How can I know God's intention for my life partner? Why doesn't God give a husband, a family, a loved one, a man, a significant other, a betrothed

Not all girls are equally lucky and sometimes, after many attempts to find their soulmate, after unsuccessful meetings and dates, girls alone ask themselves the question: “Why doesn’t God give me a husband?”

The answer to this question most often lies in the woman herself. There can be many reasons. Basically, they consist in a woman’s emotional unreadiness to marry or in an imagined handsome man with impeccable qualities, who is not so easy to find.

Each girl, depending on whether she is a believer or not, can find her own answer to the question of why she is still single, or why God does not give her a husband.

Reasons of an ecclesiastical nature

Many representatives of the fair sex, losing hope and faith, begin to blame God for their failures. There is such a thing as the crown of celibacy. Even though this is a common superstition that contradicts the church’s position that one cannot believe in damage and the evil eye, many girls see this as the cause of all their troubles.

The priest's answer to the question why God does not give a husband is logical and simple. And if you think about it, this is really true. He can't give us anything. Including he cannot give a husband. God gives every person, whether man or woman, a choice.

However, due to a vicious life, unwillingness to repent and pray, we ourselves do not notice the possibility of choice. Our pride and excessive demands do not allow us to see what the Almighty presents to us on a silver platter.

Of course, there are other options for answering this question. Some of them are magical, some are explained in our energy.

Is karma to blame?

If a girl herself has strength and is self-sufficient, her energy repels men, because they are looking for someone to protect.

If you are still wondering why God does not give a husband, then first of all you should look inside yourself, study your problems and desires this period of your life.

Most often, the answer lies within ourselves, and there is no need to blame anyone else. God gives good husband to those who strive for this themselves, who are ready to love and build a family. We just have to learn to see the options offered to us and make our choice.

In the first few months, the relationship of many couples develops ideally: walking together, flirting, touching courtship, first kisses. But what happens next? Beautiful wedding and a happy life together? Or endless conflicts, as a result of which you will part as “just friends”? When entering into a relationship with who is your person?

Why do many people pair up with people other than “their own”?

Going on dates can be pleasant with almost any member of the opposite sex (if he, of course, does not cause antipathy): sunny weather, a cozy atmosphere in a cafe or cinema, melodious music create the illusion that you are happy together. There is often no time to think about the question: “How can you understand that this is your person by destiny?” Should I worry about tomorrow when can you enjoy today?

However, a long-term affair with a partner whose views on life are very different from yours can hardly be called happy. Gradually, both sides begin to realize that they have made a mistake. The guy and the girl notice shortcomings that they cannot reconcile with. Breaking up a relationship is most often painful for both.

It would seem that the scenario of unhappy love is familiar to everyone. No one wants to get into it. Why then do many girls and boys make a serious mistake - they enter into long-term relationships with partners who are not suitable for them? There are many reasons for this, the most common of which are:

1. Fear of public opinion. Many girls are afraid that if they for a long time will remain alone, the environment will consider them “defective” and “useless to anyone.” Giving too much great importance According to others, they are in a hurry to enter into a relationship with a new partner without properly understanding their feelings.

2. Pressure from parents. Most mothers and fathers find it difficult to resist criticizing their child’s “wrong” behavior or giving him “practical” advice. It is difficult for young boys and girls to distinguish between their own and their parents’ opinions. Therefore, they often choose partners who are attractive to the older generation, and not to themselves.

3. “Falling in love” with any one quality of the other half: wealth, spectacular appearance, popularity. At an early stage, a partner’s positive trait may seem so significant that numerous disadvantages go unnoticed for a long time.

4. The conviction that you need to hurry up to start a family. Many girls who have spent too much time as brides are ready to accept a marriage proposal even from an unloved person.

5. Unplanned pregnancy. The future birth of a child often forces lovers to register their marriage as soon as possible. The groom is the father of a baby who will be born very soon. Therefore, girls in this situation often don’t even think about the question “how to understand that this is your man.”

6. There are many young men and women who at heart consider themselves unworthy of love and a happy marriage. They do not want to part with unsuitable partners because they think that they will not find anyone else.

What does "second half" mean? She is one?

Among romantically minded girls and boys, there is a widespread belief that a person can only have one true love. Is it really? There is a common plot in fairy tales: a handsome prince is destined by fate to have an extraordinary beauty as his wife. Having met, they realize at first sight that they have been waiting for each other all their lives and decide to get married.

In real life, however, there are many refutations of the fact that a person has only one “second half”.

Firstly, women and men most often fall in love more than once throughout their lives, and with each partner they are happy in their own way.

Secondly, young people usually do not have to travel all over the world in search of “the one” or “the one”. A loved one, as a rule, meets in his hometown: visiting friends, at work, on the street.

Thirdly, it is difficult to recognize “your” man or “your” woman in the first minutes of acquaintance. Relationships develop gradually. Again and again you have to ask the question: “How do you understand that this is your person “in life””?

In addition, psychologists say that for every guy and girl on the planet there are at least several thousand people with whom he or she can be happy in marriage. Thus, the myth of a single “other half” cannot be considered valid.

Signs that he is “your” person

Entering romantic relationship with a member of the opposite sex, please note:

  • what feelings do you have towards him;
  • how he behaves with you;
  • how relationships develop.

At first glance, it may seem that you are mutually in love. But how do you know if this is your person for life?

The following signs will indicate this:

  1. Together you feel easy and comfortable. You feel sympathy for each other.
  2. There are common interests and hobbies. Your views on life are largely similar.
  3. Your significant other cares about your opinion.
  4. The motives for his actions are clear to you.
  5. It is pleasant for you not only to talk together, but also to be silent.
  6. You are not annoyed by your partner’s shortcomings; he is also calm about your “quirks.”
  7. In general, you are confident in the feelings of your loved one. You don't have to wonder why he behaves the way he does.
  8. You give each other approximately equal amounts of attention.
  9. Your relationship begins to resemble a marital relationship: common affairs, plans, and similar points of view appear. various issues. You easily agree with each other.
  10. People notice that you and your loved one are similar in appearance. You can see it yourself.
  11. The style and his are similar.
  12. You feel that even if your loved one is seriously ill or left without work, he will still not lose his attractiveness in your eyes.

Signs that a relationship probably won't work out

1. He openly flirts with other girls in front of you.

2. Some features of the chosen one are very annoying; I want to “re-educate” him.

3. Do you like any particular quality of your partner, e.g. spectacular appearance or wealth. But deep down you understand: he will cease to be attractive in your eyes, having lost his advantage.

4. He regularly breaks promises to you.

A guy can be very good-looking, but neither at school nor in universities they explain how to understand that this is your man. Relationship psychology, however, is a full-fledged science. Researchers in this area know many methods and tricks that help find the answer to the important riddle of fate.

For example, try using these methods:

1. Imagine as if you were already living together: you greet each other in the morning and start a new day. Pay attention to details: who takes the bathroom first, what do you eat for breakfast? Imagine how you solve everyday issues together, agree on plans for the evening, distribute the budget, relax? When visualizing a possible future, pay attention to how you feel.

2. Tell your boyfriend stories about problematic situations (real and imagined) in life. different people. Ask unobtrusive questions to understand how your chosen one would act under similar circumstances.

3. Carefully ask how your loved one’s relationships with girls were in the past. For what reasons did he break up with former passions? However, you should not bring up this topic more than once in conversations.

4. Invite your chosen one to do something together, for example, invite friends over and prepare for the party in advance. Pay attention to how you both feel and behave in situations where you need to do something together.

From the point of view of the Orthodox religion

How to understand that this is your person? Orthodoxy recommends turning to the Holy Scriptures for this. The stories of the Bible indicate that a person does not choose his half, that God sends it to him.

The clergy remind:

  1. When making a choice, it is important to remember God and God's Will.
  2. You can turn to the Almighty in prayers asking for help in making the right decision.
  3. Young people must remain faithful to each other, live in sincere love and harmony, without even committing adultery in their thoughts. Therefore, the choice of a spouse should be taken responsibly.
  4. Christianity neither approves nor strictly condemns marriage with a person belonging to a different faith. It is highly undesirable to marry only an atheist.
  5. You cannot choose a life partner based only on his physical attractiveness or financial status. When choosing a couple, it is important to take into account the commonality of worldviews.
  6. Marriage should be based on consent, respect and cooperation.
  7. It is important to find out how your loved one feels about religion. Correct family life, according to the laws of Christianity, is when a husband and wife worship God together, know Him through their love, and pray together.

How to understand that this is your person by destiny? Orthodoxy helps you make the right decision.

From an esoteric point of view

Many people, in order to solve important life problems, turn not to religion, but to other knowledge. Of course, how to understand that this is your person by fate, esotericism will not immediately give an exact answer. But by turning to this teaching, you will learn to “order” the Universe to fulfill your desires.

Esotericists recommend saying words, addressing them to the Higher Power in which you believe and from which you expect help (angels, the Universe): “Please make sure that I know for sure whether this is my person.” Please indicate the time period within which you would like to receive a response. Many people who practice communication with Higher Power, reported that a clear and clear “response” from the Universe came to them already in the first minutes after the request was formulated. The answer came in the form of an overheard phrase from a conversation, a fragment of a TV show, brief advice from a stranger, an unusual event.

However, fate’s answer may not contain a clear “yes” or “no.” The “Universe” can recommend, for example, thinking about a problem on your own or talking to someone about an exciting topic.

Signs of fate

If you believe in fate and pay attention to its signs, you will immediately feel if something special begins to happen in life. When you get into a relationship with a guy, you want to know how to understand that this is the person for you. When solving this difficult problem, pay attention to whether your connection has the following signs:

  1. Many times you run into this guy on the street or visiting friends, without at all trying to do so.
  2. It's like he looks like one of your old, long-forgotten friends.
  3. If you have a desire to break up, new circumstances arise that clearly interfere with this.
  4. You receive amazing hints from fate that you will be together. For example, you accidentally come across an article in a magazine or a film whose plot resembles the story of your relationship.

It should be borne in mind, however, that if fate pits you against a guy, this is not at all a guarantee that your relationship will subsequently be happy and last a lifetime. It is quite possible that the universe needs your connection for a short period. For example, so that as a result an unusual child is born.

Dream Analysis

How can you understand that this is your person if you regularly see and remember specific dreams? Night visions can provide a lot of valuable information. How to work with it?

  1. When you wake up, immediately write down your dream. Record on paper all the details of the night vision: the sequence of events, the relationships of the characters, the furnishings that you remember, your feelings. It is especially important to note “strange things” that could not happen in reality. Often these are the clues to the meaning of night vision.
  2. In order to interpret the dream, you should re-read what was written down. By the way, people often understand the meaning of night vision already when they record its contents on paper.
  3. Don’t rush to consult dream books. Most often they contain incorrect interpretation of symbols. Pay attention to how professional psychologists and fortune tellers on the Internet analyze the plots of dreams. Try to learn from their experience.
  4. Think about what area of ​​life night vision concerns: love relationship, career, creativity, health? Girls, for whom the question of how to understand that this is your person by fate is very important, often have dreams about relationships between men and women.
  5. Come up with a title for your recorded story.
  6. Write down the characters you met in your dream. To strangers and come up with names for the creatures. Try to guess why they might have appeared in your night vision.
  7. Pay attention to awkward situations and feelings that arose in your dreams

By analyzing night visions, you will understand a lot about your relationships with the opposite sex.

From an astrological point of view

Is it possible, by studying the secrets of the stars, to obtain reliable information regarding whether you will be together? How to find out that this is your person by date of birth? You should not rely only on this method and take forecasts too seriously. However, you can play with the numbers and find out what makes your relationship with your loved one unique.

Write down your date of birth and your partner's date of birth in numbers.

If the result is two-digit number, its numbers must be added again: 5+2=7.

1 - you are both leaders and subconsciously always fight for who is in charge.

2 - relationships are based on a material basis. Such families, as a rule, are very wealthy, because a business partnership develops between the spouses. Even just by talking with each other, you can generate ideas on how to increase your shared wealth. But there is little passion and sensuality in such unions.

3 is the number of impermanence. Partners communicate a lot with each other, but not regularly. They can pair up multiple times and separate again.

4 is the number of homeliness, warmth, comfort. It's very easy for partners to work together. However, when uniting, they aim not at cooperation, but at joint recreation. “Fours” often hinder each other’s professional development.

5 - a very romantic union in which there is a place and tender kisses, and heart-to-heart conversations. They say about such people: “They married out of great love.”

6 - both partners are ready to jointly strive for financial prosperity and help each other solve problems various kinds. The number is favorable not only for marriage, but also for creating a business together. Often men and women in such couples, even after breaking up, continue to communicate with each other as comrades and partners.

7 - the girl and the guy come to an excellent agreement with each other. Each behaves diplomatically towards the other. But the “seven” is characterized by some optionality: lovers often do not fulfill the promises made to each other.

8 - a strong mutual attraction arises between people in such a union, but one partner always manipulates the other.

9 - the relationship between two “philosophers”. A man and a woman influence each other in such a way that both “fall out” of real life. Their favorite hobby- talk for a long time about unfulfilled dreams.

Is your boyfriend a mystery? But now you know how to understand that this is your person by destiny. By date of birth of both of you!

Magic rituals that allow you to recognize “your” person

How to understand that this is your person by destiny? Fortune telling has helped our grandmothers since time immemorial. There are rituals that help determine whether you are destined to be together.

Try one of the magic rituals described below:

"Conversation with a Higher Power"

Light a candle. Say the words: “Angels of love, reveal the truth to me, ... ( your name), will I be together with ... (name of the chosen one).” Inhale the aroma of the candle. After this, you need to go out into the street and ask the first person you meet any question that requires a “yes” or “no” answer. For example:

  • Do you have a watch?
  • Was there a man coming out of this entrance just now?
  • Did you choose this beautiful suit yourself?
  • Do you live in this house?
  • Do you have a brother (sister)?
  • Have you ever vacationed in Bulgaria?

If a person answers positively, you are destined to be with the chosen one. If negative, then you will most likely break up.

"Pendulum of Fate"

Take a small object that can act as a plumb line (bolt, pebble, heavy button, needle), tie a thread to it. Take the resulting pendulum in your hand. Wait until he freezes. Ask the “pendulum” if he is ready to “talk” to you. If an object tied to a thread begins to sway, sometimes approaching you, sometimes moving away, this should be interpreted as an affirmative answer. If it moves from left to right and vice versa, then the answer is no. At the moment when the pendulum is ready to “communicate”, you can ask any questions about your chosen one.

"Magic Conspiracy"

This method was used by our great-grandmothers, who always knew how to understand that this is your person by destiny. The spell will help if you pronounce it over melt water.

First you need to prepare such water. To do this, pour non-carbonated mineral water into a regular glass glass and place it in the freezer. Wait until the liquid freezes completely. Then take the glass of water out of the freezer and wait for the water to thaw. When only a small ice cube remains, remove it from the glass and throw it away. Water from a glass can now be used for a spell.

Leaning over her, you need to say the words: “Higher power, let me, ... (your name), know for sure whether this is my person. Reply within 24 hours." After this, drink water. The answer will come soon.

Some magicians claim that the spell is more powerful in poetic form, for example this:

Leaning over the water

I urge: to my house,

Angel of Light, come

Stand behind me, behind me.

And in about...twenty hours

Please let me know:

Who's got the bolt on his heart

Mine will be able to rip it off.

If you're already dating a guy you like, how do you know if he's the one for you? Listen to yourself and your feelings. If you are destined to be together, then all doubts will very soon disappear by themselves.

“Pravmir” publishes another attempt to answer – Elena from St. Petersburg. Let us remember that the woman asked to help her find a way to come to terms with the cross of loneliness.

Dear Elena!

I read it on the Pravmir website, and it deeply touched me and resonated in my heart with a keen desire to help you and find words of consolation for you and, perhaps, the explanation of your fate that you are so looking for. A consolation that is not soporific, but one that gives an impulse of comprehension and overcoming, an impulse not of conservation, but of movement. And although you are waiting for an answer, first of all, from the priest, I decided not to restrain my impulse and write to you.

Avoiding Standard Answers

In your letter, you say that you cannot understand the relationship between your chaste behavior and the lack of love and family in your life. You look with pain at your friends and colleagues who have all this, and ask God: “Why?” After all, there seems to be nothing to punish you for.

You say that you cannot understand God’s plan for yourself, you notice that over the years that you have been living, you could have already become a mother ten times, as is happening with your friends. “Who needs my misfortune?” – you ask. And you rightly note that none of the “standard” Orthodox answers from the series “according to sins”, “such is your cross”, etc. is not suitable to explain your condition. Indeed, standardity is not the key with which one can explain the inexplicable.

Give up pity

Let's be pragmatists and start by stopping allowing ourselves the luxury of subjunctive moods in the style of “but in the years that I’ve been living, I could have become a mother more than once.”

Such constructions, in my opinion, are very harmful and destructive, because, modeling our life in our imagination, the only thing they do is put pressure on pity - our pity for ourselves. They cherish it, warm it up, squeeze out tears in a completely artificial and meaningless way.

The construction “I could become a mother” makes sense only in one case - when a woman really could become a mother, but did not become one of her own free will, that is, she had an abortion. And then it is permissible not to feel sorry for oneself, but to mourn one’s sin before God and the murdered child, that is, to bring repentance.

If you again become fixated on yourself and your bitter fate, then such a retrospective will be useless. One way or another, this is not your case - you, fortunately, did not have an abortion. Therefore, for you, such appeals to non-existent happiness - clean water masochism and self-pity, which must be immediately abandoned by prohibiting this thought from entering your heart. You need to give up the bitter pleasure that this thought brings.

It’s a paradox, but giving up the enjoyment of pain is not much easier than giving up the enjoyment of pleasure and happiness. This may be the reason why we constantly return to this thought. We feel sorry for ourselves because we love ourselves too much, we think too much about ourselves, we pay too much attention to ourselves, we spin too lovingly around our own axis and our “unhappy” self. We, our ego, which consists, among other things, of our desires , is our favorite stumbling block that we stumble over all the time.

The construction “I could already become a mother” (a millionaire, a great actress, etc.) is also quite blatant. Listen, those girls or boys who were born disabled and are bedridden or wheelchair, could also become good mothers and fathers, but bad luck - the illness got in the way.

And those who died in childhood or adolescence from illness or accident could also. And my fiance, with whom our relationship did not work out, also, perhaps, could currently already be a father, but it happened that he was killed and he did not become a father. People suffering from infertility, who have lost their reproductive health due to certain operations, could also...

Do you understand the absurdity of such constructions?

We ourselves don’t know how long we will live, and what will happen tomorrow. We seem to be living a church life, but we only remember the extent to which our life is not a church life, but in general is fragmentary, only in days of difficult trials, when there is a danger of actually losing it. On other days, we prefer to grieve about unfulfilled happiness.

Don't confuse heaven with reality

As an unnaturalness of your lonely position, you cite the words of the Lord, who said to Adam and Eve: be fruitful and multiply, and populate the earth. But let's not forget that these words were spoken to our forefathers in paradise, and this happened before the Fall.

This is how it should be, this is God’s plan for man and the relationship between man and woman. But since then the world has changed “a little”, everything has gone “a little” wrong. And now it is very naive to expect that everything will be just fine for everyone.

We easily put up with what is not great in others, but for some reason we think that this should not concern us.

I know couples where husband and wife, groom and bride are very suitable for each other. Looking at them, I am very happy, because all the stings of pity and envy, as the holy fathers teach us, can be cut at the root with confession and a courageous prohibition, and then they simply stop bothering.

The main thing is not to try to appropriate this joy for yourself. There is no need to compare yourself with anyone and try on someone else’s fate. There are no identical people and no identical destinies. With God we are completely alone, and He has His own plan for each of us.

Trust “blindly”

You say: how can we understand this plan? This is a very interesting question. It often seems to us that if we suddenly found out why God arranged everything this way and not otherwise, why He “punishes” us and what He is leading us to, what He wants from us and by what methods He intends to achieve this, then we would all at once understood and calmed down.

It would be approximately clear to us in which direction to move, what to want from life and what not to want, what to spend effort on and what is not worth trying. This is the plan, this is the path, there are no more questions...

Over time, I realized that this is also another very funny design. It won't happen that way. No one will offer us such information about us on a silver platter, except perhaps a fortune teller. And this information is not the point.

The point is to surrender to the will of God, this will, without knowing what is called “blindly.” To trust Him, as a child trusts his parents, without unnecessary reasoning, without asking what will happen to me and where You, Lord, are leading me, and will it really be good there, will I really be happy there, and won’t it really hurt? And most importantly - without the cowardly “why?”

This question is one of the most incorrect. It’s pointless to weigh your sins on the scales of divine justice and try to understand whether I really deserve this “grief” of mine or whether they are treating me “out of line”?

You say that, thank God, you have no special sins. But the fact is that the absence of sins is not a reason for happiness, but their presence is not a reason for its absence. Not everything is so linear. The Lord is not a constitutional court. And not the Hague Tribunal. This is a living Supreme Personality, Who knows better than we do what to do with us and our lives in order to lead us to Himself.

No matter how sinless we may be in terms of external actions, this in itself is still not enough to regenerate us into something completely new, into those new people who are able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

“You are gods,” the Lord said about us, meaning our divine potency. What kind of gods are we in our current state? And will we become them if we are exceptionally calm and happy in our earthly life?

When the Archangel Gabriel informed the Mother of God that she would soon become the mother of the Savior of the human race and this would happen in a way that violated earthly nature, she, I think, did not have a very good idea of ​​what was happening to her and why, and how much it would cost her . She did not evaluate or reason. She simply agreed, regardless of the consequences. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.”

Was it easy for Her to give this consent? Did She have the feeling that She was simply lying down on the water and floating with the flow of the Divine will, or was the feeling more like when you enter icy water, when it seems that you are about to die? We don't know.

In any case, there was uncertainty ahead, besides happiness, which also promised “weapons” that would pass through Her soul, but consent was still given. In the same way, we must follow the example of the Mother of God and unconditionally agree to everything. We should not be afraid of possible pain, we should not run from it.

All this does not mean at all that there is no happiness - that ordinary earthly happiness that we so dream about. But only by giving up the constant pursuit of him can you become truly happy.

“Behold, the Bridegroom is coming...”

The Lord gives us a husband not only so that we can be happy with him, but first of all so that through him we understand and learn something important. And He gives a child, too, not in order to gratify our pride and sense of female usefulness, but so that through this child we can feel another facet of Divine love.

In the same way, the absence of a husband and child can be a means to feel this love. Only this will not happen indirectly, but, as they say, directly.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that when a woman has a husband, her relationship with God is different. The husband spends a significant part of the energy of love; the husband, if he is beloved, takes up a significant part in woman's heart, it’s as if she completely belongs to him. A woman who does not have a husband has a chance to give herself to God, as if to her Bridegroom, or at least simply move more strongly towards Him.

You say that you are not of a monastic type - this is in in this case It doesn't matter at all. If the Lord does not give you anyone, it means that He Himself at this particular moment in time is waiting to meet you and does not want to share you with anyone. And it would be very reckless not to take advantage of this moment.

After all, it very often happens to us that we live a church life for years, do not commit any particularly serious sins, and in this state of ours we imperceptibly preserve ourselves. And then suddenly it turns out that God has long been calling us to completely different heights, and we are hopelessly behind...

Are you asking how to deal with female loneliness? How to stop wanting to get married? But when we find the strength in ourselves (and this, among other things, is a matter of willpower) and make this spiritual qualitative leap, we suddenly realize that there is no “ female loneliness" No. Just as there is no male loneliness. That there is no loneliness at all. This is a myth invented by people who do not know what they are capable of.

No sudden movements needed

You can still insist that you were created for simple female happiness, and such a union with God scares you. But the fact is that all the same, each of us is called to such a union to one degree or another, regardless of gender and marital status. All the same, we must love God first, and then our husband and children.

Because the time will still come when both our husband and children will be taken away from us, and we will be left alone with the One who created us and who created our fiancés, husbands and children. And our heart should not be attached to them more than to Him. It should not be greatly, to the point of despondency, saddened by the fact that the Lord does not give us something less than He Himself, because in return for this less He is always ready to give us Himself. And there can hardly be anything greater than this gift.

So whether you want it or not, you will have to study.

You suffer because you share the opinion that the Lord has determined only two paths for us - either family life or monastic life. And you don’t belong to either one. Meanwhile, I am sure that such an artificial division of people into two main categories greatly simplifies reality.

Life shows that the Lord leads each of us to Himself in our own special way. And on this path there are no stencil trajectories, just as there are no age restrictions. You can meet your future husband at any age and take monastic vows at any age. But you can live in some third way, if it is the way that pleases God.

And I don’t see any need to make any sudden, thoughtless movements along this path.

It would be a complete failure to go to a monastery just because of a failed personal life, without feeling a special calling to it. In the same way, it would be madness to hysterically push yourself into marriage only on the basis of a “non-monastic character.” We ourselves don’t know what kind of warehouse we are. Lord knows.

You say, trying to comprehend your plight, that even Nick Vujicic he has a wife and children, although he himself has no arms and no legs! This is a truly amazing fact, testifying to the endless mercy of God to all of us and to each individual. But I read Nick, and you know what I understood? The fact that he could do without his wife and son in the same way as he could do without arms and legs. And just like that, be happy.

So we need to learn to be happy, no matter what. Not in order to turn this into some kind of deal, not with the thought that when we learn this, God will definitely send us someone, but solely for His own sake.

You write that you do not lose hope and do not stop praying that the Lord will grant you a groom. But maybe we should stop praying about it? Maybe you should forget about your dream, at least for a while? Perhaps one of the ways to get married is to stop desperately wanting it. And it may very well happen that this will happen when you forget about it. As Nick Vujicic says, let God act in your life. Let This will come to you on its own.

Freedom... from mom?

Perhaps someone will accuse me of calling for passive idleness, but it seems to me that this is a much more productive path than frantic attempts to change one’s life through some external actions. For example, some psychoanalysts advise lonely girls who want to find a companion to start by leaving their mother.

I understand what psychoanalysts rely on when they say that we can be dominated by our mother’s script and our mother’s parental egoism; Eric Berne told us about this in detail. But you know, I don’t believe that your mother, Elena, is completely selfish. Most likely, she just loves you and wishes you well. And she, of course, would be happy if you had a fiance.

I don’t believe that by the very fact of being near you, she is “winning off suitors” from you. I also don’t believe that you are a dependent person, not independent. Your description of your own life completely refutes this. I don’t think that the seductiveness of “female vibes” depends on whether the lady lives alone or not. Men can be attracted completely regardless of this.

I think that living separately from your mother makes sense if you are going to, as they say, “bring home suitors” in the hope that all this will later develop into marriage or an unexpected pregnancy. But you are not going to do this.

Our independence does not depend on our parents being under the same roof with us. Especially if the parents are already old and need care and attention. You can become, excuse me for the expression, a monad, as the respected Olga Gumanova advises, without being separated from your parents. And on the contrary - living separately and even getting married, you can not become one.

I know girls who have lived separately from their mothers for a long time and are terribly dependent on them, on their attitudes and on their childhood grievances, which they cannot overcome and forgive. Their mothers still control them and have enormous influence on them, from which they constantly and unsuccessfully try to free themselves. Instead of relaxing and allowing your mother to control you. Why not, if it makes her feel safer?

It seems to me that you should not break ties with mothers with all the strength of your soul. You just need to feel sorry for moms. Freedom is not about resisting, freedom is about allowing and giving in, accepting and giving in. This is a truly adult position, and resistance and rebellion are the position of a teenager, who is also not confident in himself. "Freedom for parrots!" – we’ve already been through this, let’s not step on this rake.

Our mothers and I are still very connected. We are flesh of their flesh. You can leave, leave, run away to another planet and still remain your mother’s daughter. And there is no terrible inevitability in this, this is how God intended it, and that means there must be some benefit in this.

As Clive Staples Lewis says, psychoanalysis must know its place. It can be used as a kind of crutch, but there is no need to pass off this crutch as the only way movement. Trying to measure God's providence with the help of psychoanalysis is the same as trying to cognize the Divine with the help of the instruments of a ciliate slipper.

It is naive to think that all this time God did not give Elena a groom for the sole reason that she lives with her mother. And that everything will change completely as soon as she leaves her mother.

You can try living separately from your mother, especially if circumstances allow it. You can make many different efforts - change your wardrobe, buy cosmetics, start actively smiling at men if there were any problems with this.

But you need to understand that all this may or may not work. You can spend a lot of money on renting an apartment and live without denying yourself the essentials. And yet the groom cannot be found. There are no guarantees...

In a word, you can follow the path of changing your life circumstances, or you can, without changing your circumstances, try to change yourself. It's a matter of taste, but the last path seems more productive to me.

This could be the way out

And I want to tell you one more thing, dear Elena. You mentioned that you would like to adopt a child, but you cannot do this, because your mother is against this idea, and you cannot go against her, because the apartment in which you live belongs to her.

I think it’s wrong to ignore mom, no matter whose apartment it is. Adopted child should not cause discord in the family, it should unite it. But the Lord can, over time, so position your mother’s heart that she will not only stop resisting your desire to adopt a child, but will begin to wait for this child. But for this, you definitely have to decide everything for yourself and ask God to help you with this.

Adopting and raising an adopted child seems to me to be much more important and exciting than giving birth to my own. Because your child does not exist yet, but these children already exist, and they do not have a mother. So why don't you help each other? This is a completely godly thing.

The desire to give birth to your child is connected with the maternal instinct on the one hand, and with the fear of death, with the desire to consolidate and continue your life in someone, on the other. The desire to adopt a child is related to the need to love and share love, regardless of the biological component. And this is much more valuable before God.

But whether we have our own children or strangers, or don’t have any, whether the Lord gives us a husband or insists on the notorious loneliness, our main task is to learn to love Him with all our hearts, all our minds and thoughts. Moreover, there is no limit to this learning, and there is no degree of intimacy that could not develop into even greater intimacy if we want it.

Well, what about the grooms? And let the grooms just kiss each other. Since they want it so badly...

Answer: When we love for something, it cannot be called true love. This is no longer love, but selfishness: we feel comfortable around this person, he brings us joy, does something pleasant, and for this we love him - in fact, we love ourselves in him. The Lord said about such “love” in the Gospel: “...if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t tax collectors do the same?” (Matt. 5:46).

How to truly love? We need to love a person simply because he gives us a great opportunity to love (forgive the tautology). Love is a wonderful feeling, an opportunity to do something not for one’s own sake, not to make it pleasant to me, but to bring joy to your loved one and rejoice in his joy, to be happy next to him. For this we should be eternally grateful to our loved ones.

God gives us an example of true love. The Lord loves us not for something, but rather, in spite of everything, because, by and large, there is nothing to love us for. But God still loves each of us because we are His children. Because He cannot help but love. Love is the name of God. And because we need His love, He feels sorry for us. It's a pity for who we are. Sick, sinful, ungrateful. And the highest manifestation of love is, of course, the sacrifice that the Lord makes for us. Christ “came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And if we want to follow Christ even a little, we must learn to love unselfishly, for nothing.

And the earthly life of Christ is constant service to people. He preached, taught, healed, resurrected, while experiencing hunger, fatigue, heat, thirst and not even having a permanent home. And “in gratitude” for all this he was crucified on the cross for us.

What are the properties true love, to which the Lord calls us?

1. Permanence, eternity. God does not refuse to love us, even if we move away from Him; on the contrary, as we know, He leaves 99 sheep in the desert to find and save a lost sheep, and rejoices over it more than over the others.

“He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

2. Sacrifice. We have already talked about this property of love.

3. True love is prudent and reasonable. God creates love intelligently, guided by our benefit. The most primitive, childish understanding of love is “give me everything I want and let me do whatever I want”! But any adult understands: we cannot follow people’s lead in everything, even if we love them very much. Yes, the Lord gives us freedom, but he loves us correctly, because the wrong love can cause harm, it can overfeed or spoil us. Let us remember the proverb: “God does not give a horn to a carnivorous cow.” Of course, if a person wants, he will still achieve his goal, going against the will of God. But God will definitely warn him, admonish him, and try to get him out of trouble. The Lord not only has mercy, but also punishes, and teaches us through life itself.

4. The ability to appreciate a loved one. For true love, the value is the person himself, his personality, and not some of his individual qualities. Each of us is valuable before God, Christ suffered for each of us.

5. From the ability to appreciate comes respect - another property of love. The famous singer Yuri Shevchuk has the following words in one of his songs: “The Lord respects us.” And indeed it is. The Lord respects us as individuals, respects our freedom, and does not force anyone to Himself. He does not force you to love and obey Him at any cost.

The words “love” and “infatuation” are considered by many to be synonyms, denoting the same feeling. Once you fall in love, that means that’s it: I love you. Despite their external similarity, these two feelings - infatuation and love - are almost diametrically opposed to each other. It looks like it’s not the same - “Fedot, but not the same.”

Let's compare. Love is characterized by constancy - falling in love, on the contrary, is a very fickle feeling. Love stands the test of time, becomes even stronger, but falling in love cannot last long: a maximum of several years.

The vector of love is directed towards another person, love is altruistic - falling in love, on the contrary, is selfish: me my beloved makes me happy, communication with him brings to me pleasure. And in love, joy is brought by the very value of the loved one and the opportunity to love him. Falling in love wants to possess and usually passes with long separation. Love, on the contrary, only grows stronger from separation. And finally, unlike love, falling in love is completely unreasonable. The lover’s emotions prevail over his mind; he is not entirely adequate.

So falling in love cannot be called love.

American expert on issues family life Gary Smalley, a believer, although a Protestant, once expressed a wonderful thought: love is not an emotion (as many people think), but a conscious choice of a person. That is, we make our choice in the direction of love for this person and make every effort so that our love does not go out. After all, the moment will definitely come when our loved one will not only delight us, but also bring us grief. difficult period, possible cooling of feelings. This is where we must remember that we ourselves once made this choice, that it is not our loved one who has changed, but simply a difficult time has come that we need to survive, helping to a loved one. Then love will be with us all our lives, regardless of any everyday storms.

I will give another example of how you can love not for something, but for the sake of love itself. Several years ago I met a fellow seminary student, a man who was not yet married. I asked him what requirements he had for his future wife. And he said that, in his opinion, the wife should be beautiful, educated, know how to cook deliciously, should be an interesting conversationalist, and added something else like that; and if a woman does not possess all this, then he will not be able to marry her.

Then I asked him:

- Why do you love your mother? (I knew that he loved his mother very much.)

“Well, I don’t know, I just love him,” he answered.

“Probably not because she bakes delicious pies and irons your shirts?”

Indeed, love for parents is our choice. We love them for a reason. After all, very often parents give everything to their children, but their children still don’t like them.

We know that love and honor for parents is a commandment of God, it is a duty of love. These people gave us life, took care of us, gave us part of their souls, we went through a lot with them, we have a lot in common. That's why we are attached to them, we love them. And delicious pies, shirts, woolen socks, etc. are just a nice addition, but things are far from the main thing.

But generally speaking, all of the above is just an attempt to explain that great and inexplicable feeling called love.

Question : If I feel that the girl with whom I am friends and whom I want to marry was sent to me by the Providence of God, can this be so?

Answer: In our lives, of course, God’s Providence operates, leading us to salvation. And the Lord constantly puts us before a choice, on the correctness of which our future life depends. But we are not prophets; it is not given to us to know the will of God. To understand whether this person was sent to us by God or not, it takes time, life itself must show this. This is why there is a premarital dating period, which should be long enough to at least get to know and understand each other a little. You need to pray that everything will be God’s will, and if your meeting is not accidental, you will see for yourself how the Lord acts in your life. But the main thing: any gift of God must be able to appreciate and cherish.

Families who ask the Lord for a child and cannot conceive for a long time are gradually filled with disappointment and bitterness; the question “Why does not the Lord give children to a woman?” is increasingly heard. How to accept and understand God's providence? Is it possible to find the strength after constant failures to trust Him further? Is there a way out of this situation?

Possible reasons

Why doesn't the Lord give a child to a woman? No one knows the answer for sure, and there is no single correct answer to this complex, dreary question. Everything is in the hands of the Lord and His Will is not ours, therefore all the answers are hidden from Him, but a person should not always search for them furiously.

What to do if God does not give children?

What are the possible causes of infertility in a woman? Never mind medical indications, you can make a small list:

  1. As a test of faith and patience, some families could not come to terms with the absence of children for a long time, but just when their souls were filled with complete humility before the Lord and acceptance of His will, He sent them a baby.
  2. For churching, some women who are diagnosed with infertility seek solutions in the church, thereby saving their and their husband’s souls. There is a lot of evidence of how people who joined the church and became true Orthodox soon became parents.
  3. The consequence of abortion - murder (and this is precisely what abortion is) is strictly punished by the Lord and often women are those who have committed the orders of infertility. Children must be accepted when the Lord sends them, and not when a person decides;
  4. The consequence of the sinful youth of parents is promiscuity, adultery, and some types of contraception have a detrimental effect on a woman’s reproductive abilities. Such people should first of all repent before the Lord and only then pray to Him for mercy and offspring.

Each case is individual, in any case, a woman (and her husband necessarily) should think about why the Lord does not send them offspring.

Perhaps you need to repent of something, maybe you need to confess a secret sin, or perhaps you need to do your part - get examined by a doctor and solve problems, if any.

The ways of the Lord are mysterious, and sometimes He does not give children of His own, so that the family can serve someone’s abandoned child and adopt him. And for some, the Lord does not allow them to have children because of selfishness and selfishness.

Everyone must find their own answer.

The Church and modern methods of combating infertility

Modern technologies allow even women who could not get pregnant for many years to finally become a mother. What does the Church say about the use of these methods?

To begin with, it should be clarified that all medications that help restore the reproductive function of the body are allowed and welcomed by the Church, as safe way improve your health and fulfill the human part. Therefore, the following methods are allowed:

  • medical examinations;
  • use of hormonal drugs;
  • tracking menstrual cycles;
  • use of appropriate medications.

But the following were prohibited by the Council of Bishops in 2000:

  • in vitro fertilization;
  • surrogacy.

Church opinion on IVF

Why is IVF prohibited? Because this is a gross invasion of the mystery of conception and the accompanying murder of children. The decision of the Council prohibited Orthodox believers from using all types of this procedure.

Eco is performed as follows: superovulation is stimulated, which makes it possible to get big number eggs, the best ones are selected and fertilized with the husband’s seed. The fertilized cells are then placed in a special incubator where they mature so that they can be partly transplanted into the uterus and partly frozen.

Important! There is no guarantee that a miscarriage will not occur, but embryos are always destroyed or killed during the procedure. Therefore, the Church strictly prohibits these procedures.

Answers from priests

Many priests agree on one opinion - that it is necessary to accept God’s providence with humility.

For example, Elder Paisius the Svyatogorets said that God sometimes deliberately delays in order to further fulfill His plan for saving people. This can be seen in many stories in the Bible - Abraham and Sarah, Joachim and Elizabeth, St. Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah. The birth of children depends on God first of all, but also on man. And it is necessary to do everything possible so that God gives the child, but if He hesitates, there is a reason for this and we must accept it.

We must pray and not lose heart! Hegumen Luka expresses a kind of revolutionary idea that in the case of a childless union it is not necessary to do anything. The main thing in our life is finding salvation and only then the joys of marriage and motherhood. So some are predestined by God to be single, so some are predestined to serve the Lord and not have children.

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov advises infertile couples not to despair, but to wait patiently. He advises to go medical examination, solve all problems in human ways, simultaneously praying to the righteous Joachim and Anna, Peter and Fevronia, as well as making pilgrimage trips to holy places. He says being away from children for long periods of time tests their feelings.

Priest Valery Dukhanin advises not to strive to comprehend all the secrets of Divine care for people. Children are God's gift, given according to His will and Providence. It is necessary to accept them with humility. He gives some examples that show that sometimes God closes a woman’s womb for the benefit of the spouses and one must be able to accept this benefit.

What to do if you can’t give birth to a child? About the talent of childlessness

Mar 25, 2018 16:27Administrator

molitva-info.ru

There is no will of God for our loneliness - the priest’s answer to a site reader

Hello, Elena.

How to stop wanting a family and children, you ask, how to come to terms with loneliness?

Priest Sergius Kruglov

I don't think so. It is impossible to come to terms with this, especially since the word “humility” in the Christian sense does not at all mean “give up on everything and surrender to the enemy.” Loneliness is one of the faces of our enemy, death, that enemy whom Christ the Lord defeated by His death and Resurrection, in the victory over which we are all called to take part. All of our Christian work is dedicated to the fight against loneliness - coming out of ourselves, from the shell of our “I”, to our neighbor, to God, recognition and unity with them in love. Love is God’s most important commandment to man; by striving for it, man overcomes loneliness.

Your words: “How to accept God’s will for yourself?” I think in this context they are incorrect. It is not God’s will for us to be lonely and suffer, His will is for us to be happy. I say this sincerely, and not at all because the priest’s job, they say, is to “protect” God. God does not need our protection, especially when we explain the misfortune that is happening by His will and blame everything on Him. In the fact that your heart does not accept various Orthodox clichéd answers to painful questions, I see a manifestation of the will of God. After all, the Lord gives each of us the strength and ability of mind, heart and body to fight for our happiness.

Christians must strive for happiness, and not just “please God.” In our idea that with our fasting, prayers, confession, communion, and doing good deeds we must “please God,” there is undoubtedly a sound grain. After all, it’s a joy for a child to please mom and dad. But there is also a bias: firstly, if we consider all this to be an end in itself, and not just a means for something greater.

Secondly, if for us God is not so much a loving and compassionate Father for us, but rather a formidable Master and Boss, then pleasing turns into slavish doing under the lash, that is, completely opposite to what God wants from us.

Why are we unhappy, why do we have to fight for happiness, that is, fulfilling God’s commandment of love and overcoming loneliness - sometimes fighting hard, painfully, until we bleed? Because we were born into a fallen world, full of evil, sin, imperfection and danger. Life is such that it does not spare anyone, it drives over us indifferently and blindly, not paying attention to someone’s screams and moans, the crunching of the bones of the righteous or sinners under the wheel.

The fact that we are still alive, despite a million dangers, can be considered a real miracle, a miracle of the manifestation of God’s care for us.

He went to the cross for us and always puts His hands under the blows of life that befall us. Why and for what purpose all this evil is a meaningless question; what God created has meaning, but evil has no meaning. Another question is relevant - what to do about this evil and how to fight it.

How do you, Elena, fight for your happiness? I, of course, do not give any advice, especially since I only know about your circumstances what you yourself said in the letter; here, the absentee advice that we sometimes easily and willingly give to each other right and left may be “missing the mark,” are simply harmful. The idea that a priest knows the exact answers to all questions is fundamentally wrong. Life, alas, poses many more questions than it answers. But it is also important to ask the right questions. After reading your letter, questions may be:

“I’m used to relying on the “will of God” in everything - it sounds Orthodox, but doesn’t this actually mean, as it often, alas, happens: I want God, the Supreme Authority, to decide for me, to guide me - but without my participation, that I'm afraid to take responsibility for my life?

So I wrote that I am not a blue stocking in a black scarf, I go to companies, but I do not mention those men who were with me in these companies, in general about those that I met in life. Am I really living on some fantastic planet where there are no men at all? Could it be that men did meet, but things “didn’t work out” with them? And if this is really the case, then why didn’t it work out?

Let me remind you once again: I’m not talking specifically about you, Elena, but I’m just giving you food for thought. Many women come to church with questions similar to yours, and the leitmotif of their complaints is approximately the same: I want to have a husband, but the kind of men I meet are not suitable for me, one is childish, another likes to drink, the third is not spiritual closeness. What to do?

If we put aside tears and complaints, there are two real ways. Or don’t waste your time and stubbornly wait for what you want, the one you see in your dreams. But then you need to soberly tell yourself: I’m ready to wait and endure for years, perhaps my whole life, but I don’t agree to live without true love. God help me!

Or the second way: remember that God bequeathed to love real, and not imaginary, neighbors, and that main way to receive love is to start loving yourself. And marry someone who exists, who you actually met in life, even if he is not ideal. And tell myself soberly: I am ready to do everything that a lover does for his beloved, bear him children, be faithful to him, not judge and not reject him from myself for his sins. I’m ready to help him get rid of them, without waiting for feelings to come along with deeds of love. God help me!

Both paths are a cross. Not what you called a “cross” in your letter, but precisely this: we bear the cross following the example of our Teacher and Savior, and He accepted the cross consciously and voluntarily. Unwanted, involuntary torment and suffering, which you just strive to throw off your shoulders, is no longer a cross. And there is no benefit from such torment and suffering.

What will I choose - to continue to sit, huddled in the shell of my unfulfilled desires, to wallow in my grievances and sores, watching in panic as the years pass, as dissatisfaction and despondency develop into severe depression? Or take and take steps within my power? Everyone decides for themselves. Only in the first case, God cannot break through to us through the shell of loneliness, which we ourselves strengthen with our inaction, but in the second, He helps us carry the cross, and life takes on meaning.

Because every cross carried along with Christ, to the extent of one’s faith, ends not in death, but in resurrection. I cannot prove this right now - but I can testify that I have met both those who patiently waited for their love, and those who, in everyday life, day after day, grew it from what was at hand.

Of course, life is full of nuances, and in reality everything can be much more complicated than in my thoughts. In any case, I wish you, Elena, not to despair, and I believe that everything will be fine for you. Easily? No, it’s unlikely that it’s easy. Everything real and vitally important in life is always won. In the struggle with yourself - first of all, with your passions, illusions, phobias, fears, lack of faith. Yes, there is a fight real risk get wounded and maimed, but there is also a real chance to win, because God is for us.

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Priest Mikhail Nemnonov: Marriage is the last corner of heaven on earth

Today everyone is talking about the family crisis. Indeed, where can you now see an idyllic family, as in the 19th century - spouses, parents, godfathers and many, many children, or even a post-war family, where there are fewer children, but two or three, for sure, and the parents live in perfect harmony. According to statistics, today there are twice as many divorces as marriages. So happy, loving friend of a friend, two years later people indifferently say: “We didn’t get along in character...”. They fall apart and Orthodox families. Parents also grieve for their children... We asked priest Mikhail Nemnonov to answer the most pressing questions - many of which were asked to us by readers of the site.

– Where should a proper family life begin? What is the most important rule of family life?

– – The main rule of Christian family life is very simple: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness,” says the Lord, “and all other things will be added to you.” The family life of a Christian is the “private” from the “general”, our family responsibilities is part of our Christian duty. Family life is the way we try to get closer to God, it is the path to salvation. Even family problems They teach inner spiritual life and do not hinder it, because they are solved only when we try to change ourselves, and not our loved ones.

– Father, is it correct to say that spouses should, first of all, treat family life as a readiness to make a sacrifice on their part?

– I am very careful about calls for sacrifices. Sacrifice is certainly present in the Christian life. Someone even said that in the life of every conscious Christian there are elements of martyrdom. But if we make too many sacrifices in the family, and especially before marriage we set ourselves up to sacrifice, sacrifice, and sacrifice again, this can be harmful for both the other spouse and the family as a whole.

– That is, from the very beginning there should not be an attitude that marriage is martyrdom?

– No, the installation should be different. Marriage is above all joy. Someone said that marriage is the last corner of heaven on earth. At least, this is how it should be, and this is exactly what you need to tune in to.

- Father, what do you see as the main problem? modern family?

the main problem Christian family, probably, in our selfishness. Because there are scary cases: people easily look for affairs on the side, having several children and being churchgoers (!) Christians, and at the same time talk about Christian love, about spiritual love...

We have become more spoiled than we were before. In my memory there has never been any ideal life, nor ideal people. But still, over the past twenty to thirty years we have become more pampered and narcissistic. Today we are less aware of what duty is, and with greater taste and enthusiasm we please ourselves, even as church people. Many people understand church life itself as a way to give themselves pleasure, albeit not rough, not material, but some kind of subtle and spiritual pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless. And we often go to church, attend the sacraments, confess and communicate with confessors not at all in order to become closer to God or to part with sins, but with the goal of pleasing ourselves.

This is what the family suffers from. The main problem is precisely that we see even the closest people through the prism of our selfishness. This, on the one hand, is natural - man is designed this way. Some psychologists claim that a person is “normally” 90% selfish. We all want to be warm, to be well-fed, to be treated well, to be spoken to gently and lovingly. By nature, we are such that we feel our own need for all this more acutely than the needs of other people. But only the Lord calls us to do for others what we wish for ourselves. And we, knowing this, demand from others that they do everything for us, leaving ourselves the role of consumers.

– How do you generally maintain your own opinion, without fear of offending love or showing pride?

- IN healthy family everyone has their own opinion. There was such a case. A married couple who was on the verge of divorce came to see a psychologist. The psychologist asked the wife: “What do you want from your husband?” She replied: “I want him to be a real man.” Then he asked: “And if your husband’s opinion does not coincide with your opinion, what do you think he should do?” “He must agree with me,” the wife answered without a shadow of a doubt. It is not surprising that this family almost broke up.

In my opinion, there is nothing offensive in the fact that your opinion does not coincide with the opinion of your spouse. The best way out in this case is to give in to each other one by one (unless, of course, we're talking about about acceptable things). But just beware of putting someone else's head on your shoulders - it will only get worse.

– How to overcome irritation?

-What irritates you? The first way is to change your attitude towards the situation. And the second is to behave as if we were not annoyed at all. And in any case, you need to ask God to find a way out. But first you need to understand what and why causes you irritation.

– They often say: everyday life is boring. What does this mean and how should it be overcome in the family?

– – Everyday life “sticks” in different ways. Some can barely make it to their next paycheck, while others don’t know where to go on vacation: Egypt, Cyprus or the Canary Islands. It is clear that such “congestion with everyday life” is overcome in different ways. But in any case, the words of the Savior remain valid that “a person’s life does not depend on the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Let me try to explain: a poor person does not become poorer in soul from the difficulties and inconveniences that he experiences in life if his main goal is to become closer to God. Likewise, a rich person does not become worse for his wealth if he considers it as a means for serving God and his neighbor, and not as an end in itself. Therefore, everyday difficulties, whatever they may be, do not prevent us from living a spiritual life, but teach us to love God more than earthly comforts - those that we have or those that we want to have.

– If a person gets tired of pulling the burden of household chores, of which there are more and more, irritation and displeasure appear. There is no joy in the house, just routine. How to deal with this?

– If we are drowning in household chores, there is only one way out - organization. You don’t always like it, it’s not very pleasant. But by spending effort to put things in order in our affairs and in our lives, we gain more than we spend.

Modern life is such that everyone has to learn composure. Nowadays, this is an indispensable condition for success in any endeavor, both spiritual and everyday. This is a requirement of life.

For example, we have a small two-room apartment, but now that we have five children, it is more spacious than it was at first. Every thing has become more accessible. And the secret is very simple. We slowly threw out everything unnecessary and thought about what and how to rearrange it to make it more convenient. They bought some things, caring primarily not about the interior, but about functionality. Sometimes we made mistakes in choosing new furniture, sometimes we didn’t. Our funds are small, but it turned out that they are enough to make our life in this apartment easier in everyday terms than it was ten years ago. I’m not saying that we have become very organized, but we have become convinced that a lot can be done along this path.

– What if the husband spends twelve hours at work?

– The husband should still participate in the household. Of course, he can no longer fully control what happens at home. He arrives tired and for the first time after work cannot participate in household chores. Therefore, the wife's responsibility increases. If a wife wants to become a good housewife, she will become one. But the final responsibility still remains with the husband, as the head of the family. You can’t just demand, you also need to put your hand in. Not to his wife, of course, but to household chores.

– What should a wife do if she arrives even later than her husband?

– It doesn’t matter who comes earlier or later. Both participate in household chores, each to the best of their ability. Otherwise, both will have difficulties that they themselves will not be happy about. You can always change things for the better. If you don’t have the energy or time, lower the “bar” lower. But don’t remove it completely, otherwise there will definitely be no clearance.

– Where does the “sawing” of a husband/wife begin, and where does caring for him/her begin? If you don't say some things, they will never be done, because... no time and energy. But if you talk about them, you spoil the mood...

– Caring for one’s neighbor, based on love, and not on incontinence, knows how to find the right path to the goal. “Nawing” means repeating the same thing over and over again. And this is one of the right ways turn any person against you. Experience shows that husbands and wives who managed to influence their spouses looked for ways to interest and motivate the other half to action, and reward in this case works many times better than punishment.

Repeat to your husband 15 times in a row some ordinary request, for example: “Go to the store” or “Take out the bucket” - and for this time you will become unpleasant to him, even if he does not tell you about it. But pose the question differently, for example: “Let you go to the store, and I’ll clean up the house, and then we’ll go together to...” If your husband is interested in the purpose of your trip and at the same time understands that he won’t be able to dump his part of the work on you, - then, I guarantee, he will do it as quickly as possible.

– How to live with those you don’t love? If after some time a person realizes that he no longer loves his husband (wife), what should he do? Is it better to break up?

Strong marriage rests on responsibility, on obligations, and not at all on the feeling of love. Someone said that a successful marriage is one that successfully overcomes one crisis after another and becomes stronger and more responsible as a result.

Responsibility helps to overcome difficulties. And feeling is a reward. To wake up in the morning with a feeling of love, you need to earn it, at least from the previous evening.

Why did the wife become unpleasant? This is the key question. We need to understand when and why it became unpleasant. There is no other way. As they say, spiritual warmth can only be returned through the doors through which we released it. Likewise, family relationships can only be restored from the point at which they began to collapse.

Those marriages in which spouses are guided only by their feelings are doomed to collapse. The feeling of love, like any feeling, is changeable, and if spouses come together and diverge every time a new feeling visits them, we will have neither a family, nor a state, nor a society, but will be a sum of selfish and at the same time very unhappy individuals, unsuitable for any serious business.

Someone said it well that like everything else worth fighting for, marriage requires daily work and fulfillment of obligations assumed by each. Then, over time, the feeling of love will grow.

– Suppose that after some time the beauty that the girl had disappeared.

– Beauty fades with time for everyone. But not all families collapse because of this. If people love each other, external beauty is not so important. And besides, the expression on a woman’s face is more important than its outline.

– And if the wife’s character began to change in the worst side?..

– Why did her character deteriorate during her life with such a wonderful husband? Maybe he doesn't either ideal character? Then there is a reason to take care of your own “log”, and not about other people’s “straws”.

– But it happens that one spouse becomes unpleasant to the other...

“We need to understand why he became unpleasant.” This depends not only on the wife or husband, but also on the spouse himself who experiences this hostility. And let's not forget that marriage is a commitment that we take upon ourselves. Why don't we marry people who are members of the so-called civil marriage, that is, those who live together without being married? Because there is no moment of commitment, which exists in a legal marriage. I don't see any other difference. People want to enjoy the pleasant aspects without committing themselves to anything. Such cohabitation does not in any way correspond to the Christian concept of marriage. Marriage is a commitment. It is, of course, based on love. Without love there is no point in getting married. Therefore, before the wedding ceremony, the priest asks: “Do you have a good and spontaneous will and a strong thought to take as your wife such and such, whom you see here before you?” The man answers: “Yes.” And only after this the wedding ceremony itself begins. But by deciding to do this, we take on obligations to another person. Including the obligation to endure his infirmities. Let's remember this.

– Is it true that a wife can drive her husband to drunkenness with her constant criticism and “nawing”? Do some of the spouse’s vices sometimes really come from the eternal dissatisfaction of his half?

– Yes, many men began to drink out of stupidity and lack of love for their wives. The Holy Scriptures contain the following lines: “The husband of a wise woman is known at the gates of the city.” The most honorable citizens gathered at the city gates to resolve the most important issues. This was the ancient “city council”. And this is absolutely certain: a wise wife will find a way to help her husband develop his strengths. But if the wife nags her husband, endlessly points out his shortcomings, and he is not strong enough to cope with this, then he will begin to degrade. And then the wife will receive what she herself sowed. The husband will sit in front of the TV, drink beer, and the wife will cry that she has nothing to talk to him about.

– Why does everyone notice “let the woman fear”, but they don’t see about “like Christ the Church”?

– Because here everyone now knows how everyone else is obliged to work. By the way, not everyone notices the words “let the wife fear her husband.” For example, women rarely notice these words, although they are addressed specifically to them and not to men.

I have seen many women who complained about the unkind treatment of their husbands, but they themselves did not show any respect for them either in personal communication or in front of people. But the words husbands, love your wives as your bodies, as Christ is the Church, are addressed to husbands, but they are mainly noticed by wives. Apparently, it is easier to think about how others should act, rather than how one should act.

– About priorities in the family (from the mother’s point of view): who to run to first – to the husband who is tired after work or to crying child?

– When your husband comes home from work, be ready to greet him.

If the child suddenly starts crying, go to the child first. But if you do not show attention and interest in your husband returning from work, then he will return home without interest.

– Where is the line between how much time is devoted to the husband and the time devoted to the child? For example, a husband wants to structure his day in one way, and this goes against the child’s daily routine.

– Usually people who have lived together for several years and given birth to a child know exactly who needs to sleep when, and what will happen if the schedule is violated on some days. If difficulties arise here, then the point is not in the child, but in the fact that the spouses do not understand each other. It’s hard for me to imagine that my husband would demand to go for a walk if the children absolutely need to sleep at this time. And besides, it is difficult to imagine that such a walk would cause great harm to the child. But if this happens regularly, then you need to convey to your husband your vision of the problem and try to solve it together.

– So the child has priority in this situation?

– No, in this situation the priority should be adequate behavior. It also happens that a wife demands compliance with the regime from her husband, but she herself breaks it whenever she wants - to talk on the phone with her friends or sit in front of the TV. In this case, it would be, at the very least, absurd to quarrel with a husband who wanted to go for a walk with his family. And it would be dishonest to justify this quarrel with concern for the child’s regime.

– What if this is not an isolated incident?

– What should a wife do if her husband demands fulfillment of all his whims? If these whims are truly harmful to children, they need to be protected. The husband is an adult, he is responsible for himself. And parents are responsible for their children. And if dad is not capable of this, then mom will be responsible for the children. I have already said that peace in the family is not the highest value, although it is dear. The highest value is our Christian duty. And it also means taking care of your children.

– What should spouses do if one of them suffers from computer addiction, goes completely into virtual reality?

– Usually, before a person leaves for any other reality, the spiritual, emotional connection between spouses is somehow undermined or weakened. It’s hard to imagine that people love each other, truly live in each other’s interests, and suddenly one of them completely goes into virtual reality. I know one family where there is such a problem, I know both spouses personally. My husband, coming home from work, can play computer games for several hours in a row. The same thing happens on weekends. But in this family there is no complete mutual understanding between the spouses on other issues. This incident convinced me that the problem of one of the family members leaving for virtual reality does not arise out of the blue. Maybe outwardly everything is fine in such families, but in reality people usually live with some different interests. And here the computer attracts the weakest. But if there was no deep community even before immersion in the virtual world, then isn’t it better to go back and try to understand why it wasn’t there and where it went?

“But there are times when even in quite prosperous families the husband sits for hours at the computer.

– If a person spends a lot of time at the computer, this does not mean that he has completely gone into virtual reality. The computer in general causes a slight addiction in almost every person who uses it. And the problem you are talking about occurs in almost every family where one of the members works with a computer. For example, this was the case in my family. I had to work on a computer when I was a deacon and wrote articles for the Radonezh newspaper, as well as my thesis. And I remember well that it was difficult for me to tear myself away from work; I always wanted to place or design something differently. Then, when I became a priest, life turned out in such a way that for two years I did not use a computer at all. And now I work mostly early in the morning, when everyone is asleep, except when I have to do something very urgent. Work is work, sometimes for the sake of it you have to be distracted from household chores. But I think the old attachment to the computer has passed. So I can testify that it is surmountable.

– And if in a family where both spouses are believers, one of them spends a lot of time not in work, but in computer games?

– If it’s about games, you need to repent of such a hobby. And if a person addicted to gaming does not want to do this, it makes sense for someone else to turn to a qualified and, preferably, Orthodox psychologist who is familiar with the problem of “computer addiction.” Think, good specialist in this area will tell you how to help the injured family member, or at least how not to harm him even more.

- Question about marital relations in the post...

– This is a difficult question.

It’s one thing if one of the spouses is an unbeliever or, let’s say, unchurched. Everything is clear here: a person does not know what fasting is. And demand compliance from him marital fast forcibly means subjecting him (and with him, oneself) to tests, the consequences of which can be very disastrous. The Apostle writes: “Do not deviate from one another except by agreement” (1 Cor. 7:5). And with an unbelieving spouse, agreement on the issue of observing the marital fast is not easy to achieve.

But there is another side to the question: what if both spouses are believers and churchgoers, if both live a Christian spiritual life, confess and receive communion? And if they are already close to that “unanimity of souls and bodies” for which the Church prays in the Sacrament of Marriage, but one of them wanted to break the marital fast? The fact is that here agreement already exists in advance: both spouses agree that fasting must be observed in all respects. Against this background, the desire of one of them to break the fast looks like a whim, or a temptation. In this case, is it necessary to go after him? Ideally, no. In my opinion, if both spouses are already living a church life, the refusal of one of them to join the marital relationship during Lent will serve the common good, and the other half will subsequently only be grateful for this.

However, in real life, not everything is as simple as we would like. Therefore, there are no and cannot be universal rules about observing or breaking marital fasting. And if the question is about marital relations concerns you about fasting, discuss it with an experienced confessor whose opinion you trust - I think he will give you good advice what to do in your situation.

– A question asked by our readers about the distribution of family and social responsibilities in the family: “Since I consider myself an independent person, I’m not sure that I can avoid encroaching on my husband’s “area of ​​responsibility.” That is, the line between masculine and women's responsibilities and the responsibility is not entirely tangible for me.”

– Usually independent people respect independence in others. Recently, one Hollywood actress got married, choosing the date of July 4th - Independence Day. She explained her choice this way: “I’m tired of my independence from men.” So, despite all our independence, we have a need for someone who is higher than us. Not necessarily much smarter, not necessarily stronger in everything, but the first is before us, and we become second after him. For a woman, such a person is her husband. (The attitude of a man towards his wife is based on other principles - there should be no equality in this.) Those women who demand that their husbands do what they, their wives, want, act extremely stupidly. They are robbing themselves. Share your areas of responsibility with your husband and help each other, not forgetting which of you is “first among equals” and who is “second among equals.”

– The question of the need for work for a wife: on the one hand, family is the main thing, on the other hand, there is a danger of being “out of tune,” becoming lazy, ceasing to be interesting to the children, husband, and respected by them.

– And still, a woman should have a family more important than work. If you have an internal need for work and at the same time have time, find a job. But remember that no one can replace a mother in the family - neither a nanny nor a grandmother. So let your work or any other business be subject to the general flow of your family's life.

– Another question from readers, a sore point for many Russian women question: how to remain sweet, feminine, weak, if the position of the “weaker sex” in the family is taken by the husband? Many women have to support their family both morally and financially.

– You are the first (and last) who can help your husband take the position of the stronger sex. By the way, not all women sincerely strive to be cute, feminine and weak. Another woman “will stop an elephant in its tracks and tear off its trunk.” And after that she will sigh that she is not allowed to be sweet and feminine.

If the husband took the position of the “weaker sex,” then the woman, or maybe two women, is to blame. One of them is your mother-in-law, and the other is you. Moreover, the wife’s fault is usually greater than the husband’s mother’s fault.

It has been noticed that a man who fails to “defeat” his domineering and stubborn wife degrades. This degradation may take different shapes. The softest is indecision, fear of somehow angering Her Majesty the Wife.

Of course he won't make any decisions. After all, if he tries to do this, inevitable trouble awaits him. But he will not implement your decisions as his own. Therefore, sitting in front of the TV with a bottle of beer or with a cat on his lap - no one helped him find himself in something else.

But if you have never tried to get the better of your husband and another woman is to blame - his mother, then help him get out of the “hole” in which he finds himself. Push him to make his own small decision in any matter - albeit not as wise as yours, but still kind. Help him implement this decision: support him in the middle of the journey and reward him when everything is done. And if he turns out to be a capable student, then one day let him go forward to his rightful place.

– What to do in such a situation: the wife clearly sees what she gives to her husband good advice, but he wants to do things his own way and doesn’t understand what his wife is offering the right way out from the current situation?

– Everyone has the right to learn from their own mistakes. In addition, we are not always as right as we ourselves think. So show respect to your husband even where you think he is wrong. Respectfully tell him that you disagree with him and respect his decision. According to the apostle: “Christ is the head of the Church, and the head of the wife is the husband.”

I think that first of all a Christian family should be happy. This does not mean that we should indulge each other in everything. But if a Christian family is a picture of an unhappy combination of two or four people, then every unbeliever or half-believer, looking at it, will say: Well, if that is all that God can do!.. Or even worse: If God’s intrusion into the relationship of two brings such fruits to people, then it’s better without Him... And it seems to me (I’m not talking about all happiness, not about harmony in evil, but about a serious attitude) that at the center of the family there should be love, there should be joy, and not constant torment in the name of some ideal, often fictitious. Often a Christian family could be the most convincing argument the fact that if God enters some situation, comes to some group of people. He brings something that is nowhere to be found, and that can be called happiness, not brokenness. That's why I talk about happiness as the first and very important condition. Happiness, of course, must be morally consistent, that is, it must be genuine christian love between husband and wife; and when I say “Christian,” I’m not saying something exotic and strange, but simply that attitude in which a person honors, loves, considers another, believes that he or she (this applies to both) will gladly sacrifice something desired for the sake of another; that children are also brought up in truth, in love, that they try to instill in them that goodness brings joy, and not just effort, etc. It seems to me that a happy family- convincing proof that, if God comes into a human situation, it can flourish in a way that no other can.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Man before God. M.: Pilgrim, 2000

www.pravmir.ru

Why can God not give a husband? I live alone, I have never had a relationship, there has never been mutual love, just not mutual.

Why can God not give a husband? I live alone, I have never had a relationship, mutual love too, but not mutual, no one has ever courted me, there is emptiness inside, it seems that I will never have a family. Why is it so, God gives this happiness to some early and simply, but to others not. I pray, I try to change, but despondency takes away my hope, does God want me to live alone? But I understand that I don’t want this, even those who don’t believe in God live as they want, God gives a family. Thank you Seriously, I'm not an expert on love issues. There is no need to blame God, as if He has a warehouse with suitors, and He gives to some and not to others. Look at your lifestyle. It is quite possible that you lead a lifestyle in which it is impossible to meet anyone. If, for example, you sit at home all the time and are depressed, then it will be very difficult to meet anyone. Will God really zombify some man and send him to your apartment with a bouquet of flowers? It is clear that I know absolutely nothing about you and your lifestyle. But generally speaking, I would start with this. Join a club for mountain climbers, chess players, parachutists, gardeners, astronomers, literature lovers, etc., etc. - communicate with interesting people in an interesting environment.

God help you!

Category: Answers from priests to questions | Posted by: Orthodoxy (10/20/2016) |
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