The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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We hear a lot from people who are romantically struggling. I don't want to belittle that experience, which I know can be incredibly painful and lonely.
But it would be good to hear from people who are satisfied with their romantic life for a change. Are there any Mottezians with happy love lives who want to share their experience?
Also congratulations to @2rafa on the engagement and @Gaashk on the new baby.
Catholic, married twelve years, five kids (one of whom has significant special needs, I typed up a long post about him on DSL). I don't know what experiences you'd want to hear about, but the most useful approach I've learned over the years is this: you need to re-frame every problem as something external to the relationship and view your spouse as a teammate in fixing the problem. Do this even if the problem seems to be your spouse.
On a related note, at a certain point the relationship needs to become more important than your individual success or happiness. This works great in a Catholic marriage where divorce is explicitly off the table; not nearly as actionable in other contexts.
Make sacrifices, and make them generously.
Christian marriage in general, although a lot of people in other denominations seem to either ignore this or just never learned it. My wife and I haven't had our marriage convalidated because she has a problem signing a thing saying marriage is for life. And she's a Christian! I have tried pointing out to her that the prohibition on divorce was directly said by Jesus, and that this isn't a Catholic thing. But she just doesn't seem to want to accept it, IDK why.
It's kind of sad because it means I can't get any of the sacraments, but what can you do. At the end of the day, I still took a vow before God (we had a Christian ceremony, just not Catholic) and I intend to uphold it. A lot of people online will say stuff like "you don't have a valid marriage so leave", but that isn't on the table. Even if it means I can never get absolution at confession or participate in communion again, I'm still going to stand by her forever. I just hope she comes around someday.
Have you inquired into a radical sanation?
That kind of rules-lawyering makes me furious. This shows the downside about having a lot of explicit rules, people think that the explicit rules in canon law or the catechism matter more than basic moral law of keeping sacred vows.
No, I was actually unaware that existed. I probably won't go for it yet, but in time maybe. For right now I think that I agree with what the priest at my parish has told me: trust the Lord, if he wants us to have our marriage blessed by the Catholic church he'll lead my wife in the right direction in due time.
Yeah, I know. I think it's silly too, but that's humans for you I guess.
I'm not familiar with the canon law nor am I at this time a practicing Catholic, but from glancing online the radical sanation path might make a lot of sense.
You know much more about your wife's concerns than I do. But speaking as someone from a protestant background -- any sort of formal submission to Catholic authority, even on a matter about which there is agreement, can be very, very scary. I mean, I hope you and your wife both meant your vows to be for life, considering foreseeable possibilities, in accordance with the divine teaching. Do you think she's more concerned about signing a document that says she's signing on to Catholic teaching, or more concerned about making a pledge that she interprets as closing her off from a divorce should you do something radical, which of course you would never do, like have an affair?
I definitely think it's more the latter. She has no intention of just giving up on our marriage lightly, but she also doesn't want to sign a pledge saying she isn't going to divorce me because of extreme cases like what you mentioned. Infidelity, abuse, etc.
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