This post paints a pretty bleak picture of a woman who is obsessed with suspicion. Let us hope we don’t fall into this trap…and nip the beginnings of it in the bud! As you can see, after reading this post, suspicion, uncontrolled, is most unbecoming and makes a fool out of the one whose heart is filled with this vice!
From The Wife Desired, Fr. Leo Kinsella
Fundamentally, a suspicious woman is a cynic who believes that all human conduct is directed wholly by self-interest or self-indulgence. Insecure in this cold, evil world, she must protect herself. She trusts no one. All must prove themselves innocent, else they are guilty.
There is something in her of the hypocrisy of Diogenes, shuffling along with a lantern looking for an honest man. He was blinded by his own light and not very honest. In his most desperate moment of loneliness no one should ever trust a suspicious woman with any confidence.
The suspicious being is a petty, beetle-browed parody of a son of God. The suspicious wife is obnoxious to all, and it is little wonder, seeing what mental company she keeps.
Satan, ever ready to whisper into her ear a choice little morsel of gossip, suspicion, or rash judgment, is her boon companion. Suspecting sin of others, especially her husband, she herself drones through life in sin. It is a sin of injustice to suspect another of wrong doing, to put evil motives into the minds of others.
Most suspicious wives fall into a definite pattern. Suspecting their husbands of infidelity, they themselves are unfaithful to the trust and confidence out of which grows real companionship. The suspicious wife generally informs the whole neighborhood of her husband’s imagined infidelity.
Relatives are dragged into the sorry picture. She makes a nuisance of herself even where he works by continually checking on him over the phone or by waiting for him at his place of business. He becomes the butt of nasty jokes from his fellow workers. He is suspected of irresponsibility by his employers. If he is not released from his position, at least he is considered a poor risk for any advancement.
Often the suspicious wife makes a liar of her husband. In order to allay her apprehensions over some trivial matter, he takes what he foolishly thinks is the easy way out. He lies. One lie usually demands another. Sooner or later the truth will out.
Once she has caught her husband in a lie, the suspicious wife goes to work on him with the eagerness of a bloodhound on the scent.
An innocent highball with the boss on the way home from work might be misconstrued by the little woman so he fabricates some excuse for being a half hour late for dinner. On finding the truth later she belabors him with it.
He is perpetually in a turmoil whether a truth or a falsehood will stir up her suspicions. For him it is either the frying pan or the fire. His silence is construed as guilt, and his protestations of fidelity are its proof.
In this connection the sad picture of a husband comes to memory. After telling his story of a suspicious wife and his gradual alienation, he sat in silence for a few moments and then said, “A ghost woman ruined our marriage.”
The short and the long of the matter is that these women are capable of very little love. Love brings trust and confidence upon which companionship can be built. Most of these suspicious women complain of the lack of companionship with their husbands. They do not stay home in the evening. They never have any holidays together. Their conversation is meager.
These wives do not seem to be able to see that they are driving their husbands away from them–even at times into the infidelity of which they are suspicious.
The wife desired is in love with her husband, and therefore she has absolute trust in him. Because she is a practical woman, she knows that there is no other possible course. She realizes that her husband carries with him the weakness of humankind. So she is poised more in readiness to forgive than to drive herself into mental illness by constantly fretting about the possibilities.
She is only human, so the devil will use sundry situations to drop suspicions into her mind. He will play on her imagination. She wisely pounces upon these dirty offerings at the first consciousness of them and flings them from her mind.
In this action she recalls the wisdom of the ancients–obsta principiis, resist beginnings. An evil suspicion willingly harbored in her mind quickly sends out roots to sap the very life blood of her love. The longer it is nursed the more difficult will be the extraction. She knows this and tosses the devil’s garbage back at once. The tranquility of her soul is not to be whipped into turmoil so easily.
Jealousy and her twin sister, Envy, have spawned more mischief upon this world than is generally realized. These are the vices with which the devil is most tormented. Little wonder it is, then, that he takes particular delight in seeing jealousy or envy bring about the moral downfall and consequent misery of a human being. These vices have a frightful history of human tragedy strewn in their wake stretching back from the latest divorce to the murder of Abel.
It is hard to imagine a vice less rewarding to its victim than jealousy. Conceivably, the robber derives some enjoyment from her spoils, the adulteress from her passion, the deceiver from her deception. Jealousy produces nothing but sadness and grief. A jealous wife makes me think of the picture of a wounded snake biting itself.
If it were not for the tragedy of broken marriages arising from jealousy, the situations springing therefrom often would be comic.
One wife complained one day that her husband gave his affection to everybody but her. At a wedding reception she saw him kissing his cousins. He explained that there was nothing to it. Simply they were kissing cousins. She made a searching study of the propensities of his side of the family and proclaimed that his cousins were not kissing cousins.
A jealous wife watches her husband like a hawk. He had better not show any affection even to his sister, or he will be in hot water. A momentary, furtive glance at a beautiful woman always alarms and makes her uneasy. Because a jealous wife is an unhappy wife she contributes no happiness to a marriage. From jealousy it is one fast, easy step to suspicion and all its incumbent evils.
A wife striving to be desired by her husband will be ever on guard against jealousy. It is a petty sin in the sense of its meanness, not in its consequences. Lest some feel that the language concerning suspicion and jealousy has been too severe, hearken to the words of Scripture. “With a jealous woman is a scourge–he that hath hold of her, is as he that taketh hold of a scorpion.” Ecclus. XXVI, 9, 10.
Once a friend gave a bit of sage advice concerning friendship and companionship for those on long vacations with a group of friends. He advised going off by oneself for a day. A week or ten days of constant companionship begins to wear. After having spent the day alone, one will come running back to one’s friends and be happy to be with them again.
The wise wife will realize that it is good for the husband to have an evening out once in a while to attend some club or lodge, or to bowl. She will not want to keep him under her eye constantly. She should be free likewise, of course, to get out by herself and visit her girl friends. No hard and fast rules can be given for guidance on a question like this. Yet the principle must be recognized that deep and lasting companionship does not suffer from occasional, brief separation.
Some silly wives begin to pout, if the husband ever ventures out for an evening. By their childish and short-sighted attitudes, sometimes even clouded with suspicion, they become less desirable companions. Little wonder it is then that the husband starts to wander off more than he should. The ideal wife will be successful in some phases of companionship in the same proportion as she is successful in developing her personality.
“Blessed is the home where unkind speech does not enter, nor cursing, nor bad literature, nor intemperance, for on that home will be heaped the blessings of peace.” – Fr. Lawrence Lovasik http://amzn.to/2nq50xO Catholic Family Handbook (afflink)
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Very good reminder on jealousy! Thank you!