Married posters! What advice would you give to the single Pringles here?

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TheAmazingGrace

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After all, a lot of us want to get married eventually, and it’s always good to learn from other people’s experiences.
 
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As a single Pringle I think being a faithful catholic is most important. Along with getting in and keeping in shape and knowing how to socialize and read social cues
 
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Relax and enjoy life. Marry somebody who you’ll be happy with in 20 years. You need to look at the long game. If you don’t know what I mean, read about the last 1/3 or 1/4 of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”. Heck, maybe read the whole thing.
 
Don’t view it as a ‘how can this relationship benefit me?’, don’t get married for yourself. Be willing to forgive, a lot. Be ready to compromise, a lot. And don’t think a person will change after you are married, or make the mistake of thinking you can change them. And stick things out even when things look like they’re falling apart. I probably love my wife more now than after 27 years of marriage.
 
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Pringles is a brand name of potato chips btw. but maybe you knew that. 🙂
advice?
Let your partner know you take the marriage vow very seriously.
Modify your expectations. It is natural to go through a honeymoon period where the partnership seems located in heaven already. be ready for the part after “shiney and new”. Reality. Money is always a concern. paying the bills, saving for a house. make sure you have good communication over things like these. At least one of you has to be pragmatic. Better both really.
Ideally both of you are Catholic but it can still work. My family in fact has not one single marriage where both are Catholic. I don’t think you should put any pressure on your partner to enlist in the Catholic Army either. 🙂
Again I would stress that word. “expectation”. Don’t expect your partner to be the one of your dreams. Your partner is not God nor Goddess. Chances are they will have at least one idiosyncrasy which annoys you. Luckily my dog finds my jokes funny because my wife certainly doesn’t anymore. 🙂
My marriage has lasted 27 years. We were married in a Catholic Church. I think that helps.
 
My advice? Be content with where you are. Mind you, that’s easy for me to say. I’ve been married for 37 years. However, my wife and I both agree; life is much simpler when single and, much as we remain solidly married, neither of us is remotely interested in dating again, when one of is eventually left behind.
 
CelticWarlord said:
neither of us is remotely interested in dating again,
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That would’ve been my father’s answer but when he was left single at age 73, after 48 years marriage, he was trying to date other women within 18 months. Loneliness does that to you.
 
I can certainly understand that, and know of similar people. In my own case, though, I am a very private person, do not socialize much at all outside of work and message boards like this, and have no desire for close human contact. A couple of years ago a gal I work with lost her husband to cancer. Within a year she was dating again and got hitched almost immediately. She said to me before she left to move out of town, “I’m not like you, C----. I need to be around people”. Others of us just don’t. 🙂
 
Thanks for your post. It gave me the opportunity to reflect.

Stay strong and grow in your faith. It will never fail to guide you.

Marriage is a Covenant not a contract. It’s 100%/100%, not 50/50 or anything the world might say. Love is a decision.

Grow and enrich your marriage throughout your life together. Think of a garden planted and left alone; you wouldn’t expect a great harvest.

Your love will change over time. It won’t always be the crazy mad romance that brings you together. I can say, but you have to trust , it grows in depth and breath.
 
Marriage is a path to great happiness, holiness and heaven.

We need to learn “how to convert” the “work” (not just joys) of marriage into graces for the world, mainly our wife and our children.

When we learn how to do that marriage becomes much simpler, much much happier, and it generates great warmth for the family and the surrounding world.

Hint: to get to this state of learning takes a lot of joyful and hard work, much denial, humiliation (> leads to humility), takes a ton of prayer, excellent “use” of the Sacraments, particularly Holy Communion and Sacramental Confession, and lots of “beginning again” with a sporting spirit.

Great great happiness can come from it.
 
So much I could say here. I’ve been married 32 years this year.
  1. Don’t try to drastically change the person you marry; Everyone changes over time, BUT it’s usually as a result of life events. So if there are things about the person that just don’t sit well with you, marriage is probably not a good idea. I’m talking about non-negotiables (which you would have to determine).
  2. Pray together! Start out with dates that include going to adoration, or confession, or weekly/daily Mass
  3. Have things in common, but also have separate interests so you have things to talk about.
  4. Watch how the person interacts with their parents (you can learn so much about a man in watching his relationship with his mother, i.e., is he deferential and respectful, or does he ignore, tune out, barely tolerate), same for a woman toward her father (and the other parents as well)
  5. Know that the premarriage period of behavior, when you are getting to know each other is when each of you are putting your best selves forward, so it never gets better than that IYKWIM.
  6. Know that you will be making a decision to love this person for the rest of you life.
I could probably come up with more…but this is long enough 🙂
 
When it’s the right one, and the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony is there, there might be hard times, but everything is enjoyed. Hubby’s a twin, and I was the fourth of four. That’s almost like putting two babies together. I grew up almost an only child; he always had his twin. That’s where the rub comes from. However, I consider him to be my Superior, and humoring him goes a long way to maintaining peace in the household.

One of these days, I hope to author a book called, “Finding Your Missing Rib.”

Blessings,
Mrs Cloisters OP
Lay Dominican
http://cloisters.tripod.com/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/
 
CelticWarlord said:
neither of us is remotely interested in dating again, when one of is eventually left behind.
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My mother was widowed in her mid-60s and she had several older men interested in her over the years. I think she was a little flattered, but made it very clear she was not interested. She never wanted to be married to, or even in a relationship with, any guy after my dad. I’m pretty sure I would be the same way if my husband passed away. Both my mother and I dated a lot until we finally got married (past age 30) and we both enjoyed it but I think we both had had enough of it too.
 
Be open but not desperate. I found my spouse via “spam” from a dating site I hadn’t looked at in years. 13 years of marriage later and one 6 year-old, this is the one piece of spam I’m glad arrived in my inbox.
 
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Andropause and menopause have a lot to do with whether a widowed person remarries. If there’s no desire for intimacy, why lead someone on when there’s no chance of a consummation?
 
  1. Don’t be a nice guy/beta male
  2. Don’t be a raging feminist
  3. Dump the drama. We all have tragedies and bad experiences. Some have it worse than others.
  4. Don’t rely on anecdotal evidence/advice over the internet
  5. Don’t sit around waiting for it to happen cause Grandma said it’ll work out for your someday. Applies mainly to guys.
 
SuperLuigi said:
Don’t be a nice guy/beta male
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There’s no such thing as alpha and beta humans.

We are not animals. This animal-like distinction paints a very black and white picture of masculinity. It greatly simplifies the multi-dimensionality of masculinity, and is a gross underestimate what a man is capable of becoming. It also doesn’t even get at the heart of what is really attractive to women. When you impose just two categories of male on the world, you unnecessarily mislead young men into acting in certain predefined ways that aren’t actually conducive to attracting and sustaining healthy and enjoyable relationships with women, or finding success in other areas of life.
 
Been married for 8 years. We met by accident. The only advice I have is to keep perusing each other even after your wedding day.
 
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Stay single and pursue the religious life, it is a higher vocation than marriage.

It really is true what the Apostle wrote, “he who is married worries about his spouse more than God.”

If I could turn back time 10 years knowing what I know now, I’d be a hermit or a monk.
 
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