Marriage Prospects

Once upon a time, any young woman who did not have to work for her living was kept on a relatively tight leash until she was married (or went into a convent, I suppose). If she married a nice man, she could then breathe a sigh of relief and take advantage of whatever freedom her position in society afforded.

The logic behind this was to foster the young lady's marriage prospects, since it was believed that the the surest route to happiness and fulfilment for a woman was marriage, children and grandchildren.  Anything that messed up a woman's chances of making a "good marriage" was seen as catastrophic.

As a matter of fact, marriage, children and grandchildren is still an excellent (if not foolproof, obviously) path, and that followed by the richest in society, you may have noticed. Poor people tend not to marry anymore. Rich people still do. People in the middle waver. There aren't a lot of supports for marriage, and divorces can be financially ruinous. If I were a young man looking for a wife, my question wouldn't be "Has this pretty 26 year old been chaste her whole life?" My questions would be "Would this pretty 26 year old divorce me when life got tough, poison my children against me, and take me to the cleaners?"

By the way, we are probably living in the first time in history when young men were so sexually jaded, they were unmarriageable. Thanks to the  internet, an unprecedented number of men are now regular consumers of porn, and thus more men than ever "have sex with themselves" as a matter of recreational course. It's incredibly sad, and not only does it eventually render men uninterested in "real" women,  it is a major factor in contemporary divorce.  So really, I suggest parents should now be as careful for their sons' chastity as most parents used to be for their daughters'.

But let us posit that there are millions of eligible young men out there who have not been psychologically castrated by their electronic devices, hundreds of thousands of them Nice Catholic Boys who want to find a Nice Catholic Girl, get married, have some kids, and come home to the same  sofa every night.

These Nice Catholic Boys might not write out long lists of essential features they hope for in Nice Catholic Girls, but they generally do not want a girl who has serious problems with men as the Future Mrs Them.  Therefore, if you are a Single Catholic Woman who has serious problems with men--you hate your bullying father, for example---the best thing you can do for your marriage prospects is to wrestle with those problems in private.

Fortunately for Your Humble Scribe, I got over my adolescent resentment of men by the time I started blogging. Obviously I am alarmed by male violence and exploitation like everybody else, and I wish fewer men lied about what they have read. (SO annoying.) I also wish working-class Scottish boys did not enjoy driving their Ford Fiestas up behind middle-aged women walking along thinking deep thoughts and shrieking "YEEEAAAAAA" in our right ears as they pass. But apart from that, men are quite obviously a Good Thing, and if you want to get married, you have to communicate subtly that you know this.

It is therefore incredibly irresponsible of Catholic older women mentors to encourage their Catholic unmarried former students to publish passionate diatribes expressing their hatred for their fathers and of the "non-physical" violence meted out on the family by their fathers, and of the wonders of feminism, witchcraft and whatnot. Writing this stuff out for an hour a day every day on a cheap notepad and then setting the paper on cathartic fire would be excellent and therapeutic. But publishing it can be murder on your marriage prospects.