Prol-Life Teen:
Yeah, I don’t much like being called names myself, but I’m used to it.
At least this guy didn’t call me the F-ing B word.
But people want answers sometimes, so they write asking for help. And being told by several people on a Catholic forums that they should leave might be enough to get them to do that. Whenever we write here, we have a certain authority. We are Catholics and people trust our views to be the Church’s views, or so I believe.
There is much wisdom to what you write. I always try to keep in mind that someone will actually take my advice. I don’t give it lightly. You won’t find me on financial forums or housebuilding topics. Too many people gave me bad advice when I was being torn apart by my xh. Or the advice they gave me didn’t help me to see the situation as it really was. I paid a dear price for that. The people, in retrospect who gave me the best advice in my situation are the ones who had been in it themselves.
I do know what constitutes a good marriage and what constitutes a bad one. In a perfect world a husband and wife truly are one flesh. But if they don’t really have a marriage, they aren’t. And no amount of wishful thinking can make it so. And it takes two people to make it so, not one person trying and crying and worrying and begging and another one taking refuge behind closed doors with a computer or something.
Often the fact of whether there really was a marriage with two united as one flesh can only be determined after it has all crashed and burned. Looking through the wreckage, canon lawyers trace what should have been there and make the best decision whether or not the facts support a real marriage, real consent, and a real intent of purpose on both spouses to have a marriage that is exclusive, permanent, and open to children. It’s like a plane crash that the NTSB picks through to find out that the plane never should have taken off to begin with.
Everyone marries happily, hoping they have these things, and maybe even believing it. And events unfold, often messily, in peoples’ lives to show that maybe their hope was not founded on reality. Full consent of the will was lacking, emotional capacity was absent, belief in the permanence and fidelity of marriage was lacking. Some secretly have no intent at all to have children.
What you see here is how some of that realization plays out over time as people struggle with realizations about the person they married. I can assure you by the time people come here with a problem most of them have probably agonized for years over it as it built up and some of it we’ve read the history of and so the information we give isn’t in a vacuum. Some have had spouses that told them they were crazy, or making mountains out of molehills or it was all in their heads.
It’s tragic. Many times children are involved. By the time someone is coming to a board of strangers to present a case, they are just looking for objective outside validation from people who have no dog in the fight to affirm their deepest instincts about a situation, to be told “No, you’re not crazy to feel that way. Sane people wouldn’t put up with this attitude from a spouse or fiancee.”
Or they’re hoping to be told, “Yes, your instincts are correct that this is sufficiently serious that others would pause too.”
They’ve already had that argument with themselves over and over. Many have gone to priests and professionals. They come here for some kind of validation, the same kind that our judicial system uses when it picks 12 people and puts them on a jury… that the common sense of a group of impartial people will arrive at the truth.
I hope you never in your life are in such a situation that you are reduced to asking strangers to tell you you are not crazy. You are young and haven’t experienced a lot of what people here have. Would to God you never endure what I did. I had no idea when I was 18 how things would go. It’s good I didn’t. The only thing that has gotten me through is my faith and my family. (Males and females!)
The point of the original thread was one man coming to register his discontent that the women here seem to call men out on bad behavior and people get too many divorces and annulments.
The thread has not been derailed so much as examined, expanded upon and put in a larger context of how society and certain immoral behaviors have coarsened people and reduced the ability of people to view each other with respect and dignity. He is mad that people just didn’t agree with him and let it go at that.
Some of us used personal anecdotes to illustrate that. May you never have personal accounts in your life about how porn systematically broke down an important relationship. Sometimes it goes beyond forgiving. How many times do you let your husband beat you up, accept the flowers and the half-hearted apology (which eventually stops) before you realize that forgiving him is going to get you maimed or killed someday? When your husband threatens to kill you, do you forgive that? Or the woman whose husband repeatedly breaks all promises and sneaks online and views porn… at what point is her ability to trust him so broken that the marriage is unendurable? Marriage requires a LOT of trust. Without it, living in the same house is impossible. Respect is impossible. Which makes love almost impossible. Especially if the porn viewing is accompanied by lots of other behaviors that indicate a lack of respect for the wife.
Yes, sometimes it really feels like we’re given more than we can handle. If someone is thinking of breaking off an engagement, it’s probably not really over a stupid thing. It’s probably over the sum total of a lot of little things that make them wonder.
I know how I would have viewed some of these things when I was 20. My view of them now, decades later, is colored not only by my annullment, but by years of friends and relatives and their experiences, and seeing lots of stories, people coping with spousal abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, infidelity, and mental issues. I don’t feel comfortable relaying their stories, so I only tell my own.
Realizations about patterns of human behavior occur over the years. I too would have said the woman with the fiance in the hotel room should have forgiven him when I was your age. Now, in hindsight, I would have been among those suggesting she postpone the wedding. Because now I know that no matter how sorry he was, he wasn’t ready for the permanence and exclusivity of marriage. People who “accidentally” mess up like that are often lying to themselves most of all. It’s really not an accident, but his subconscious desire to be free coming out. The truth often comes out in messy ways. Men who really want to get married don’t put themselves in that situation or find themselves in that situation. More is going on there. Do you suggest they rush into a marriage with such questions hanging over their heads? That is the exact kind of information tribunal asks for when they question any incidents that “occurred during the dating, engagement period, wedding, or immediately after the wedding” that could cast doubt on the person’s ability or resolve to maintain an exclusive marriage bond.
If that woman married that man and he later turned out to have a problem finding himself in hotel rooms with women not his wife, no matter how sorry he was, some here would have pilloried her for not looking at him closely enough and determining what kind of person he was before they married! Reread this thread!
Our judgment here is also clouded by our joys. But nobody asks us if they should marry the guy that spent all summer mowing our aged parents’ lawn for free, or how many diamonds they should put on the bracelet for the wife who just gave birth to their child after postponing cancer treatment so the baby wouldn’t be hurt.
You are only seeing the problems here.
If someone’s marriage is at the point they can’t talk to their spouse anymore (as you’ve seen, some spouses refuse to talk at all), then they’re often desperate to talk to someone.
Watch and learn from other people’s mistakes. You show a lot of wisdom, but some wisdom can only be gained through experience. I hope all your experiences are good ones.
But as you grow older you’ll realize how common many experiences really are. It’s like a movie… you can predict how some end very easily. Sometimes the only way disaster can be averted is with deep spiritual conversion. And what is often lacking from horror tales here is that the spouse causing the problems is a person of deep prayer or frequents the sacraments. THAT is what often makes the situation truly hopeless.
I know, easier said than done.
). My behaviours towards him are much worse than dirty clothes left on the floor. In many relationships women feel that it is their right to nag their husband. If she wants to go out with her pals it’s a well deserved break. If he wants to go out with the guys he’s being immature. (I really agree with Dr. Laura’s book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands… honestly I do everything wrong according to her book and she’s right! It’s really made me take a good look at my apalling behaviour and realize that I need to treat my DH with more respect and care!)
