Relationships and religion

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Sloth's picture
Relationships and religion

My boyfriend and I have had very few problems in our relationship. It has always been quite blissful, and still is, despite one main issue...
My boyfriend is a Christian. A weird one, in the sense that he refuses to believe half of the bible, but believes in the Ten Commandments and the god and heaven/hell of the bible. He says our relationship was proof that the god he believes in brought us together.
He was obviously saddened when I confessed my disbelief in an intervening god for not only that reason, but that he said he wanted to spend forever in heaven with me. I told him I didn't believe in any afterlife and it made him even more depressed.

Does anyone have any advice?:(

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ex-christian_atheist's picture
Really the only way I see a

Really the only way I see a relationship between an atheist and theist working is if 1) One of you is convinced by the other, or 2) you just never discuss religion. I can't imagine being in a relationship with a religious person, at least one who lived the "religious lifestyle" because I find it very annoying. It doesn't bother me with my parents and stuff, but being around it all the time would drive me nuts. If you don't get incredibly annoyed by it, the best thing to do is probably just ignore it. The biggest thing would be to not try and convince him, or if you do, only use the Socratic method of asking questions to make him think about why it doesn't make sense.

Sloth's picture
thank you for your advice :)

thank you for your advice :)

Zaphod's picture
Well my mom and dad have been

Well my mom and dad have been together for about 60 yrs. they love each other and my father is a outspoken atheist while my mom is a serious on a scale of 1 to ten Christian i'd give her a 9. They have been together longer than many teenagers think they will live. but they have learned to some degree to make compromises mostly on the part of my dad like the going to church on all days of obligations in addition to once a week visits, no swearing, trying to raise the kids in the Catholic faith ect.. its kind of a I don't believe what you do but I'm going to respect it and who knows, maybe one day I'll be convinced though I highly doubt it type situation. but they love each other for reasons not related to their stances on religion.

I remember hearing my mom say often when I was growing up that she was hoping to be good enough to get him into heaven. I have gone into more detail about their relationship in the past on these boards. You should really take the time to look through some of the old topics.

Jeff Vella Leone's picture
Zap your father is a lick ass

Zap your father is a lick ass, lol
no offence

Your mom must be beautiful then :P

Nah I wont imagine myself with a woman that cannot understand me.

There are no compromises for me, you are either open minded or close minded, i don't wanna live with someone who is not capable of being unbiased about something even after seeing the facts.

Zaphod's picture
My father is definitely not a

My father is definitely not a lick ass, And yes many many people thought both my parents in their day were extremely attractive. I have seen the pictures and this may sound weird but I got to say it's true...

My mom understands my dad, like I said he is outspoken.

My point above was mainly this, if two people want each other enough and love/care each other enough they can make it work even if one is an atheist and the other is religious.

PS. since you brought it up, my mom was one of the most sought after women in the area my parents grew up in. And many many people were upset when she started dating him even more were upset when they got married, partially because she was FBI (full blooded Italian) and he was not.. It was a different era and people viewed their relationship as a mixed one. There used to be pole ironically located in front of a church where where the neighborhood boys would put a notch in it every time my father won a fight and in one week there were 32 notches added to that poll, sadly, eventually the pole was taken down.

When he started dating my mom he said one thing was to be clear, no woman who dates him was to sleep around with other people, she said fine but any man who dated her is going to go to church with her and if they eventually were to marry and have kids, they were to give the kids a catholic upbringing. I don't know if he knew exactly what he bargained for right then and there but he did keep up his end of the bargain.

I used to remember some priest would see my father on the way out of the church at the end of Mass and look as if they were saying a small prayer for God to please guide them through what was coming. He often would have priest avoid him to avoid discussions with him after the first few times of meeting him as he has been known to call them on their bull in his own tactful way (designed for in front of the kids), if they would try to get to friendly with him which was generally how priest approached new faces back then I am not so sure about now.. It was well known he pretty much viewed them as scam artist.. He was also known for sleeping through each Mass but he throughout all those years and all that snoring he still held up his end of the bargain.

My father was like, "So, all I have to do is go to church with my family, let my kids come to their own conclusions while being sure we all go to church together, I never agreed to lie to them about God and I will never agreed to lie to them if they ask me about my beliefs or wished to talk with me about religion but otherwise I will just keep my opinions to myself when it comes to what they choose to believe. To make you happy I am willing to go church with you every day of obligation including each weekend I am around rather than away on business, during which time I can get some good shut eye and for this I can share my life with this beautiful who will be faithful to me, which nothing would please me more than to see her be happy even if that means giving the church a fair shot at convincing my family of all this God hocus pocus." To him, this sounded like a win win, to her if he was willing to do this it sounded like a win win for her. Its about mutual respect and keeping your word and there is nothing lick ass about that. To him he wanted nothing more than to see her happy with who she chose to be married to and to deliver on his promise which he agreed to and she said was pretty much the one thing she felt most strongly about.

Jeff Vella Leone's picture
In the end, after reading

In the end, after reading through all that I still think he was a lick ass lol.

All men tend to be a bit of a lick ass with woman, especially in the beginning.

Beauty is irrelevant when it comes to the matter of the heart in my opinion.
So your father chose loyalty before reason.

Well loyalty goes both ways in a relationship, your father did not need her to make a promise or agreement.
Unless she lets him sleep with any woman he wants, that is.

He was just happy to have the woman of his dreams for "all I have to do is go to church with my family" condition.

The way I see it is that he chose to not have a woman that truly understands him but to accept her how she is.

It works but it is not my idea of perfect love.
Well nothing is perfect in this world anyway so maybe his choice suited his desires better then mine.
I agree "mutual respect" does make a good relationship but i believe in something more then that in a relationship.

I would definitely want someone which can understand my most inner feelings and not give up about that because my girl cannot possibly understand me.
That is me and those were different times.

Zaphod's picture
If she did not keep up her

If she did not keep up her end of the bargain and he did all those years I would agree with you. but she did and he did too...

My mom does understand my father, they just disagree on their beliefs, regardless they respect the deal they made and the beliefs of each other. They love each other the way thy are and don't try to change each others beliefs. I doubt either one is happy with how their end of the deal panned out , but I would say my father made out better than my mom. All said, they do love each other and have been together for a long time.

I would pick on your dad but I suspect even if you did know who he was, your a bastard :P

Jeff Vella Leone's picture
haha, I view the previous

haha, I view the previous generation as an inferior generation with less potential.(brain wise)

I mean I am young and foolish sometimes but the level of stupid reasoning I am surrounded with is astonishing.

I think that my children wil be smarter then me because they are building on what we got our degrees on in their kindergarden.

Sometimes one gets astonish when he sees a baby using an Ipad/Ipod, I don't.

The Ipad and similar devices are made to help people instinctively understand things.

It's the elderly people which find it so hard that even a baby can fare better.

CyberLN's picture
This cracks me up!

This cracks me up!

Zaphod's picture
Hey Sloth, How is your

Hey Sloth, How is your relationship working out with you and your boyfriend? How did he respond to the whole mom smacking incident? I ask because if he is not supportive of you or worse takes her side on the issue I recommend you seek better options.

Sloth's picture
Sadly, it ended up not

Sadly, it ended up not working out. I think it's for the better though :)
We turned out to have many more differences than just religion, and I knew that I would be miserable spending my life with someone who differed in views when it came to not only religion, but was homophobic, sexist, obsessive compulsive, and quite rude to my family.

ImFree's picture
It’s best you did not invest

It’s best you did not invest any additional time in him. Sometimes there are just too many differences to reconcile. Someone compatible will eventually come your way. I wish you the best.

Mythlover's picture
Sloth, I don't think you

Sloth, I don't think you should have major problems, depending on how you both handle it. It sounds like he is not over-the-top religious, and if there is enough good in your relationship, you can get past that. With that in mind, I would imagine that this kind of relationship would take a lot of work. For me, my "atheism" is a part of me that I hold closest, in fact, THE part I hold closest, it is integral to who I am, so anyone I love would need to understand that about me and be able to discuss the various subjects that come with being atheist. You, however, may be able to reconcile your differences, and ultimately it depends on what YOU want from a relationship. There is more to both of you than your views on religion.

Dave Thompson's picture
Sloth, good luck to you. You

Sloth, good luck to you. You have a difficult time here as I see it. If he does not buy into creation, the flood, the exodus, and such then fine as far as that goes. But he is still trying to convince himself of nonsense. I really can't respect anyone who is wishy-washy on this stuff. If someone says they believe, then friggin believe right?. If most of the book is understood to be BS than it is likely the rest is at least suspect of being BS itself.

My concern with a significant-other who picks and chooses from among the text is likely to do the same thing in other aspects of their lives. Kind of a half-assed way of living if you look at the big picture. Think of it this way, you can never be sure that there are not deal-breaker-level aspects of your relationship with him that he is choosing to compartmentalize and ignore because he likes the rest of it in the same way he is cherry-picking among the pure BS in the bible to come up with some fragmentary belief system he can accept.

Then, assuming your relationship goes further and there are children. How are they raised? Are they going to be taught nonsense or rational ideas? Zaphod's father crumbled and gave into his wife's demands for superstition. I rather agree with Jeff on this although I wouldn't call him an 'asslick', I'd definitely say he capitulated on an item on which he should have been resolute.

You wouldn't be asking this question here if it didn't bug you, so I wish you a good outcome here. On a lighter note, at least your boyfriend isn't fully delusional regarding young earth and all that. But this then begs the question; if he understands that none of the foundational material in the book is legit then 'why god' at all?

Peace

Sloth's picture
The relationship ended up

The relationship ended up failing for several reasons. One, because it turned out we were TOO different, and not just in the area of religion. But he began preaching to me daily about the garden of Eden and laughing at all of my opinions. His religious cockiness showed that if we were to stay together to the point of marriage and children, the poor kids would be preached to and laughed at the same way I was.

Mythlover's picture
Sloth, I checked out some

Sloth, I checked out some websites to help you out. The first one is various people's ideas on the subject, and the second is a letter from a man who managed to work out a relationship.
Again, this is probably going to be harder than many relationships, but it all depends on you two.

http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/agnosticatheist-christian-how-to-make...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnshore/2008/09/letter-from-an-atheist-ma...

Sloth's picture
Thank you :)

Thank you :)
Sadly, we ended up not working out though :(
He began to relentlessly preach to me everyday and our viewpoints on many things, not just religion, clashed majorly.

Mythlover's picture
Well, probably for the best

Well, probably for the best then. I'm proud of you, it's difficult to get out of bad relationships. Better that you got this poisonous person (to you at least) out of your life sooner rather than later. This gives you the opportunity to find somebody better who understands and supports both you and your deepest beliefs. Don't worry too much about finding somebody, though. In my personal experience, high school relationships do more damage than good, but you should try to find similar minded people in your area if possible, they can help you through the tough years before you go out on your own.

Lmale's picture
Do you remember what ghandi

Do you remember what ghandi said about christians 'i admire your christ shame so few christians follow his teachings' there are good christians hell i follow some of the commandments the ones that only apply to christians i dont follow ofc.

Kataclismic's picture
My aunt is a widow, her

My aunt is a widow, her husband of thirty years died in 2010 and as a widow she has excellent health benefits but her current boyfriend wanted her to marry him. He is unemployed and struggling at the moment while my aunt works nights at a Toyota manufacturer. Both are Christian though they have a rather different set of beliefs and my aunt told him that she wasn't about to lose her health insurance for a marriage certificate. He has since broken it off because he repents for having sex out of wedlock and refuses to do it anymore. And you thought you had problems. :)

SwollenGoat's picture
Just a bit of advice Sloth,

Just a bit of advice Sloth, from reading one of your other posts you state you are only 16. Do not worry about relationships or spending your life with anyone at this age. Have fun, all that stuff comes later down the road.

Lmale's picture
As a man i can all but

As a man i can all but guarentee you wont find a teenager good relationship materiel they are simply not mature enough and hormones make most dumb as hell lol
Your young youve all the time in the world enjoy it dont be in a hurry to grow up.

ex-christian_atheist's picture
Actually I'm a teenager and I

Actually I'm a teenager and I've been happily married for over a year and we've been together for almost 5. but ya know, whatever :)

msartell's picture
My wife is a Christian. We

My wife is a Christian. We tend to not talk about religion too much, but when it does come up it can sometimes get a little ugly. For the most part though, we just keep to ourselves about our beliefs. Even though I wish we shared the same views as each other. It works pretty well though. We don't try to convert each other or bad mouth each others beliefs. It can cause problems sometimes, but it really is no big deal.
She goes to church on Sundays, I go with sometimes also to make her happy. We let each other do what we want with our beliefs without interfering. I'm happy being with her. I'm currently living in a small town and the main "attraction" is a bible college. There aren't many people here(if any) that is atheist. It can be a pain not having anyone to talk to that thinks like you do around. I guess that's why I joined this site. Anyway, if you two can be happy with each other having separate beliefs you two will be great. If it gets to be a big problem, staying together might not be the best option. Good luck!

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