Who I am

I am a middle-class, middle-aged, married, tradition-minded Catholic man who regrets, strongly, most of the life decisions he has made. I regret my sin, my cowardice, and my decision to marry. The cowardice I regret the most is resisting God's call to a celibate vocation.

I fully expect that I will be miserable for the rest of my life due to my decision to marry. This is despite the fact that I have beautiful young children and a fantastic and supportive family. I've done my wife, children, and myself a terrible disservice by rejecting God's call to the contemplative life and choosing a woman who is not fit to marry based on superficial similarities, taste, snobberies, and interests rather than traits that actually matter.

I spent the first few years of my marriage angry and bitter at my wife for her failings. More recently, I realized that this situation completely my fault, as all of these traits I loathe in her were there at the outset. I was not blinded by love or any such foolishness; I had the arrogance that I could somehow fix her, and that things would immediately get better once we married, since the difficulties and inconveniences of dating would be gone. My proposal to my wife was an exercise in pride, and God has and is justly punishing me for this sin. I accept this, and wish to embrace it, though I currently lack the strength.

And thus, in this sorrow, I hope to work towards my salvation. This blog will function as a means for mentally working through my trials, as I have little support elsewhere. I work entirely too many hours to meet with any sufficient priest regularly for spiritual direction, nor can I discuss any of this with my friends, as in conversation I lack the composure to discuss this rationally without detracting my wife. In written form I can edit myself, and censor the evils that would otherwise spew from my mouth.

As I wish to remain anonymous, I will withhold many details of the specific marital problems that my wife and I have. I do not wish to detract her publicly, nor disturb my children as they age.

A secondary aim of this blog will be to convince other young, pious, Catholic men not to marry, and instead remain celibate. For every Catholic woman out there that will make a fine wife, there are hundreds that are too poisoned by feminism to ever do so. The odds are not in men's favour, if their goal is to marry and raise a righteous, God-fearing family with traditional gender roles. That, coupled with the threat of divorce (the vast majority of which are initiated by women), make it too risky of a proposition in this day and age. It is better to spend a life able to give freely of time and talent to organizations within the Church who can best reach out to non-believers in the world that they might attain salvation. Whether this is to be done as a single man, priest, or religious is a matter for discernment, but marriage should be off the table for most men today.

For any reading this, I do not want your sympathy, for I deserve none. What I would most appreciate is prayers that I might persevere in faith, never giving in to despair or other sin. I know I will never be happy in this life; I act in solemn hope that I might in the next.