I had an interesting conversation today with a friend (who is a Catholic woman) about the difficulty of finding our future spouses. Would you exclude someone from consideration for any or all of the following reasons:

1. The person has a child from a previous relationship
2. The person is a smoker
3. The person comes from a divorced family

I once had brief correspondence with a nice Catholic girl on a Catholic singles website, and after she found out that my parents were divorced, I never heard from her again. We had been getting along well, and then all of sudden nothing–no more contact from her at all. The only thing I oculd think of was that it was because she found out that my parents are divorced. I felt a little hurt and talked with my roommate, the G, about it; he thought that it was wrong to exclude someone based on something out of their control like that.
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My friend I talked with today implied she would exclude someone if they were a smoker. I don’t blame her; that’s a big negative in my book, but it shows we all have factors that we look for in our future spouses and ones that we will rule someone out by.
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What about if someone has a child already? Is it possible to think about having a relationship with them without considering the fact that they have a child? It does not seem possible to me. So that means that I think it would take an extra strong call from God to me to show me he wanted me to enter into a romantic relationship with a single mother.