Skip to main content

Stop looking for marriage, start looking for love

It's very easy to idealize the sacrament of marriage. As a society, we tend to focus on a perfect wedding day, followed by decades of wedded bliss.

We tell ourselves that marriage will be work, but it will be worth it. And of course, these grand plans benefit from a haze of idealism and (for many of us), the unknown reality that is married life. 

While daydreaming isn't a terrible thing, it often makes us focus on the wrong things. 

No, I'm not saying you should not get married. Rather, I'm talking about a mindset. Sometimes as a Catholic, we put so much emphasis on marriage, that we forget what actually leads to marriage. If you're searching, don't search for a wife or a husband. 

Instead, focus on looking for a lasting, meaningful connection and sustainable, deep love. 

When you're thinking of a partner who qualifies as 'marriage material', we tend to think of a set of specific criteria. When dating (or even just meeting people), it's easy to quickly start to compare against criteria in your mind. The weakness of setting criteria is that it skews perception.

It can be very easy to 'write people off' when comparing against a criteria, because the minute a single box does not get checked, it is human nature to hyper focus on that single unchecked box. Conversely, you may be a very easy grader, and you might grade a prospect too easily. 


The inverse of writing people off would be overlooking critical shortcomings in that person and in your reaction to that person. Equally poor decisions. 

Love on the other hand has no criteria because it is a feeling. There's no real way to list out reasons as to why you love someone, except that you just love them. As such, there are no list of criteria. Once you have this loving feeling, and (god willing) the other develops the same feeling, then an ideal and sustainable marriage will follow.

Marriage will still mean work and sacrifice, but having a strong foundation of love will make everything easier. 

So, get rid of your list, don't worry about checking boxes. Instead, focus on a meaningful connection and balance those critical items after you gauge your connection. You'll be glad you did. 

Comments

  1. Well said. I would add that recently single people that have not yet move past their previous relationship also tend to have this "check-in the box" mentality when there interesting in dating.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 traits women ACTUALLY find attractive

In response to our prior article , it was time to create an article that answered the other side of the equation, and this time it's for all the dudes out there!  It is a timeless question: what do women want in a man? Further, and perhaps more importantly, what do faithful women look for in faithful men?  There are a lot of articles out there to consider, along with a lot of mixed advice, but we've narrowed this list down to five heavy hitters for you to focus on going forward.  1. Confidence Confidence is infectious, especially in a romantic partner. We all want to feel like we are with someone who is strong, self-assured, and independent.  Confidence is a tricky one though, because it's a bit of a catch-22. Low confidence begets more self-criticism begets lower confidence. Seeing highly confident people from a distance can feel like looking through the glass at a really great party: everyone is having fun and smiling, and you're left out in the cold. Ouch. Good news?

Refer new members! Win a beautiful Rosary!

Hello CatholicLuv users (and CatholicLuv curious),  We at CatholicLuv hope this message finds you healthy and well! It's been a busy few months for us at CatholicLuv, and we've been enhancing our service, marketing our company, and gaining a user base month after month!  We're happy with the direction things are going - but we'd like to continue to make CatholicLuv even better, and what's better than more users of the faith? Nothing!  We think 2020 was hard enough, and we'd like to get back to celebrating the good things in this life, like Easter! To commemorate the season and to bring more users into the fold, we're holding a contest! A contest!  We are introducing a referral program and contest, and the winner will receive a fantastic handmade rosary from Jesse's Vintage !  Jesse is known for his fantastic workmanship and handmade rosaries on Etsy, and we will be giving this beautiful example away to one lucky CatholicLuv user! If you don't win, we

Introducing CatholicLuv Premium

Hello faithful and fellow Catholics! We wanted to provide an update on some exciting new developments for our dating service. We have created a new premium tier for our users, with a few new exciting features to share. These include: Online indicator - no more guessing who has been active and who hasn't! A new message will pop up next to those profiles who are online, helping you choose who to speak with and where to spend your time! Message read status - a feature that's been in demand! Now it's possible to see who has read your messages and get a better sense of where you stand with your connection.  Unlimited new chats - start as many new chats as you want, with as many new connections as you'd like! This does change the free tier to a limit of 3 new chats per day.  + More premium features to come as we continue to grow! Here's our post on the r/CatholicDating subreddit that explains a lot of our thinking: We've been growing every month, adding new users f
Best Lifestyle Blogs  - OnToplist.com