Confused and devastated

[vames]

Also I have to admit I’m really disappointed in the human side of our Church because they have not been there for me at all. A bit angry really.

If they weren’t there for you, it means that you shouldn’t rely so much on them. Any other person, be it a priest or a relative or a friend, can’t and won’t walk in your shoes, they won’t live your life and have no idea about what it’s best for you, so you have no reason to depend on any of their advices. Now ignore what anyone else say (including on this forum) and ask YOURSELF the following questions:

1. If it weren’t for this issue (cohabiting before marriage), would you know in your heart that he is your soulmate? You say he’s a good man and he would be a good husband an father, which is very important and very praiseworthy when you talk about a 26 yo man. And from what I know, a man who is 26 can change his mind pretty spectacularly, so to say, when it comes to religion, so if he became a CINO, it doesn’t mean that he can’t become again a good Catholic if his sources of frustration disappear or if he understands better that what upsets him has to do with fallible humans, not with God. As for him being able to wait for 6 years, this is A LOT OF TIME for any young man and IMO this explains his impatient talk about “compromises”. I’d be more worried if he didn’t want to marry you at all.
2. Have you talked to him about what led him to became a CINO? Was it only because his frustration about not being able to marry you quicker/not being able to cohabit with you? If he had other reasons (or other reasons too), do you know anything about the reasons? Again, he can change his mind about these reasons too, even if it won’t happen overnight or at Christmas.
3. Do you feel bad only because you have spent 6 years with him and now you feel deceived and lost or because you do love him and want to be with him for the rest of your life and you know that he loves and wants to be with you too?
4. Supposing that you two will agree to marry quickly, have you talked to him about the essential things that make a Catholic marriage work? (children - how many…) Because this is what really matters, at the end of the day.

 

[savedbygrace71]

I feel like I have had six years of my life stolen from me And how do you invest nearly all of you into someone for so long and then boom, there’s just nothing? :’( .

No, please don’t look at it this way. I had a rough heart break, well more than one actually. And then one day I met my husband. He had just moved to the US and we happened to cross paths. If I hadn’t been taking up time learning life lessons for a few years, I may not have been in the right place at the right time to meet him. Before you know it, you will meet the right man, and have a real wedding and someday a family. And you have to have walked this journey to get there.

Be strong you are better than this, and you will find a new chapter starting soon.

 

[Cradle]

Thank you all, you all bring up good things to remember. I think I will come back and re-read all of this in a few months when ‘the smoke clears’ as you guys said. I appreciate the wisdom and the prayers. I don’t think I can be strong right now but maybe someday.

And vames, your ‘pretty spectacularly’ brought a chuckle out of me. Reminds me of the people in Argentina, they truly know how to say that word!! I appreciate you providing the opposite perspective as well. 1. I would say this issue (temporarily cohabiting before marriage for a few days - because he wasn’t pushing for permanent cohabitation, to be fair), which arises out of an ‘i-know-better-than-you/the-Church’ kind of attitude he’s got sometimes, his lack of faith, and his being at odds with my family are the things that stand in the way. 2. Yes, of course. It is essentially low spiritual self-esteem, his own but worsened by mine. I can be quite negative sometimes. There were some other things but basically the way he saw it was, ‘if my gf and my good friend, who seem to be decent Catholics, still feel inadequate, then what the heck am I doing here’, made worse by a very atheist circle of friends (he can be quite susceptible to peer pressure). This all happened about a year and a half into the relationship, so it was way before there was time to get frustrated by a long wait til marriage. Also he was a recent convert when we met (half a year post Easter) so I don’t think he fully realized what he was getting into. How do you resolve these things? I don’t think you can really, would take a miracle from God essentially.

1. Both. Tears come when I think of our past times together and when I think of what we had hoped for our future. This is where the seed of doubt in the breakup comes from, the reason I feel so torn. And 4. Yes, we have talked about those things, and where I want a lot he doesn’t agree exactly but he does want children, he is willing to raise them Catholic (though not the perfect praying angels I imagine lol), etc.

And I get where you are coming from re: support, yes they can’t walk in my shoes and make the decisions for me, but when you need moral guidance or at least guidance informed by morality, even in somewhat trivial matters, it means that you need guidance, no? Physician heal yourself??? Is it really that much to ask to get an appointment with a second priest? Apparently you only get one shot and if you want another it’s ‘relying on them too much’. Sorry I don’t mean to sound sarcastic or rude but I’m really frustrated by this throw them to the wolves attitude that is prevalent in the human side of the Church

 

[Xantippe]

Cradle said:

“Apparently you only get one shot and if you want another it’s ‘relying on them too much’. Sorry I don’t mean to sound sarcastic or rude but I’m really frustrated by this throw them to the wolves attitude that is prevalent in the human side of the Church.”

There are so many of us and so few of them.

Here’s a question–do you really want to see a priest or do you need to see somebody else? You know what the answer is about this relationship (and there’s a strong consensus here), so you don’t really need moral counsel. With a 6-year relationship ending, what you do need is moral support, and it might genuinely be too much to ask of a priest who wasn’t also a good friend (I remember hearing from a priest at a Newman Center that he HATED arbitrating all the boyfriend/girlfriend stuff). Your needs (and they are needs, rather than wants) are big enough that you should seriously consider seeing a therapist for a few visits. Christian counseling is an actual subspecialty, so you don’t have to worry about arguing with them over the moral issues. In fact, if you PM me, I happen to know a very suitable person in British Columbia. She might not be in your area, but she would probably be able to recommend other therapists. I wouldn’t suggest taking on this expense (and I realize that it is an expense) were it not for the fact that I think you are in danger of losing years of your life in going back and forth over this breakup and agonizing over whether you did the right thing or (and I think this would be even worse) taking him back after his return. A few hundred dollars could save you years of anguish.

 

[EasterJoy]

Thank you all, you all bring up good things to remember. I think I will come back and re-read all of this in a few months when ‘the smoke clears’ as you guys said. I appreciate the wisdom and the prayers. I don’t think I can be strong right now but maybe someday.

And vames, your ‘pretty spectacularly’ brought a chuckle out of me. Reminds me of the people in Argentina, they truly know how to say that word!! I appreciate you providing the opposite perspective as well. 1. I would say this issue (temporarily cohabiting before marriage for a few days - because he wasn’t pushing for permanent cohabitation, to be fair), which arises out of an ‘i-know-better-than-you/the-Church’ kind of attitude he’s got sometimes, his lack of faith, and his being at odds with my family are the things that stand in the way. 2. Yes, of course. It is essentially low spiritual self-esteem, his own but worsened by mine. I can be quite negative sometimes. There were some other things but basically the way he saw it was, ‘if my gf and my good friend, who seem to be decent Catholics, still feel inadequate, then what the heck am I doing here’, made worse by a very atheist circle of friends (he can be quite susceptible to peer pressure). This all happened about a year and a half into the relationship, so it was way before there was time to get frustrated by a long wait til marriage. Also he was a recent convert when we met (half a year post Easter) so I don’t think he fully realized what he was getting into. How do you resolve these things? I don’t think you can really, would take a miracle from God essentially.

1. Both. Tears come when I think of our past times together and when I think of what we had hoped for our future. This is where the seed of doubt in the breakup comes from, the reason I feel so torn. And 4. Yes, we have talked about those things, and where I want a lot he doesn’t agree exactly but he does want children, he is willing to raise them Catholic (though not the perfect praying angels I imagine lol), etc.

And I get where you are coming from re: support, yes they can’t walk in my shoes and make the decisions for me, but when you need moral guidance or at least guidance informed by morality, even in somewhat trivial matters, it means that you need guidance, no? Physician heal yourself??? Is it really that much to ask to get an appointment with a second priest? Apparently you only get one shot and if you want another it’s ‘relying on them too much’. Sorry I don’t mean to sound sarcastic or rude but I’m really frustrated by this throw them to the wolves attitude that is prevalent in the human side of the Church

Remember, too, that you don’t need a priest to defend your own informed sense of right and wrong. You can seek spiritual guidance for yourself, as many priests or books as you want to see about something while forming your conscience about it, and then you can draw your boundaries not on the authority of the priest, but on the authority of your own correctly-formed conscience. At that point, the burden rests on the other person to prove to you that your conscience is formed incorrectly, not the other way around.

 

[Cradle]

Remember, too, that you don’t need a priest to defend your own informed sense of right and wrong. You can seek spiritual guidance for yourself, as many priests or books as you want to see about something while forming your conscience about it, and then you can draw your boundaries not on the authority of the priest, but on the authority of your own correctly-formed conscience. At that point, the burden rests on the other person to prove to you that your conscience is formed incorrectly, not the other way around.

This is a really good point. And anyway we should always err on the side of virtue, right?

More prayers please! oh why are there so many wimpy Catholics around?

 

[LoveJesus13]

This a great thread to learn from, just curious how is your situation going now? Did you end it with him? Also, does anyone know how to put a thread as a favorite so that we can refer to it again later, I don’t mean to respond to all the threads I find helpful but if someone can let me know how, thanks.

 

[eonporter]

Been there, done that, came out the other side.
When I was your age, I did similar heavy lifting in several relationships with non-practicing Christians, CINOs, and one outright atheist (of Catholic upbringing). It does not work. …] But he is a 26 year old man. He is not going to change, honey. Give up that fantasy now.

It may not be so simple.

When I first met my wife and we started dating we had a similar issue, and I was the one in the the same situation as this 26 year old man. Except I was 32 and non-catholic at all. We were already intimate. She would go to the mass every sunday and would had avoid communion for that. It was painful to her. Not to me.

At certain point a priest gave her the advice of ceasing intimate relationship with me since we were not married, and when she told me about the advice, guess what happened? That got me REALLY, REALLY mad. And I said “there is no way I am going to accept that”.

If she insisted in the pursuing that course of action at that time, I would have broken up with her. 100% sure I would. We kept being intimate. This situation was in conflict with her beliefs, but she accepted it anyway. And I hated that priest for so long for even giving that advice.

Fast forward 5 years and I am the one who blesses the food before lunch, prays the Angelus every 12 p.m, takes the kids to the church everyday so that they can be closer to the Lord while I worship in the sacrary, we go to the mass together, we pray the rosary every single day together, and I will do anything so that she can have some free time to visit her spiritual director and get advices like those I used to hate 5 years ago. And all of that would never happen if she wasn’t flexible enough to acknowledge that our relationship had a future, but needed time to develop accordingly to God’s will.

I guess faith is a tricky thing in the end. You have to be strong. And you have to stand your ground. But not to the point where you break someone that could be saved otherwise. I am grateful she didn’t quit on me, at least.

 

[His_helpmeet]

I’m seeing some HUGE red flags here:

1. Your BF is asking you to “compromise” your moral values. That’s a definite NO. “Compromising” works for some things: where you want to eat, how expensive of a house you should buy, where you spend your summer vacations, etc. “Compromising” of moral values is NOT an option.
2. He’s asking to bump up the wedding. In the context of these other issues, again, to me, that’s a HUGE red flag. It almost sounds to me as if he’s scared to death he’ll lose you, so he wants to get the marriage over and done with so he can’t lose you.
3. He’s refused to take the authority of a priest, PLUS he has to know that the Church has DEFINITE words to say about cohabitation before marriage. Unless he finds a priest who is completely out to lunch, I can pretty much guarantee you he WILL NOT get the answer he is looking for.

The Church’s understanding of marriage is that it is intended for the good of the spouses and to provide a stable foundation for the raising of children. It sounds as if you’re starting to fall into Satan’s (common) trap of believing that you NEED to be married RIGHT NOW, that you can CHANGE HIM and that it’s FOR THE BEST. The reality is, a leopard doesn’t change his spots. If he’s asking you to make all of these sacrifices, not because it’s best for you but just because it’s what HE wants, how long before he starts wanting to control everything? If you’re in that much debt, what happens if he falls over dead 2 days after the wedding? You’ll STILL be in that much debt! Can you really see yourself being married to this man for 50 years or so? Do you really believe he will be prepared to lay down his life for you as his wife, as a Catholic husband should do, if he is already asking you to compromise on what you KNOW to objectively right and wrong?

Marriage isn’t just a “ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after” kind of thing. There’s no “perfect” happily ever after, and any “happily ever after” you DO get takes WORK. I’m not an expert, but I’ve been married 3 years to a man I believe God intended me to marry, if I followed His Will. We have a good marriage, but like any marriage, it hasn’t been a complete bed of roses. Marriage takes work before AND after the wedding. (One of the best pieces of advice we got was from married friends: “Marriage is a verb, not a noun.”) This is a marriage we believe we were CALLED to be in. We understood that divorce was NOT on the table and we were prepared to love each other unconditionally. It doesn’t sound as if you and your BF are completely prepared to love each other that way. (TBH, it doesn’t sound as if he, at least, completely understands what marriage is all about, either.) You CANNOT go into marriage believing that divorce is an option if things don’t work out. That’s not only a recipe for disaster, it’s grounds for having your marriage declared invalid. Plus, you need to think about the effect on any future children. Is this really someone you want to have children with, KNOWING that you only got married because it was convenient? If the marriage falls apart, often the children suffer the worst. (I have a DSD from DH’s first marriage, which was declared invalid. He and his ex haven’t been together since 2008, and DSD STILL struggles with her feelings about it.)

My advice: Marriage is OFF the table until further notice. You also need to seriously think, and pray, about God’s will for you and for this situation. Admittedly, it’s not always easy. I used to think I’d NEVER find anyone. Then, when I was 25, I found someone - and I found out that he was worth waiting for.