As Catholics, we regularly pray for people we have never met. We pray for people who are homeless in our cities, for people living across the world in war-torn countries, for our world leaders. It is common practice to pray for these masses of people without knowing their names or faces. It is much more difficult to pray for a single, specific person whom we have not met yet, someone whom we are not sure even exists.
Praying for a future spouse is a prayer for a person, a future, and a vocation. It is a prayer for a nameless person, for wherever they are and whatever they are going through at this moment. It is also a prayer that requires trust in God that this person exists and that they will become your spouse.
When you have a deep desire for the vocation of marriage but find yourself going three years without a single date like I did, this prayer can easily become all-consuming. I remember so many lonely Saturday mornings going to the adoration chapel and asking God to introduce me to my future spouse. What started as a prayer of hope became one of desperation, which diminished my trust in God’s plan for me.
It was not until I learned to maintain a healthy detachment from this prayer that I was able to trust God again. By refraining from praying for my future spouse as a means to an end, I could instead pray for a fully-formed, unique person who was waiting to meet me, too. While I was not always successful in this detachment, learning to pray for my future spouse rather than just praying to meet my future spouse helped me to not only become more excited to meet him, but also more peaceful during the period of waiting.
These are a few tactics that helped me learn to pray for my future spouse before I knew his name:
Pray for your future spouse to experience God’s love in a specific way
Pick a specific way that your future spouse could experience God’s love today.
Pray about a hope you have for them, whether it is to have them stay safe, are able to achieve a goal they have, or simply that they have a good day today. Be creative in your intentions for your future spouse and trust God to love them wherever they are.
Pray for your future spouse to grow in a virtue
Growing in virtue is a lifelong process.
Neither you or your future spouse will be perfectly virtuous when you eventually meet (or ever!) but you can always grow in virtue. Pick a virtue that is important to you or that you struggle with yourself, whether it is faith, obedience, patience, or anything else. Pray for your future spouse to grow in that virtue with you today.
Maintain self-awareness
As you pray for your future spouse, check in with yourself about your true intentions.
Are you only praying for your future spouse because you think it will help you meet them sooner, as I often did? Or are you praying for them out of genuine compassion and love for who they are right now? God wants to hear your desire for the vocation of marriage, but He does not want it to become a burden to you. Exercising a healthy detachment is challenging, but it can help you to pray for your future spouse with an awareness that they are not a perfect person who will bring you complete fulfillment, but a fully human soul just as you are.
Persevere in prayer
You may not feel like praying for your future spouse every day, and that’s okay! If praying for your future spouse becomes overly discouraging or upsetting, take a break and trust that God hears the deepest desires of your heart - especially the ones you cannot articulate.
It may be helpful to end prayers for your future spouse with some of the final words from the St. Therese Novena to remind yourself that God is with you in this time of waiting, and every day.
I trust you, Lord. Help me to trust you more.
I love you, Lord. Help me to love you more.
