Should people marry out of love or or out of duty?

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I am a single 30 year old man. I know I am called to be married someday. I have never been in love with a woman. I hear types of things from Catholics about marriage, both good and bad. A lot of people say they married the person they love. I have also heard others claim that the Catholic church teaches that people need to get married and have kids out of duty more than anything.

Back in the day people did get married at a younger age. Poor people married to keep farms going and in some traditions the marriage was arraigned. So back then people did not make a big deal about people having sex at a young age, because people married at a young age.

The bible also states that if a man cannot control his sexual urges that he should be married.

What is the current catholic teaching? Should people wait and marry out of love? Should people just settle and marry because they can’t control themselves sexually?

How is a 30 year old single man with sexual urges supposed to never act on them?
 
There is nothing that says one must marry out of duty. None whatsoever. Don’t be taking spiritual lessons from the people who have been telling you that. They don’t know what they are talking about.

How is a 30 year old man with sexual urges not supposed to act on them? The same way a 30 year old priest does not act on them. A man can control himself, bottom line. No excuse. People do it no matter how hard it is. If you want to be married, there is nothing wrong with that but you gotta go out and look. God won’t drop someone at your doorstep just because you have a vocation to marriage. You gotta do your part.

St Paul told the Corinthians that it was better to marry in their case. Men were men back then though, 20 years olds are still kids these days. Also there was a lot of temple prostitutes in that town. You always gotta take into consideration the audience that anything in The Bible was originally written to. Do you think St Paul would tell a 16 year old boy these days to get married because he is always burning with sexual urges all the time? No.
 
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Are you in love with anybody?
Or at least there’s a woman you’d like to know better?

Nobody is entitled to have sex
 
Three things I think of, for what it’s worth:
  1. Everyone has a call to a vocation. Have you prayerfully and patiently considered what direction God is calling you to: married life, single life, or religious life?
  2. Chastity is for everyone, even married folks. Self control continues even after you say I do.
  3. Marriage in the Catholic Church is a sacrament, an on-going grace giving promise between two people that should mirror Christ’s love for His Church. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved (give their life for them), and wives to lovingly serve their husbands (not as slaves but as a gift of self). It’s pretty hard to treat each other that way if you don’t love each other. But love isn’t just attraction and warm fuzzy feelings, it’s often a choice to serve.
To find out more about the Catholic teachings on marriage, you could spend time delving into the catechism or search on Catholic.com 🙂
 
  1. Stay away from enticing things if you can.
  2. Use your energy on something else that is productive
  3. Pray. Mentally pray to Jesus. Pray the Rosary every day.
Back then, marriages were like business deals. You didn’t marry who you loved, you loved who you marry.
 
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I know what the catholic church teaches on marriage. As for controlling yourself in marriage the bible says: “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

It should be easy to control yourself sexually since people work and have other things to do in their lives (if they are as active and involved as I am). I am a busy active person. A lot of time I get no rest.
 
MP_Kid said:
What is the current catholic teaching? Should people wait and marry out of love? Should people just settle and marry because they can’t control themselves sexually?

How is a 30 year old single man with sexual urges supposed to never act on them?
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I should say, and this can be unconventional, love is the practical part - the attraction that you have for each other.

Other than that, love in the Christian context, does have a wider perspective, which generally means to give for the good of others. In this case, the others is your spouse, your wife.

If you want to get married, be prepared to give (to love).

As for sex, it is holy in the context of the two shall become one, the cleaving to each other. Its purpose is unitive (include pleasure), so yes, it is to satisfy your sexual desire; and procreative (bearing children).

God bless.
 
MP_Kid said:
How is a 30 year old single man with sexual urges supposed to never act on them?
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The same way a single male or female of any age does. You need to worry less about how and understand why there is a need to never act upon your desires. Read some books about chastity by Jason Evert.
 
You can certainly marry for love but you must remember that once you marry you have a duty to love because it is what you have promised. Duty is not inconsistent with love.
 
I loved my husband and wanted to get married to him.
Didn’t see it as a big “duty”. The duty part comes in when some hardship or difficulty presents itself, like somebody gets seriously ill, loses their job, drops dead.

You say you’ve never been in love with a woman. Someday, if/ when you do love a woman, you will understand better with the understanding that comes from your heart, not just your head.

I would also be really suspicious of any guy who was getting married because he couldn’t “control his sexual urges”. What’s going to happen the first time his wife is ill or not physically up to having sex, or when she has to be away for a few nights because of some urgent work or family business? People need to have some control over themselves. Sex is a nice feature of being married, but it is just one feature and depending on circumstances may be a relatively small part of the picture.
 
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Better to marry - than to B U R N !

Does anyone happen to know the context of " burn " - in this scenario ?
 
i quote St Jerome
“It is better to marry than to burn,” that is to say, it is better to take a husband than to taste criminal pleasures.
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From my opinion, “to burn” means the fires of hell
 
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I heard pre-arranged marriages often worked out -
Not to change the vibe of the thread 😉
Imagine - never meeting a person before -
next thing you know, your standing in a middle of a love ceremony !
 
My co worker did that.
He’s a Hindu from India.
(Actually they met two months before–her parents brought her over to the house, they spent the morning getting to know each other and made the decision . He didn’t see her again til the wedding)
They’re married 30 years
 
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