Is it selfish to not have the desire to get married and have children?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hail_Mary
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Sometimes I do find it annoying if people keep asking me why I’m single or try to convince me to get married.

It also pains me to hear that there are people who have successful career and loving families and friends but yet they let their relationship status define them or complain about being single.
 
Hail_Mary said:
Seeing my parents argue in front of me did have an emotional toll on me and they have no idea how my mental state is. I even feel scared to tell them how I am feeling in my mind because I feel like they will judge me. I don’t think they will ever allow me to disagree with them. I feel like this may affect my relationships in the future.
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You probably should get counselling for these issues.

I wouldn’t rule out marriage altogether, you may meet someone someday that you want to marry. Don’t be afraid of marriage because of your parents experience. Even if you never marry, you need to be able to deal with these issues for your own wellbeing.

If your parents suggest arranged marriage then you could politely point out to them the place in the catechism where it specifically says that parents should not force a vocation upon their children. It may be a cultural tradition/practice, but Catholic teaching trumps local custom in this regard.
 
AdamP88 said:
If your parents suggest arranged marriage then you could politely point out to them the place in the catechism where it specifically says that parents should not force a vocation upon their children. It may be a cultural tradition/practice, but Catholic teaching trumps local custom in this regard.
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Yes exactly. Arranged marriage is part of Indian culture though. If I have children of my own in the future, I won’t force any vocation upon them whether it be marriage or religious life. I’ll just have them explore vocations through retreats or something like that.
 
Have you had people assume that you were gay because you don’t have a significant other?

When I tell them I wasn’t they won’t believe me.

Annoying.
 
It definitely isn’t.

A coerced marriage is not a valid marriage.
 
I understand being afraid to marry after watching your folks being unhappy .
I’ve been there.
But I would also caution against making a blanket rule that you’ll never marry, ever.
You don’t need to chase after a husband, but if somebody came into your life you really cared about, be open to giving it a chance 🙂❤️
 
Well it’s just that I feel concerned that I would treated like a maid or a servant by my future husband or his family if I get married in the future and my mom was in the same situation as well. I thought marriage was supposed to be about partnership and friendship.
 
Hail_Mary said:
Well it’s just that I feel concerned that I would treated like a maid or a servant by my future husband or his family if I get married in the future and my mom was in the same situation as well. I thought marriage was supposed to be about partnership and friendship.
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If you are worried about how marriage usually goes in your particular culture, then don’t date guys from that same culture. Many people have all kinds of preferences for a marriage partner, for various reasons. You could always adopt a policy that you won’t date the people who you fear view marriage in this way.

That could take the form of “I won’t date Indian men”. Or “I will only date Catholic men, who were raised in the West and have embraced the more Western view of Catholic marriage.”
 
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If you were forced into sex against your will, raped, you are still a virgin in the eyes of God.

(St. Augustine talks about this at close to the beginning of The City of God. Romans had a strong tradition from pagan times that raped women should kill themselves, and many Christians of Roman ethnicity believed it too. So when the Sack of Rome occurred, St. Augustine wrote a letter to stop raped nuns and other women from killing themselves, and other Christians from looking down on them; and that is how The City of God started out. Stuff from the letter ended up in the book.)

Book 1, Chapter 16 of The City of God:

"Nothing that another person can do to the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers from it…

“But shame invades even a pure spirit from which modesty has not departed, because if an act cannot be suffered without the victim feeling some sensual pleasure, she fears lest it be believed she gave some consent of the will.”

Chapter 18 points out “If nobody can always control what happens to his body, but only can control the consent and refusal of his will, who can suppose that he loses his own purity if his body is grabbed and used for another’s lust? If purity could be destroyed that way, purity would not be a virtue of the soul.”

But you did not consent in any real sense, and God knows that. So nothing done to you against your will can possibly remove your essential virginity. Your body is pure when your will is pure, even if you feel disturbed and sad.

So in Chapter 19, Augustine says of raped and sexually assaulted women, “Within their own souls, with their consciences for witness, they keep the glory of chastity; and in the sight of God, they are counted as pure.”

(BTW, if someone did participate willingly in some pre-marital sex but not in the rest, that part would be a sin but forgiveable at Confession; and the rest would still be rape and sexual abuse! That refusal to consent to such treatment, even if someone could only refuse internally, would be an act of chastity.)

So get some help, even if it has to be online and/or anonymously. (I don’t know if you can report him criminally where you live, or if you just have to let it go for now, and look after your own safety. Obviously your own safety comes first.)
 
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Anicette said:
There is no reason to adopt a child as a single person. There is enough married candidates.
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There are many, many, many children in the US who need loving homes. There is nothing in Scripture nor Tradition or Doctrine that forbids single people from adopting.
 
It is difficult for a single person to adopt and raise kids, but it can happen. It is particularly common when siblings adopt younger siblings who are still minors, or among cousins, or in situations when there is sudden need.

Shrug. No point arguing about something that would happen years in the future, if at all. Let the OP get better first!
 
Well I did feel like that my ex-bf did force me into doing sexual things against my will. He would say that I’m like his slave and that he owns me so I would have to say yes to him even though I said no to him. He did not let me have control over my body. He would also tell me that he will feel rejected and not loved by me when I did not allow him to touch me and do sexual things to me.
 
Saying yes under force or duress is not saying yes.

No real man would do that kind of crud.

I am glad you are out of his power! What a creepy skunk!
 
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PLEASE get help. Tell your priest, if you are in the US call a hotline. You need safety and healing.
 
Also, some singles have adopted children in rares cases, the Church has always promoted the adoption by married families. And many catholic agencies in some countries prefered to give only children to families with a father and a mother.
TheLittleLady said:
There are many, many, many children in the US who need loving homes.
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Sorry, but there is also many serious disfunctionement in adoption in US.
Some children should not be adopted as they are already a family.
And the worst in the system of rehoming of children (25,000 children in 2016). Seen from an European perspective (and more, a french one), it is something that is close to human traffic, and a sale of children.

Yet, it is not the object of this post…
 
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I did end things and blocked him on Snapchat with when he broke up with me by asking me to be friends with benefits.

I feel that being in a friend’s with benefits arrangement is toxic and unhealthy. It can keep me from finding true love and being in a healthy romantic relationship.
 
AdamP88 said:
If you are worried about how marriage usually goes in your particular culture, then don’t date guys from that same culture. Many people have all kinds of preferences for a marriage partner, for various reasons. You could always adopt a policy that you won’t date the people who you fear view marriage in this way.

That could take the form of “I won’t date Indian men”. Or “I will only date Catholic men, who were raised in the West and have embraced the more Western view of Catholic marriage.”
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To be honest, I don’t want to settle down with a man who will view marriage that way, which is the wife being treated like a servant or a maid. This is also why I set high standards and refuse to settle for less. I’m also picky about who I date and let in to my life. I’m not scared about being alone and single for a long time.

I really don’t feel like stressing out about all of this and causing this to make me feel unhappy. Life is just too short to be worrying about all of this.

I would much rather have a successful career and have a loving family and friends and I don’t care if I’m single or never get married.

Because of all of this, now I feel scared about becoming close to God and submitting to His Will.
 
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