Want to get married, but don't want children

[DisorientingSneeze]

This is selfish. It’s not a unique trait–it’s very common–but selfishness IS a huge impediment to marriage. This is something to work on before you get serious with a man.

To some degree, looking back weren’t we all at least a little more selfish before marriage and some of the growing pains of newlywed life was having to really live that dying to oneself business? We are all capable of being transformed by love. I don’t totally disagree with you, I just think we all had some selfishmess, but marriage is helping us grow.

 

[Psalm30]

Life generally isn’t fair. Good people die. Young people die. People fall in love with people who don’t feel the same about them. People who are in stable, financially secure marriages and desperately want children can’t get pregnant. Unwed, immature teenagers get pregnant at the drop of a hat. God isn’t responsible for any of this. It’s all the result of original sin.

 

[alphawoman]

Hopefully no more! You’ve already been very clear and forthright.

 

[SnowRose]

I agree with Heidi, above all about needing to work on yourself a bit in general, and set the specific question aside for when you start dating that someone special.

At that point you may have changed your mind. Or you may still want an adults-only marriage.
Just be very sure your partner agrees fully with you. Once you agree you can work on a solution together. It’s dreadfully unfair for either spouse to trick the other about something this major.

(As non-Catholic I’m not going to suggest anything else, since I take it your faith otherwise is important to you, even if you struggle w this specific teaching)

 

[DarkLight]

It does happen the other way too. I think 5 years ago I might have said the same as OP. Now…well, it’s the desire for marriage that changed, not the lack of desire for children. I rather suspect a few people would tell me there’s a problem with that too, but eh.

 

[Allegra]

I’m sorry to say, but while your reasons may be “valid” for you, they aren’t particularly strong arguments for the Church to change her teaching. The people in this thread and everyone one else you know who think your reasons are selfish and/or immature don’t live in a special world of rainbows and unicorns. They are mostly parents who have or are currently raising families in the same exact world that you live in and are either perfectly happy or happy enough. Your experiences of annoying nieces and nephews, meeting children with deformities, and anticipating discomfort during pregnancy and childbirth are not special in anyway. Everyone has met disagreeable children. Every woman has endured heartburn, cramps, and (gasp) had to stop riding their personal pony for a while. Everyone has encountered children who have disabilities and many people are either raising children with disabilities or even possibly have them themselves and don’t wish they had never existed. None of these experiences are unique to you. What IS unique to you is your perception of these relatively minor events that most people consider the normal happenings of life as major tragedies to be avoided at all cost, even at the expense of the greatest joy that most people have ever experienced.

To those who appreciate the beauty in creating a new, unique, human life, It’s like saying you never want to eat chocolate ice cream because you hate going to the store. Or that you have no interest in seeing the view because walking up the hill is so bothersome. Family is what life is about. When people are dying, they gather the people they love around them. They don’t look at selfies of themselves with perfect abs and photo of long-dead horses. The things you are adamantly concerned about having to give up seem like minutia compared to a lifetime of love.

The sad thing is, many of the things you are so overly-anxious about are inevitable anyway. Eventually, you are going to get older and your health will deteriorate. Your ankles will swell. You’ll probably put on weight. At some point, you won’t be able to exercise as much, or really at all, and you certainly won’t be able to ride your horse. You could get cancer or diabetes anyway. (and not the type of diabetes that goes away in a few months.) Presumably and God-willing that you don’t perish prematurely in some sort of accident, you have a very good chance of becoming old, weak, and sick for a time period and you will rely on others for transportation, guidance, and basic care.

 

[Allegra]

cont.

Curiously, despite the fact that you only seem to perceive an exaggeratedly negative depiction of raising children, while ignoring everything positive about it, you seem to do the exact opposite regarding marriage. Marriage requires the exact kinds of self-sacrifice that child-raising does. Even the sweetest, sincerest, sexiest Catholic-man-who-wants-a-wife-but-never-children (The chances of meeting such an individual and him being anything than less than a self-centered creep is the topic of another post.) is still a human being with his own needs, wants, desires, and short-comings. Despite his best efforts, he’s going to be annoying at times. He’s going to be lazy, boorish, gross, flatulent, loud, self-centered, insensitive, or bossy at his less-than-finer moments because everyone is. Many married people will tell you that they’ve had moments were their spouse was less reasonable than ten toddlers. What gets you through that is being able to go outside of yourself and love the other person despite their and your own failings. And that’s just assuming you find yourself a mensch. If your knight in shining armor turns out to be Average Andy, you’re looking at struggles with porn, addiction, infidelity, financial dishonesty, and some real crisis. In married life, you may have to make tremendous sacrifices. You may have to move for his work, his health, to be closer to his family. You may run on hard times financially and have to make personal sacrifices for his benefit. You may have to make all your vacations to Akron, Ohio, to see his grandma and there is nothing to do in Akron except sit on her sofa and listen to the litany of all the people she knows that have died. He could become injured or sick to the point that requires a heroic level of self-sacrifice. It’s not too far out there that you might end up changing a diapers whether you have a baby or not. All those scary things that happen pre-birth to children? There’s none of them that can’t happen to an adults due to illness, accident, or circumstance. In a marriage, you have to be up to that. Kids are generally pretty easy going. You give them a Happy Meal, and you can take them anywhere. Grown people, however, are persistently demanding and will resent you a lot longer when they don’t get their way. You’d do well to listen to those who have been in the real world. (and by the “real world” I mean the REAL real world, actually being married and raising children.) At any rate, no one here can tell you what it seems you want to hear. No, the Church won’t marry people who are opposed to ever having children, nor is it a good idea to attempt such a marriage.

 

[Allegra]

I don’t think His Holiness was thinking horsey rides and disdain for a baby bump fell into such categories, but you do bring up an important issue. NFP practiced with the intention of 100% sterility is not a cake walk. It kind of sucks. It’s stressful on marriages even when the reasons for avoiding childbirth are obviously dire. I can’t imagine agreeing to a lifetime of it for anything less than major reasons. I suspect the OP would have a microscopic dating pool to court from, particularly among Catholic men.

 

[Allegra]

Because they have experience and they know that the “worst of children” aren’t nearly as bad as you are making it out to be and they know that the joys of having a family far outweigh the concerns you have.

 

[Allegra]

There’s a problem with not wanting marriage? Your mom probably would feel that way, and it might be hard for people to understand like it is hard for people to understand when someone doesn’t like chocolate, but I doubt too many would argue that there is something morally wrong with it. What would be morally wrong would be to get married when you know it isn’t for you and leaving a wake of destruction behind you.

 

[DarkLight]

I’ve heard some say it’s wrong for someone to not want to choose either marriage, or to take vows as a religious person, and that a permanent intention towards the lay single state is not acceptable. Even that it’s selfish (it can be, but doesn’t have to be), or that people who say that aren’t actually intending to practice chastity.

I think the main point there is that there’s an idiot for every opinion and sometimes you just have to roll your eyes at them.

 

[Peeps]

These are awesome posts, Allegra! Really right-on, as we used to say back in the 1970s!

And I know that you are one of those people who have faced some major issues with one of your little ones (health-wise). Hopefully all continues to get better with her.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’ve always desired marriage, however, which is how I know that I’m meant to get married.

Yeah, because what we want is always what we’re “meant” to do. Shaking my head.

I know that I would make an excellent wife

Forcing myself not to post the “Condescending Wonka” meme.

I hope that if you should indeed become a wife, if indeed that happens at all, that you learn a few things, including that you have much to learn over the course of your marriage about how to be a wife.

I’m not even going to touch the “children” angle except to say that if you’re not open to life, then you shouldn’t get married in the Catholic Church, regardless of how you think you’d be an absolute genius at wifery or are absolutely destined for it or whatever.

By the way, your future husband might want to have some say in the above issues too. Just sayin’.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’ve heard just about every choice people make in one’s life, including choosing marriage or the religious life as well as staying single, called “selfish” by others. As you said, the world is full of judgmental people, and part of maturity is learning to ignore them.

 

[Sarcelle]

This brings to mind a Spanish proverb.

Everyone is a fool in someone else’s eyes.

No matter what you do or what you are, there will always be this know it all who claims you are doing it all wrong.

 

[Diamond93]

Yeah, because what we want is always what we’re “meant” to do. Shaking my head.

I know that I would make an excellent wife

Forcing myself not to post the “Condescending Wonka” meme.

Gee, aren’t you so understanding and sympathetic? Because that’s totally how Jesus would respond to me if I were telling him all this.

I’m seriously struggling with this and have been trying to take what everyone has said here to heart and have now started praying about it. There’s no need to be patronizing about it. Lucky for you if you’ve never struggled with this the way I am. But there’s no need to be sarcastic in a condescending way.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Jesus might be kinder than me, but he would likely tell you kindly not to presume you’d be so great at something that you haven’t even tried yet, that involves another person, and that is complicated.

Do you not realize that you sound really smug? Especially to people who have experienced the ups and downs of marriage?

Marriage involves another person. From your original post, I’m not even seeing that you have a man in mind with whom you’re discussing this. You’ve just kind of decided “I Am The Greatest”. It’s like if I said, “I know I’d make an excellent astronaut” but I haven’t even entered astronaut training, much less been to space.

Humility is a virtue.

 

[Psalm30]

@Diamond93 I can’t help noticing that you are responding very selectively to people’s posts. Many have posed thought provoking questions to you, trying to get you to see an alternate point of view. In response to these questions you get defensive and refuse to see any perspective other than your own. This in itself will not serve you well in a marriage, children or no children.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your reasons for this thread. What exactly are you looking for? What do you want us to say?

The answer is and always will be that you cannot enter into a valid marriage in the Catholic Church with your current attitude towards pregnancy, childbirth, and children in general. We’ve encouraged you to learn more about why this is so. Perhaps if you understand the reason the Church teaches this, you will be able to make peace with the fact that you have two options — remain single, or marry while being open to children — and no longer struggle, as you say you are doing now, or see it as unfair.

However, you are going to have to accept the fact that if you are looking for someone to tell you it’s perfectly fine to get married in the Catholic Church when you’re not open to children, that simply is not going to happen.

 

[Diamond93]

Do you not realize that you sound really smug? Especially to people who have experienced the ups and downs of marriage?

Humility is a virtue.

I’m not trying to sound smug, I’m simply defending myself when someone is being unfairly sarcastic towards me.

How am I being smug when I’ve admitted several times now that I’m struggling, and I even went so far as to apologize to one poster who I had been too snippy with early in this thread? And when I said that I’d make an excellent wife, I never said I’d be a “perfect” wife. I know that I will fail from time to time as a wife. But I feel like I have enough essential good qualities that qualify me to becoming a wife. Why is it wrong that I acknowledge the good parts of myself? I never said I was perfect and that I have no flaws. And I know that I will never be the greatest.

 

[Diamond93]

@Diamond93 I can’t help noticing that you are responding very selectively to people’s posts. Many have posed thought provoking questions to you, trying to get you to see an alternate point of view. In response to these questions you get defensive and refuse to see any perspective other than your own. This in itself will not serve you well in a marriage, children or no children.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your reasons for this thread. What exactly are you looking for? What do you want us to say?

The answer is and always will be that you cannot enter into a valid marriage in the Catholic Church with your current attitude towards pregnancy, childbirth, and children in general. We’ve encouraged you to learn more about why this is so. Perhaps if you understand the reason the Church teaches this, you will be able to make peace with the fact that you have two options — remain single, or marry while being open to children — and no longer struggle, as you say you are doing now, or see it as unfair.

However, you are going to have to accept the fact that if you are looking for someone to tell you it’s perfectly fine to get married in the Catholic Church when you’re not open to children, that simply is not going to happen.

How have I refused to see a perspective other than my own when I just said that I’ve taken a lot of what you guys have said to heart and have begun praying about it? But just because I’ve started praying about it and am trying to think harder on what you guys have told me, it doesn’t mean I’ve completely flipped from “I never want kids” to “I want to have 20 kids” within the span of only a few days of this thread.

You guys have already answered my questions as far as the Church’s stance on it. And I understand that my desires are incompatible with Church teaching. I just keep getting responses to this thread saying all sorts of stuff, so I’m just responding to it and explaining myself.