Life falling apart since becoming Catholic

[sfleet]

Thank you all so much for taking time to offer prayers and suggestions.

We have talked about counseling a few different times and we haven’t ever followed through with it. Most recently I was on board and she said “nevermind, I don’t know what people that don’t share our beliefs could offer.” I then suggested that I’d attend counseling on my own, I’ve recently gently expressed some of my doubts about our marriage and tried to express that maybe I’m more to blame. I’ve said that I will go to personal counseling.

I think that is so embarrassing and humbling to be honest. I never thought in a million years that I would be seeking counseling. Makes me very sad and disapointed in my situation.

Generally speaking we have good family time. I think I’m a pretty good dad, my wife has even said “you are a terrific father but not a husband.” And it isn’t that I treat her particularly bad but more so that we just can’t seem to get along. We are both always on the defensive. That is ething else we both need to work on, not taking everything as a personal attack.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Generally speaking we have good family time. I think I’m a pretty good dad, my wife has even said “you are a terrific father but not a husband.” And it isn’t that I treat her particularly bad but more so that we just can’t seem to get along. We are both always on the defensive. That is ething else we both need to work on, not taking everything as a personal attack.

There’s more to her comments than your conversion. If you are married nine years and have children, then you likely have fairly young children. Marriage takes work, and when both parents are busy being parents and taking care of the other aspects of their lives, they often neglect to do the kinds of things they did together back when they fell in love.

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church.”

Work on attracting your wife. You need to win her again. Do for her the kind of things you did for her when she fell in love with you. Stop being defensive and listen to what she’s saying: she does not feel loved by you if she says that you’re a “terrific father but not a husband.”

Take her on dates. Find time to be together. Make her feel loved by you.

If you are devoting yourself to your children, your work and now your new Church, she likely feels like there’s not much left for her. If she sees you in a loving relationship with God and she doesn’t have a relationship with God, she may feel threatened by your new Love interest. Your relationship with God needs to spill over into how you treat others, including your wife. You say you don’t treat her particularly bad, but you didn’t say that you treat her particularly well. After nine years of marriage, if a husband isn’t making efforts to treat his wife well, she may feel neglected and unloved.

Sweep her off her feet! Behave in such a way towards her that she falls in love with you all over again. If it’s difficult for you to do that for her, do it for God and for your children.

My advice to you is to love her and to be loving towards her.

 

[jaimeleglise]

Thanks!! God Bless. Memaw

God bless you too, Memaw. you always have great posts.

 

[SuperHappy]

I am glad you are looking for solutions to the problems in your marriage.

I think that the best thing you can do at the moment is stop thinking you are not married to the right person. You chose her, she is the mother of your children. Think back to all of the reasons you married her. Pray for her and for your marriage and for your family daily. Ask God to help you gently lead her by example.

Each person’s conversion comes at their own right time. You have received the joy of discovering a closer walk in faith. Now you need to help your wife discover the same joy. Try to remember how you were before your conversion and understand her point of view (which you previously shared). Don’t see her as “less” because she is still the way you both were before. Ignore the comments as best you can, she is feeling like she is losing the man she married. Your attitude of being married to the “wrong person” is most certainly evident to her. Don’t think it’s not.

The Bible clearly tells us:

1 Corinthians 7: 12 -16 - To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

 

[Katherine438]

Thank you all so much for taking time to offer prayers and suggestions.

We have talked about counseling a few different times and we haven’t ever followed through with it. Most recently I was on board and she said “nevermind, I don’t know what people that don’t share our beliefs could offer.” I then suggested that I’d attend counseling on my own, I’ve recently gently expressed some of my doubts about our marriage and tried to express that maybe I’m more to blame. I’ve said that I will go to personal counseling.

I think that is so embarrassing and humbling to be honest. I never thought in a million years that I would be seeking counseling. Makes me very sad and disapointed in my situation.

Generally speaking we have good family time. I think I’m a pretty good dad, my wife has even said “you are a terrific father but not a husband.” And it isn’t that I treat her particularly bad but more so that we just can’t seem to get along. We are both always on the defensive. That is ething else we both need to work on, not taking everything as a personal attack.

Many, many issues in my marriage over the years while my husband was not Catholic and I was … never once thought the issues were because he wasn’t Catholic … but since he converted it’s like an entirely different marriage … I thank God for it.

I would not go to psychological counselling by myself … I tried that and their answer is always to get a divorce … if you want counselling go to your priest and get someone who is in line with Catholic teaching.

I will pray for your marriage.

 

[Cyril_Of_Canada]

Thank you all so much for taking time to offer prayers and suggestions.

We have talked about counseling a few different times and we haven’t ever followed through with it. Most recently I was on board and she said “nevermind, I don’t know what people that don’t share our beliefs could offer.” I then suggested that I’d attend counseling on my own, I’ve recently gently expressed some of my doubts about our marriage and tried to express that maybe I’m more to blame. I’ve said that I will go to personal counseling.

I think that is so embarrassing and humbling to be honest. I never thought in a million years that I would be seeking counseling. Makes me very sad and disapointed in my situation.

Generally speaking we have good family time. I think I’m a pretty good dad, my wife has even said “you are a terrific father but not a husband.” And it isn’t that I treat her particularly bad but more so that we just can’t seem to get along. We are both always on the defensive. That is ething else we both need to work on, not taking everything as a personal attack.

I don’t really feel qualified to help you, but I feel moved to at least speak to you OP because I feel I’m in a similar situation, so I hope maybe I can speak from what I can draw based on my own situation and my own suffering that I experience to comfort you:

I’m in the same boat as you, except I haven’t crossed the Tiber yet. I really sympathize and relate to you OP. There is nothing wrong with counselling. Have you read Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn and Crossing the Tiber by Steve Ray? They were in similar situations too with regards to their wives.

You are completely right; It is embarrassing and humbling—but there is nothing wrong with counselling. You are right to feel sad and disappointed—but I really feel you could benefit from taking charge of feeling sad and disappointed by channeling all your suffering into what good can do in your life for both you and your wife and your marriage. It’s a great opportunity for pursuing holiness and character building and loving your wife even as much as it hurts to do so from all that disappointment and sadness. It’s a situation that reminds you of the power of prayer and how you can’t do things on your own and to lift up your anxieties to God and let him fight your battles for you to help you overcome the wall of Jericho that really seem impossible or hard to handle.

 

[MarkInOregon]

There’s more to her comments than your conversion. If you are married nine years and have children, then you likely have fairly young children. Marriage takes work, and when both parents are busy being parents and taking care of the other aspects of their lives, they often neglect to do the kinds of things they did together back when they fell in love.

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church.”

Work on attracting your wife. You need to win her again. Do for her the kind of things you did for her when she fell in love with you. Stop being defensive and listen to what she’s saying: she does not feel loved by you if she says that you’re a “terrific father but not a husband.”

Take her on dates. Find time to be together. Make her feel loved by you.

If you are devoting yourself to your children, your work and now your new Church, she likely feels like there’s not much left for her. If she sees you in a loving relationship with God and she doesn’t have a relationship with God, she may feel threatened by your new Love interest. Your relationship with God needs to spill over into how you treat others, including your wife. You say you don’t treat her particularly bad, but you didn’t say that you treat her particularly well. After nine years of marriage, if a husband isn’t making efforts to treat his wife well, she may feel neglected and unloved.

Sweep her off her feet! Behave in such a way towards her that she falls in love with you all over again. If it’s difficult for you to do that for her, do it for God and for your children.

My advice to you is to love her and to be loving towards her.

The above is very good advice. And remember love is not a “feeling”–those will come and go and come again in varying strengths over the years. Love is willing the good of your spouse, it’s loving her as Christ loves us even when you don’t feel like it. I guarantee I never ever feel like unloading the dishwasher at 11:00 pm before I go to bed, but I do it because I know it makes her happy when she gets up in the morning-its a small thing but in her mind it says I love her. It can be hard to do things for someone when we don’t feel we are making progress or that there is any reciprocity, but we should continue on anyway–we are called to love–and that is all we can do. Perhaps watching the movie Fireproof would be helpful for you. You may also put in prayer request for your marriage so that members of CAF can pray for you and your marriage.

The peace of Christ.
Mark

 

[therese1998]

This is never popular advice; it certainly wasn’t when I got it. However:

If you are committed to God, you will honor the sanctity of your marriage. Whether you believed in Him or were Catholic at the time of your marriage, those vows are considered by Him to be binding. Whether you are married to your soul mate or to the person you “ended up with”, you can best serve Him by not serving your feelings.

If you are committed to God, you will put first the emotional well-being of your children. You will love them enough to keep the harm from them that divorce does. It’s very clear, from scientific research and from the evidence given for decades from young and grown children of divorce, that the dissolution of their parent’s marriage is almost NEVER helpful or even neutral for children. From the trauma of leaving an intact household to separate households to the emotional wrench of always leaving one parent to be with the other to the loss of the security of an intact family unit, divorce is awful for them and has a very high probability to effect their emotional well-being for a lifetime. To leave your wife because you feel she is not the woman for you, or even b/c you feel called to single life, will probably hurt your children in ways that you won’t be able to fix. Even if it makes you “happy” (and there’s not guarantee it would), it would come at the expense of your children. Would God have you fulfill your personal desires or would He have you protect your children?

God is gracious and often gives us feelings of love for others to make the sacrifices to love those close to us with an agape love. Without those feelings, it is SO HARD to walk the walk, I know. Do you think that praying to have feelings of love for your wife and children in order to make those sacrifices would be beneficial for you? Or even, that those prayers may be the start of being able to get back to the love you and your wife shared as you started your family?

I will pray for you…there is joy in conversion; so much joy. But there is personal sacrifice and hard roads to walk, also. Sometimes, the Lord asks not for the sacrifices we WANT to make, but for sacrifices we really don’t want to do. Be well, be comforted in the Lord and be blessed in your choices!

 

[sfleet]

Again I appreciate the advice and prayers. Unfortunately everyone makes it sound so easy in response. Oh just choose to love her, choose to do this or that. Well obviously it isn’t that easy for any of us fallen creatures…otherwise there wouldn’t be any sin.

I have read Rome Sweet Home, but I’m not Dr. Hahn…far from it. I just don’t feel like I can go on forever with these negative thoughts…I guess I really need to man up and go to some sort of counselor. I’ve spoke to a couple of different priests and while I’ll feel hopeful for a short period it doesn’t take me long to go back into despair.

 

[Cyril_Of_Canada]

Again I appreciate the advice and prayers. Unfortunately everyone makes it sound so easy in response. Oh just choose to love her, choose to do this or that. Well obviously it isn’t that easy for any of us fallen creatures…otherwise there wouldn’t be any sin.

I have read Rome Sweet Home, but I’m not Dr. Hahn…far from it. I just don’t feel like I can go on forever with these negative thoughts…I guess I really need to man up and go to some sort of counselor. I’ve spoke to a couple of different priests and while I’ll feel hopeful for a short period it doesn’t take me long to go back into despair.

I’m suffering, man. I just got back from my adhd counsellor today. I have Generalized Anxiety disorder, anxiety disorder from my condition, depression, social phobia, suffering from grief, anger management issues, lack of self confidence and self esteem, I haven’t seen my son in a month even though my wife is away in her country with him visiting family. I’m having severe marital problems with my wife who doesn’t believe that I love her and doesn’t understand why I married her. As a man who is really suffering, lonely, hurting and broken inside, I really want to reach out to you to encourage you to learn from my own situation and suffering. I’m really crushed and I have a constant internal monologue going on in my head that is often negative. I have learned to benefit from my suffering. It’s been humbling and good for character building and an opportunity to practice the christian faith and draw closer to God.

I really feel you could benefit from counselling and even if you despair, don’t give up hope as hard and as difficult as it is. Paul and the apostles suffered a lot for their faith. They really did.

I feel you could really benefit from going to an adoration chapel and just spending time with the Lord there and lifting up your problems to him and let him go before you. I know it’s tough and I wish I could wave a magic wand to make your problems go away just like mine. But don’t look at your situation as the sky is falling woe is me lose hope sort of thing. Think of how God could be in control and the bigger picture and how good could come out of your situation. It helps for me to know God is in control even if the world seems to be falling apart around me. I take comfort in knowing that. I don’t want to suffer and I don’t enjoy despairing. But hey, it’s really such a joy to practice the christian faith in my sufferings and pursue holiness and draw closer to God and focus on prayer.

I’ll keep you in my prayers.

 

[sfleet]

Thanks Cyril, that was a great post and I appreciate it!

Prayers for you and your situation as well. I’m not trying to have a woe is me attitude and I know I have so man blessings in my life. The more i think about these things and play them out in my head makes me realize I need counseling even more than I could ever imagine.

Thanks again!

 

[therese1998]

If our advice sounds “easy” it’s because it’s impossible to adequately convey in words how difficult it is to love when you don’t feel loving. It would be hard enough to do if we were all at our relaxed, peaceful best, but most of us are tired, stressed and distracted.

Nobody here who is offering you prayers, advice and support snapped their fingers and loved without difficulty. Everybody who has done it has had to do painful, sacrificial work on a minute by minute basis. We’ve ALL had to grit our teeth 1,000 times a day and just carry on with the work. Choosing to love is NEVER easy. It’s not easy for us to choose to love others and, I would imagine, it’s not always very easy for God to love us.

 

[egretps]

If our advice sounds “easy” it’s because it’s impossible to adequately convey in words how difficult it is to love when you don’t feel loving. It would be hard enough to do if we were all at our relaxed, peaceful best, but most of us are tired, stressed and distracted.

Nobody here who is offering you prayers, advice and support snapped their fingers and loved without difficulty. Everybody who has done it has had to do painful, sacrificial work on a minute by minute basis. We’ve ALL had to grit our teeth 1,000 times a day and just carry on with the work. Choosing to love is NEVER easy. It’s not easy for us to choose to love others and, I would imagine, it’s not always very easy for God to love us.

Yes this.

I found on another thread from two gentlemen who suffered divorce. They mentioned a video from Bishop Sheen: youtu.be/KBckoWr2Vs8

“The unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband” - From the Fulton Sheen video. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. 18 minutes or so in the video.

It knocked my socks off by the end. I’m so glad I listened to it today. Bishop Sheen has a couple of other videos on marriage that are just as good.

Now, your story of the fast move into a ‘physical’ relationship with your girlfriend now wife, is very common. I hope some of our single readers are paying attention. You might have been ‘caught up’ in her and found yourself married, so now you have doubts. Well, even in the best marriages, doubts can creep in. Maybe not all happy marriages have doubts, but some do.

My husband isn’t particularly ‘devout’. And, I’m haphazard in my own faith. I dunno, maybe a little ADD, a little lazy. Our soulmate status of sorts has more to do with each of us growing and encouraging the other towards God and the good things, truly good things in life. And, we’re not perfect, not by a long shot. I’m looking at probably decades in purgatory. If I’m lucky. Ha ha! And I wish I wasn’t. My husband? If I had to guess, his simple and pure confidence in Our Lord will probably get him his sainthood before I ever get through half my time in purgatory!

There are warnings against marrying non-believers, that Pauline warning I hear about now and again. Unequally yoked and Paul says that if the unbeliever is willing to stay married to the believer, they should stay married. biblehub.com/commentaries/2_corinthians/6-14.htm and biblehub.com/1_corinthians/7-12.htm
Too many of us run towards marriage, before we become believers. This is not a mistake, but maybe a part of God’s Big Picture. His Plan.

I can’t promise, but you might still have a soulmate in your wife. It’s only nine years, give it another 9 and see.

Now, your wife might not be in the ‘same place’. Sadly she might never, that will be her choice. But, as her spouse, you are to show her by example.

This applies to your children. You are not required to make them holy, but you are to give them a holy example by your own life.

You are in my prayers today. I think you might be going through this doubtful time as a persecution from “you know who”. Increase your prayer life. Try a simple fast, because it’s only through prayers and fasting that you can remove ‘you know who’ from your life. biblehub.com/mark/9-29.htm From time to time, I discovered that this is often the only thing that gets me out of the ‘discouraged mindset’.

God Bless you!