Is it selfish, and therefore sinful, to remain single if one remains single for selfish reasons

  • Thread starter Thread starter SacredHeartBassist
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I don’t think Your analogy is a good one. Maybe a select group of marriages might be good but most marriages aren’t good. That’s why the divorce rate is where it’s at. My parents didn’t have a good marriage and my dad hit me and my mom all the time. And honestly I know more people with marriages that mirror my parents than I know people who have good marriages.
 
There is something like 100,000 volcanoes [volcanos?] … most being under the ocean.

I spent years collecting data on Mount Erebus, which is right near the South Pole. Elevation is nearly two miles. And it spews chlorine and other noxious gases right up into the alleged “ozone hole” from a continuous caldera … full time eruption.

Amazing.

I have BOXES of data including maps. Just on this one volcano!
 
If you tell people that you don’t want to get married because you are afraid that your future husband will do to you what your father did to you and your mom, it will probably come off as a lot more genuine and garner a lot less incredulous looks than the reasons cited in your original post. Of course, you aren’t under any obligation to reveal that sort of private information or really justify your life choices to anyone.

PS- It really isn’t a “select few” marriages that are happy. The overall divorce rate isn’t great, but the numbers improve substantially if you look at couples who are mature and entering into marriage with a firm sense of commitment and for the right reasons. What’s more, even those whose marriages ultimatey end in divorce rarely regret their attempts at family life, but just their choice of who they entered into it with.
 
Volcanoes … again … when I was young I received a letter announcing a quest for volunteers to “winter over” at the South Pole. HOWEVER the person sending the letter … delayed forwarding the information … so that HE could apply for it … and it was too late for other people to apply.
 
Allegra said:
Money issues and conflict are difficulties found in most marital relationships at one point or another and it’s not sinful to acknowledge the pros and cons of any situation. I think the reason married people give you “the look” when you say that isn’t that they think you are selfish, but that they find those downsides to be superficial when compared to the many tremendous benefits of having a family. Sort of like saying, “I’m glad I didn’t win the 18 billion dollar lottery jackpot because you just have to pay taxes on it and who has time to write out all those cheques anyway?”
If you feel the need to apologize for your single life (and there’s really no reason for you to feel obligated to do so), you might get more understanding if you concentrated less on the superficial downsides you perceive about married life, and emphasize the exciting and important opportunities you have as a single person.
Click to expand...
In Canada, lottery winnings are tax free so that analogy doesn’t work 🙂

Regardless of the reason for the ‘look’, it will always come accross as judgemental. As a single person, I NEVER give a ‘look’ when a married person tells me how many kids thet have because I am sure a lot of Catholics with over 3 kids are fed up with being judged for having so many kids.

It is all about learning to respect other people’s choices
 
That’s sort of my point. They aren’t judging your choice to be single as much as responding to your statements about their own life style. You will get a much better reaction if you focus less on what you think is too burdensome about the way they live and more on all the amazing opportunities the single life offers you. It probably isn’t the way you choose to live your own life that garners “the look”. It’s the fact that your statements about their life sound silly to them. And since you really don’t know what their life is like, it is up to you to stop making such statements if you want them to respect your point of view.
 
Allegra said:
That’s sort of my point. They aren’t judging your choice to be single as much as responding to your statements about their own life style. You will get a much better reaction if you focus less on what you think is too burdensome about the way they live and more on all the amazing opportunities the single life offers you. It probably isn’t the way you choose to live your own life that garners “the look”. It’s the fact that your statements about their life sound silly to them. And since you really don’t know what their life is like, it is up to you to stop making such statements if you want them to respect your point of view.
Click to expand...
Thank you for pointing that out. I am now seeing it in a different light. So correct me if I am wrong, but when a single person says ‘I don’t want to marry because it is too expensive’, a married person feels judged for making a ‘wrong’ choice. Where as if the single person was to soften the delivery of the statement and say ‘As much as I am sure there are a lot of advantages to being married, personally I doubt I could handle the challenge of sharing finances’, the married person would feel less insulted.

Is that what you are getting at?
 
Whatever happened to the days when married people, upon hearing any speech by a single person about why they are single (other than a religious vocation), would simply chuckle and say, “Oh, just wait till you meet the right girl/ guy. You’ll soon change your tune” and then everybody changed the subject to movies or sports?
 
I guess those days are gone because more and more people are never meeting the right person and they just end up never married
 
Then how come 98 percent of people I know who aren’t nuns or priests are, or have been, married? I’m racking my brains right now trying to come up with a lifelong single person and no one out of several hundred people is springing to mind. (Possibly one or two gay people.)

I will say that I have a considerable number of friends, especially men, who did not marry until they were around 40. Most of them had lived with a couple of women during their 20s and 30s and then ended up marrying when they hit middle age.
 
Last edited:
I had the good fortune to meet a volcanologist when I was at university. I mentioned looking for a part time job as a research assistant and he hired me on the spot. To me it was a win-win situation since I now had another source of income, aside from my scholarship money, along with some unique work experiences.
 
that’s just people you know but i know several people who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who have never married. no one wanted them or they didn’t really try
 
Last edited:
I’m sure there is anecdotal evidence all over the place, but what I am saying is that there are not droves of never-married people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, at least not in the United States. The vast majority of people who are not committed to religious life do get married at some point. If this was not the case, you would not be running into people looking at you funny for wanting to stay single.

I think the actual percentage of “never married” is around 20 percent, and that very likely includes some people who are/were in a long-term romantic partnership that for whatever reason they did not make into a church marriage or civil marriage.
 
Last edited:
I’m sure part of that is due to the fact that society no longer requires or even strongly suggests that people get married in order to move in together and have children, and in fact sometimes creates economic motivations for people to avoid marriage. It’s not all about lonely people who couldn’t find anybody who wanted them.

Up through about the 1960s-1970s, living together was frowned upon and if you had a child out of wedlock it was a disgrace. Now it’s normal.
 
Last edited:
well i think that’s part of it, but i think another part of it is that more people are not dating at all.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top