In the Poll asking if non-religious would approve of a religious spouse bringing up your kids in their religion I am surprised to find people saying they would be unlikely to be in a relationship with a ‘quite religious’ person.
The reason is I don’t think you choose who you fall for. I’d feel more kinship with a girl who is an Atheist, but whenever I’ve fallen for someone it is without having a clue what their religious beleifs are. So I thought a poll is in order. We don’t have enough polls! Need to keep making polls!
Well, there is pursuing and dating, and then there is building a life with someone. One of the first people I dated was attractive, funny, and in many ways compatible with me. But he didn’t want to have sex because of his dumb religion. So we weren’t a match, because I did want sex and I thought his reason (which obviously was important to him) was stupid. Why would we have continued dating?
Likewise, I was in a serious relationship for several years, and it was great “practice” for finding the man of my dreams. But there were several reasons why it wasn’t built to last, and his religion was part of it.
If my hubby suffered a brain injury or something (can’t think of anything else that would cause it) and became very religious, it would be hard to stay with him. I would try to keep things amicable, since we have children, and as long as he was OK with equal time, I’d live with that. But if not for the kids, I’d have a hard time staying attached to someone who was hardcore religious. If he came to me and said he believes in a prime mover, or hell, something that doesn’t put him philosophically out of alignment with me, like Buddhism or Wicca, I’d be much more OK with it.
Honestly, I’d be cool with just about any form of belief or non-belief as long as they weren’t trying to push it on me or anyone around me, or insult me or others over it. I’d much rather be with a woo-woo believing pagan fluffy who was respectful of others than a militant, offensive anything.
I don’t expect my partners to share my views any more than I expect my friends to do so; actually, I reckon that it’s impossible for two people to have identical religions, as I view religion as an individual experience on which we slap collective labels for ease of communication.
But I’ve stopped dating guys and being friends with people who tried to “convert” me to their own label (from atheist to born again passing through monotheistic, politheistic and atheistic religions). I come from a culture in which religious views are a perfectly fine conversational theme, I’m fine with listening to your views and telling you mine - but Ad Hominem and conversion attempts are the end of any conversation.
I can humour strangers,acquaintances, and friends, but there’s no way I could live with someone who was religious and humour them full-time. My ex left his religion before we even met and no longer identified as religious, yet he still brought some unpleasant habits* to the relationship that he learned in his years as a believer. Eight years of that was enough to change my original opinion, which was that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and I should accept them for who they are.
Specifically, “the man is the head of the household and the woman should obey him”. He’d pull that crap from time to time and I blame the years he spent learning it from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and prior to that from the Catholic church.
I’ve given up trying to build a relationship with men who don’t share my views on politics, religion, etc. It just doesn’t work for me. I have friends with differing viewpoints but that’s not the same; for me, a committed love relationship has to be deeper and it’s never worked with men who are more conservative than me or who are religious. Avoiding certain topics or arguing about certain topics is just not how I want to spend my time.
All the guys I’ve dated have had the same religious views as me - that is, “Whatever you want to believe is fine, just don’t try to convert me.”
I’ve dated Atheists, a guy who became a Catholic while we were dating, a guy who grew up in a crazy Christian family but was more into scholarly theism by the time we met, and a coupla guys who grew up going to church (like me) and were on the fence about the whole thing (like me).
Religion never came up with most of them. If it did, then it was just a bit of friendly conversation.
However…I guess I would avoid someone who is obsessed with converting me to their religion (or their church, I’d suppose, since I am already Christian). But I don’t think I’d be attracted to that person in the first place.
The real question is not ‘how much and what kind of religion does the SO have’ but ‘how does the SO relate to people in the world as she practices her religion’.
If she’s some kind of inerrantist my-way-is-the-only-way proselytizer, I would run away and leave her to her god, since she seem to have made the decision that her relationship with her god is more important than her relationship with another human being.
I prefer ZipperJJ’s philosophy: “Whatever you want to believe is fine, just don’t try to convert me.”
It’s all a question of degree. I’m not going to church or temple every Sunday and I might get frustrated if she felt the need to attend weekly. It would be irritating to have diet restrictions because of her belief. We could work around anything but I find it hard to imagine that I would want to marry someone whose life was way different than mine, even if I loved them.
I wasn’t sure how important it was that my SO be atheist until I wasn’t sure whether or not he was. That brief, teasing moment of uncertainty made my true feelings pretty clear to me (previously I’d assumed I could meet someone halfway).
Religion never came up as a point of contention for hubby and I. It turns out he’s atheist - something which only came up about a year ago when one of his good friends started really pushing the religion angle at him, which got his back up. I’d been with him for about 9 years at that point and couldn’t have told you what his outlook was if he hadn’t mentioned it, though I’d have probably said ‘agnostic’ or ‘deist’ if pressed.
So it turns out that we’re both atheists but it hadn’t come up as an important point in our relationship until 9 years later - and then only under fire from an outside source.
More important to us was the kids issue: I didn’t want any, and if he’d wanted kids that would have been a deal-breaker. Since we both agreed on that issue, the major hurdle was out of the way. If he’d been religious it wouldn’t have mattered to me as long as he didn’t want to convert me.
I have relatives and friends from lots of different religious backgrounds and convictions, and it’s just not an issue between us. I don’t attempt to ‘convert’ them, and they don’t attempt to convert me, and we get along just fine.
My father (Catholic) is married to a Jehovah’s Witness. They have a perfectly happy relationship as far as religion goes - neither is attempting to convert the other. So it can certainly be done, provided both parties respect the other.
Between 2 and 3 I would try to convert a spouse if she wasn’t Christian but not through the Fundamentalist type of “You’ll Go to Hell if you don’t convert etc.” which will simply turn them off but through education and exemplary living.
I answered the poll before I realized that it was supposed to be for unmarried people only. So I answered it for the actual situation of me and my wife. We have different religious beliefs, but neither is extreme.
For me the umbrella widens as I can’t really separate my own personal philosophy from my spiritual positions; in any event it’s pretty hard, unthinkable really, for me to conceive falling hard for someone who doesn’t share my core values.
I couldn’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t respect me, so anyone who is “tolerating” my Reform brand of Jewish atheism is right out. Aside from that, I go to shul once a week and on the major festivals, and observe the fun parts (like sukkah-building, Purim parties and cheesecake on Shavuot) and a few of the less fun parts (no leavening over Pesach, fasting on Yom Kippur). Basically, Jewish observance is a significant enough part of my life that I think it would be very difficult to make it work with someone who wasn’t able to work with me to find a way in the middle.
I’m picturing a stroppy non-religious atheist sulking in the bedroom with the door closed while I enjoy an elaborate five-course Pesach meal for one. That’s probably not going to work.
Been married 23 years so I didn’t fill out the poll. But I’d say VERY important.
Wife and I are both strongly nontheistic - our 3 kids have turned out to be as well. I would have a lot of difficulty living with someone who chose to be irrational about something like religion. I could imagine being with someone who had weak religious leanings for a “god of the gaps.” But can’t imagine truly respecting someone (in the manner I believe spouses ought to respect each other) if they strongly believed in any particular theology.
