Wonderful books by Father Kinsella:
The Wife Desired
The Man For Her

No one is self-sufficient. We are dependent beings, dependent 
upon God as well as upon many of His creatures. Too frequently 
some wives worry themselves with the erroneous idea that 
dependency is a sign of weakness. The honest truth is always a 
position of strength. Dishonesty is always a position of weakness. 
And it certainly is just as dishonest for a wife to imagine that she 
is independent of her husband, as it is for him to think that he is 
independent of her.

As a married couple grow older and deeper in love, do they grow 
less dependent upon each other? How can you love and be loved 
without having someone beside yourself, outside of yourself, upon 
whom you are dependent?

The wife who struggles against this dependence upon her husband 
is a little crazy. Does she want to love and be loved? Then she will 
not achieve her desire without dependence. The ideal wife does 
not hide from her husband her realization of this dependence. She 
glories in it. If he is only half a man, she will have his love and 
affection to her heart's content.

When a man falls in love he gives up his freedom. No longer is he 
as carefree as the wind to go and come as he pleases. In a sense he 
becomes his wife's man Friday. His whole being gravitates toward 
and becomes bound to the object of his love. There are moments 
of alarm over the new situation. Strains of part of a song, "I'll never 
fall again," may run through his mind during wistful thinking of 
his past freedom. Yet, even if he could, he would never trade his 
new sweet servitude of love for the past emptiness of his life. 
When a woman falls in love, she likewise gives up her freedom. 
She too becomes dependent upon the object of her love. But God 
has made her more realistic. She has no misgiving about her lost 
freedom to be alone in the world.

Obviously a wife must rely upon her husband for many things, as 
for example, companionship and financial security. In this 
discussion we are limiting ourselves to consideration of 
interdependence of man and wife for their emotional and physical 
wants. A wife needs the physical manifestation of her husband's 
love for her. Too many wives realize this fact about themselves 
only after they have separated from their husbands and have burnt 
the bridges behind them.

"I'm sick and tired of marriage. It has been nothing but a headache. 
I'll never look at another man as long as I live. I have my two little 
children to live for. I'll be all right. Don't worry about me." I know 
this refrain by heart; I have heard it so often. After the lonely 
nights and days of two or three years they change the tune. They 
are interested in another man. They want a declaration of nullity 
for their first marriage. Because the validity of the marriage is 
incontestable many of these wives who did not want or need (they 
thought) one husband end up with two--the civil divorce courts 
and all their legalistic jargon to the contrary notwithstanding.