Loneliness in marriage

[JoyToTheWhirled]

I’m trying not to get sucked into self pity, but I also want to be honest about things. Life is a challenge right now, waiting to hear the results of a job interview, kids in the middle of exams, etc. But one of my greatest joys and consolations is my faith and my marriage.
My husband is not a Catholic. He’s a fairly committed Evangelical Anglican, and is supportive in a practical sense, driving me to Mass and so on. But his attitude towards my Catholic faith ranges from mildly antagonistic to dismissively uninterested to the point of hurtful rudeness. Occasionally he intersperses this with curious questions which I do my best to answer. We’ve been married 18 years.

Yesterday, I went on pilgrimage to Walsingham, and it was honestly the best experience I have had since my reception into the church at the Easter Vigil. I have wanted to talk about what I did, what the place was like, show him the pictures and so forth. I don’t expect him to experience a damascene conversion through it, I just want to share a conversation about things which are important to me as much as I listen and take an interest in his worship leading and youth work at his church.

But he is so uninterested, he actually fell asleep while looking at his phone when I was halfway through a sentence explaining that there used to be a railway line that you walk along now. It’s the kind of thing he used to be interested in, just to say I’m not deliberately boring him! He’s constantly on his phone, or watching sport, and seems to have stopped engaging with me when I speak, even though he expects me to respond actively to his long rundowns of his workday or his experience at church.
I am beginning to feel painfully alone, and his disinterest in my life is rubbing me raw. I don’t know want to wallow in ‘poor old me’, but I really would appreciate any advice about how to change my focus so I don’t end every day crying in the kitchen because I might as well share my day with the kettle for all the response I get.

 

[1ke]

Has this been a marked change since your conversion?

 

[exnihilo]

I’m sorry you are experiencing this. I have some sense of this. When I was looking into Catholicism I would be excited about what I was learning. I wanted to share what I discovered. My wife was not excited at all. As I progressed towards converting she was actually mad. She was mad I brought her to our Protestant church and was now in a sense leaving her.

I remember feeling quite alone. It was very difficult. In my case, before I actually converted, she became open to conversion. We ended up converting together. Now she is more on fire than me. If anything she now experiences what I once did. She is in a sense more in fire and wanting to share things with me. I don’t have the same enthusiasm. I don’t mean I have lost the faith at all. I just mean her enthusiasm is more than mine right now.

Have you told your husband how you feel and asked him why he is not interested? If not then I’d start there. He may not realize how his behavior impacts you. Or maybe he has some sort of resentment. He may feel like you left him. And, in a sense you did.

Also, whenever we commit to something we are necessarily rejecting everything else. When we marry we are rejecting all others. When we converted we were rejecting all other religions. A mixed marriage is more difficult. There is no getting around it. In a sense you can’t share your life with your spouse in religious mattters like you did before.

This may be a passing thing. You may be in a period of adjustment. I’d start with mentioning your hurt to your husband and ask him questions to uncover why this might be.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

This can happen in all relationships. Is he just this way with Catholicism or all things?

 

[Allegra]

I’ve experienced something similar to this when I was really excited about something and my husband doesn’t really care about it. It’s kind of lonely to have anyone to talk about something you are passionate about, and we invest so much energy into our marriage, that we often exclude other family and friends. It’s probably not that healthy to neglect those relationships though. Although your spouse should be your chief confidant, sometimes you need someone else to talk to.

 

[JoyToTheWhirled]

Thanks for your replies. It’s really been a marked change in the past couple of months. Primarily about my faith, yes. It’s almost like the reality of me being Catholic has finally hit him and this is his way of keeping it at arm’s length.
I very much aware that we aren’t singing from entirely the same hymn sheet now - its actually what made me falter in my first time through RCIA because it seemed such an enormous wedge to put between us. But then later, he encouraged me to follow what I believed truth was, and seemed to support my choices, if not enthusiastically.
I don’t know, I guess it’s just another thing to work through, and when I posted the OP I was feeling vulnerable and upset.

 

[TheLittleLady]

My husband did not convert until about a decade after I did. I felt so alone, sitting there at Mass, every week praying for his conversion during the petitions.

On the Good Friday liturgy before he came in, I began to cry because I thought “God has answered my greatest prayer, what will I pray for from now on?”

On a practical side of the Faith, this video is OUTSTANDING http://ninevehscrossing.com/CommonGround/CGOrder.php

It has aired on both TBN and EWTN. I’d suggest ordering it and watching it with your husband.

On the relationship side, do you guys to anything together? What did you do when you were dating? Did you go hiking or to the movies or swimming or out to hear an band and dance? How often do you do those things now?

Hire a sitter (or offer to trade off sitting with a friend) and go do what you did at the beginning of your story. If you can only do an evening out twice a month, that is a start. If you can take a weekend away together to just re-connect that is even better.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

He simply sounds like he’s not as interested in your Catholic faith journey as you are.

My husband was very tolerant of all the Catholic stuff I did over the last few years (pilgrimages, novenas, special Masses, reading up on the saints, etc), but he wasn’t exactly excited about it on the same level I was. He viewed it pretty much the same way as he viewed my (numerous) other interests that he wasn’t terribly excited about. And he himself also had several other interests that didn’t exactly rock my socks.

Find some fun things that you both enjoy, do those together, do your Catholic stuff separately and geek out about it with your Catholic friends. And keep praying for your husband to convert.