Want To Meet Your Spouse? Then Meet the Man in the Mirror

“If you know yourself and know your foe, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Love and war are very similar things; two parties meet, emotions run high, and very interesting things happen. Only with love there are more people around at the end than were at the beginning, and war involves considerably less drama.

But, like in most things, self-knowledge is essential for success in both. Success comes when you know what you’re trying to achieve and have a plan for how to achieve it. That applies in dating as much as anything else.

In other words, I’m about to run contrary to a lot of advice you receive on CatholicMatch: I’m going to suggest that you should have a ‘checklist’ of sorts identifying the qualities you are looking for in a match and that you should not deviate from it.

Stick with me; it’s not quite what you think.

Don’t Expect The Unexpected

We all like hearing stories of completely unexpected vocations; “I never imagined God would call me to the priesthood,” “I never expected he would point me to this person,” etc.

The thing is, though, I think that upon further examination we would find that most of these kinds of stories aren’t quite as unexpected as we’d think. Or rather, in retrospect we see how they came about. Take Mother Angelica, for instance. On the one hand it seems completely unexpected that a cloistered nun who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks would found a multi-million dollar media empire.

But when you look closer, examine her life and her personality, it becomes, not exactly inevitable, but not so surprising. You wouldn’t be able to say for sure that she would do it, but you can see that she was the kind of person who would do something like that; she was driven, innovative, had great force of personality, didn’t put up with shoddy work, and was used to dealing with a wide variety of people.

In other words, Mother Angelica had exactly the personality one would expect from someone who founded a media empire; it’s only the fact that she was also a cherubic-faced nun that makes it so surprising.

God surprises us by knowing us better than we know ourselves: not by calling us in completely unexpected directions. To truly know yourself, therefore, is to have a good idea of the vocation God is calling you to.

This isn’t an attempt to assert the self as somehow the supreme reality, as if God were a career director finding suitable work for us. God Himself made us, and He made us a particular way and, hence, to do particular work.

A mole must dig to the Glory of God, because God made the mole to dig.

Wheat does not produce carrots and apple trees don’t produce figs, but each yields its own proper fruit because God made it so. Likewise Mother Angelica did not produce the same kind of ‘fruit’ as St. Teresa of Calcutta, who did not produce the same fruit as St. Therese of Lisieux, who did not produce the same fruit as St. Teresa of Avila.

And here is the point: if God suited us from all eternity for a certain kind of work and produce a certain kind of fruit, He also suited us to a certain kind of mate.

“He Has All the Virtues I Dislike and None of the Vices I Admire”

So said the endlessly witty Sir Winston Churchill regarding the Labor politician Stafford Crips. As so often happens, there is wisdom in the Last Lion’s wit. A man may be a perfectly good man, and yet from our perspective be completely unlikable. This is because, in the infinite variety of human personalities, some are compatible and some are not. Side note, this is one of the reasons Christ orders us to love our neighbor and not ‘people’ or ‘our friends.’ We’re to love whoever happens to be there, not just people who strike our fancy.

This is especially true of the life-long relationship of marriage. If we’re looking for someone to eventually marry and spend the rest of our lives with (and I can’t imagine what we’re doing here if we're not), then we ought to have a very good idea of what kind of person we could happily live with for the rest of our lives. This depends in large part on what kind of people we are ourselves.

Basically, before you start looking for someone to spend the rest of your life with, you should have some idea what would qualify her for the position.

Who Will You Spend Your Life With?

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not talking about superficial stuff like what color hair she has or how tall he is (though let’s be honest: you ought to find your potential spouse attractive). I’m not even talking about shared interests or anything like that. The qualifications I’m talking about will be different for each person and based on your own knowledge of your own personality.

To cite an example in my own case (not because I’m especially interesting, but because that’s what I know), I always check the politics box when running a search because I know from experience that a strong disagreement in that subject seriously affects my ability to become comfortable and familiar with a person.

It imposes a barrier to intimacy that, while manageable in friends and family members, would be intolerable in a spouse. So I don’t try to contact potential matches who deviate in this area.

Do you see? The point isn’t to construct some fantasy woman to compare against every woman you meet, but to recognize how your own personality works and to identify the factors in the other person that will help or harm a potential relationship. This isn’t a matter of “I expect a tall, athletic redhead who is into sci-fi, plays piano, and lives within fifty miles.”

As far as superficialities are concerned, we should be flexible. But what does and does not qualify as a superficiality will depend in large part on your own personality and what you know about yourself.

Figure Out What Is Really Important

Go write down a list of everything you hope to find in a spouse, however superficial it may seem. Then, once this is done, go to a quiet place and prayerfully consider each item. Ask yourself “why do I want my future spouse to have this quality? Do I know anyone who already has it? How do I react to it in them? Is this just part of some superficial fantasy, or is it based on a real knowledge of myself?”

By the end, you should have a core list of qualifications that spring, not from fantasy, but from real knowledge of yourself and of what kind of person you could see yourself spending your life with.

Now, does this mean that you should never deviate from this list, or only pursue someone who fits it to the letter? No, of course not. But here’s the rub: if you do deviate from the list, it needs to be for a good and sufficient reason. If you say, “I don’t usually like quiet people, but I’m going to go after this quiet girl,” then you have to ask yourself “how does this quality differ in her from other people’s? What about her makes me think I’ll get along with her when I usually don’t get along with people like her?”

The important thing is to be aware of yourself and the other person: to know what kind of person you believe would make a good spouse for you and why. This will help you to avoid infatuation on one hand and ‘settling’ on the other. Because if you know what is really important, you’re less likely either to have your head turned by superficialities or to simply accept the first tolerable person who comes along.