Here's Why Your Happiness Shouldn't Depend on Your Relationship Status
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It’s Advent.
That means we’re preparing for Christ’s first coming at Christmas and His Second Coming at the end of time. It also means that in about four weeks you’ll see happy couples your own age posting pictures of themselves kissing beneath mistletoes and holding hands in front of Christmas trees. If you’re single, you might feel a little bitter: where’s my mistletoe partner? You might ask. Where’s my soulmate with whom to share this Christmas?
Being single can be rough during the holidays. However (and here comes the cliche you’re probably as sick of hearing as the Mary Did You Know? song), being single is an opportunity for spiritual growth that will benefit you in your future marriage (if that is your vocation).
In what areas does being single offer opportunity for growth?
Well, there are quite a few, but there’s one of particular importance: a deepened commitment to God as our final end and happiness, and detachment from sources of joy other than Him. “Our hearts are made for You,” St. Augustine said, “and they are restless till they rest in you.”
Dating and marriage can be great sources of joy. Having to go without this source of joy for a time gives us the opportunity to turn to God and choose to be happy with Him even in the absence of the romantic relationships we naturally desire.
The most important reason for us to cultivate this attitude is because it is the correct attitude, and it will help us to more easily attain heaven. However, if you are called to marriage, this attitude will also help you when you finally do enter that blessed state.
On this point, let’s turn to Fulton Sheen.
In a talk on marriage, Sheen discusses how putting all our happiness in the object of our romantic affections is a recipe for disaster:
“If one starts with the assumption that the other person is God, then one is doomed to drink the bitter dregs of disappointment...‘I entered this marriage to be supremely and infinitely happy, and you're not making me happy!’ Well, the reason this kind of discontent comes over the soul is because one expected something from marriage which is not there. Here is the answer to that problem: remember that no human being in the world is love. God alone is love. We creatures are just lovable (and only to a limited degree). When a creature begins to take the place of the creator and begins to stand for love, then marriage turns to hate.” (Marriage | Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen | Catholic Podcast)
In other words: if one thinks of one’s spouse—whether the spouse one actually has or the spouse one hopes someday to have—as the source of our happiness, we’re going to be let down, because no human being is our ultimate happiness. Only God is.
And if we go into marriage with the notion that our spouses are our ultimate happiness, we will become resentful of them when they inevitably fail to live up to a standard met only by God.
This is perhaps the greatest opportunity that a period of being single gives us: the chance to practice and deepen our belief that “God alone suffices,” and that a spouse isn’t necessary in order to be happy.
This isn’t to say that we should stop desiring marriage.
If marriage is the vocation God has given you, then you should desire it! Nor is it to say that we shouldn’t expect joy from marriage. It is simply to recognize that the final purpose of our existence is not a future spouse (wonderful though they may be), and that our ultimate happiness does not lie in marriage, no matter how myriad its joys.
Our happiness lies in God. The more deeply we believe this and live accordingly, the more likely we will be to reach everlasting happiness in the next life, and the more likely we will be to have a happy marriage in this life.
Dive deeper this season.
So, this Advent, as you prepare for the Christmas season, continue to ask God to help you find your spouse, but also ask Him to make you content with Him alone.
When you see the Christmas pictures of happy couples, be happy for them and thank God for what He has already given you: membership in His Mystical Body and the hope of seeing Him one day face-to-face. If you are called to marriage, this submission of self to God will lay the groundwork for a happier marriage in your future.
And whether you are called to marriage or not, it will advance you on the path of holiness, the path to the end-goal of every vocation: complete union of the soul with God in the Beatific Vision, complete and unending happiness.
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