Church Guilt--Am I the Devil?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My husband does not like to go to church. But he feels he has to go to church. He feels terribly guilty if he doesn’t, and, in case he isn’t feeling guilty enough, his mother slathers on an extra layer or two of guilt when they talk. So he forces himself to go.

But it’s so obvious that he doesn’t want to go. Like this morning. Church starts at 10:30. At 10:20, he still hadn’t showered or dressed. When I started asking him to help me do other things, like go to the bathroom and get breakfast, he whined that it figures I’d want to do this when he had to get ready for church. Like I’m now to blame for keeping him from church because he can’t take his super-quick 5 minute shower and leave. I think if he really wanted to go, he’d have taken his shower and gotten dressed at, oh, 10:00? 9:30 even? I think he, consciously or not, was trying to sabotage his plans because he doesn’t want to go to church.

I wasn’t trying to sabotage his plans because I honestly thought that, if he hadn’t showered by 10:20, he wasn’t going to church. He’s kidding himself if he thinks he can shower, shave, fix his hair, dress, and drive to church in 10 minutes.

The thing is, I feel a little guilty anyway. I don’t care if he goes to church or not. I’ve never been much of a church goer. I stopped attending any kind of services regularly when I was in junior high school and I don’t feel guilty. If you don’t want to go, then don’t go. If you’re doing it to make another person happy, you’re not doing it for the right reasons. If you’re doing it not because you care about the message but because you feel like you need some kind of fire insurance, you’re not doing it for the right reasons. So why stress yourself out? Why play these, “I’m going to sleep in, play with the computer, screw around until 10:20 when I’ll take a super-quick shower, oh you want breakfast now? It’s your fault I can’t make it to church” games?

But I feel guilty because maybe I should be supportive of him? Like, maybe I should have started nagging him at 10:00 to get ready? I should have waited until later to ask for breakfast? Because maybe he really does want to go to church and I shouldn’t help him sabotage his own plans? I’m really being selfish by keeping him here to myself? And if I really cared about him, I would try harder to get him off to church so he wouldn’t give in to his base desires and then be consumed with guilty?

Am I the devil?

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No, I already have that title, although some also refer to me as a goddess. You’ll just have to be one of my loyal minions.

3

Don’t let it bug ya. If you want to go, go. If he wants to go, he can go, but don’t let his “game” stop you from going if you so desire.

4

Oh, I don’t want to go. I’m a thoroughly unrepentant non-church goer. I just feel guilty for dragging him down to my level, even though I think he really wants to be down at my level and only goes to appease his own guilty conscience. And I think that’s not a good enough reason for going, and if he wants to sleep in and have breakfast with me at 10:30, then he just should instead of playing these games. Only it makes me feel a bit like the snake tempting him with the apple of late-sleeping-breakfast-eating. “If you miss church, you will not die, but will actually be happier for it.”

So, am I the devil?

5

No, you’re not the devil.

It sounds like he doesn’t really want to go to Church, but his guilty conscience is really the only thing making him go each week. So he tries to find ways to not have to go, and since you happened to offer a convenient “reason”, he jumped on that.

If he really wants to go to Church, don’t take this crap. If he tries blaming you again, tell him, “Listen bucko, you’re old enough to know what time to get up and what time to get ready. If you can’t do that, tough shit. Don’t blame me!”

6

So, am I the devil?

Nah. I’m one of those who goes four sundays in a row then misses the fifth sunday because I think I have “earned” a sunday off.

You may be the devil but at least you’re not a hypocrite.

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IMHO, it’s your husband’s decision: to go, or go not. He needs to make a clear decision about it.

I wonder what would happen if he said one of: “I don’t want to go to church. But I will, because it’s important to you.” or “Please stop pressuring me about this. I will make my own decision.” or even “I don’t want to go to church, and will stop. I don’t believe in it, and going there feels like a lie.”

Guilt is the devil here.

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I agree with zweisamkeit. He’s a grownup, and can make up his own mind, and should either go, or not. If you start ‘nagging’ him to get ready on time, he’ll just get grumpy about that. Call him on it, is my opinion–don’t let him blame stuff on you just because he hasn’t yet made up his mind to do what he wants to do.

Does God want people at church if all they’re going to do about it is whine? Would he prefer that people acted like believers during the week? Is your husband getting anything out of church at all? I dunno, maybe once he gets there he’s happy enough that he went and enjoys himself, but it doesn’t sound like it. I’m not sure that reluctant church attendance is any kind of ‘fire insurance.’

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Gr8Kat, I know exactly how you feel. I’m an agnostic, and my husband is Catholic. My husband insisted upon raising our daughter as Catholic as well, which was fine with me. However, it’s been a bit of a struggle sometimes. He got a bit disillusioned with the Catholic Church lately, (no, it wasn’t the sex abuse scandal; it was mostly that we moved and had trouble finding a church that he “clicked” with near our new house) and he seems to look to me to push him into going to church–but, frankly, it doesn’t really matter to me if he goes or not! He complained that he is only raising our daughter Catholic to give her some sort of religious background, and that if only I had a church to go to, he’d convert right away. “You know,” I said, “there’s nothing stopping you from finding a new church!” Why is it my job to find him a church?

The problem is that, traditionally, (and I know this is a big stereotype here) in many families, it is the wife/mother who is the religious one, and it is the wife/mother’s duty to nag at her husband and children to go to church and to make sure that they do all the other stuff that their particular religion requires. I know that my husband’s own family of origin is very much that way. It’s actually turned things upside down to have that be the father’s job in our family, and I don’t think he realized, at the time our daughter was born, how different that that would be. Meanwhile, I’m becoming less religious all the time, and I certainly don’t know all the Catholic stuff, anyway. However, he does need my support, so I do wake them up, get my daughter ready, etc., and I even tag along sometimes.

Your husband is used to his mother’s nagging, prodding, and guilt-mongering and is very likely secretly flabbergasted that you do not provide the same, or else he’s secretly delighted because you provide a convenient excuse. Perhaps both are the case.

However, you’d probably wake him up for work, even if it was a job that he didn’t really like, and you wouldn’t serve breakfast and ask him to do a whole bunch of stuff ten minutes before he had to be there. Should you do the same for church? Well, that’s up to him, really. Perhaps you should, at 10:00, say something like, “Are you going to church today? If you are, you should get ready.” The rest is up to him. If he doesn’t get up and go, it’s not your fault. Don’t feel guilty about it. Remind him that you are not his mother, and it is up to him whether or not he goes to church. It’s also up to him whether or not he’s late.

You didn’t say if your husband is Catholic or not, but I think that my husband would say that guilt is a perfectly good reason to go to church. The Catholic Church wants you there every week whether you want to be there or not (and they do also want you to want to be there, of course, but they’ll take what they can get :).) It’s almost as if they expect the guilt to be strong enough to carry you through any crises of faith. (If I’m wrong about this, sorry. I admit to a lack of theological knowledge.)

Perhaps your husband can find a church with Saturday evening services–then he could have his church and his Sunday morning computer time and breakfast, too.

10

There have been times when all the way to Mass I’m saying I don’t want to go, but still I go. And once I was there, I was glad I went. This is for daily Mass, which for us isn’t consider a obligatory thing. I get a lot out of it, though. It’s just that after 9 hours at work, then out to the barn to feed my horse, and I haven’t been home yet, it’s easy to say that I don’t want to go. But again, I go and I feel better for it.

Maybe your husband is just a procrastinator. Does he say that he doesn’t enjoy it, when he goes?

StG

11

My husband is Catholic, and, AFAIK, the church in our small town only has the 10:30 Sunday service. But after he finally got out of the shower (at about 11:00), and announced he was going to town (Salem) to run errands, I said, don’t the big churches in town have Mass more than once a day? Why don’t you check there. So he did and guess what, not only was there a Mass just starting, his mother was there! Afterwards, they went back to her place to visit and I guess had a nice time for once without so much guilt. Afterwards, he thanked me for making the suggestion. I’m such a good wife :slight_smile:

So now let’s see how late he starts sleeping in :wink: