Want to Be a Good Wife Someday? You Need These 3 Things.

What can you be working on now so that you’re ready to enter into a marriage covenant freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully? 

Read on for a few suggestions for your consideration!

1. Learn discipline.

Self-discipline (or self-mastery) is a necessary precondition for a free, total, faithful, and fruitful commitment for life. We must first possess ourselves in order to give ourselves away. Sound paradoxical or a little heady? If we’re unable to say ‘no’ to our own desires, they rule us.

If I cannot actually say ‘no’ when faced with sweets, I’m not really free. If I cannot actually put my phone down for a period of time and just be present to the people around me, I’m not really free. If I can’t say ‘no’ to viewing inappropriate images on the internet, I’m not really free. We cannot give away what we do not have, including our very selves. In order to be able to fully say ‘yes’ to all that marriage offers to us and what it requires from us, we must know how and be able to sometimes say ‘no’ to ourselves. 

Spiritually

What does your prayer life look like? Would you describe your prayer life as being a “habit”? Or would a better descriptor be “haphazard” or “half-hearted” or “......” (non-existent)? Assuming that you’re already hitting the bare minimum precepts of the Church like weekly and Holy Day Mass attendance, etc. consider: how often are you getting to Confession? Adoration? Are you praying every single day? Are you working with a spiritual director? 

Practical action #1: Write down what your prayer life looks like currently, including everything you can think of (ex. I pray for 5 minutes each morning, I go to Bible Study every other week, Adoration for 15 minutes on Monday mornings, Confession once a month, or I pray Night Prayers every evening before bed, I go to Mass twice during the week, have a devotion to St. Michael, daily pray the Litany of St. Joseph, etc.).

The key question is what, if anything, you do every day. The point is to see what you already do regularly, what’s habitual for you. If your list looks something like “I pray sometimes” or “I go to Confession when I think of it,” what’s one thing you can add or commit to doing regularly? The book “Atomic Habits” communicates clearly and engagingly how to create habits that stick. 

Financially

Money is a big source of contention in marriages. Being financially disciplined will enable you and your spouse to meet your shared goals, be they saving for a down payment, paying off a house, cash-flowing a fancy vacation, etc. 

Practical action #1: Get out of debt. Yes, you could bring yourself and a wagon’s worth of student loan, credit card, or other debt with you to the altar on your wedding day, but how incredible and free would you (and your spouse) feel if you entered marriage without debt? 

Want to learn how? Read Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover,” Amanda and Jonathan Teixeira of WalletWin’s “How to Attack Debt, Build Savings, and Change the World Through Generosity: A Catholic Guide to Managing Your Money” and/or Ramit Sethi’s “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.”

A smattering of content from each one: In TMM, you’ll learn to create sinking funds so you can save now for known future expenses (like Christmas gifts, vacations, birthdays, weddings) rather than being “surprised” and overspending at the last minute. In the Teixeiras’ book, you’ll be challenged to rethink your approach to tithing and that magical number of 10%. Ramit Sethi makes an intelligent case for automating as many payments as possible (think rent, utilities, sewer and water, “payments” to a savings account, even charitable donations) and for determining your actual financial priorities and seriously cutting costs in areas that don’t matter to you. 

Personally

If you tell your friends or sister or grandma that you’ll be someplace at a certain time, will they believe you? Or do they automatically add half an hour to whatever time you listed, or wonder if you’ll make it at all? Discipline in your personal life looks like keeping your commitments (and perhaps trimming the amount of commitments you make so that you can actually stick to them), like showing up on time to work each day, getting out of bed right away when your alarm goes off, volunteering monthly (or weekly!) at a soup kitchen, taking a niece or nephew or godchild out on a monthly playdate, etc. 

Practical action #1: Learn about yourself. Maybe you take Metanoia Catholic Academy’s Temperaments Quiz, or the 5 Love Languages quiz, or The Woman School’s Wholeness Quiz, or the Clifton Strengths (formerly Strengthsfinder) test, or perhaps you go through the Catherine of Siena Institute’s Called & Gifted spiritual gifts (charism) discernment process.

Pick one of the above and learn more about what makes you tick, your unique strengths and vulnerabilities, so that you can work synergistically within your strengths and with awareness of your vulnerabilities. The more we authentically know ourselves as we are (without blinders to our own frailties or ignorance of the gifts we’ve been given), the freer we are to enter deeply into a relationship, especially a lifelong relationship, of self-gift. 

2. Learn how to forgive.

In the context of marriage, you will have many, many (many, many) opportunities to forgive. Some of the opportunities will be over little things that annoy the boogers out of you. (He leaves every cabinet door open behind him? Does he think you are his maid?) Some of the opportunities will be over big things. (He went out and spent what on a vehicle without checking with you first?) It’s no secret amongst us ladies that we’re often skill-level expert at holding onto things that bother us for-ev-er, and mayyybee throwing things back in a boyfriend’s face that we would expect him to consider ancient history, if the shoe were on the other foot. 

Practical action #1: Make a habit of monthly or bi-weekly Confession. Owning up to our own sins and failings, and receiving the grace of the Sacrament, predisposes us to offer mercy to other people rather than holding grudges and wallowing in bitterness or unforgiveness. 

3. Get in touch with your feminine genius.

If you want to prepare to be a wife, it’s helpful to learn about what living your femininity looks like, and how your femininity can complement your man’s masculinity (rather than competing with, dominating, or being dominated by it).

Maybe you cringed a little as you read the above, assuming that living your femininity would require you to be someone other than your authentic self, but I guarantee you that living out your own feminine genius is much broader than any stereotypical ideas you might have heard or conjured up. Consider the very broad definition that philosopher Sr. Prudence Allen offers in volume 3 of her 2,000 page reflection on womanhood, “The phrase ‘genius of woman’ refers to a way of being, acting, and loving in the world, which manifests a unique creativity in human relationships.” Catholic speaker Lisa Cotter offers a quick explainer clearing up several misconceptions about the feminine genius here.  

Practical action(s) #1(-4): After you’ve watched the video above, check out Pope St. John Paul II’s beautiful Letter to Women, and then his longer consideration of womanhood in Mulieris Dignitatem (which actually preceded Letter to Women chronologically!). And then check out Lisa Cotter’s own book “Reveal the Gift” on this very topic. 

One last word….

Yes, there’s plenty you can work on to become “wife material” while you wait to find your man. Yes, your preparations now can pay dividends toward your future happiness. Keep in mind, too, that learning to be a wife happens in a big way when you are a wife. So, if your man shows up tomorrow, while you’ve barely just begun the first action item, it’s ok.

Don’t shut the door in his face (I’m *not* ready!!!), no need to tell him to come back once you’ve completed all the steps. Do what you can, sure. And then trust our good God that through the graces of the sacrament you will learn to become the wife you’re called to be, and your husband will learn to become the husband he’s called to be.