A Man’s Guide to Loving a Woman – Catholic Style

  1. Sanctity. This is the first rule of a Catholic man. Be a saint and create the most fertile ground for your spouse to be a saint.

    © Julia - Fotolia.com
    © Julia – Fotolia.com
  2. Share your dessert. This is one of the hardest tests. You have eaten a good dinner. The sweet tray is brought to your table. She says she does not want any because she is full. Your slice of warm brownie over vanilla ice cream arrives. She suddenly wants half. Give her more than that.
  3. A clean sink. I do not care how dirty a kitchen is, if you close the cabinet doors and clean the dishes it always looks 100% better. I know you did not leave the doors open. She does not want to hear she did either. Just close them and offer a prayer for the great reminder of all the little things that are flawed in your own person.
  4. Sex. She deserves better than being treated as an object. She is a lady and a woman. Keep her away from poisons that can harm her body. Yes, the pill is a poison.
  5. Workout with her. Yes, it takes longer. Life is not about being as efficient as possible.
  6. Open her door, it opens her heart and yours.
  7. Take out the trash. Yes that disgusting, smelly, rotten, and overflowing soul. Go to Confession regularly.
  8. Encourage sons to treat your wife like a queen. This relationship is very important.
  9. Defend her. If someone threatens her life, step up and die defending her. It is what Adam should have done. This includes those little deaths that destroy a person’s good name like gossip. Your friends do not want to hear about your wife’s faults and you should be embarrassed for even mentioning them.
  10. Stand your ground. Not against her, but with her. She may have emotions that soar up and down. Be a rock of consideration and strength that comforts her even in what appears to men as trivial. They are important to her, they should be important to you.
  11. She is beautiful. She wants to hear you say it often.
  12. Just a note. Buy a small notebook, here this is good, and leave a small note every morning. Tell her something new that you love about her. Remind her special moments that meant a lot to you. Thank her for being a strong woman. Ask her forgiveness for your faults. Draw her a small picture. Look up a great quote.

 

Share other good ideas below.

J.Q. Tomanek

J.Q. Tomanek

J.Q. lives in the country of Texas with his wife Denise, a Southern Belle from Trinidad and Tobago, and his three children. He holds two graduate degrees from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, an MBA and Master of Science in Organizational Leadership, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Having taught for five years in Catholic education, he now works in the construction industry in Victoria, TX. He is a parishioner of Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus Parish in the Diocese of Victoria.

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35 thoughts on “A Man’s Guide to Loving a Woman – Catholic Style”

  1. This goes along with #1, but definitely shouldn’t be left out. Pray with her and for her! We need to be supported spiritually as well as the other ways.

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  4. J.Q. thank you for being such a gentleman to speak up for what a woman’s heart really needs . Your actions reflect your upbringing. I feel as if I just met your mother and father. They did a wonderful job. May God bless you and your lovely wife and family.

    1. Anna Marie, thank you for the kind words. I am blessed with parents that have always been there when wanted and needed and gratefully have taught me life’s important things.

  5. This is very true! Thank you for sharing this to the world JQ. You are such a true gentleman. May God bless you!

    1. Erin, grateful for the words, I am a work in progress. Thanks God for multiple chances. After 12 years of marriage, I am finally getting a few things right 🙂 Have a good day!

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  7. Respect her intelligence. Read some of the same books and discuss them, which requires that she gets to speak entire sentences while you listen and don’t interrupt. Don’t order her to share your opinions. You wouldn’t do this to your friends, don’t do it to your wife. Most importantly, don’t assume that simply because someone with a uterus likes a particular work of art that it will bore you. Women have good and educated taste. Listen.

      1. That’s the kind of response I’ve come to expect from all conservative websites, especially religious ones. You are exactly the kind of people who marry illiterates. They’re easy to dominate.

      2. You believe women should be cowardly, dimwitted, doormats. Oh, you don’t use exactly those words; you’ll say “submissive, receptive, and nurturing,” but you actually mean that a woman should never be more educated, have more money or authority than her husband and should always cater to whatever idiot whim he has. Women are never allowed any will or autonomy. See the Patheos blog “Love, Joy, Feminism” from yesterday for a more thorough discussion.

      3. Chelsea Zimmerman

        Nice try, Karen, but the “discussion” on the blog you’re referring to has nothing to do with what we believe as Catholics. One (honest) look at the history of the Catholic Church and her many strong female saints and leaders will tell you that.

        Try a book like The Privilege of Being a Woman by Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand — who just so happens to be a highly educated philosopher, theologian and former professor. Her credentials alone debunk your bass-ackwards view of how we treat women.

    1. The advice to read some books in common and have deeper discussions is pretty sound (including the listening part), it’s good advice for both spouses. On the other hand, I’ve met some couple in which one spouse–sometimes it’s the husband, sometimes it’s the wife–likes to read and have intellectual discussions about what he or she has been reading, but not the other spouse. Therefore, I would broaden this advice a bit–if you both like reading and discussing literature, good! Or music, or art, or etc. But yes, spend some time intellectualizing together, in good conversation.

      1. Yes, but that good point is rather lost by the wild tangent which dominates the middle of her comment. It reads like the beginnings of an unhinged rant (and a bizarre one at that) with the whole “don’t interrupt” her thing, not to mention the “someone with a uterus” line.

  8. AnnMarie Creedon

    I don’t come across many articles by men supporting men. We need more! I think men and women from my generation and beyond haven’t been catechized properly and don’t truly understand the sacrificial nature of marriage. If both husbands and wives learned to put their relationship with the Lord before their spouse, and their spouse before themselves, the world would be a very different place. Good job, JQ; please continue writing and encouraging your fellow Catholic men.

  9. This is a great article. There are a few things that could be added to it.

    1. Listen to what she has to say, actually listen. Don’t just reply with a “ah huh” like most of us do. Engage in the conversation, and to take it to the next level involve a personal action into it. If she makes a general comment that she is low on her favorite lotion, surprise her by bringing some home the next day.

    2. Keep her on her toes. This can be as simple as recreating an old date that meant a lot to her. Put thought into it. It can be easily noticeable if you do not. Back into the dog house you go. lol

    – I’ve found that these work extremely well!

  10. Nice list.

    But keep in mind: There is a VERY narrow range of women towards whom this kind of behavior is wise.

    By the grace of God, I happen to be married to one. I can treat her in this fashion, and not be undermining my marriage by doing it.

    But for most unmarried women in the U.S., such behavior amounts to throwing your pearls before swine.

    In dealing with THOSE women, I’m afraid the various “married game” bloggers have their number: I refer to Vox and Dalrock and the rest, who sound outraged by the detritus of feminism precisely because there is good reason to be outraged. Few American women can make it through college without being seduced by that dreck; most wind up replacing a Catholic or even a generically Christian worldview with a mess of pottage.

    Then the men who woo and marry them are shocked when, a few years later, their wives begin to show signs of disgust and boredom at all that virtuous servant-leadership. The sad reality is that these women married while the thrill of newness was still active; after this wears off, “servant-leadership” begins to look like a doormat wussiness in her eyes, and virtue seems more like weakness than strength. She begins to long for a bad boy to tickle her fancy, and finds that her husband is in the “friend-zone,” drifting towards a position somewhere between “boring schlub” and “puppy that follows me around.”

    This is what Catholic men have to understand, if the woman they’re dating (or their wife) is neither a recent import from a more traditional culture, or a really and thoroughly Catholic woman with a worldview 100% unadulterated by American pop culture. Such women are rare as hen’s teeth.

    At any rate, I am not knocking the list. Far from it! This is the kind of masculinity which a good woman would appreciate. She would instinctively grasp the value of the LOYALTY implicit in it, and respond in kind.

    But that’s a good woman. Courtesy of the intersection of pop culture and academia’s ideas of gender equity, many (most?) women in our era have been steered very effectively away from goodness.

    Gentlemen, be ye forewarned: If you desire marriage and children, and do not want to see the one destroyed and the other become strangers to you, you will have to gauge your woman very carefully, and learn how to tickle the “bad-boy” and “novelty” and “adventure” parts of her cerebral wiring just often enough for your virtue to not make you look like a thing to be safely taken for granted.

    1. Good point. Yes, the list is geared toward those married. Another thing to consider is a deeper understanding of each other during the engagement period. Instead of treating each other as if you are already married, this time period needs to a heavier discernment period. There needs to be some solid and sobering questions asked of each other before an exchange of vows. Maybe I will list a number of them that I think is important in a later post. I also know a person that would be perfect this topic, so I will ask her too.

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