, go to mass, and pray at home together.

I like those odds.

I like those odds as well!

 

[Norseman82]

Norseman82:

Your grandparents were married for 58 years. I am guessing that they were married at the very latest around 1930 (allowing for both to be approximately 20 years of age when they married.)

Do you understand what the world was like in 1930? Vastly different than the world of today. Men’s and women’s roles in society were very clearly defined. Far fewer women went to college or entered the workforce in 1938 in comparison to today’s women.

My parents were married in 1945. I believe that generation had the best this country had to offer its citizens. We are fractured today. Men and women live very different lives now and, for better or worse, you can’t unring the bell. Most women I know want to live some before they knuckle under to family life. Women’s expectations from a spouse are higher today than they were 70 years ago.

I came from a Catholic home. My parents did not divorce over the rampant alcoholism, but they should have. Of the four children, three are alcoholic, two are divorced, two have had abortions and one adamantly refuses to marry (he is the baby at 51). We are the walking wounded, byproducts of “the best this country had to offer its citizens”.

At least fifty percent of marriages which take place today will end up in the dumpster. I am not impressed with the odds.

marietta

My grandparents married around 1914, they were early-to-mid 20’s. My grandmother did work on a farm prior to coming to the USA and getting married; I recall that she may have worked outside the home a bit during the depression as a cook.

I can sympathize with the fact that there was familial alcoholism to deal with; I had to deal with that issue myself after mom died, and although I don’t know how bad it got with you, I do know that it does affect people in different ways, even unknowingly. But how it has affected me is that it only increased my longing for a good family life and hopefully it taught me how **not **to act.

Maybe we cannot “unring the bell”, but why cannot we work to try to reverse the wrong in society?

 

[Norseman82]

It’s a sad thing but too many people have the attitude that they are having a trial marriage and that it doesn’t have to work, or that they need to “test drive” every pretty boy/girl they can like they are shopping for cars to see if the sex life in marriage will be good.

What is also sad is that there is an expectation of what is called a “starter marriage” in today’s society; even in a marketing course I took for an industry certification it was mentioned that at a certain age you will get divorced and at a certain age you will remarry!

 

[ack]

Ouch. I think I agree with agapewolf. If your view of love and marriage is that dismal, then you are in no position to be giving people relationship advice of any kind.

Yes, I have many, many moments of feeling resentful about the way God designed man and woman. Here’s my blasphemy: I think the system is faulty or, at least, the men and women who enter into it bring so much expectation that over time they can’t help but become resentful.

“The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life”." In all my travels around the world, in all my relationships, in all my extended families, I think I have seen two marriages which could even try to measure up to "the healthy state of conjugal and family life." I believe that in order to save their sanity, lots of people downplay their misery. I know that Catholic marriages fall apart just the same as Jewish marriages or Protestant marriages. So, in answer to your question, yes, this passage infuriates me. I would rather die young and unencumbered with a husband I despised than drag out a marriage pretending that all is well when it is rotten to the core.

** You tell me there’s a third relationship alternative - healthy and happy? Not in my world, not in this life.**

marietta

 

[Morwenna]

3% Catholic marriages that practice NFP end in divorce
1 % Cath marriage, practice NFP, and go to Mass end in divorce
.09% (yes, that is POINT ZERO NINE)% divorce who practice NFP, go to mass, and pray at home together.

I like those odds.

Me too! :clapping: :dancing:

 

[Ankabaranka_87]

3% Catholic marriages that practice NFP end in divorce
1 % Cath marriage, practice NFP, and go to Mass end in divorce
.09% (yes, that is POINT ZERO NINE)% divorce who practice NFP, go to mass, and pray at home together.

I like those odds.

Well, not saying that those stats are wrong…but stats generally get manipulated so much, that even my stats prof always warned us about quoting stats. This goes the same with Marietta’s quote about 50% of marriages go into divorce. In fact, in the past few months, I heard that the divorce rate went down to 40% (don’t quote me on this). But, i’m curious where you got your stats from? I really would like how they come with those results (sry, I am working as a research assistant this summer, and details like these interest me )

anyways, i know i am young, just 21, but at my age people start expecting you to be in a relationship or at least had 1 long term relationship (i havent, and not bcause i didnt have the chance, i just didnt feel that i was ready). In fact, a very close guy friend of mine told me to hide the fact that I never had a boyfriend because this might deter guys away from me.

Anyways, who knows what is to happen? i am only 21. I might be suited for the single life, or religious life or married life?

A quote my single friends and I like to joke about :

“Apparently, the knight in shining armor who was SUPPOSED to sweep me off of my feet got lost in the woods”

 

[agapewolf]

In 2001, I went to a theology of the body seminar. (not by C. West).

A priest gave these statistics saying it was study done in Wisconsin. I don’t know any more than that. He may have said, but I didn’t write it down.

I know stats are manipulated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these are dead on true. I know also that the magic formula wont’ guarantee success of a marriage…it takes free will and commitment. However, it’s giving the marriage the best chance at not only survival but success and happiness.