If God loves me why won't he send a spouse?

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agapewolf said:
I find this thread very interesting. While I see a lot of bitterness in the OP posts, and I think there is something bigger going on here, and its very true that one’s general demeanor can assist or repel meeting people in general, the cliches are tiresome, annoying, and most of the time do not tell the whole truth.

“have to be happy with yourself/God first”. Bull. This is heresy. We are never completely satisfied until we are with God in heaven. He put that ache for Him in us on purpose.

“stop looking and the spouse will show up”. Again, doesn’t make a lot of sense. If marriage is our vocation, that is our path to heaven, and we should never cease pursuing it.

I find Jorduspeaks posts extremely compassionate, empathizing, and very intuitive to the way a single person feels often time.
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I think the cliches are harmful.

I get mad when people parrot them at me. I know they’re just meant to try and encourage us single folk but more often than not they’re just frustrating and pointless.
 
nickybr38 said:
I think the cliches are harmful.

I get mad when people parrot them at me. I know they’re just meant to try and encourage us single folk but more often than not they’re just frustrating and pointless.
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I think many of the cliches can be harmful. However, I can tell you that it is very often true that you will meet your spouse when you least expect it.

I met my dh 16 months after a broken engagement with my ex. He had turned out to be addicted to drugs, which he was doing behind my back, and I never even knew! He then broke up with me because I wanted him to get treatment. 😦

The breakup left me suicidal and praying for death every day. It also catapulted me into serious hormonal breakdown, and my physical health greatly suffered. I went through a year of serious therapy and also attended the wonderful A-anon group. So a year later I was able to cope, but I still desperately hoped my ex would somehow find his way home to me. Then, a year after the breakup, my mother became ill and I left my job to return home to care for her.

One day my friend invited me out for her going away party. I was very sad as I had moved back home to be with my mother and had few friends, yet now one of my few friends was moving away! I told her I’d be late as I had to go to the gym and really I was weary and sad about saying goodbye. Well when I got there, I met her work colleagues, one of whom became my husband.

He was everything I thought I didn’t want. He wasn’t effusive; he didn’t talk about his emotions all the time; he didn’t tell me sad stores about his trials and he talked a lot into sports*. So for a long time I struggled. He and I had a massive connection, but I kept questioning it because he did not meet any of the items on my list. So I was really torn. Yet there was something very strong there. I was also still in love with my ex, I guess. However, he got under my skin and I fell in love. I threw out the list and enjoyed our relationship as he carried me through an eating disorder, through ill health, through family problems. We laughed together; we traveled together; he held me through the storms; we even found sports we both enjoyed. He became my rock, and eventually, my husband.

So please don’t give up. I was sure that I would be alone forever after my ex and I split. So much so that I planned to devote my life to friends, family and career. Yet life threw me a curveball and now I have a husband who adores me, supports me, loves me and has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can shelter us through any storm.
  • I used to go for the “tortured artist” type. Such people are very often all air and no substance.
 
JorduSpeaks said:
Sorry, but this is just not a rational point of view. Everyone I know has been in some form of relationship before, and none of them “had it together” beforehand. Furthermore, being single (meaning unattached, not necessarily unmarried) in today’s world leeches confidence and happiness from you, largely because of the attitude you’re demonstrating, Rau.

What your post basically says is that you have to increase your value in order to meet someone. However, no matter how much a person increases her or his value, there is always more work that could be done. Furthermore, the attitude that says, “I am single because I am less valuable than most people” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence or happiness.
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I am saying that you need to live the best life you can at all times. Seek to have and maintain good friendships and a good social milieu. Strive to be as successful as you can be in your working career. Participate fully.
 
JorduSpeaks said:
Expectation of equality has nothing to do with it. It’s just cause and effect. When you put people to the test, you damage the relationship and drive them away.
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God puts us to the test (or allows us to be put to the test). I could gather countless bible verses to demonstrate this point, but I’ll just refer anyone to the Book of Job if they doubt that God may test us. This is not to damage our relationship, but to allow us to mature and grow in faith, and to be proven, like a parent will allow their child to be tested so they can grow in their abilities and responsibilities.

But let’s put this aside. My point was not that this may be a trial from God to test her, but that God may not consider giving her a spouse while her faith is under question to be the right way to direct her back to Him.
JorduSpeaks said:
As for your thinking that being unhappily single is what’s best for Teach, that might be true. After all, I don’t know Teach or all the specifics of her situation. However, if it is what’s best for her, it’s hard to see it from here. Not only does she have to deal with the pain of lacking the basic human companionship that it seems everyone else finds so easy to acquire, but at every turn the world sends her the message that her misfortune is her own fault. Look at all the posts here. We’re on page 8 now, and I bet if you took all the posts that DON’T say or imply that she’s single because there’s something WRONG with her, it wouldn’t even fill one page. Singleness is basically the new leprosy in that sense. If a person is suffering, the world thinks they must deserve it. Eventually, they start to believe that message, themselves.
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I never said she deserves it, but noted that she herself seems to think that it is God’s will for her (“It’s obvious God has plans for me to be alone the rest of my life”). If that is really the case, she should be glad to know God’s will. While it may not be what she wanted, it is (it it is God’s will) what is best for her.

Of course I recognise that what she said may be more out of frustration than actually believeing that she understands it to be God’s will. Either way, the answer is to seek God’s will more clearly.

She posted rather provocatively. And she has received some rather provocative responses in return (mine included). That doesn’t mean that I think she should give up on finding a spouse. But I do think her current unmet desire is a bad reason for turning from the Church.
 
Galbin,

Awww. That’s so sweet.

Rau said:

“I am saying that you need to live the best life you can at all times. Seek to have and maintain good friendships and a good social milieu. Strive to be as successful as you can be in your working career. Participate fully.”

Yes! And that’s good advice for everybody.

I remember once being in a new city (nearly 3,000 miles from my family), unemployed (it was post-9/11), being pregnant and knowing nobody in town but my husband (and my husband had a 75 minute one-way commute). Literally my only social interaction aside from my husband was seeing the OB. Eventually, my pregnancy symptoms lifted and I felt SO BORED, but I figured there was no point in doing anything until the baby was born. Things got a bit busier toward the end of pregnancy, what with going to childbirth classes and picking out baby furniture, and once the baby was born I did some very good things (started hosting a mom’s Bible study and started tutoring an immigrant). However, there were three months while I was pregnant that I totally wasted. I’m never going to get those three months back, either.
 
Xantippe said:
Galbin,

Awww. That’s so sweet.

Rau said:

“I am saying that you need to live the best life you can at all times. Seek to have and maintain good friendships and a good social milieu. Strive to be as successful as you can be in your working career. Participate fully.”

Yes! And that’s good advice for everybody.

I remember once being in a new city (nearly 3,000 miles from my family), unemployed (it was post-9/11), being pregnant and knowing nobody in town but my husband (and my husband had a 75 minute one-way commute). Literally my only social interaction aside from my husband was seeing the OB. Eventually, my pregnancy symptoms lifted and I felt SO BORED, but I figured there was no point in doing anything until the baby was born. Things got a bit busier toward the end of pregnancy, what with going to childbirth classes and picking out baby furniture, and once the baby was born I did some very good things (started hosting a mom’s Bible study and started tutoring an immigrant). However, there were three months while I was pregnant that I totally wasted. I’m never going to get those three months back, either.
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God sometimes allows us to experience what we need though we do not know we need it. I live 2000 miles from anything I wish to. I am a social person who makes friends easily, finding my wife was easy and God seems to always put people in my path.

Except now. I am isolated, lonely, and like you described, I don’t have much more contact than the Lady at the Mcdonalds window and the store clerks. Even though my parish is one of the best I could hope for, it is just not producing lasting relationships for me right now. But as I go through this, I can see that God is working in this time in my life. I am focused more on my marriage and kids than ever before. My spiritual life is healthy and would not be if I was not “in the desert” right now. God is preparing me (us) for something. I can feel it. And I trust it.

While my situation is no where near the OPs or what the real subject is on this thread. It is one of loneliness and isolation at a time in my life when I may not see the reasoning behind it. But God has lead me so far, he has lead me to the happiness of following him. And I see that He has always chosen better for me than I would have for myself.
 
agapewolf said:
I find this thread very interesting. While I see a lot of bitterness in the OP posts, and I think there is something bigger going on here, and its very true that one’s general demeanor can assist or repel meeting people in general, the cliches are tiresome, annoying, and most of the time do not tell the whole truth.

“have to be happy with yourself/God first”. Bull. This is heresy. We are never completely satisfied until we are with God in heaven. He put that ache for Him in us on purpose.

“stop looking and the spouse will show up”. Again, doesn’t make a lot of sense. If marriage is our vocation, that is our path to heaven, and we should never cease pursuing it.

I find Jorduspeaks posts extremely compassionate, empathizing, and very intuitive to the way a single person feels often time.
Click to expand...
1 Corinthians 7 said:
1 Now concerning the thing whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
2 But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
3 Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband.
4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
5 Defraud not one another, except, perhaps, by consent, for a time, that you may give yourselves to prayer; and return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency.
6 But I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment.
7 For I would that all men were even as myself: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that.
8 But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I.
9 But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burnt.
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Marriage is inferior to celibacy.
 
A good marriage is better than bad celibacy.

Good celibacy is better than a bad marriage.

Presumably good celibacy is better than a good marriage, but it’s all a question of what one happens to be called to.
 
Rau said:
Against what scale do you view this ranking?
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It’s not a “scale”. This is church teaching.

The consecrated celibate life is a sign of the commitment to the marriage of Heaven. It is bypassing the earthly marriage which is an icon that points us to the ultimate vocation of the marriage of Christ to the church.

Objectively it is the “better” vocation. Subjectively, the vocation that is better for us is the one to which we are called.
 
agapewolf said:
Agreed.

What in the world does that have to do with what I said?
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agapewolf said:
It’s not a “scale”. This is church teaching.

The consecrated celibate life is a sign of the commitment to the marriage of Heaven. It is bypassing the earthly marriage which is an icon that points us to the ultimate vocation of the marriage of Christ to the church.

Objectively it is the “better” vocation. Subjectively, the vocation that is better for us is the one to which we are called.
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Marriage is definitely a vocation, but that doesn’t mean there is a call to it.
 
agapewolf said:
It’s not a “scale”. This is church teaching.

The consecrated celibate life is a sign of the commitment to the marriage of Heaven. It is bypassing the earthly marriage which is an icon that points us to the ultimate vocation of the marriage of Christ to the church.

Objectively it is the “better” vocation. Subjectively, the vocation that is better for us is the one to which we are called.
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The word “better” must be applied to and understood in the context of a scale, regardless of the source of the statement.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
I know the etymology, I am contesting marriage has a calling like religious life.
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While a used the word “calling” …that wasn’t even close to the point I was trying to make. You are arguing semantics in responding to me on this one.

Not everyone is called to religious life, so its a nice umbrella term to say “the vocation which someone is called”. It was in the context of talking about the “better” vocation.
 
agapewolf said:
While a used the word “calling” …that wasn’t even close to the point I was trying to make. You are arguing semantics in responding to me on this one.

Not everyone is called to religious life, so its a nice umbrella term to say “the vocation which someone is called”. It was in the context of talking about the “better” vocation.
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A lack of a calling to religious life does not mean one is called to marriage
 
Dear Teach, Try not to despair and know that God does hear your prayer and of course He loves you very much. There are many men and women in your situation right now. So many that an author named Emily Stimpson wrote a book called “A Catholic Girl’s Guide to the Single Years”. The author is in her thirties and had had similar struggles in finding a good Catholic man. I 'll keep you in my prayers.
 
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