Seven Bad Reasons to Get Married

What is your motive for getting married?

If you are on CatholicMatch, there is a good chance you are orienting your life toward marriage and family. Most people want to get married. But do you want to get married for the right reasons?

There are many reasons that our culture, our families, or our own pasts unintentionally pass along to us. These are expectations that perhaps should be reevaluated before you say “I do.” Going into marriage with the right set of expectations and goals will help both you and your spouse maintain the happiness in matrimony for which we all long.

Don’t get married in order to:

1. Grow up or mature.

You’ve probably heard this. When someone is full of youthful enthusiasm or impetuosity, some well-meaning person may say, “Just wait. Marriage will grow him up.” Oof. Although marriage has a profound affect on us and can be part of the equation to help us mature in Christ, getting married with the hopes that it will be a cure for youthfulness places pressure on your spouse that should not be there. Your spouse is not your second chance at being parented. Do your maturing before you walk down the aisle.

2. Find financial stability.

Does this bring to mind Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice? “A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!'' We laugh because when put like that, it sounds absurd. But, plenty of people disqualify another too early in the dating process based on either their or the other person’s current financial situation. Just as it is not a spouse’s job to parent you, it is also not their job to financially rescue you.

3. Cure your loneliness.

The late Rich Mullins said it well, “Friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is part of our experience, and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness lived together in the same experience.” There are plenty of married people who are lonely. And plenty of single people who are not.

Loneliness, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad, nor is there any cure for it. Loneliness is meant to call us to orient ourselves to heaven—our real and eternal home. As St. Therese said, “The world is thy ship and not thy home.”

4. Fix your heart, because you already had sex.

This reason can spring from our innate desire to fix our mistakes and make amends for our transgressions. However, solving one mistake by making another is not fixing the problem at all.

In the 90s I remember attending so many chastity talks and “True Love Waits” rallies. Often times there were skits meant to manipulate emotions. One, in particular, had a girl with a big red paper cutout heart. And she went around passing bits of it to various boys as she tore off pieces. Then she found “the one” and wanted to get married. And she gave him what was left, a small little scrap of red paper.

The problem with this is that we are not made of paper. Jesus makes all things new. Our hearts can heal and be restored. The Lamb of God really does take away the sins of the world. If you are already sleeping with someone, the fix is not marriage. The fix is the Sacraments and the grace God has already provided for you.

5. Live up to or fulfill family or church expectations.

“Why are you single? You should be married by now!” Says who? Yes, most of us want to find ourselves in happy marriages. But there is not a timeline. In directing your life, God is not watching the clock nor the calendar. Your journey is your journey and our good Father knows what is best for our sanctification.

It is more than OK to take your time, to be really sure of where you are, and who you allow on the journey with you. If you are not ready for marriage, jumping into a serious relationship in order to stop the tongue-clicking of the church ladies or your aunties will not contribute to the happy marriage you want to establish.

6. Silence the ticking of your biological clock.

While this may be more applicable to women than men, everyone feels that they have a window of time to establish a family before it is “too late.” I can offer no better words of comfort in this than the Scriptures themselves: God places the solitary in families (Psalm 68) and more shall be the children of the barren than she who has a husband (Isaiah 54).

Of course these things speak of deeper and more transcendent realities than our physicality. It speaks to the reality of the theology of our bodies (Thank you, St. Pope John Paul II) and that there are many ways in which we image the parenthood of God—and that is not exclusively through biological children. So, although it is natural to feel that biological clock running down, look to Jesus’ timetable and trust his plan. 

7. Cure temptation.

We all get it. Chastity in 2021 is no walk in the park. It has been an uphill battle throughout the ages, but our postmodern culture makes it feel sometimes as futile as Sisyphus pushing the boulder. However, we are mistaken if we think that marriage will be the solution. Marriage will not cure anyone of sexual temptations. Chastity is something we need for all of life, not just for our single years.

In fact, it would be a great gift to your future spouse to obtain a level of self-mastery before marriage, because there will be times of abstinence during marriage (for times apart, times of illness, postpartum, NFP, prioritizing the needs of your other children, etc.).

The good news is that the Holy Spirit is every bit as ready to give you the grace to overcome temptation now as He is after you say “I do.” 

So, why should you get married?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to marriage as a vocation. Therefore you should get married when and if God calls you to it. Just as in a vocation to the priesthood or consecrated religious life, the vocation to marriage involves sacrifice, love, and a lifetime commitment. Just as Jesus who came to serve and not to be served (Matthew 20:28), get married not only to be loved, but to love and to lay down your life for another.