Engaged - Family not 100% on engagement

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Kate1501

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Hello Everyone!

Happy New Year!

Just a quick background, I am a catholic and my fiance does not have a faith due to a terrible start to life when he was left outside to die as baby (so he thinks there is no God as God would not do that to him). My parents live in a different country so have only met him a few times.

So, my long term boyfriend (6 years) proposed to me on new years eve…which I was very happy about! He told me he has spent years planning this, saved money for a long time to get a ring made. I told my parents the next day to which their first response was, they thought I was joking, and then my mum asked me whether he will get married in a church (he will) and whether he will do the marriage preparation course (which he will). My now fiance’s family where very excited and spread the word quickly, whereas my parents said they would wait to tell the rest of the family once we had talked this through properly. I am now left feeling very anxious and worried about being engaged when I would prefer to be feeling happy and excited that somebody loves me enough to spend the rest of his life with me.

Has anyone else been in this situation when their other half is not a catholic and what are your experiences?
Has anyone else had experiences of family members not being 100% happy with their engagement, did you worry that you had made the wrong decision because of their views or did you follow your own heart? It will take us a while to save for the wedding, so I am hoping in that time we can show my parents the couple that we have become and get their blessing!

Thank you very much for your responses!
 
If you have been with this guy for 6 years and your parents live in a different country, those things tell me you are an adult. I imagine after 6 years you and he have talked about these things at length and come to agreements that are acceptable to you both. This is not your parents call. I know it has to be very very difficult to not have the response that you had hoped from them but this is your decision. You are doing what those called to married life are supposed to do which is “leave and cleave” I pray that your parents come around and that things will go well in your engagement and marriage.
 
My parents did not approve of my marriage either, because they just didn’t like him.

Now that they are all deceased, it doesn’t matter anymore.
 
My ex-husband’s parents did not approve of our marriage because I wasn’t Jewish. It took them about a year to fully accept me and that was because my ex and I took in their granddaughter and raised her as our own child. Once they saw how happy she was living with us they began to like me.

Hopefully as your parents see more of your fiancé they will become more accepting of your choice.
 
Something else to ponder…

Is he on board with your children being raised Catholic?

Is he understanding that artificial birth control is not permitted?

You don’t have to answer those questions to me, of course, but it is such things that a Catholic who wants to live according to legitimate Church authority would desire to follow.

I apologize if you have already discussed this and all is well.
 
This is your decision alone to make. Others have made good points about how you need to discuss things such as no birth control and raising kids Catholic.

However, if your parents are devout Catholics, they will never like the idea you married a non believer. No matter how much they accept your fiancé on the outside, they will always be secretly praying for his conversion to the faith.

Honestly, the more I grow closer to God, the more I am nervous about people with the mentality ‘If God did exist he would never have done that to me’. It shows a blatant refusal to look at ones past with open eyes in order to mover forward. Something that could have a lot of negative behavioural effects done the road
 
I was the non-Catholic one when my husband and I were dating, and even though I had started RCIA by the time he proposed, his parents didn’t know that. I think they always secretly hoped I would convert someday, but they were supportive of our relationship anyway because we were adults and we were happy.

If your parents are concerned, it might be because they haven’t had enough time to get to know this guy in person because of the distance.

Or maybe it’s an ethnicity/race issue, depending on the circumstances.

But if their only concern really is the religion thing, maybe they would feel better if your fiance went through RCIA. I did not join with an intention to convert. I joined to get a better sense of his faith and how we could best compromise on things in that area. If he converts, it’s a bonus. But at least you could tell your folks, “Look, he’s in RCIA. He fully understands my faith and he’s going to support me in it even if he doesn’t agree.”
 
If you and your fiance live in a whole other country from your parents, obviously they don’t know him and his family super-well. So it would be natural for them not to be quite so excited.

Also… it is natural for parents to be a little skeptical. Most fathers take a long time to be convinced that X guy is good enough for their little girl, and the same goes for mothers. That is why there are so many jokes about it.

Finally, of course your parents’ personality style and experiences would also affect their reaction. If there have been a lot of divorces on your side of the family, they could be a little wary of marriages among younger people.

The big thing is not to be too paranoid about this.

I’ve shared before that my dad is not Catholic, whereas my mom is very Catholic. My dad is a very steady, honorable sort of guy who keeps his promises, so he usually goes to church at his church in the early morning and then goes to Mass with my mom later in the day (unless they go to Mass on Saturday night instead). But not everybody will do this. Also, my mom knows that Dad will never go to Mass with us on Marian feast days, because it gives him the theological heebie jeebies. He’s not outspoken about it, he was okay with naming me after Mary, but there’s a certain distance he won’t go. Also, there was tons of angst for Dad back when I discerned becoming a sister or a nun. I was really surprised at how much that stunk.

OTOH, my parents are very happy most of the time. You just have to know that there will be these things that can’t be bridged easily. You can hope your fiance will convert, but you have to plan for what you’ll do if he doesn’t.
 
Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for your thoughts on this matter. It is nice to have some thoughts from people that cannot be biased towards this situation.

Having reflected on what has happened and how to move forward, my fiance would like to do the RCIA course which I think is great! And we will also be looking to go on an “engagement encounter” as a starting point for both of us. My fiance has no problem with our children being raised as catholics so I also think that is positive.

Thank you all again for taking your time to respond to my post, I am very grateful.
 
Kate1501 said:
Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for your thoughts on this matter. It is nice to have some thoughts from people that cannot be biased towards this situation.

Having reflected on what has happened and how to move forward, my fiance would like to do the RCIA course which I think is great! And we will also be looking to go on an “engagement encounter” as a starting point for both of us. My fiance has no problem with our children being raised as catholics so I also think that is positive.

Thank you all again for taking your time to respond to my post, I am very grateful.
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Congratulations!

If it helps, my family was not happy about me marrying my DH. They were mostly polite about it, but they weren’t happy at all. Fortunately, 12 years after the marriage, I am thrilled with my choice.

Is part of their reluctance to embrace your marriage the fact that you will be less likely to return to their country? Perhaps they thought you’d come home some day and think that by marrying you are basically stating your life is in your new country now. Maybe they blame him for putting an end to their hopes you’d come home.
 
Thank you MJJean & Monicad!

MJJean, I think maybe part of my parents reluctance may have something to do with me still being so far away - and they did hope I would in time return to live near them, however that is still possible!

Monicad, I am not offended at all by what you said, if anything they are thoughts I already have, and I am trying to be practical and make sure that we are both ready for a life together. Which is why I am making sure we are taking the right steps before we get married so that we are both committed to each other in how we want to live our lives. I definitely don’t want to get married to find out that we both expected different things from each other during our marriage. I am conscious that often love can blur our vision as sometimes excuses are made that “everything will be okay”. That is why I am hoping the engagement course will help bring these discussions to the surface so that we are both able to see if we are able to make this work forever.

Thank you again!
 
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