Do you pray with your spouse? Why is this not common?

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I personally do not like to pray with anybody, my husband included. I like to pray alone and very deep in thought, and I find having another person around is a distraction
 
Ah—I love this thread because both my husband and I feel prayer is a solitary activity. I enjoy my private conversations with God–even if we share them with each other (as in I pray for this, or that), it’s something I relish, as does my husband. I get very offended by other Catholic couples who promote the view that if you’re not praying together, you’re not promoting faith as a family. We do other things instead–like volunteer together and share our time and talents—servitude. Oddly, many of those who proudly proclaim they say a rosary together as a family would never make the time to do the things we do. But other than grace before meals, our prayer life is solitary. We encourage our children to pray as well, we talk about prayer and how to pray, but again, we still promote it as a solitary activity, with certain exceptions (9/11, serious illness in the family in which we said a Rosary as a family, etc. as much as anything because those were situations in which it brought comfort when there was nothing in our control). Our parents were the same way.

On the other hand, I believe in going to Mass as a family and we will re-arrange our schedules to do this if there is a conflict.

Bottom line, just because we don’t sit down as a family and pray the rosary together everynight, doesn’t make us bad Catholics. We serve God as a family in many other ways.

Thank you for the opportunity to express this thought…it’s something that recently I got defensive about, again.
 
Col40 said:
Ah—I love this thread because both my husband and I feel prayer is a solitary activity. I enjoy my private conversations with God–even if we share them with each other (as in I pray for this, or that), it’s something I relish, as does my husband. I get very offended by other Catholic couples who promote the view that if you’re not praying together, you’re not promoting faith as a family. We do other things instead–like volunteer together and share our time and talents—servitude. Oddly, many of those who proudly proclaim they say a rosary together as a family would never make the time to do the things we do. But other than grace before meals, our prayer life is solitary. We encourage our children to pray as well, we talk about prayer and how to pray, but again, we still promote it as a solitary activity, with certain exceptions (9/11, serious illness in the family in which we said a Rosary as a family, etc. as much as anything because those were situations in which it brought comfort when there was nothing in our control). Our parents were the same way.

On the other hand, I believe in going to Mass as a family and we will re-arrange our schedules to do this if there is a conflict.

Bottom line, just because we don’t sit down as a family and pray the rosary together everynight, doesn’t make us bad Catholics. We serve God as a family in many other ways.

Thank you for the opportunity to express this thought…it’s something that recently I got defensive about, again.
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I appreciate your honesty. I would be grateful to get your feedback on this post and how it relates to how you and your husband pursue this. I like your comments about working together on projects etc…

rcspiritualdirection.blogspot.com/2009/02/marriage-spirituality-daughter-of-king.html
 
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