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Why Are We Still Single (or Single Again)?
PART II
by Anastasia Northrop |
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 Last month I discussed the first five of the "Seven C's of Self-Centered Singleness." Last but certainly not least, these next two "Cs" are probably two of the biggest factors in today's growing single population.
Counterfeits: The prevalence of counterfeits promoted through the media has contributed to the breakdown of family and relationships. Most children growing up in America today don't know the truth about the fundamental components of life, namely love, marriage and the family. If a child grows up in a broken family with divorced parents, and his friends have parents who are also divorced or unhappily married, and he watches the national weekly average of twenty-eight hours of television programs (which often portray unhappily married or non-married couples), where is he going to see an example of lasting marriage and loving family life? Studies have shown that children of divorce are much more hesitant to marry because they don't have an example in their own lives of how a marriage can work. It's perfectly logical: they don't want to marry because they don't want to become another divorce statistic.
Hollywood also presents a counterfeit notion of what love is. It portrays love as a passionate feeling that you get from someone rather than a choice that you make to give yourself to another. It tends to show only one little part of a couple's life - the "I'm passionately infatuated with you and everything about you is glorious perfection" part. It rarely shows the couple with a good marriage who has been married five years, ten years or fifty years - a couple who is very much in love but has had to work hard for it, to fight for it, to struggle for it - and only through their suffering with each other reach the depth of love they now share.
This grave misrepresentation of the reality of love contributes to what Jillian Strauss, author of Unhooked Generation, refers to as a "Why suffer?" mentality, particularly in relationships.(1) As she rightly points out, we don't mind working hard in the office or in the gym, but when it comes to relationships, this generation places no value on suffering. This is a generation divorced from the reality of the Cross. We do not realize that the only way to real love and a fulfilling marriage is through the Cross, and often on the Cross.
We don't know what marriage is, we don't know what love is, and we don't know what the body is and what sexual union is for. This has led to a generation deeply wounded because we have experienced love, marriage and sex in all of the wrong ways. When we have one bad experience with a relationship we are then more hesitant to begin another for fear of experiencing the same unhappiness and pain again. This happens over and over...and slowly we build walls around our hearts, the scar tissue forming solid and heavy bricks. This makes it more and more difficult for us to love and to receive love. C.S. Lewis put it well, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."(2)
Pornography is another crushing counterfeit in today's internet-saturated society. Despite the fact that it is not discussed openly in church, many committed Christian men struggle with pornography or are addicted to it. "According to a wide range of Internet pornography statistics, it is estimated that roughly two-thirds of Christian men struggle with pornography and one-in-five regularly view Internet pornography."(3) There are numerous studies showing how devastating pornography is to a man and to all of his relationships, as well as countless women who can testify to marriages torn apart by it. (Pornography has long been more prevalent among men - and understandably so since they are more visually wired. But now in our pornified culture even women, who are not wired that way, are increasingly becoming ensnared by pornography.)
How is this particularly insidious counterfeit affecting the single situation? Not only the hard core porn but even the billboards which assault drivers every day have a destructive effect on the way men view women - including the women at the local Catholic singles group. Both men and women must know that normal, healthy women just don't look like the billboards - and they never will! Whether we are conscious of it or not, society presents an image of woman which is simply not realistic - and if men find themselves expecting that Mrs. Right will look like the blond Barbie on the billboard they need to realize that they will never find her. Gentlemen, did you know that female models and actresses are 23% thinner than the average woman - and that they are thinner than 95% of the female population? Strauss recounts the story of a young man who told her he had to be with someone who "took his breath away." She reports the man "is still alone and waiting to be breathless."(4)
Of course, women can also place too many expectations upon men. Yes, it's written into us to desire the knight in shining armor who rides to our rescue and saves us. That's a good desire - and it is built into a man to fulfill that. But to expect any human being to be perfect and fulfill all thirty-nine items on your checklist is simply impossible and sure to disappoint. Movies and television have done serious damage to our concepts of masculinity and femininity and have fed us with false ideas of what we should be looking for in a spouse. We need to seek perfection only in Christ who is our ultimate Spouse because looking for it in one's husband or wife ultimately leads to an unsatisfying marriage.
Contraception:
Until the Anglican Church allowed artificial contraception in 1929 it was rejected by all Christians. Until 1965 it was illegal to use it in the United States. In the early 20th century Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, began a campaign to legalize contraception as a means to breed only the "right" kind of people. Of course, the idea of contraception and its various (sometimes not so effective) methods have been around for centuries. The difference is that now it's very easy to get and very widely used, even by those who consider themselves Catholic (despite the Church's teaching against it).
Contraception is arguably the most key factor in the current breakdown of marriage and the family today. As we all know, once you divorce sex from babies it's much easier to have sex outside of marriage. This leads to wounded people, broken marriages, children conceived in a hostile environment, increased abortions, and STDs to boot. Contraception has had disastrous effects on our culture and has adversely affected our relationships. In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI accurately predicted that contraception would lead to the objectification of women. His words have proven true. With the help of contraception we can have sex whenever we want with whomever we want without (much) fear of an unplanned pregnancy. Men don't have to worry about supporting a pregnant woman and the child that might result from sexual union; therefore it's much easier for them to view women purely as a means to their sexual pleasure, as objects for their gratification. What happens to a relationship when both parties view each other as objects for their physical and/or emotional pleasure? Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) pointed out in his book Love and Responsibility that the opposite of love is not hate, but use, to use another person for one's pleasure. Contraception does not lead to more love but to more use.
Contraception has not only invaded the personal practice of the majority of people in the United States, but it has also pervaded the minds and hearts, even in subtle ways, of an even greater majority. What is the essence of contraception? It is something which excludes life, which blocks fertility so that one can enjoy self-centered pleasure. Everything in our culture drives us toward an attitude of self-centeredness which makes one's own individual ideas and comforts the first priority in life. Another way to express the idea of putting oneself first is "making oneself god." Contraception shuts out God, the Creator of life, and attempts to thwart His design for the marital act. A contraceptive attitude, whether it is in the context of sexual union or any other context in life, does something similar. It attempts to shut God out of any area of our lives in which it is not convenient for us to have Him. This deeply affects every aspect of life. In sum, the contraceptive mentality is both self-centered and closed to life, which is the antithesis of receptivity to God's love and life. I propose that this, the contraceptive mentality, is at the very root of the current trend of singleness, and that it plays itself out in the more concrete ways we've discussed above.
So what do we do? Enter John Paul II who proclaimed to the world that the essence of love is making a gift of oneself to the other. The person who did this most fully and completely was Jesus Christ. He is the one who shows us what it means to be a truly fulfilled human person by loving us and giving Himself to us in the most radical way possible in his death on the Cross. The truth about the nature of love and the meaning of life is desperately needed today. It is the message which can heal and transform our lives of fear, emptiness and pain through the real and liberating power of Christ's Resurrection. Next month I will discuss a practical response to the "Seven C's of Self-Centered Singleness": the "Three C's of Christ-centered Singleness."
"Hear more on this and other singles-related topics at the 2008 National Catholic Singles Conferences, April 25-27th in Chicago, IL and June 27-29th in San Diego, CA. Dynamic speakers, uplifting worship and fun socials with 500+ other Catholic Singles! For more information visit www.nationalCatholicsingles.com."
Footnotes
- Jillian Straus, Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We're Still Single, (New York: Hyperion, 2006), pp. 24-25
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960, 1991) p. 121
- Proven Men, http://www.1wayout.org/pages/internet-pornography-statistics.aspx
- Jillian Straus, Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We're Still Single, (New York: Hyperion, 2006), p. 33
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