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Mixed Religious Marriages/Relationships?

MattusMaximus

Intellectual Gladiator
MattusMaximus
Joined
Jan 26, 2006
Messages
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I'm just curious. Are there any folks on the Forum who are in a mixed religious marriage or relationship? I am, and I'm just interested in hearing the thoughts & experiences of others...

To get the thread rolling, I'll start.

I'm an atheist, and my wife is a Christian. We've been together for 15+ years and we love each other more than I can say. I tell her that though I believe there's no heaven it doesn't bother me because my life with her is heaven enough for me.

We have no kids, just a bunch of cats.

I've spoken with others who are very confused about how we can possibly be together, but it works because we make it work.

Anyone else? Thoughts? Comments?
 
37 years in my case. Me, I'm a BAWA (Bad Assed Atheist with Attitude). She is a believer because she was indoctrinated as a child and finds it easier to believe than not to. (My assessment, not her's.) We agree (mostly) to disagree. I have brought her slowly toward the light but don't really push it. We have two kids, both in their 30s. My son is non-believer and my daughter is a "non practicing" Xian. Neither my wife or I proslytized , so they made up their own minds. YMMY. :D
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
37 years in my case. Me, I'm a BAWA (Bad Assed Atheist with Attitude). She is a believer because she was indoctrinated as a child and finds it easier to believe than not to. (My assessment, not her's.) We agree (mostly) to disagree. I have brought her slowly toward the light but don't really push it. We have two kids, both in their 30s. My son is non-believer and my daughter is a "non practicing" Xian. Neither my wife or I proslytized , so they made up their own minds. YMMY. :D
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I have to put your post in with mine so you can compare...

Married 37 years. White Anlo-Saxon Atheist married to a devout Catholic who was indoctrinated into the faith by virtue of being in a Catholic family (something I did not allow my children the luxury of). We have two kids, both in their thirties, my daughter is a softer version of her mother and my son is a non-believer.

We also agree to disagree but lately I have become more verbal in the defence of my beliefs and have taken to pointing out the more outrageous things that the religious in general do.

I find myself rising to her defence when her religion is attacked (Catholics are not Christians did you know) and she has come to my defence a few times, challenging the bigotry against atheists. It works for us so far. What will happen in the next 37 years? Who knows?
 
After two short marriages with nonbelievers, I found someone with a higher tolerance for BS (Catholic), something that's apparently also required to put up with mine, as we've been together almost 20 years. We have two children. I see by MySpace/Facebook that the elder child is agnostic (we haven't discussed it); the younger probably tends that way too, though both have been through "the program," and the elder is scheduled to be confirmed before too much longer. I used to go to church with them, but now that both of the children are teenagers, I no longer do. They (including my wife) no longer go that often themselves.

We cherish and support each other, and our family. The fact that she's a staunch Republican and I'm not gives us something to discuss, not something to fight about. The fact that I prefer classical and bebop and she prefers pop means that we're both exposed to music we'd otherwise miss. She isn't perfect, I'm far from perfect, and we don't make the perfect couple, but we love each other so none of that matters.

Religion, unless it becomes an obsessive focus of one's life, has very little to do with the sort of compatibility that makes a marriage work, in my opinion. If it weren't for the resurgence of Creationism, I wouldn't be on the internet in a religious forum. For the most part, I don't care what people believe, whether it's eternal life or zero-point energy. Such things rarely matter in day-to-day living.
 
my husband and i have been together off and on for 27 years and to begin with i was the believer and he was apathetic, over the years we reversed our rolls and then about 14 years ago he got caught up in a fundamentalist yec sect,
in reaction to the expectations he developed i started researching and reading a lot more and ended up an atheist
i told him so and we discussed it and fought about it for a couple of years until he decided that i was really just a liberal christian and that god told him to be tolerant of others:sour:
in the interests of saving our marriage and the fact that i love him i just shut up and let him put his spin on it so we could get on with the rest of our lives
we have 3 children in their late to mid 20's and they are all agnostics
 
jimmygun said:
I have to put your post in with mine so you can compare...

Married 37 years. White Anlo-Saxon Atheist married to a devout Catholic who was indoctrinated into the faith by virtue of being in a Catholic family (something I did not allow my children the luxury of). We have two kids, both in their thirties, my daughter is a softer version of her mother and my son is a non-believer.

We also agree to disagree but lately I have become more verbal in the defence of my beliefs and have taken to pointing out the more outrageous things that the religious in general do.

I find myself rising to her defence when her religion is attacked (Catholics are not Christians did you know) and she has come to my defence a few times, challenging the bigotry against atheists. It works for us so far. What will happen in the next 37 years? Who knows?
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It is interesting how much your experience matches mine. Are you my long lost twin brother? :D

My wife does attend a local church on a occasional Sunday basis and she and I have attended a couple of their functions (we had a nice bus trip and cruise last summer). The church is a small sect with only a few church locations in Canada and the US. They are more to the fundamentalist end of the spectrum but not obnoxiously so (IMHO). The members I have met do not bring up religion in my presence and neither do I in theirs. I would not indulge in any religious "discussions" with them for my wife's sake. ;)
 
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I've been married to the same wonderful, smart, funny, caring man for 17 years. We've gone through a lot of changes, both together and seperately. I was raised as a Protestant Christian, as was he. At age 19 and 20, I dabbled in New Age/occult type stuff, but I wasn't serious about it and I lost interest pretty quickly. After we were married, we went through a few months of Mormonism (I know :rolleyes:), but eventually dropped it. I then started moving toward agnosticism and he developed an interest in Wicca, via some fellow soldiers. I am now an agnostic atheist, and he acknowledges and accepts that. He is now a Wiccan, although still lurking in the broom closet mostly. His beliefs don't really bother me, and my lack of beliefs don't seem to bother him. I did suggest he read "that Sagan book", but he declined, saying that he liked to believe that there was still magic in the world. Okay by me.
 
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I've been married five years. My wife is LDS and a Return Missionary. I don't advertise. We have one child and will likely have others. We agreed before we were married that the children would be raised LDS, and that I would help as I could, but that if they had any confusion on my particular stance, I would explain it to them open and honestly. I go to services with her, but only the first hour (sacrament meeting) and I usually read a book during that time. Most of the church is aware that I'm a non-member, and are quite baffled both by me and by our marriage. Some people seem to be constantly on the look out for some kind of subversion that I might be planting, but for the most part we are well and warmly received. :)

My wife has struggled from time to time with my lack of religious beliefs, especially since there is such pressure in the LDS tradition for all their temple ceremonies and whatnot. I could probably be swayed, if for nothing else then domestic bliss on this one aspect, but I'm not interested in being a hypocrite to myself and I'm really not interested in trading my comfy underwear for their antiquated "garments". Me boys like their support! :D
 
I am an atheist, my wife is a liberal Christian. Actually, she's not really a Christian, but she goes to a (barely) Christian church (United Church of Canada). She believes in God and souls but not in the divinity of Christ or the efficacy of prayer (except as a form of meditation, perhaps). She is a research scientist in a biological field, so she clearly accepts evolution.

Our kids are being raised to have minds as open as possible without letting their brains fall out, as Sagan might have said. They occasionally go to Sunday school, just so I can have some peace around the house, but they are being taught that the Jesus stories are just stories, and that some people believe in God and some don't, and that's okay.
 
bokonon said:
Religion, unless it becomes an obsessive focus of one's life, has very little to do with the sort of compatibility that makes a marriage work, in my opinion.
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For the most part I agree. The one exception is the question of how to raise the children. Some denominations expect children to go through a particular program of indoctrination and ritual as they grow up; those issues can be tricky to work out in an interfaith marriage.

I speak as an observer here. I've dated very few believers. My live-in girlfriend wavers between agnosticism and deism when she thinks about it at all. She dropped the idea of a personal, caring, loving god at age 12 when her father died.
 
My wife of 15 years was raised RC in South America. My mother-in-law is very devout, the next generation less so. They still kick things up a notch or two for Lent, though. I like fish anyway, so no problem for me.
I was raised a Lutheran, which is about a stone's throw from Catholic, and I generally agree with Bokonon that religious compatibility isn't necessarily critical to a happy marriage as long as nobody is obsessive about the issue. One of my brothers-in-law is also atheist, so tolerance of apostasy is part of the family culture.
My wife's upbringing was that Catholics were true Christians, but she was also taught that there are these Protestant people out there who also claim to be Christian. As far as I can tell, that's about the extent of what she learned about Protestantism growing up. Since our marriage, we have only lived in the US for about four years, so she still hasn't quite got the hang of Protestant sectarianism, American style.
So, when she looks at me and asks things like, "Baptists - are they Christian?" I just can't help but hug her to pieces, while in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Honeybun, I'm sure glad I got you out of Oklahoma."
 
I'm not in a relationship, but my parents were mixed. (My mother is Mormon, my father was Catholic. I don't think my father thought of Mormons as proper Christians, but he would never have denigrated my mother to me in any way, so I'm not sure.)

My parents agreed that none of us were to be baptized until we were 18 and legal adults. At that time we could decide for ourselves. Since my mother was a stay-at-home mom, and my father was career military, and not infrequently on TDY, it's not surprising that all seven of my siblings ended up getting baptized Mormon. Two of them would be considered Jack Mormons, but they believe in god, etc. The other five are still devout Mormons. I'm the sole atheist, and since I realized I was an atheist by about 13, I'm the only one in my family not baptized into any religion.

The main reason things worked for them, I think, was because my father was very much a "live and let live" sort. Very important, as my is very much a "my way or the highway" type. Of course, I'm not sure if my father, as open-minded as he was, could have been in a relationship with an atheist. He died still believing, I think, that my atheism was my form of teenage rebellion, and not a rationally thought-out philosophy. He just couldn't conceive of not believing in a god or afterlife.
 
My wife (33 years) is Jewish but not highly religious and I am atheist. It has worked out fine with us. I behave well when we go to family affairs (her side does them, my side not much!) and get along perfectly with them (that we all respect/like each other may have something to do with that). It may have helped that her grandparents had stated if she ever married a goyim they would be (I am being nice here) very unhappy. Met them three days before the wedding and all objections ended (It may have been related to my having better knowledge of Jewish Wedding traditions/procedures than most of the family did - it helps to be a fast reader with a good memory!!) It has been a mostly fun 33 years - especially when we pop up to DC/Baltimore where most of the family lives!!
 
My husband's a nominal Christian. He hasn't set foot in a church or opened a bible in the whole time I've known him, except for last Wednesday.

See, he recently got hurt (pulled a muscle in his hip) and scared himself looking stuff up on the Internet about it. He became suddenly and hypochondriacally convinced he had colon or prostate cancer. This is, in part, due to his overall lack of knowledge about how the body works and what kinds of really weird-seeming things are actually normal for the body to do.

He also had his head filled, as a child, with old wives' tales of people getting cancer and dying of it before they even knew they were sick. He'd always thought cancer did that--just snuck up on ya and killed ya <snaps fingers> like that.

He kept going to the doctor, and being tested, and all tests came out negative. All the doctors and the nurses there reassured him he didn't have any kind of cancer. None of the tests revealed any abnormal cells of any kind. He did have a mild UTI, which had irritated the prostate, and for which they gave him antibiotics, but no signs of cancer or any serious illness. Yet, he remained unconvinced.

So, Wednesday evening, he rather hesitantly approached me and said he was going to his employer's church (his employer is also a minister), to have them pray over him.

I tried to say nothing, to let him believe whatever he wants to believe, in the same way he does for me and for which I am quite grateful. But he knew it would bug me, so he kept probing for a response. I did finally tell him, under pressure, that I thought he was engaging in magical thinking because he was scared, and that while I understood that, I couldn't agree he was doing the right thing by going for prayer.

"When you find out you're okay--because you are okay--you won't really know if it's because you've been okay all along, or because God healed you. Can't you wait for your last blood test results to come back first?" I asked.

"Well...this would make me feel better...." he said.

"Okay," I replied, "but let me ask you this: if you are sick, does God know it?"

"Ye-ess..."

"And does he want you to be sick?"

"No...."

"Then why do you have to go to a special building and have a bunch of strangers beg him to make you well again?"

He didn't say anything to that; just walked away deep in thought. That night, he went to the church anyway. He did not feel better about any of it, and his fear remained. Friday, he got his test results: normal. Better than normal, the doctor said. He immediately felt better, and most of his "symptoms" went away immediately.

That's the most discussion we've had about religion in over 10 years. Yeah, it kind of bugs me that he resorted to magical thinking, but I don't think he feels the prayer helped him, so I don't think there's any danger of my having to beat him. ;) In fact, I think it may have helped him see that magical thinking just doesn't work. I hope so, anyway.
 
slingblade said:
My husband's a nominal Christian. He hasn't set foot in a church or opened a bible in the whole time I've known him, except for last Wednesday.

See, he recently got hurt (pulled a muscle in his hip) and scared himself looking stuff up on the Internet about it. He became suddenly and hypochondriacally convinced he had colon or prostate cancer. . Friday, he got his test results: normal. Better than normal, the doctor said. He immediately felt better, and most of his "symptoms" went away immediately.

That's the most discussion we've had about religion in over 10 years. Yeah, it kind of bugs me that he resorted to magical thinking, but I don't think he feels the prayer helped him, so I don't think there's any danger of my having to beat him. ;) In fact, I think it may have helped him see that magical thinking just doesn't work. I hope so, anyway.
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The important thing is that he does get his PSA tested as often as the Dr. recommends - and worry if it rises - especially if it goes from the twos to four or higher. Thanks to my doctor doing that I am now prostate and cancer free. A friendly suggestion, also:If the urologist does the (painless) needle test and says "it shows only one small group of cancer cells - you would almost certainly be safe for at least five years, but.....", go with the "but..." (The but turned out to be a tumor about 1.5 cm^3 that was rght on the point of breaking through the prostate capsule which is NOT A GOOD THING!!) Best to you both - you keep track of your possibilities too!!!
 
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RobRoy said:
I've been married five years. My wife is LDS and a Return Missionary. I don't advertise. We have one child and will likely have others. We agreed before we were married that the children would be raised LDS, and that I would help as I could, but that if they had any confusion on my particular stance, I would explain it to them open and honestly. I go to services with her, but only the first hour (sacrament meeting) and I usually read a book during that time. Most of the church is aware that I'm a non-member, and are quite baffled both by me and by our marriage. Some people seem to be constantly on the look out for some kind of subversion that I might be planting, but for the most part we are well and warmly received. :)

My wife has struggled from time to time with my lack of religious beliefs, especially since there is such pressure in the LDS tradition for all their temple ceremonies and whatnot. I could probably be swayed, if for nothing else then domestic bliss on this one aspect, but I'm not interested in being a hypocrite to myself and I'm really not interested in trading my comfy underwear for their antiquated "garments". Me boys like their support! :D
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I don't know how you do it, RobRoy? I have two young sons and my wife is a luke warm believer. I tolerate the occasional prayer before a holiday dinner (by her family, the wife never does), but I will not let me boys go to church until they are old enough to figure out that some adults believe weird things. Looking in from the outside I get nauseated by the indoctrination children are subject to by any religion. I would fight anybody who tried to get my kids in church at their age.
 
fuelair said:
The important thing is that he does get his PSA tested as often as the Dr. recommends - and worry if it rises - especially if it goes from the twos to four or higher. Thanks to my doctor doing that I am now prostate and cancer free. A friendly suggestion, also:If the urologist does the (painless) needle test and says "it shows only one small group of cancer cells - you would almost certainly be safe for at least five years, but.....", go with the "but..." (The but turned out to be a tumor about 1.5 cm^3 that was rght on the point of breaking through the prostate capsule which is NOT A GOOD THING!!) Best to you both - you keep track of your possibilities too!!!
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All well-taken and well-spoken points. He's going in for a colonoscopy Monday. The state has a grant program and he got in, so it's free. :) His doc says every 50-ish man needs to get one, and if it's clear, he won't need another for a few years.

He's actually really good about his health, about eating properly and getting check-ups, and he doesn't hesitate to visit his doc if something odd is going on that we can't puzzle out or that needs to be seen about.

But I do appreciate your advice and concern. :)
 
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