Is Being Single better then marriage?

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What kind of single? Single “just living my own life” or “single, but looking” or single, consecrated/ missionary?

No matter how much easier it would be I simly cannot believe anyone would feel very fulfilled just living the single life (living for the sake of living kind). It’s kind of like being married but choosing not to have children. May be a nice, comfortable life but you miss out on an immense sense of joy amd fulfillment that comes from the HARD work of raising children.

Regardless, the BEST thing, is living your vocation, whether you discern that that is marriage or consecrated life or single (with a purpose) it’s between you and God. And you’ll know you are living it when, on the worst day you still know you are doing what you should be doing.

I answer for both my husband and I when I say that we would NEVER go back to the single life, although neither of us spent too much time being “single”. As a matter of fact I feel a lot of pity for people in their 20 and 30s who seem to not have any direction and they’re scared of making any decision because it might be “hard” . I always tell them, let me break it to you, as a Christian, NO MATTER WHAT your vocation is, it WILL be hard. There is no easy way out of being followers of Christ. The sooner we find joy in sharing His cross, the sokner we lovingly embrace our call, and vice versa.

It’s kind of like the multitude of married couples who have one child or two, decide it was really hard, and the put off having the next for years and years, or forever. If God hadn’t intervened we would have been one of those couples and we would be missing out on a tremendous wealth and blessing! But as we were juding it, we were SURE that having more children would kill us. There are some circumstances in which we simply do not know what we’re missing out on but we’re ready to throw in all the negatives in our calculations in order to justify not taking the risk and throwing ourselves completely in God’s will.

Marrying the person God intends for you should bring nothing but peace and joy, and, of course, hardship, like everything else 🙂
 
Ultimately, doing God’s will is what’s best for us. If it is God’s will for us to be married, then marriage is what will bring us the most happiness and lead us to holiness in the long run. If being single is what God wills for us, then that is the road to happiness and holiness that God has decided would be best for us.

I, personally, am quite opposed to getting married, but I think all of us, those of us who want to get married but haven’t yet, and those of us who don’t want to get married, like me, should be open to doing God’s will and not what we personally want for ourselves, because God knows best what it is that will make us happy in this world and the next. If God calls me to marriage, so be it. I hope not, though. But I’ll do God’s will ahead of my own will. Or at least I’ll try because I know I should.

I love the freedom of being single. I love being unencumbered and being able to drop everything - my home, my job - everything, and then disappear in a foreign country for months on end without any responsibilities, obligations or expenses. I could never do that if I were married. I love being relatively unconcerned about my own future and being entirely unconcerned about people depending on me, because there aren’t any.

What for married people looks like loneliness and pointlessness, for me is freedom from worldly concerns, the ability to keep company with whomever I want and to focus my life on God. What for me looks like a life of suffocation, restriction and worry, for married people is a wonderful vocation of companionship, bringing forth new life, and leading one’s beloved spouse into heaven.
 
I’d be lost without my wife. She’s my rock. For me, marriage is better.
 
youtube.com/watchThe answer will vary depending on what’s been happening lately. Sometimes I long for the days when I could do what I wanted when I wanted to, without waiting for someone else to get ready or have conflicting plans.
 
I’d note again that this is a very individual thing, and I won’t pretend to tell people what the best is for them. But I will note this.

I’ve lived both lives, having started living in the adult world relatively young, and having married when I was 31. After we had children, what amazed me is to realize how amazingly narrow my world view had been prior to being married, and even when I was first married and didn’t have children. I don’t mean to suggest this applies to everyone who is single. But I don’t think I really became an adult until I we had children, and I don’t think I really even fully stepped into my humanity until then. I had more time to do this or that prior to then, or when single, but I was so much poorer in comparison that I can’t even imagine it now.

What I think that may caution about (if anything at all) is that when we choose a state in regards to marriage, ie., to marry or remain single, we must be careful to reconcile that with God’s desires. If we base it on human concerns, such as money, freedom, etc., we are making decisions based on a very, very narrow set of perceptions which stand to be flawed in some manner. When I was a young working professional, I thought I was fully adult,and I wouldn’t have thought that marriage would change my world outlook deeply, but it did. Even if some disaster was to render me single today, I would never be that person I was when I was single again, and I wouldn’t want to be.

God, it is often said, works in mysterious ways. I thought I was living a pretty Catholic life when I was single, but there were errors in my perceptions that I had then that I wouldn’t have become aware of but for being married. My Faith is much deeper, my awareness of things much greater, and truth be known I’m probably freer in real terms than I ever was when single, as there were things I wouldn’t have been able to overcome but through events that occurred to me in the married state.

I also want to note that “happiness” is a bit of a misconstrued concept when we casually speak of things like this, as it’s very difficult to really define. Our married life has been far from trouble free. We’ve been afflicted by illness and troubles, but we’ve never been unhappy. I’m amazed when so many casually drop spouses in times of trouble as to us, that’s when we’ve been the closest. In some ways, I think that’s an aspect of the married state that’s the least emphasized, but the most present if things are working correctly. Had I not been married, there are some things I’ve gone through which I don’t know that I could have very well endured. If I’d been single, I’d have been like a rowboat in a stormy sea.
 
I don’t know if one is a higher calling according to Church teaching but the Church has a real problem here because a lot of leaders and regular laypeople in the Church neglect single people and make us feel like lepers. But to be fair I think this is a societal problem not just a Church problem.

Personally being single is misery. I have been told that the single life is my vocation and I greatly fear that loneliness is literally going to kill me (as in a heart attack sometime before I turn 50 or maybe even 40). I want a strong woman to love and be loved by, to laugh and cry with, to fall asleep with me at night and wake up with me in the morning, to cook for, to buy flowers for, to share favorite songs with, to read Scripture and go to Mass and receive the Body and Blood of Christ with, and to journey to Heaven together. But if I must be single then that is God’s will and I pray for a meaningful life.
 
Since I seem to attract to the wrong sort for marriage I take that as GODs way of telling me marriage isn’t in the cards for me. I’ve learned to prefer being single is far better then being in a bad relationship.
 
Depends- Any life that does not involve giving yourself away completely to others will be unhappy, married or single. I just think it’s easier for some people to give themselves totally to one other in an exclusive set-up or a tiny closed group (Family) whereas others are more suited to giving themselves away to a community. Either way, it 's totally sure that if your life does not involve a genuine giving away of oneself to others, genuine selfless service in some way, you’ll be miserable. That’s just the truth of human nature- We were made for love, can’t be happy without it…

If you are married and never truly forget yourself in service to your spouse, children, in-laws, you’ll be miserable. If you are single and only spend it on self-centred pursuits alone, you’ll never know true happiness, ever. At the same time, if you are in difficult circumstances,in whichever state, only heroic faith and great spiritual maturity will help you have joy in the midst of it all.

Single: Less or Greater responsibilities depending on the life but lots of loneliness at times- Marriage has it’s problems and joys too.
 
Certainly not, not just being single anyway. The Church has traditionally recognized only three fundamental vocations: preisthood, religious life, and married life. The idea of single life being a vocation is new. The passage of St Paul referred to above was normally seen as referring to the religious life.
Also, at least in the Western church, it has long been accepted that living alone is a difficult way to lead a holy life. Hermitages were never common in the Western church since the time of Benedict and the start of monastic life. The Church, seeing the wisdom of living in community as opposed to by oneself, required orders to adopt communal life almost always.
Until our modern day shortage of priests, it was also rare for secular priests to live alone, as more than one priest was almost always at a parish.
I am not trying to knock singles by any means. If anything, if they are successful in leading good and holy lives, they are more heroic than any of the other three options; because most of us certainly need someone else to answer to. But it is because the vast majority of us need that help in achieving heaven, that saying single is better than marriage is wrong, IMO.

It is interesting topic, because there is a flaw, IMO, with the way permanent deacons are handled by the Church. I do not support married priests beyond the Church’s exceptions; but I will say the requirement that deacons cannot remarry after the death of a spouse seems both arbitrary and misguided.
 
King_Lazy said:
…

I love the freedom of being single. I love being unencumbered and being able to drop everything - my home, my job - everything, and then disappear in a foreign country for months on end without any responsibilities, obligations or expenses. I could never do that if I were married. I love being relatively unconcerned about my own future and being entirely unconcerned about people depending on me, because there aren’t any.

What for married people looks like loneliness and pointlessness, for me is freedom from worldly concerns, the ability to keep company with whomever I want and to focus my life on God. What for me looks like a life of suffocation, restriction and worry, for married people is a wonderful vocation of companionship, bringing forth new life, and leading one’s beloved spouse into heaven.
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With all due respect to KingLazy and without trying to cast any negative light on him, I would like to use his post to illustrate my last post.

Most importantly, this is a common idea, but not a Catholic idea, of what freedom is. As Blessed John Paul II said “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought”. A member of a religious order who takes a vow of obediance is no less free than King Lazy represents himself. The correct understanding of freedom is critical to understanding what a call to holiness is all about.

Next, this “freedom” to be unencumbered, to do whatever we want at anytime, for many people is a recipe for moral disaster. Just reading People magazine about rich celebrities should illustrate this point. It is obvious that (relative to the general population) a very high percentage of the rich and famous get in a lot of trouble with substance abuse and out of controlled life styles. Is that because only bad people become rich and famous? I think not. I think it is because their “freedom” is poison for the vast majority of people, considering our fallen state.
 
In my point of view, I can only say:

At the beginning of the world, the first man with the first woman was a couple. That was the first natural and supranatural marriage: Adam with Eve. That was wanted by God, the creator of the univers.

Thus, in general and by principle, we can state that a man is for a woman, or a woman is for a man. The marriage is the principle before and after the original sin. With Jesus-Christ, marriage is a sacrament and still the principle;

Marriage is for natural and supranatural love. Catholic marriage is a sacramental way for going to heaven. It is a state of life that is, per se, licit, legal, good, not bad and not only tolerable. With the marriage there is special aids from Holy Trinity. Marriage is very good, per se.

In the natural way, to stay single is not totally normal. This situation of state of life was not in the first time wanted by God. With the Holy Revelation and Jesus-Christ, the each person can chose an other way for going to heaven : priesthood (sacrament), be a nun, be a brother, be a monk, be a friar, be a wife, be a husband.

Each person is free to chose its catholic way. It is a true freedom for each human being.

Stay a single person is a possiblity like the marriage. There is not inferiority, or superiority.

In conclusion, single is not better than marriage and marriage is not better than single.
 
tafan said:
With all due respect to KingLazy and without trying to cast any negative light on him, I would like to use his post to illustrate my last post.

Most importantly, this is a common idea, but not a Catholic idea, of what freedom is. As Blessed John Paul II said “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought”. A member of a religious order who takes a vow of obediance is no less free than King Lazy represents himself. The correct understanding of freedom is critical to understanding what a call to holiness is all about.

Next, this “freedom” to be unencumbered, to do whatever we want at anytime, for many people is a recipe for moral disaster. Just reading People magazine about rich celebrities should illustrate this point. It is obvious that (relative to the general population) a very high percentage of the rich and famous get in a lot of trouble with substance abuse and out of controlled life styles. Is that because only bad people become rich and famous? I think not. I think it is because their “freedom” is poison for the vast majority of people, considering our fallen state.
Click to expand...
Whats that line in the bible - the truth will set you free.
as a single Dad I’ve gotta say being able to come and go as you like is not necessarily freedom. Devoting yourself to someone is very freeing if you have the right perspective on freedom.
 
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