Love the Unknown Spouse

Oftentimes we will hear about doing things to love your spouse, on how you should pursue your husband or wife, you should be kind to them, give them affection, so on and so forth. This is good, to love the person before you, the one whom you've dedicated yourself to, promising them this one life that you have to be theirs. Many people fail to do this well, which we see evidenced by marriages falling apart, and even in good marriages struggling due to the selfishness of one party or another. We should love our spouse well, but we don't seem to be doing a good job at it right now - and this has probably been a problem since we people have been around.

This is in part a problem of vision, a perspective issue. For those of us who are single, and those of us who are not yet married, I ask this: how much do you love your spouse right now? Perhaps you have met the person that you will marry, or perhaps they remain a stranger as of yet, but whichever one it is you still have the opportunity to love them today. This person who is a stranger to you today (and that is a thought worth reflecting on by itself) can be loved by you today - are you loving them?

Yes, some of you have heard about this idea before in the sense of preparing yourself for them and getting ready to be a good husband or wife and getting your finances in order, and perhaps more. These are good things to do, but this is not what I mean. Loving your spouse to present yourself well to them is very good, yes, but when I speak about loving your spouse I mean it in the sense that they are before you right at this very moment. Not a conceptual "presenting the best version of myself" for them, not in having a home prepared for them for when you wed, no. These are good, but I think they are only part of the picture in how you should love your spouse. I mean love in this way - if the person whom you would marry was in your life now, what things would you do for them to love them? If you think love letters are romantic, how many do you have written for your spouse right now? This person whom you have not yet met, what gifts are you preparing for them now?

A quick tangent from the topic, for those who are reading this and are either already married, engaged, or are consecrated to the Lord. In one sense this lesson is behind you, but in another sense this is both a reminder to you in this moment and a lesson to share with any children you may have. The ways in which you could have loved your spouse better before marriage, and how you could love them better in your marriage, this can be a valuable lesson for others to learn from. Perhaps this is something you wish you could have practiced in your previous state of life, but even with it behind you the lesson can be shared with those round about you.

Now, back to love letters. Of course you don't know yet how tall your spouse is, how attractive they are, how athletic they may be, and so on. But, love letters are not just about you extolling the things which attract you to the other, they are also about your desire for that person. Love letters are confessions of your dedication and desire to the other person, opportunities for your lover to get to know the very intimate parts of you which are not shared with others. These opportunities to love your spouse are not limited to the moments when they are in front of you, gifts such as love letters can be preserved as a future gift. Introduce yourself to your spouse, share with them the things which you are passionate about. It very well could be that you are a very different person when you two finally wed, but are these letters from the old you not also a gift? Imagine, a letter of introduction to your younger self, a piece of you frozen in time to be given to the one whom you marry. A portion of you which is unchanging, a snapshot saved as a gift to your beloved. This will be a gift which nobody else will receive from you, so long as you write this letter.

Be ready to make yourself a gift unto your spouse - not just for the wedding day, but also for the entirety of your marriage. Prepare your body for your beloved. Foster healthy habits by making yourself well, eating good food, becoming more handsome or beautiful within your natural means, seek out strength and fitness. Become jacked? No. Practice healthy habits to keep you strong and lengthen your life? Yes. Just imagine making an account to your spouse for all the foods you've eaten, all the lazy days where you lounged about, and the conversation you would have with them. They would be upset with you - not because "You're fat, ugly, and lazy, and I hate you" but rather because "You are beautiful, and I wish you could see that and treat yourself as if you knew it", and through tears your beloved would say to you "I wish that you would keep yourself in good health, I want to share as much of the lives we have left together, and I wish we had more time".

To digress for a moment, what I am not saying is that you should go start running marathons, that you should live on a strict "healthy" diet, and that having any fat is a bad thing. Here is the standard I am proposing: are you healthy enough that you will be able to be active with your children and your grandchildren? Do not mistake me for being opposed to a trip to Wendy's, enjoying a bottle of wine, or lazy days - au contraire, I would propose that truly healthy people are able to both enjoy these things and pursue health in other ways. Health is not just physical wellbeing, we are not simply bodies, we are body-soul composites as man. If your idea of a good time is kale chips after a 6am run, that you abstain from pizza because "it's bad for you", you head to the gym in the afternoon and do another run in the evening, you are not a healthy person - no couching the statement, no nuance, no backtracking, you are unhealthy. Your body and your health has become an idol, and you cannot gift an idol to a godly spouse.

I will share one example of what I do in loving my spouse today before I have met her, but I will say little because the details are a gift only for my wife. The ring around my neck is a gift for her, and it is a reminder each moment I feel it against my skin that I should be preparing myself for her. I have several gifts for her once I meet her, things which she will be the only recipient of, things which I will not tell to anyone else. No past girlfriend of mine has known any more than what I have shared with you now, and none will know except my bride. Among these gifts is me, the most secretive and hidden parts of me, things which can only be known by my wife. The objects which I have set aside for her, the stories which I have prepared for her, the pieces of me which are intentionally reserved for only her, I am preparing and preserving all of these for her.

There are likely hundreds of ways in which you could love your spouse right now, even though you don't know who they are yet. Perhaps you love them by writing letters, or if you carve things then preparing something for them now, or perhaps a painting - or, it is your body which you prepare for them and set aside as a gift to be given not only on your wedding day, but your gift unto them each day of your marriage going forward - or, if you have the good fortune to own your own home then you prepare a garden for them, you build up the shed with things which they will likely want, you make a home-y space where they will feel at peace once you two become united - or, instead of doing one of these things I listed, you do all which you feel called to do. The key I wish to communicate to you, dear reader, is that there are things you can do today to love your spouse before you have met him or her. Find your own unique way to love your spouse today, allow your beloved to learn of how you have been making yourself ready for years to be presented to them.

Now, there is of course the real possibility for myself and for you reading this to discover that your calling is to religious life rather than marriage. Is your preparation for your spouse not still important? My frequent prayer, preparation of my body, of my finances, would this not be a good gift to the Church were I to one day give myself to Her? If my vocation is to be wedded to the Church, my prayers for Her have not been for nothing. My parents, my grandparents, they pray each day that I will be a good husband one day, and that my wife is protected and sanctified as she prepares for me, and it could be that I meet this woman in church one of these days in the future, or it could be that she is the Church herself. My prayers for Her healing, for Her protection, for Her sanctification, and for my preparation as a man before I am wedded to her, these are all still for the good.

Another note on vocation, for those unsure of whether they will marry or go into religious life, there is no such thing as a "wrong vocation". You are not going to be damned for choosing one over the other, your life is not "wasted" if you join religious life when you "should have chosen marriage". Though some may not say this explicitly, there is an idea in the West that there is a right choice and a wrong choice, and this is false. This is not how the Church has ever seen vocations, this is a modern theory come from American Catholics. It is not as if you have a right and a wrong choice for vocation, you have the choice between two goods, and perhaps one is "more good" for you than the other but choosing either is still good. Without being explicit, just look at your body; you can see that you were made for another person, your body's purpose is to be a husband or a wife, a father or a mother, and there is nothing wrong with choosing this vocation. Religious life, giving up marriage, is an offering to God, a dedication wholly to Him when you could be giving that time to a family and spouse - this is also good. Whether you choose to engage in the natural vocation of marriage which God gave to us all, or if you give that up and offer your celibacy as a sacrifice to Him, these both give glory to God.

There is the reality that the invitation might be stronger for some to one vocation or another, and God may be asking you to step specifically into one vocational path or the other, and I very much advise you to listen to that. Sometimes He has a plan for us which calls us to something higher, and our sanctification is reached through one vocation rather than the other - listen to Him. He wants what is best for us, He knows what is best for us, so I advise you to listen.

On the other hand (and I am not advising you to ignore God's voice, just adding nuance) God loves to give us a choice. He asks things of us, He wants us to choose. He gave us free will, the ability to choose. This is not a Calvinist God who says the minor choices are our own, but the major choices are His - no, we aught to reject that thinking. He allows us to choose our vocation, and while sometimes He wishes us to choose one over the other because He knows it would be better for us, we have not made the "wrong choice" in choosing one or the other so long as it is in pursuit of Him.

To reiterate this point again, we are all called to marriage, our bodies proclaim this, the story of our first parents in the perfect garden proclaim this. But we have the option to offer up abstinence from this natural vocation and dedicate that to Him. If you feel as if the option for marriage or religious life is taken from you then you cannot offer that as a sacrifice - a sacrifice to God is given, not taken, as we see throughout all of Scripture and especially with Abraham and Isaac.

I have written "a final note" more than once and had to delete it, but now I truly begin to close. Love your spouse, choose your spouse. Whether your spouse is Christ, or She is the Church, or your spouse is a man or woman roaming the earth today, make yourself ready for this person. Prepare yourself today for your beloved. I would recommend all people write love letters to the one whom they love, and I recommend you do so now for your future spouse. If you are a woman reading this, write a love letter for your husband, with the idea in mind that this could be to a man you meet soon, or it could be to Christ Himself; and for a man reading this, write about your love for your wife, and recall this could be for a woman you meet soon or it could be the beloved Church. It is never too early to fall in love with the person that deserves the best of you.

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I wish to add an addendum here, as I wish to tear your heart apart. Below is a love letter from a man named Richard Feynman to his wife. Please read.

October 17, 1946 D’Arline, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you. I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive. I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real. My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Rich. PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

I wish for you to take a few things away from this letter. One, it is a good thing to want the kind of love this man has for his wife, you should want this kind of love in your life. Two, this kind of love takes work, a lot of it. Three, this love hurts, it will ruin you, it will tear you apart, but it is better to hurt from love than to never find this kind of love at all. Four, this kind of love takes work before you meet your other half, effort is required of you when you are with them, and even when you have them there is still effort required of you when you are away from them.

Love your spouse, love them well, in every moment. Now before you've met them, and in each moment you have them; love them so well that you can't sleep when they are away from you, that your laugh is less full when they aren't here. Love your spouse well today, and tomorrow, so that when they die before you it feels like a part of your soul has been ripped out from you. But, though you are deprived of your spouse for the remainder of your life, though you hurt at the memory of them, you are joyful at the memories of them which still live in you.

Written for VME Catholic, by Ethan Hall