Catholic Husband

Marriage was designed to be a reflection of Christ’s love for the Church. Being part of such a union is a big set of shoes to fill. What makes it even harder is that we’re called to lay down our life for our wife.

The concept of laying down my life for my wife in a theoretical or academic setting is easy. I’d like to think that, if it came down to it, I’d have the courage to make that call. My daily life, however, doesn’t reflect that predisposition.

When we are called to love our wives as Christ loved the Church, and to lay our life down for her, that doesn’t just mean the loss of our temporal life. That means our whole life. That means not playing Xbox in the evening if she needs to talk. That means doing chores instead of watching a movie. It means staying home to take care of your sick wife and missing out on those Super Bowl tickets.

I personally believe that if we don’t make the daily, small sacrifices, then if we are even put to the test, we might not pass. Those who are faithful in the small things are trusted with the bigger things.

Take a look at your own life and relationship with your wife. If you’re not laying down your life for her daily, you won’t when it really counts.

Your wedding is a day, marriage is a lifetime. Those words are so true, but we can easily forget the words that are exchanged. It can be easy to leave the events of the day in that day. To live an authentically Catholic marriage, we must bring the words and prayers of the Nuptial Mass to life.

Most of my pre-wedding knowledge came from popular culture. In most Hollywood movies, the couples write their own vows. Each story seemed to be the same. The man would labor over the vows, trying to make them unforgettable and impactful. It seemed pretty stressful. I was delighted to find that the Church provides two versions of vows to use.

She gives us two choices for a simple reason. Your wedding vows aren’t nice things to say to your wife. They aren’t supposed to be engineered to bring a single tear to the eye of the Maid of Honor. They’re designed to be the roadmap for your marriage. No matter where you go, or what you do, your vows are the lighthouse. They guide your decisions. They guide your life.

The Church provides the vows because they adequately reflect the Church’s understanding of what marriage is. They spell out clearly the Church’s understanding of the married life and the role of husband and wife.

The vows are promises. They are beautiful. They are final.

The great thing about the vows is that you can use them as a plumb line. In any situation in your married life, when you reach a decision point, you can reference your vows and know if you are out of bounds or not. It’s wonderful.

The vows are certainly words that we speak, but they’re intended to be brought to life. When I promised to take care of Alison in good times and in bad, I’m supposed to translate that into action. When we’re flat broke, I’m still there for her. When we’re rich beyond our wildest dreams, our marriage hasn’t changed.

It’s a refreshingly absolute promise in this world of flakiness.

The vows are one of the critical elements of the Nuptial Mass, but they’re intended to have a much greater use than to just confer the Sacrament.

The relationship between a husband and wife is both exclusive and complete. By its design, it can meet almost all of the emotional needs of the spouses, but that can be difficult.

One of the challenges for young people is their first exclusive dating relationship.

A major challenge for young people in their first exclusive dating relationship is managing that exclusivity.

The young couple is enthralled with each other and find more and more of their emotional needs met in their relationship. A great danger is for the couple to segregate themselves from their friends. The danger comes when they lose sight of their healthy need to engage in relationships outside of their dating relationship. Marriage can have a similar pull.

Being a husband, you should find the vast majority of your personal fulfillment in your wife and the activities that you enjoy together. You share a life with this woman, you share everything. From the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you are living in total, complete connectedness. This is even more true if you are raising children together. Your life is full of communication and connection.

While your wife is able to meet most of your needs, and she, yours, it is wise to actively seek out other couple friends. Having relationships with people in a similar state in life can be a tremendous benefit to your marriage and it can also provide many mutual benefits.

First, you have a sounding board. When you have a difficultly at work, you probably turn to your wife to see if you are wrong. When you and your wife have a disagreement, her objectivity could be called into question. If you have some really close couple friends, you could bring them in and get some outside advice. They might have also been in a similar quarrel and could share some tips as to how to successful navigate the situation.

Next, they can provide quality relational interactions. If you’ve ever babysat for a young child, you know just how draining giving your full attention to a single person can be. With couple friends, you don’t have to overwhelm your wife with your emotional needs. Perhaps one of your needs is to go to a sports game or watch a war movie. If you have great couple friends, you can arrange for the husbands to hang out and the wives to hang out and do something they each enjoy.

Finally, good couple friends can provide opportunities to share the joys and challenges of the married life with. Being married is hard, especially being happily married. You may find people trying to pull you down because they are envious. Having great couple friends can reaffirm the good of marriage and remind you that there’s nothing wrong with living an authentically Catholic marriage.

In order to find good couple friends, you must be proactive. Engage in Church activities and local young adult outings. When you find them, hold on tight. You’ll both be glad that you did.

Masculine pride will tell you that apologies are weakness. It will tell you that the person who apologizes first, loses. Masculine pride has also gotten you into a few tight spots before, hasn’t it?

My wife and I learned something very important early in our marriage. We’re bad at fighting. I would withdraw because I wouldn’t want to make her more mad. She’d shut down because she needed more time to think. What we had was a failure to communicate. Over time, we’ve gotten better. Thankfully, I learned a few things along the way.

The biggest threat to your marriage doesn’t come from the outside. It doesn’t come from her catty cousin or your bumbling friends. It comes from unresolved arguments. Like a festering untreated wound, it only causes more and more marital discord. When you refuse to treat the wound, you let it get out of hand. It will completely destroy your marital peace.

By time you get to the point of an argument where you assign blame, it’s usually pretty deep into the discussion. You may be in so thick of a forest that you can’t really remember what this fight is all about. Even if you aren’t the original person at fault, you probably hurt your wife by mishandling the process. After all, is there really a correct way to handle a fight?

The important thing to know about apologies is that they are almost like ice breakers. When one side concedes fault, it makes it easier for the other party. Then they can feel secure enough to apologize and the situation can be resolved. I’m not saying that men are always wrong, but I am saying that we don’t have to peacock with our wife. We can lead well by readily acknowledging that at some point in the process, we injured her, though we didn’t want to.

Most importantly, apologies can’t be fake. Don’t say “I’m sorry” to just resolve the fight. It won’t work. Trust me.

Marriage is give and take. We can give her a great gift by taking responsibility first.

The place of marriage in society is something that is being fiercely questioned in our world today. What is marriage? What is its purpose? Why do we give married couples certain benefits? As Catholics, it is quite clear. Marriage is both unitive and procreative and benefits are granted by the State because the State has a vested interest in the regeneration of its population in stable homes.

While some make the argument that marriage is based solely on “love,” my experience as a new dad tells a different story. My experience has illustrated quite clearly that the genius of the architecture of marriage is the gender differences.

As a man, I think quite differently than my wife. We can approach the same problem with two different solutions. It’s during the times when we take advantage of our different approaches that we really succeed.

A few days after bringing our son home, he was crying inconsolably. Since I have never really been around young kids, I didn’t know what to do. My wife, however, tapped into her maternal instincts and put some sugar water on his pacifier and he calmed right down. My solution was to hold him, hers was to medicate. One or the other may not have worked, but together, they both did and he calmed right down.

There is something special in our gender differences. Neither of us is better than the other, but together, we are better than alone. Our thought processes, our emotions, and our intellects meld together to create the best possible outcome. The diversity of thought provides the best chance for the right solution.

When we turn the world selfishly towards us, we neglect the innate architecture that makes it so powerful, so beautiful. Sometimes it’s best to realize that God has the bigger picture in mind, and we know that things end better when we place our trust in Him.