Is a 'spark' always necessary?

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Marriage is not about feelings - that is so contrary to what modern culture tells us, and look at how well modern culture is doing with marriage. Marriage is a vocation, marriage is a sacrament.

God created marriage - what was the first thing that God said? Did He say “it is not good that man does not have that spark with someone” or “it is not good that man does not have someone to be romantic with” - nope, God said “it is not good for man to be alone”.

The Catechism is very clear about marriage:

1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”

**1652 **“By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.”

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: “It is not good that man should be alone,” and “from the beginning [he] made them male and female”; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.
 
MCGar said:
I think this is all a bit one sided and a tad bit selfish. I would not want my fiance to be with me if he did not feel a spark being with me. I think I deserve to know if he doesn’t feel a spark.
Knowing that sparks fade or change doesn’t mean that they aren’t important at all.
My fiance and I have discussed in detail the eventually of sparks fading and the importance of or bond in sacred matrimony.

Granted not all people feel sparks at the same time but they must keep in mind being totally and completely honest with the people that they want to have a relationship with.
If you aren’t honest about not having a spark with this girl by the time marriage comes around, then I believe that you would be using her for your goals and aspirations of wanting marriange for yourself, it doesn’t matter what you think is enough that you will give her in the marriage (even if it’s all honorable things like respect and support), to keep silent about the lack of spark is a serious lie by omission in my book.

I’m not saying you have to have a spark right off the bat, but do the lady a favor and be completely honest with her when the time comes, she should have the right to know where you stand so she won’t being going into a marriage deluded.

I feel very strongly about this because I would feel like this sort of ‘secret’ would defraud the intent of the sacrament.
If she knows about the lack of sparks and she accepts it, then she can go into marriage without being lied to.

Also, I think it speaks volumes that you might not care enough of her feelings to realize that she would actually care to know your true feelings for her! I’m really shocked by this :eek:
I’m also shocked that all the advice given hasn’t pointed this out. In marriage we MUST think about about put the feelings of the other spouse as an important thing to nurture not to ‘get around’!

I apologize if my understanding of the situation isn’t perfectly clear, because I really hope I’m missunderstanding the problem
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Maybe we need to define “spark”. To me “spark” was that butterflies in the tummy body all a flame feeling I would get when ever I was around someone I was attracted to. I think in my situation God allowed me to see my DH through clearer eyes, I decided to marry him because I could see that we loved each other deeply and not just because of that rush of emotion. I guess I could see that we had a long burning fire that I would have been blinded to if all I could see was a sparkler. The best advise I can give is just don’t walk away because there is no spark what I have now is hundreds of times better than any spark.
 
With that further explaination (thanks, sometimes I need things repeated), I think you can’t force a spark and he can seek to explore this relationship longer to see for himself if no spark at all is enough for him.
But in the end her feelings, priorities and expectations should be taken into consideration and he needs to be honest with her about his true feelings so she can make an informed decision.

There is a big trust factor in marriage and when things get gritty and hard later on in marriage, and if she finds out that he never felt the spark, then she’ll feel devalued and manipulated and will have no trust to get her through the tough stuff.
 
Yes, I guess ‘spark’ needs to be defined more. I don’t think of spark as a euphoric feeling that is similar to what a tween gets on her first crush 😃

I think of spark as an attraction that is special for that one person in your life, that is unique to that one person and should not be transferred over to any passing person or acquantance.

As for married love not being about feelings I highly disagree.
God calls us to love in many different ways. The love we have for God should have a definite feeling, the love we should have for our neighbor (as a creation of God) should have a definite feeling, the love we have for our children have an unequivicol feeling. There is a type of passion, and intensity that is different for each love but it should be there.
Married love is not an exception.
I think maybe you should listen to a CD entitled Marriage and the Eucharist.
Love isn’t devoid of feeling. Love is a healthy and nurturing respect for an actual feeling.
 
C2K2 said:
Maybe we need to define “spark”. To me “spark” was that butterflies in the tummy body all a flame feeling I would get when ever I was around someone I was attracted to. .
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my definition too…sometimes you feel this for someone with whom you have nothing in common and you “know” you must not be together, and with the person whom you have many things in common , you don’t 🤷

maybe it’s simply physical attraction.
 
C2K2 said:
Maybe we need to define “spark”. To me “spark” was that butterflies in the tummy body all a flame feeling I would get when ever I was around someone I was attracted to. I think in my situation God allowed me to see my DH through clearer eyes, I decided to marry him because I could see that we loved each other deeply and not just because of that rush of emotion. I guess I could see that we had a long burning fire that I would have been blinded to if all I could see was a sparkler. The best advise I can give is just don’t walk away because there is no spark what I have now is hundreds of times better than any spark.
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Yeah, that. I was definitely attracted to my DH, even back then! It just wasn’t that infatuation so common to early relationships.
 
I may be posting too much but I think that I need to further elaborate.

Attraction/sparks/chemistry/sexual passion are gifts given to us by God meant for the use of it in a Catholic way (for marriage, for procreation). There is nothing dirty or base about these feelings. The problem is if people misuse these gifts, if they stop at the superficial. We shouldn’t overreact to the misuse of them by running in the complete opposite direction. We should just be careful to be wise with the gifts given to us, not put too much focus on them but also not disregard them.
 
MCGar said:
Yes, I guess ‘spark’ needs to be defined more. I don’t think of spark as a euphoric feeling that is similar to what a tween gets on her first crush 😃

I think of spark as an attraction that is special for that one person in your life, that is unique to that one person and should not be transferred over to any passing person or acquantance.

As for married love not being about feelings I highly disagree.
God calls us to love in many different ways. The love we have for God should have a definite feeling, the love we should have for our neighbor (as a creation of God) should have a definite feeling, the love we have for our children have an unequivicol feeling. There is a type of passion, and intensity that is different for each love but it should be there.
Married love is not an exception.
I think maybe you should listen to a CD entitled Marriage and the Eucharist.
Love isn’t devoid of feeling. Love is a healthy and nurturing respect for an actual feeling.
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Love is a choice.

Love is more than feelings, and love can and should stand when the feelings fade. Feelings will ebb and flow, feelings are emotions.

The sacraments, the grace that comes from them, does not depend on feelings - Jesus is present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist regardless of what I “feel”. The truth is not about feelings.

You might want to read “Dark Night of the Soul”.

Is soaring emotion and fuzzy pink bunny love and butterflies and romance nice - yep. Does a lasting marriage depend on it, nope.

Believe it or not, for centuries the idea that romantic emotion was something that developed after marriage was the way things were. A sacramental marriage requires love, real love, love that is a choice.
 
The spark can be a number of things like people have suggested.
But from the most part it comes from being attracted to one another either spiritually, mentally, physically, or even commonalities. The so called “spark” is actually a feed off one another. If one acts in a positive way towards the other and the other replicates there is “spark”. If either one is hesitant or couscous it is almost guaranteed to not have a “spark”.

Is it needed absolutely not. IMHO. It is better to get to know each other without the rush of a “spark”.

Don’t worry about “Eros” if all goes well all you have to do is spend time and pay attention to each other with true openness and it will happen. Just make sure you are at the same level (one could be thinking of one thing and the other somerthing else).

Like a priest once described Eros to me as “God’s little push to get out of your comfortable life and get married”.

God Bless you both will be in my prayers.
John Anthony
 
John_AH said:
Like a priest once described Eros to me as “God’s little push to get out of your comfortable life and get married”
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an elderly friend of mine told me the same. She said love will change with time into another “form” of love…love between a man and woman is
God’s little push to get out of your comfortable life and get married…

strange …same words!
 
I guess Dh and I didn’t have much spark right away either. we both found the other attractive and fun to be around, but remained ultra celibate (as in- he didn’t even kiss me for about a year) and were just great friends. I would advise you to pray for contentment and for God to bring you the right person, and for a sign if this person is “the one”. Once I stopped looking, DH showed up. GOD knows who he has planned for you. just stop, step back, and listen to his directions. twk
 
kage_ar said:
Love is a choice.

Love is more than feelings, and love can and should stand when the feelings fade. Feelings will ebb and flow, feelings are emotions.

The sacraments, the grace that comes from them, does not depend on feelings - Jesus is present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist regardless of what I “feel”. The truth is not about feelings.
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But that’s exactly the state of mind I disagree with, disagreeing with how people make love dependant on the fuzzy feelings turns into a complete 180 with regards to how feelings relate to love, as if feelings are inconsequential.

My view point is that:
No, love doesn’t depend on feelings, but love isn’t devoid of feelings and feelings are a gift of God to be applied properly to each situation. Feelings are part of humanity and thus part of what God created us to be. We are not to artificially cut off our feelings from our bodies because that is an unnatural divide. Granted, we may have dissordered feelings because of our fallen nature, but with God’s love we change those feelings into what they are meant for.
 
It is important that two people do not enter the sacred bonds of marriage expecting to always have the same feelings for the other. That sets the couple up for misery that could lead to divorce.

They can choose to love, even when the only thing they feel is annoyance or apathy. In those times, love as a choice is what will keep the marriage together. It is easy to stay to gether when you feel all gooshey and blissful -
 
Depends what you call the spark. If I were to name it, I’d say it’s not necessarily the biological attraction itself, as in sex drive, but rather a bit more mental or psychological thing. Something which energises you, intrigues you, but might as well unhealthily stimulate you.

Without that spark things seem to be somewhat platonic, even if you can’t say you aren’t attracted or you don’t love the person. Yet you still feel something is not there. This is a bit similar to being able to say that someone is pretty or even beautiful without being attracted to him “that way”.

One thing that comes to my mind is that puppy loves generally don’t have that spark. And yet it’s not just friendship. Sexual attraction is generally hardly there, given the young age (puppy loves happen before children even know how sexuality works). Perhaps without sparks things look a bit this way.
 
Defining that ol’ spark is hard.

I think the important thing about moving towards marriage is to find out the other person’s bad habits, and decide if you can live with them. Also reveal your own…

That spark can hide them or make you think you can change them. So try to keep it in the background. If you don’t have that spark yet - don’t worry about it. It’ll come when you need it.

The first time I met my DH, my first reaction was, “Wow! What a pair of shoulders!” But God arranged things so that I was able to decide to accept his football fandom, and his… well, I like to joke and say, "I married ‘Mr. Right,’ but sometimes his middle name is ‘Always.’ " Those things are parts of the man I love. So I watch football with him, and we’ve developed a family joke about being w… wr… wro… that word! (I can be pretty opinionated, too!)

And he accepts things about me, too. I’m not the world’s best housekeeper (God bless you, FlyLady!) and spend way too much time on these forums! Plus he lives with my depression, which ain’t easy. God bless him.

We are especially blessed because, 8 years into our marriage, we walked separate paths to the Church. One day he came to me and said something like, “I don’t know whether you’ll like this, but I have to go back to the Catholic church.” I said, “Great! When do we start?” A lovely surprise for both of us.

Gosh, I just love to count my blessings!

Ruthie
 
I think Pope Benedict XVI addressed this in his first encyclical ‘deus caritas est’. He also talks about the ‘spark’, though not quite in those words, but talks about the immature kind of love which develops eventually in marriage.
In this context it is highly instructive to note that in the course of the book two different Hebrew words are used to indicate “love”. First there is the word dodim, a plural form suggesting a love that is still insecure, indeterminate and searching. This comes to be replaced by the word ahabà, which the Greek version of the Old Testament translates with the similar-sounding agape, which, as we have seen, becomes the typical expression for the biblical notion of love. By contrast with an indeterminate, “searching” love, this word expresses the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.
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It is part of love’s growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being “for ever”. Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God
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Thanks all. I appreciate your posts, the more I read of them, the more I realise this may be worth pursuing. It’s very very early days, like 3rd date early days, so will need to wait and see.

I have realised I still had disordered affections for my ex too, which I’ve been praying about. Those attachments aren’t healthy because at their root is a rejection of the real love which respects her as a person and respects her free will, including her free will to leave me. I have also been re-reading JPII’s ‘Love and Responsibility’ - excellent book!

I suppose what still concerns me is a kind of pointless envy, the classic temptation of the modern world to ‘wait for the one’ or to ‘play the field’ or say ‘I can do better’. I still find it hard to say to myself ‘I am in a relationship’ and close my mind to other possibilities, whereas with my last relationship I found that much easier, that’s one thing the ‘spark’ does help with. I just need to keep telling myself that these are temptations and not God’s ways.
 
I can only speak for myself. I’ve been married a long time (33 years) but prior to that, I had a active dating life, and several relationships.

At the risk of being called “superficial” I had to be physcially attracted to the girl to even start a relationship. Attractive women are different then anyone else, because of the way they are treated in society. I learned it came with the territory. Often I came to realize the girl had nothing going for her but her looks, and I eased out. For the ones that did, I hung around. The relationship might fail, but it wouldn’t be because of a lack of passion.

I don’t see how a physically benign relationship turns passionate over time, but that is not to say it doesn’t happen, just not for me. If I’m not physcially attracted to her now, I don’t see how that changes later because I find out she has a good sense of humor? But thats just me.

Throughout our 20s and 30s my wife and I were very passioate about each other. Being seperated from her for even a few days was difficult. Now in our 50s, our relationship is based on enduring love, and a sense we are growing old together, and need each other more in other ways now.
 
To me, it probably depends on your perspective. One person’s spark, is another person’s thud. If your looking for that 10 where everything is right, you may need to scale back some of your expectations. If your looking for a relationship, just any relationship, that you may settle for a 4-5 with regard to what you want, maybe you should be a little more selective. A good rule of thumb is to try to temper your natural way you approach the situation, with a more moderate position.

Certainly love is more than emotion, but at the same time you need to yield to prudent judgement to know if it’s the best situation to spend your time on. Granted you could muscle out enough action to love anyone. Since you cannot love everyone all the time, you need to discern what to prune and where to place your focus.
 
DL82 said:
It seems even from ‘Love and Responsibility’ there is a presumption that people will begin a loving relationship with some level of emotional desire for one another.

I’ve started spending time with someone who is a wonderful person, very caring, intelligent, and who I get on really well with. I’ve been trying to look at the situation purely from a self-giving ‘agape’ perspective, and think she likes spending time with me, and that I might have something to give her in a relationship. I don’t find her unattractive, there just isn’t a ‘spark’, but the more I pray for it, the more I find myself being given the desire to be with her.

Should I stop kidding myself, or should I continue to pray for the desire to desire her?
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A spark is always necessary if you plan to start a fire.
How about you simply pray to do God’s will?
 
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