What a mess
I believe this represents the attitude of most women today.
It is therefore better, for most men, not to marry.
August 27, 2008 - Posted by Blogmaster | Uncategorized
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I’m a 46 year-old married father of six, a traditional Catholic, and a fourth-generation Californian living in Chico. In this space you can expect commentary on religion, culture, politics, local history, and things of personal interest. The title of this weblog is an allusion to an obscure bit of Chico history linking the forest in our neighborhood to the mystical Sherwood Forest of merrie olde England. I can be reached by e-mail at: jeff.culbreath@gmail.com.
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- "If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite." - Russell Kirk
also recommend finding women who are not career-obsessed, and simply want to be a good housewife, or finding a women from south america or east asia!
In a two year period that ended in 2005 I was a groosman in not 1, not 2, not 3 but FIVE weddings… That is right, five weddnigs that entailed me having to sit through drunken best-men toasts in rented pants…
Today 4 of the 5 are divorced already, and the fifth one is definately on the way. Total number of children for the 5 couples? ONE.
The one was planned and part of a family-making scheme? Nope “We forgot condoms” was what was said… And plans were made for tubal ligation by a 26 year old following the birth.
My advice to men my age – as the unmarried revert – is to meet a girl who is committed to marriage and raising a large brood (preferably meet her at daily Mass) or just get a dog (or five).
“…or finding a women from south america or east asia!”
That might have been good advice 20 years ago, but today the Oprahfication of America – and the Americanization of the world – is nearly complete.
“And plans were made for tubal ligation by a 26 year old following the birth.”
How incredibly sad.
That article gives me the absolute creeps. There’s no love there at all, no loyalty, nothing. Is this supposed to be _funny_? Doesn’t she understand that humor between spouses has to be coupled with tenderness and gentleness and must never be cruel? Oh, that’s right, she doesn’t care.
Do men drive their wives nuts? You bet. Do wives drive their husbands nuts? Absolutely. But the utter absence of love for one’s spouse is a horrifying, sinful state of the heart. I would have thought that even a non-Christian woman reading that article would feel she was staring into the pit. Where’s the love? Where’s even basic human kindness? This is blackness and nothingness. Making the husband into a cipher, and putting it in print. Can it be a fictional persona? Maybe she isn’t really married to a guy named Will. I suppose we can always hope.
I like her jacket.
Lavender is hard to wear.
Agreed, JC! I should have given the couple a vopy of Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical Humanæ Vitæ… instead of the stupid giftcard.
Lessons learned.
I know I lead a sheltered life, but I have to admit I find it hard to believe most women are like this. I know really nice girls and women (unmarried) who would never write something like that about a husband.
“I know I lead a sheltered life, but I have to admit I find it hard to believe most women are like this. I know really nice girls and women (unmarried) who would never write something like that about a husband.”
Lydia, I could certainly be wrong – it is impossible to know any real percentages – but in my personal experience “most women” is not an exaggeration. Our Catholic and Christian friends are the exceptions, not the rule. I don’t think that most women are quite as nasty as the author of this horrid article, however. Most are rather aimless souls merely seeking the “self-fulfillment” they have been constantly told they deserve. They don’t want to ridicule their husbands; they just want what they want … more than they want the sacrifices of a real marriage. The feminist movement, the schools, television and film, advertising, romance novels, women’s magazines, Oprah, etc., etc., have been feeding women the same selfish message for decades now. Even the churches offer little resistance.
That said – and I’m surprised no one has brought this up – most men today also have attitudes unsuited to married life. We’re a nation of adolescents.
Horrible. And AFAIK entirely true. Good post.
It’s funny you should use the word ‘adolescent’. I was talking about that nasty article with my husband last night, and I said, “She sounds like a seventh-grade girl.” My husband said, pointedly, that people who start using drugs in early adolescence are sometimes emotionally arrested at that age. Obviously I don’t know when that is the case. I think culture might have as much to do with it as chemicals.
From the article:
“If we stay, we stay because we decide to, not because our ankles and wrists have been locked into societal expectations.”
What a complete disconnect from reality! Society has absolutely obliged us by disintegrating to the point where there are few expectations of anybody. And yet, she is still ungrateful! It reminds of the bumper sticker: “Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?”
Jeff,
After having posted that, what do you tell your children? Surely you still hope that they marry and give you grandchildren.
What do you tell them to avoid people like that? Marrying a woman like that is a fear I have for my boys.
JCH
“After having posted that, what do you tell your children? Surely you still hope that they marry and give you grandchildren.”
Yes, I do hope at least a couple of them will marry and give us grandchildren. At this age we’re talking a lot about religious vocations and praying that God will show them what He wants them to do in life. The lack of good marriage material is one way to replenish the priesthood and religious orders!
But yes, we also talk to them about marriage. They know that Catholics are obliged to marry Catholics. We are fortunate to count among our friends many examples of good Catholic marriages. Examples are important and should give them a sense of “normal” when choosing a spouse. Obviously, we hope their spouses will be chosen from traditional Catholic families like those of our acquaintance.
Over time I will gradually start getting more specific as to the problems with contemporary society – problems which begin in the human heart, and can even lurk in their own hearts. Perhaps, as they approach adulthood, we’ll read and discuss articles like this one.
Other than that – pray, pray, pray!
Ugh…the abominable Oprah machine strikes again.
This is a marital contract in a godless age. An empty void. No self-giving, only selfishness. And pride. And contempt.
Frightening.
You guys seem to know more about this than I do: Was a couple like that always like that? Or did they start out with some actual affection for each other and just get this way gradually?
“Was a couple like that always like that? Or did they start out with some actual affection for each other and just get this way gradually?”
Lydia, I think people go into marriage these days without having any idea what love is. They don’t know how to love. Most likely they’ve never really been loved themselves. The average woman in college has already been sexually intimate with 5.7 men; the average man in college has had intercourse with 7.2 women. How many more before marriage? – heaven only knows.
Here’s another mind-numbing article (caution: extremely disturbing content) by another member of Generation Clueless. This has been going on for a long time. I don’t know how a woman can do this to herself without ruining her capacity for marriage.
Oh my gosh! If my husband had written this article, I would have been heartbroken. The woman doesn’t sound like she really knows what she wants, but that the world should cater to her anyway. Ugh, things like this make women look even worse…
I could NOT get through that article. The smug self-righteousness was too much to bear, whatever the topic.
But I will say this – as a 30-year-old married guy, I’m smack in the broken home generation. Lots of people I know have come from those type of homes, even good Catholic people.
Broken homes and the ubiquity of feminism can add challenges to marriage that spouses do not foresee, I will admit. These things affect all of us, even if we chant the Credo with gusto and make monthly confession without skipping a beat.
Good people, I’m saying, can be influenced in very bad ways, and that will present difficulties. But I wouldn’t just give up. We have to work harder, it’s true, to make our marriages work, but isn’t it better to make the effort, even if you fail, than never to have made the effort at all?
“We have to work harder, it’s true, to make our marriages work, but isn’t it better to make the effort, even if you fail, than never to have made the effort at all?”
Absolutely. If you’re married, “making the effort” is absolutely non-negotiable. This woman’s marriage is redeemable, and her husband has his work cut out for him. But if you’re not yet married, best to avoid a situation that is likely to end in disaster. You’re playing with the lives of children here.
Several points:
1) The woman’s story: perfectly understandable thinking on the part of someone who has no sense of marriage being a conscience-obliging sacramental bond. Even the growing mountain of psychological evidence of the lasting harm of divorce isn’t sufficient to dissuade many from that step.
2) Our host is correct regarding contemporary women of our generation. I have encountered this firsthand in this last year by being involved with local secular singles’ social-groups made of roughly same-age peers. These women have been “recycled” (in terms of legal marriages and unmarried intimate relationships) so many times that they should be the envy of the eco-freaks.
3) I myself fit the demographic of the NY Times article: 43, some college but no degree, underemployed and living through considerable family assistance, never married … and not even getting interest for simple dates. The elimination of living-wage jobs for un-degreed men is the single worst thing about the economic paradigm shift of my lifetime. (Sometimes I wonder if I’ll be trapped where I am for the rest of my life. Better start buying lottery tickets.) Debates have been had here about ideal social conditions vs. today’s reality, but do not doubt this: a society that sets the bar for practical marriageability so high that a noticeable minority of men can’t meet it is one that will implode on itself surely enough.
“Debates have been had here about ideal social conditions vs. today’s reality, but do not doubt this: a society that sets the bar for practical marriageability so high that a noticeable minority of men can’t meet it is one that will implode on itself surely enough.”
Very true, Somerset. What we have in America is really not much different than what polygamous societies tend to produce: a surplus of single men. In fact, our system of “serial monogamy” may be even worse than polygamy. In America a relatively small number of men get to recycle and monopolize a large number of women, leaving a sizable minority of men permanently marginalized and overlooked for marriage. Once again, the Catholic answer to this problem – permanent marriage and monogamy for all – is a matter of justice.