Are You Sure You Aren't Looking for a Fairytale?

Have you ever had a sentence stop you in your tracks?

"Your goal to find a kind, loving Catholic husband who will treat you like a princess fits my goal of marrying a princess like you."

That, my friend, is a bold way to end a first message you send to a woman whose CatholicMatch profile doesn't say "princess" anywhere. And—confession—I didn't respond to him, for lots of reasons.

I'm in Florida and he isn't. He wants to take me dancing, he said. You couldn't pay me to go dancing on a date. But even if I were open to a long-distance relationship right now, his princess line may have done him in.

My goal wasn't, isn't, and never has been to find a man who treats me like a princess. Treat me like I'm a good woman? Yes. How about a warrior? I'd take that. But "princess" doesn't sit well. 

Maybe it's because "princess" is a little insulting—as if I want to be pampered perpetually or put on a pedestal. Or it's because being a princess, according to the movies that still haunt us from childhood, involves being stuck until a dude shows up or needing a knight to save you. And I do, in fact, need to be saved. But I already know a savior and He definitely isn't on CatholicMatch. 

The fairytale rivals the rom-com among the threats to our expectations of real-life relationships. But God didn't design us to live fairytales. Infatuation is never forever (and even if it were, it wouldn't be constant). There is no happily ever after; there are peaks and valleys. 

Marriage in a fairytale is the end of a harrowing story. Marriage in real life might be the beginning of one.

It's supposed to stretch and sanctify you. It isn't supposed to be like a fairytale. So why do so many of us keep looking for one?

To be clear, I don't know anybody out here looking for an actual prince or princess. I've never heard of a real woman who waits at her top-floor window for the man of her dreams to show up, nor a man who scales a building to climb in through a woman's window (without getting arrested). These are not the fairytales we've sought.

No, the fairytale today's single adults want is different. 

It isn't the knight in shining armor story. It's the "play video games whenever I want but also be a spouse and parent" story. It isn't the "frog becomes prince" story; it's the "frog never becomes prince but still gets the girl" story.

The fairytale is landing a spectacular spouse without first doing any work on oneself. It's having astronomical debt and no plan to pay it down but also finding a woman or man not concerned by that. It's having a career that can't sustain a family but also having a family. It's winding up married because a magic spark told you who to choose instead of using the free will God gave you to choose for yourself.

The fairytale is intimacy without conflict, access to a person without commitment, or commitment without risk. It's having a spouse who feels loved even though you haven't made an effort. It's burying your own pain so you don't have to face a difficult healing process without also inflicting pain on a spouse and kids. 

That is the fairytale. And it isn't going to happen.

It's what we seek when all we want is peaks. But this is life, people. Valleys are coming regardless of whether you want valleys. Maybe it's about dang time to value them—to endure some of the deaths to self that healthy relationships require instead of making people endure the pain of dating you before you've done that.

Yeah, there is discomfort in cutting back on video games, but imagine how your spouse will feel when he or she has to compete with a Playstation for your attention. There's suffering in starting a strict budget when you're used to buying all the things your parents couldn't buy for you. But if you spend all your money while you're single, you'll wind up with kids whose parents couldn't buy them those things either. 

And is it scary to choose a person and bind yourself to him or her for life with no proof that it'll always be fun or easy? Heck yeah it is. But I am personally terrified by how many Catholics act like God won't give us graces to face what we'll face within the Sacrament of Matrimony.

In seeking these fairytale versions of the vocation of marriage, we really prolong what we've longed to see end: that single life. We already know we can't get to marriage without ups and downs. And we already know we can't get through marriage without them either.

But consider: Going through the downs—the valleys—is easier when you can go through them with somebody who loves you.

Don't squander a shot at partnering with a person who's willing to accompany you in hardships by holding out for a life that has none.