Fr. Mike Schmitz gives some advice for working through breakups.
Transcript:
Caller: My last girlfriend I had, she. When things got a bit more serious, she panicked a bit and said, “I’m not going to be a mom or a nun. I’m going to be a cool aunt.” And I, as someone who kind of seriously desires marriage, how can I find people who are truly ready to enter that vocation?
Fr. Mike: Yeah, Luke, that’s a great question, and thanks for putting me on the spot. But actually, first, I apologize. I’m so sorry about that relationship that just kind of, you know, ended. It’s never easy. I don’t know if you’re at an okay place now, but it can be one of those situations where it’s like, wait a second, we were moving forward.
I remember doing this with a young man, and he started dating. I mean, he was dating to discern, dating to, you know, just for marriage. He started dating this woman, proposed to her, and she said yes. They came up to Duluth for our first marriage prep. At one point, halfway through, they said, “Can we just have a moment?” I said, “Okay, sure, I’ll leave the room.”
When I came back in, they had broken up. He had—she had broken off the engagement. I was like, “Oh, wow.” And they had a two-hour drive back to the Twin Cities.
What happened after that was another. He recovered, you know, his heart recovered. He went back out there, met, you know, one person, and they continued to date, proposed, she said yes. Then before even the first marriage prep, she broke it off again.
It was one of those situations. I only highlight this because his big crisis was, “Am I just bad at discernment?” I was praying, like, I was looking for the kind of indications that this would be a good fit, that everything was, that this is not against God’s will, all these kinds of things. He just thought, like, the problem must be me in this situation. I must be bad at discernment; I must be bad at relationships, all these kinds of things.
And the answer is no. It just—it was. This is one of the big things. I really believe that there are a number of things that get discerned when this happens. One of them is that at the end of the day, both people still get to choose. Even if the Lord is like, “Yeah, this is an open door; yeah, this is a good door. It would be great if you guys are married.” At the end of the day, both individuals still get to say whether they want to walk through that good and open door or whether they would say, “Yeah, I’d rather not.”
So it wasn’t bad discernment on his part. It was discernment on their part. Similarly, someone says, “I really feel called to religious life.” They apply, and the people discerning might say no, they might say yes. But the recognition is that it is a cooperative discernment.
I know there can be a great pain in that. Thanks be to God, he started dating another woman, proposed, she said yes. They’re married; they have, I think, four or five children. They really, really love each other. It was a matter of, “But we’re both on board.”
I’m so sorry. I don’t want to be tangential here, but I think there’s something about that that just is. Sometimes we can get so discouraged by our story, discouraged by our past and discernment that it can be like, “Man, will it ever work, or is it me just messing this thing up?”
I just wanted to hopefully try to speak into that, Luke, in the sense of saying part of the process. I do want to try to answer your question, but I want to first. What do you think about that part first?
Caller: Yeah, I think that’s great. Discouragement. I mean, one of my best friends was one of those who had the engagement break off, and he’s been dating, and it’s just been rough to see him kind of get in a more negative state when I know he’s such a strong Catholic man. He’s leading a community out there.
It’s just a measure of feeling like you have failed at discernment. It’s just a matter of kind of like finding those people who are ready for marriage. Where’s a good place to meet them, and what’s your number one tip for dating?
Fr. Mike: So I’m gonna say something, and you’re gonna say, “Ah, everyone says that.” That’s fine. CatholicMatch.com really is. My little sister met her husband on CatholicMatch.com. We’ve had some people in our sphere up here, young adults and whatnot.
I’ve also heard people say, “I go on there, and it’s been fruitless.” But there is a place about when people are on a website kind of like that, they are interested in discernment, they’re interested in pursuing a long-term relationship, interested in discerning marriage and family.
So that is kind of that open door. Again, it’s not perfect. There’s no place you could go that’s perfect. You go to your local parish; that’s also not going to be perfect. But I really do think there’s something about going to places where there are like-minded people, and that could be a virtual place or it could be an actual, you know, in-person place.
But I think that—and that’s always been the secret, hasn’t it? That I could go to my local parish, and then there she is. Because I go to the place where like-minded people are. I go to that woman I work with right now; she’s our chief of staff, and she had tried CatholicMatch, didn’t really work out for her.
Then she went to another more, I guess, political worldview website or place, and she’s engaged. It was like-minded people coming together and looking to say, “Who is here that I could maybe potentially see myself starting to have a future with?”
As you know, Luke, part of that is getting out of our comfort zone, maybe getting out of our circle of people we know now. But I really do believe it is going to those places, whether in person or virtually, where there are like-minded people and then just kind of bumping into folks and seeing who’s there.
And I don’t know what that’s—that’s what I got. My two cents.
Caller: All right. Well, thank you so much, Father.
Fr. Mike: Absolutely.