"What's on your list?" OR "Why are you still single?"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gertabelle
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

Gertabelle

Guest
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen Catholic women on these forums saying, “Where are all the good Catholic men?” and Catholic men saying, “Where are all the good Catholic women?”

And each time, everyone shouts back, “I’m right here!”

So are what are we doing wrong here? Are we looking for what we want instead of what God wants? I mean, are we so attached to our list of hopes/expectations/requirements that we aren’t truly open to God’s will? Are we using our “lists” to keep others away, perhaps afraid of the commitment, or making the wrong choice, or being hurt? Or are there really only two dozen good Catholic singles left in the world? (OK, on AMS there are actually 23 single Catholic men in my state, ranging in age from 20 to 70.)

Does finding a good Catholic spouse really have to be this complicated?

SO, the poll asks what’s on your list. And here I’m asking why are we still single?

Jump in and feel free to share thoughts on finding a Catholic spouse, whether you’re single or married.

Gertie
 
There is more to the single situation than merely finding someone who shares our faith. One is not going to marry someone who one finds so physically unattractive that you could never properly kiss them.

One is not going to marry someone who is a person of faith, but they are a mess otherwise such as having mountains of debt yet spending on frivolous items constantly. (I know a very “nice” man who could never cross that friend line for any woman who wants to have a family and a secure home because he is irresponsible with money even in his 40s with no desire to change his lifestyle. He would continue to rack up debt that the poor wife might have to try to pay off since he does not care.)

One cannnot marry someone who professes to be looking for a “good Catholic woman” but who only looks at women with certain physical attributes who are never “good Catholic” women. I know a number of Catholic men who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to who they ask out.

I’m still searching for a reasonably responsible man who is attractive to me on a physical and mental level (maybe not handsome by the world’s standards but OK to me) and he has to want me. It is not easy to find person after person who are wonderful but not for us. I have been known to do some matchmaking when that happens because even if I never find anyone for myself, I would like all of the other nice people who have marriage as their vocation to find someone.
 
It’s hard finding a date when you’re shy, and when you’re conscious of the shyness it can drive you up the wall. Sometimes literally.
 
Why am I still single?? Because the right person hasn’t come along yet. (Or maybe they have, and we just don’t know it yet…I’m not really sure.) 😛

Most of that “list” stuff you have up there is negotiable in my book…as long as the guy is Catholic (really Catholic, not just in name), and a non-smoker.
 
Where’s the option about having discerned through prayer that my vocation is not to be married?

~~ the phoenix
 
I don’t want a committed relationship right now. Too much fuss for an 18 year old.
 
I don’t think i have a “list”. There are certain things and traits that i know my personality doesn’t match with.

1.) Needs to be a practicing catholic. He needs to be involved in his faith without me pushing and pleading. I want a partner in life not a child. I also want someone who will understand and not get offended if i say i just need to go to church to talk to father/confession. Its not something against him just there are some things in life that only God can help with. If he is catholic then he should understand.
2.) Educated. Not necessarily with a degree but i like politics, history and theology so i need someone who can keep up.
3.) Backbone- I want someone who can tell me no. A spouse is suppose to help you get to heaven so he needs to be able to correct me if i am slipping down the slope toward sin. I also want someone who will not let me win every argument even though i am becoming a lawyer. (lol)
4.) Humor- he has to have a sense of humor. i like to laugh and enjoy life and need someone who can do that with me
5.) Kids-Has to like kids and be open to having some.
6.) Can’t root for the Cubs or the Yankees or my father might dishonor me for bring another non-astros fan into the family. 😉

Things i like but aren’t totally necessary- Non-Smoker, older, no kids

I am single right not because that is where i am suppose to be at the moment. With school and other things going on i haven’t had the time open to dating someone. Life is settling down and so now i am out there making time. I have met a nice gentlemen so i will see where it goes.
 
My list
  1. Must be nice
  2. Should be hot(:p)
  3. Must be friendly
  4. Smart would be nice
  5. Does nothing against the law
Yeah…pretty basic stuff I know
 
I am not terribly picky, but I would say that I would prefer that a person who may become my wife meet a few, fairly important qualifications Here are the most important ones. Before I begin, let me say that I am a man.
  • The person must be female.
  • She need to be the same species. (no more canines or felines!) The same as me, that is.
  • She should have either a pulse or a body temperature above room temperature.
  • She must like men.
  • She should have a rudimentary ability to speak (any language) and express herself. My ability to understand her notwithstanding (she is a woman after all).
  • She must be Catholic.
  • She must be eligible for a sacramental marriage.
  • Ideally, she was born in the same century I was.
  • She should be old enough that me simply being alone with her does not constitute a crime.
  • Oh, and since I have no sense of humor, neither should she.
That is pretty much my short list. Most other things are negotiable.
 
My list includes: Strong faith and morals (follows the church’s teachings), waiting for marriage to have relations, nice and caring, goofy and fun, not high-maintenance, non-smoker, doesn’t drink or occasionally, also at least somewhat attractive to me (great smile). - Also, I need someone I can talk and tell everything to (Complete Honesty), and for her to feel that way with me.

BTW, for others looking for a nice Catholic girl or guy, I would suggest trying catholicmatch.com (You can find people who match your list pretty well on there). - That is where I found my girlfriend. We have now been going out for over 6 months and she is Great!
 
rpp said:
** ]She should have a rudimentary ability to speak (any language) and express herself. My ability to understand her notwithstanding (she is a woman after all).*
.
Click to expand...
That’s a very good one

You have to be able to express yourself in a healthy relationship.
 
beckers said:
1.) Needs to be a practicing catholic. He needs to be involved in his faith without me pushing and pleading. I want a partner in life not a child. I also want someone who will understand and not get offended if i say i just need to go to church to talk to father/confession. Its not something against him just there are some things in life that only God can help with. If he is catholic then he should understand.
2.) Educated. Not necessarily with a degree but i like politics, history and theology so i need someone who can keep up.
3.) Backbone- I want someone who can tell me no. A spouse is suppose to help you get to heaven so he needs to be able to correct me if i am slipping down the slope toward sin. I also want someone who will not let me win every argument even though i am becoming a lawyer. (lol)
4.) Humor- he has to have a sense of humor. i like to laugh and enjoy life and need someone who can do that with me
5.) Kids-Has to like kids and be open to having some.
6.) Can’t root for the Cubs or the Yankees or my father might dishonor me for bring another non-astros fan into the family. 😉

Things i like but aren’t totally necessary- Non-Smoker, older, no kids

I am single right not because that is where i am suppose to be at the moment. With school and other things going on i haven’t had the time open to dating someone. Life is settling down and so now i am out there making time. I have met a nice gentlemen so i will see where it goes.
Click to expand...
👍👍👍
rpp said:
  • The person must be female.
  • She need to be the same species. (no more canines or felines!) The same as me, that is.
  • She should have either a pulse or a body temperature above room temperature.
  • She must like men.
  • She should have a rudimentary ability to speak (any language) and express herself. My ability to understand her notwithstanding (she is a woman after all).
  • She must be Catholic.
  • She must be eligible for a sacramental marriage.
  • Ideally, she was born in the same century I was.
  • She should be old enough that me simply being alone with her does not constitute a crime.
  • Oh, and since I have no sense of humor, neither should she.
That is pretty much my short list. Most other things are negotiable.
Click to expand...
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I think between the two of you, this is a fairly complete list!

Gertie
 
Oh, the list is very complicated. I have a lot of ideas but few non-negotiables, even though I’ve thought many things over and over.

Obviously, what God wants is both more important and better (including better for me) than what I want, but we need to avoid attributing to God a human logic. God is not a controlling father who wants you to marry a blonde or a brunette.

Generally, I want to have them as they come. There is a number of beautiful “types”, but there’s always a new one coming. I want to be surprised. And it’s always integral with the whole person. She’s a long-haired brunette or a short-haired blonde as much as she is tense or relaxed, explosive or calm, introverted or extroverted and so on.

Whatever works? I don’t know. Opposites, complements, who cares. Life does not disprove theory as much as contain a lot of data that cannot all be processed. You can’t make a fully exhaustive calculation in a matter of life. I also believe in common history. In pieces of life shared together. No maths’s gonna do that for me.

In the end, I’ll probably say I just need to feel this thing. Well, if that’s the reality, I’ve got to admit it. There may be something good in opposing reality, but little in denying it.

I just want someone I will be comfortable sharing my path with. Someone with whom life can be a shared adventure. Someone to talk to, someone to debate with, someone who will stand up to you and who will play competitive games against you, but who will never betray or leave you, which means who is entirely on your side, but whose loyalty first goes to God, good, truth.

Experience and longish deliberations teach that I’m probably looking for some sort of blend. Clear and bright mind, but in touch with life. In touch with life, but philosophically detached. Philosophically detached but resourceful when it comes to pushing onward. Determined as well. In touch with tradition and the legacy of our civilisation, but at the same time not a hater of modern technology. No reactionary conservative, but at the same time no change-for-change’s-sake liberal. I understand vanity especially because I’m not quite immune to it myself, but excessive levels turn me off. Willing to make necessary concessions and arrangements, but not a power compromiser. Someone who uses beautiful language, but who can break away from form. I like people who sound like philosophers, but I don’t like people who sound like pricks. Even though I might often find myself belonging to the latter group. :rolleyes:😛

What else? Honour is important. Good, old-fashioned notions but understood in a proper concept. Historical knowledge does shed light on the understanding of chivalry, does it not? Yes, I know I’m a prick. But you wouldn’t think that if you were on the same page with me.

What’s more, I guess it’d be very hard to find someone who’s read the same books (in a metaphorical sense). I often go off on tangents. I can start babbling about the crusades, but I can similary “lose it” with computers or some other tech. Or art history. Or Latin. Or I randomly start talking in a foreign language or quoting some obscure stuff. I’ve had a mutual feeling with computers since childhood (age 7 or so), as well as art and art history (dad is a retired artist), my youth was full of history contests, literature and grammar generally got me in the top of the class, although I didn’t particularly love them at some points (they were often very tedious and pretentious and gloomy) and I was the hand-raiser kid in those more science-like subjects until I fell out with them. Actually, I managed both to top the mock highschool maths final in my class and narrowly avoid failing the whole year in the end, getting a D in it. I ended up in the law, but I might as well have - and probably should have - studied archaeology instead. I did pass that awful entry exam the year I was entering uni. Same with classics and with English. I would never have made it to any IT education because of maths and other things, but I can still pull off things like professionals rarely dream of (e.g. six lines of code to do what normally takes two pages). 😛 This I say knowing my modesty is oh-so-very endearing, but anyway. :p:rolleyes:😃 I freely admit one of my friends who’s a software engineer (supervises coders) said she’d never hire me for the way I code (no comments and nothing is done the orthodox way).

All in all, I basically need someone equally crazy. Haven’t found yet. If not going to, well, that’s bad, but I’m not going to make someone else, and myself, unhappy.
 
chevalier said:
Oh, the list is very complicated. I have a lot of ideas but few non-negotiables, even though I’ve thought many things over and over.

Obviously, what God wants is both more important and better (including better for me) than what I want, but we need to avoid attributing to God a human logic. God is not a controlling father who wants you to marry a blonde or a brunette.

Generally, I want to have them as they come. There is a number of beautiful “types”, but there’s always a new one coming. I want to be surprised. And it’s always integral with the whole person. She’s a long-haired brunette or a short-haired blonde as much as she is tense or relaxed, explosive or calm, introverted or extroverted and so on.

Whatever works? I don’t know. Opposites, complements, who cares. Life does not disprove theory as much as contain a lot of data that cannot all be processed. You can’t make a fully exhaustive calculation in a matter of life. I also believe in common history. In pieces of life shared together. No maths’s gonna do that for me.

In the end, I’ll probably say I just need to feel this thing. Well, if that’s the reality, I’ve got to admit it. There may be something good in opposing reality, but little in denying it.

I just want someone I will be comfortable sharing my path with. Someone with whom life can be a shared adventure. Someone to talk to, someone to debate with, someone who will stand up to you and who will play competitive games against you, but who will never betray or leave you, which means who is entirely on your side, but whose loyalty first goes to God, good, truth.

Experience and longish deliberations teach that I’m probably looking for some sort of blend. Clear and bright mind, but in touch with life. In touch with life, but philosophically detached. Philosophically detached but resourceful when it comes to pushing onward. Determined as well. In touch with tradition and the legacy of our civilisation, but at the same time not a hater of modern technology. No reactionary conservative, but at the same time no change-for-change’s-sake liberal. I understand vanity especially because I’m not quite immune to it myself, but excessive levels turn me off. Willing to make necessary concessions and arrangements, but not a power compromiser. Someone who uses beautiful language, but who can break away from form. I like people who sound like philosophers, but I don’t like people who sound like pricks. Even though I might often find myself belonging to the latter group. :rolleyes:😛

What else? Honour is important. Good, old-fashioned notions but understood in a proper concept. Historical knowledge does shed light on the understanding of chivalry, does it not? Yes, I know I’m a prick. But you wouldn’t think that if you were on the same page with me.

What’s more, I guess it’d be very hard to find someone who’s read the same books (in a metaphorical sense). I often go off on tangents. I can start babbling about the crusades, but I can similary “lose it” with computers or some other tech. Or art history. Or Latin. Or I randomly start talking in a foreign language or quoting some obscure stuff. I’ve had a mutual feeling with computers since childhood (age 7 or so), as well as art and art history (dad is a retired artist), my youth was full of history contests, literature and grammar generally got me in the top of the class, although I didn’t particularly love them at some points (they were often very tedious and pretentious and gloomy) and I was the hand-raiser kid in those more science-like subjects until I fell out with them. Actually, I managed both to top the mock highschool maths final in my class and narrowly avoid failing the whole year in the end, getting a D in it. I ended up in the law, but I might as well have - and probably should have - studied archaeology instead. I did pass that awful entry exam the year I was entering uni. Same with classics and with English. I would never have made it to any IT education because of maths and other things, but I can still pull off things like professionals rarely dream of (e.g. six lines of code to do what normally takes two pages). 😛 This I say knowing my modesty is oh-so-very endearing, but anyway. I freely admit one of my friends who’s a software engineer (supervises coders) said she’d never hire me for the way I code (no comments and nothing is done the orthodox way).

All in all, I basically need someone equally crazy. Haven’t found yet. If not going to, well, that’s bad, but I’m not going to make someone else, and myself, unhappy.
Click to expand...
I know that your post was long, and I quoted all of it; but there are some people out there who can match even the odd-ball ones among us. I myself am a trifle odd. I was kicked out of my Shakespeare class in undergraduate school because my teacher said I intimidated the other students by knowing too much of the subject matter beforehand. 🤷 She let me take the final exam in the second week of the semester and write a paper instead of attending class. I loved that teacher.

I am not fond of science, but I was able to successfully test out of taking any science in my undergraduate classes. I like weird things, and, like you, enjoy talking about unrelated subjects including the Crusades (a favorite of mine), vampires, and literary criticism. I taught myself the rudiments of computer coding because I wanted to add to one of the computer games I liked. 😛

And I have a husband who shares all these interests with me. I taught him to code, and we worked on some of those projects together. We are currently writing a novel together.

Of course, we have been married nearly twelve years now. We have had plenty of time to grow more like each other. I shared my love of the medieval period with him; he did not have it before we married. Now he loves it as much as I do. 👍

Hang in there, chevalier!
 
According to my friends, I am still single because I am looking for a Neanderthal with a Phd:confused:

The man I really like at the moment is incredibly kind, thoughtful, handsome (to me, anyway) and very into the outdoors. He’s also very close to his family and seems to be utterly without conceit or pretension. I can honestly say I have never met a single Catholic man who meets this description, which is pretty sad!

Even sadder, he is divorced, so I can’t do a thing about it, apart from trying to be a good friend to him and hope (depserately) that he finds me so irresistable and amazing that he one day starts investigating annullments and is actually a suitable candidate for one and is so impressed by my Parish Priest he decides to convert too…or that God throws a Catholic in my path (not literally: I might mistake a man falling in front of me as drunk, desperate or just plain mad!) who is intelligent, thoughtful, active, successful in his chosen field and most importantly, born without middle class angst:p like me!!!
 
Rose71 said:
According to my friends, I am still single because I am looking for a Neanderthal with a Phd:confused:
Click to expand...
What would that look like? Unfrozen caveman lawyer???

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

My friends tell me I’m single because my standards are too high – that is, he has to be a practicing Catholic who is eligible for sacramental marriage. Apparently, that is asking a lot 😦

A couple friends also tell me that the only man I could ever marry would have to have been in the seminary for a time, or an ex-priest! :eek: Well, former seminarian would be fine… but ex-priest? I’m not even going there :eek:

Keep praying for the conversion of the man you’re attracted to, and keep praying for the fine Catholic man you will marry. 👍

Gertie
 
Still single because apparently it’s God’s will that I be so.

There aren’t many of men of faith around…that are interested in me at least. 🤷

For some reason known only to God I only attract guys that are liberal or player types…talk about opposites…lol I’m fairly conservative and no where near a player type. Or they aren’t into religion. 🤷:eek:

I refuse to date anyone who doesn’t share my beliefs anymore. 👍 It’s a waste of time to do so anyway. 👍

Resigned to being single as I don’t seem to have much choice and I’ve got other issues on my mind at the moment anyway. 🤷:rolleyes:😉
 
Sillara, thank you.

Rose, that reminds me of a young lady I once met by chance. At a point I cut contact when it was merely still developing because I feared I woud fall in love and ignore the basic things.

She was the most polite young woman I had ever met. And yet that was not politesse, it was genuine. She was not at all jaded. Except you could sense some of the modernist hypes, well, who’s free of them nowadays?

One thing: she was pro-choice. She was even, in fact, a medical student studying to be a neonatologist. And she was still pro-choice. Not of the rude, activist kind, but the belief was the were and she used the word “awareness”, when commenting that a more liberal legislation wouldn’t be accepted in our country. It never crossed the line of madam and sir and yet it was rather kind and attentive for a mere polite discourse.

I also remember she was very trusting and seemed to be a good person. However, I couldn’t take it. Not less than a year after a break-up with someone I thought I’d marry one day, a break-up caused, apart from long distance, by the difference in beliefs, including on pro-life matters.
Sierrah said:
For some reason known only to God I only attract guys that are liberal or player types…talk about opposites…lol I’m fairly conservative and no where near a player type. Or they aren’t into religion. 🤷:eek:
Click to expand...
A lost home effect, perhaps? I have a similar one on non-Catholic women.
 
Frankly, this thread is like a needle in my heart. 😦 My mom sometimes wonders if she’ll ever have grandchildren. My guy friends tease me about ‘being gay’ (I’m not). I often wonder especially in these times why I hang onto a large house when it’s just me, my little brother and my dog. I’m decent looking, I dress well, and I’m well-mannered. I’m employed, never married, and have no children. I used to be really good at the whole dating thing.

Who would have known that becoming a funeral director would change all that?

“Oh, is that like a mortician? That’s creepy. How can you do that for a living?” More often than not, that’s the reaction I get when I introduce myself to a woman. No matter how charming I try to be, this is something that’s difficult to shake. Last weekend while at a dinner party, I overheard two women talking in the kitchen. One asked the other why she had blown me off. “What am I supposed to do, become the undertaker’s wife? I don’t think so.”

Welp.

I guess I need to try something different. I’m not sure what that something is just yet, but I suppose I’ll find it soon. Lord knows I’m looking.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top