Yet Another Doper Relationship Advice Thread

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m sure we’ve done this before, and I’m sure that we’ve covered this topic before, but here goes. (And if anyone has links to previous similar threads, please feel free to link so you don’t have to retype what is probably the same advice.)

We’ve known each other for over a year, and when I finally found a new job, I asked her out. From Day 1, we hit it off. In fact, I hit it off with her better and deeper than anyone else I’ve ever dated. We took it slow, and really savored that New [del]Car[/del] Relationship Smell.

But a month ago, she asked me what my religious beliefs were, and I explained that I was an atheist. I’m not a militant atheist, I’m not in your face about it. She expressed some shock. But by this point, she knew the type of person I was, and that didn’t jibe with her preconceived notions of what she thought it meant to be an atheist. Last week, she was over, and she brought it up again - it had been gnawing away at her. So I explained as best I could, being very serious that it had taken me years to wrap my head around it, I didn’t expect her to do so in an evening.

Well last night, she confessed that she could not see herself dating an atheist. Despite not being a churchgoer herself, and despite the fact that we share the same values, she couldn’t picture herself continuing something long-term with me. What was tipping her over the edge is extensive conversations she was having with her friends, and the fear of having that conversation with her family. Again - she’s not a churchgoer, but wants to be. In our time together, she’s never once gone to church.

I think I still have some time here. I urged her to have more conversations - but this time with ME, as well as with people that actually know ME. Things don’t seem too positive, but I know that our mutual friends are both religious as well as fair - I don’t think she’d been getting that from her conversations. Either way, I guess we’ll see. She’s out of town this weekend, but I’m going to take Sunday and go attend services at her church. I certainly don’t expect to be converted, but I’d like to see if there’s anything of value that I can get out of it. I think that would go a LONG way to help this situation.

The reason I started this thread is to see if anyone else out there has had a similar experience, and how that went, and if there are any suggestions they have.

2

These sorts of issues always seem faintly absurd to me, since your girlfriends attitude really doesn’t exist here - well, outside of really weird sect and the like. If the typical norwegian said “I wouldn’t date an atheist” it would sound…distinctly kooky. I’m not saying this to sound snarky, but to let you bear in mind that my advice comes from someone with no experience in your particular issue, but with a general workable knowledge of the stuff that goes on in female brains sometimes.

Is she able to articulate any sort of coherent reason for not wanting to date an atheist? Or is it all fairly vague, worried statements?

If the former, you may not be able to overcome this depending what they are. You really can’t fix “I couldn’t live with someone I couldn’t share my faith with”, or “I would always be heartbroken because we won’t be together in Heaven” or “I don’t think mixed-faith households are good for children”.

If she can’t, she may just be having trouble letting go of all the stores of worry she has had thrust upon her over her life. If she has been raised with a skewed image of atheists, those feelings of fear and worry may not be entirely rational. Think of it like this: she likes you, but she is (maybe not consciously) scared of atheists. So, because you are an atheist, thinking of you and being with you makes her feel scared, and fills her body with feelings of worry she can’t explain. Her friends are adding to her feelings, and making her feel that the only way she can stop this is to let go of you.

If this is the case, your “enemy” is her skewed perception of atheist. But just giving her the facts may not be enough: you need to sit with her, and listen to her, and let her talk you through why she feels what she feels (note for males: don’t give advice at this point, whatever you do!). If you can just get her to put this into words, it may help her see that her fears are unfounded. Wish you luck.

3

Advice threads go in IMHO, so I’ll move this thither for you.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

4

Is she of an age where she’s seriously considering every man she dates as “potential future father of my children”? She may have strong feeling about raising children in her faith, or keeping a family cohesiveness based on religion.

5

I dated a religious guy for three years; I won’t say it was a waste of time, but we had no future from Day One, since I’m not even slightly religious.

First, I’d say that you probably don’t have a future with this girl, and secondly, you don’t really want to be in a relationship with someone who will never think you’re good enough, and that’s what it basically boils down to (it was the same with me - I wasn’t religious enough, and more than once, there were definite undercurrents of me not being good enough because of it).

6

It’s strongly of the “I’m not sure I can deal with the fallout from my family” sort. It’s a little immature, but she is extremely close with her family. I can understand that. It’s also an element of wanting to grow together with the shared experience of religion/faith, which I can also understand (I was once deeply religious). She’s not in any way “deeply” religious, but if it’s at least a small portion of her identity, I can see wanting to share that with someone. I just need to figure out if I can contribute towards it while still maintaining my own identity. I doubt it, but I’m willing to at least explore it.

That’s currently the plan. Thanks.

Yes. I have no problems with the prospect of letting someone raise my children in a religion - I got a lot of value out of it when I grew up, though I shed the trappings of the supernatural aspects of it (obviously).

I haven’t gotten those vibes yet, but it’s a good thing to keep an eye out for. Thanks.

7

It doesn’t matter why she doesn’t want to date you, she doesn’t want to date you. She may change her mind through the wisdom acquired with age and life experience, but you’re not going to change it for her. End it. And definitely don’t wait so long to share your religious orientation in the future.

I’m an atheist and I only date other atheists/agnostics. I know plenty of Christians who only date Christians. That’s the simplest way to make sure potential dates are cool with your religion (or lack thereof). If you feel that’s too militant, do yourself the favor of finding out ASAP whether the person you’re into is cool with your faith. Unfortunately, atheism is hard to advertise, but there are still oppressive anti-atheists out there. Online dating (like okcupid) is a good option because it allows you to see someone’s faith before you send a message, if they choose to advertise it.

Keep the faith :wink:

8

What if you attend church with her on occasion? Do her parents really need to know you are an atheist? It seems like if you support her in her religion and indicate your willingness to go to church with her on occasion, they don’t need to know the gory details about exactly what you believe. Plus which they can always hope to convert you :wink: (They don’t need to know if it’s hopeless…)

My husband and I are, admittedly, both practicing religious (he’s a believer, I’m agnostic), but we are of very different religions. However, it’s never been a problem because we both support each other in our religions, and try to make it a priority to support the other in his/her religious community. I won’t lie, my husband likes it that I’m religious, but if I were an atheist and was similarly supportive of his religious community I don’t think he would have any problems. (I certainly wouldn’t, but it’s a bit different for me, being agnostic.) And (speaking as someone who is agnostic but practices a religion) I think it’s possible to be agnostic or atheist and grow into a religious community without losing one’s own identity.

Anyway, I think you have an attitude towards religion and towards your girlfriend that is really mature and wonderful, and if she is a reasonable person she will realize that. But it’s hard to figure out that a conception you’ve held your whole life without knowing it is incorrect, and it might take her a little while – it sounds like you’re willing to be patient with that process, and that’s great.

9

Her religion is not just what she believes in, or whether she goes to church when her mom and dad aren’t looking. It’s a culture and a set of practices that outsiders aren’t always welcome to be part of. Most of the (for example) Jewish kids that I went to college with didn’t go to Temple at school, EVER, and half of them didn’t keep kosher (because it’s a pain in the ass with dorm food). They were functional atheists. But they sure as hell did all those things when they visited home. And they never would have considered dating outside their religion (one did once, they ended up breaking up because he couldn’t handle the way they ostracised her).

If she already feels this strongly that it won’t work out, the odds of the relationship succeeding are very, very low. She knows what her family is like, he doesn’t. Even if she herself is not observant, she may still want to experience events that are only attainable if he converts–like a church wedding, her parents’ blessing, and the ability to gossip about her good whateverreligion boyfriend to her girlfriends, without the slightest amount of shame or secrecy.

I’ve read on various forums, more than once, about relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish adults going down in flames. Just because of the Jewish parents’ refusal to have anything to do with a non-Jewish significant other. If the person with fundamentalist parents doesn’t have the balls to stand up to their parents, then any relationship to a non-whatever is doomed from the start. OP just didn’t know it was doomed because they never discussed religion until now. That doesn’t make them any less of a doomed couple all along.

Religious compatibility*, like the desire to have kids and how you manage your money, is one of those fundamental components of a strong relationship that truly is non-negotiable in the long term. Something will have to give in the end, it will either be her or him. After that point, resentment will very likely always be there. It’s similar to how a woman may completely define herself by the desire to have multiple kids in the future with her long-term boyfriend, but then she finds out that he’s adamant about never having children. Well fuck, there goes the relationship. She can lie to him and to herself and say she doesn’t care about kids. He can lie and say maybe he’ll want kids with her someday. But their preferences don’t change, and 5 years into the marriage they divorce bitterly. All over an easily-avoidable issue, if they’d been smart about it and broken off the relationship when they discovered the incompatible interest.

*I’m not saying you have to both be Jewish or both be atheists, but you both have to be tolerant of whatever the other believes in. As OP’s girlfriend is not tolerant of what he believes, it is over for all practical purposes.

10

My first thought is that there is probably more to this. Unfortunately, almost all cases “I don’t want to be with you because of circumstance X” simply means “I don’t want to be with you.” When you find someone you truly cannot picture life without, pretty much nothing gets in the way. I’ve known plenty of people who had strained relationships with girls due to cultural issues, only to find those cultural issues disappeared with the next boyfriend. Issues create exactly as much distance as a person wants them to.

If she’s letting you go this easy, there is a lot more in the relationship that isn’t working besides a mostly theoretical difference in philosophy.

The good news is that if there isn’t more to it than that, and she really does want to be with you, it’ll get resolved. You sound really flexible, and you might be able to fake your way enough to please her parents, provide companionship for her spiritual journey, etc. If she wants to go to church more, maybe you could alternate her church with UU meetings- seeing them both as places to grow as a person and be part of a community.

Anyway, if it doesn’t work out, there is more to it than church. And if there isn’t any more to it than church, it’ll work out.

11

At what point did I say she didn’t want to date me?

12

One thing that does seem odd - she knew you for over a year, then you dated for <I’m not sure how long but at least a month> and the topic of your respective religious views never came up. And then she was “shocked” when you said you were an atheist.

Something is not quite adding up here - I have a fairly good idea of the religious views of everyone I know, and I’m not at all religious. And, if religion were really that important to her, seems to me she’d have been curious about the religious views of anyone she knows well, and certainly someone she’s dating. I know people - my sister and a cousin for instance - who never would have considered dating, even casually, “outside” of their religion.

So I’m amending my position to “something else going on” here. Or, perhaps, she’s had a recent religious epiphany and it’s made her rethink her relationships.

13

When you said in your initial post that she confessed to you that she “couldn’t see herself dating an atheist.”

Since you are an atheist, it was a simple logical step to conclude that she was saying, in essence, that she didn’t want to date you.

I don’t want to say your relationship is doomed, but it’s been my experience that religion (or lack of) is one of those fundamental elements that the majority of people can’t compromise on in order to make a relationship work. Not a long term lasting one, I mean.

14

My three relationships I’ve had:

  1. A Catholic, so much so that he almost entered the priesthood after college.
  2. A Jew.
  3. The current (and last, of course) is a Catholic.

I’m an atheist and while I’ve definitely not kept it a secret to what I believe, I’ve always made sure that any conversation I’ve had with my SO is respectful. I’ve made verbal limits on where my comfort level is. I also let them know that if something is important to them, it’s important to me. Whether that’s midnight mass, or really lengthy passover dinner, or going to get the dogs blessed for St Francis.

And while I make those compromises to them, I expect them to also make some to me. If there isn’t that in a relationship, I don’t see how it could work.

It sounds like Munch’s girlfriend/partner/SO/VELP is ignorant as to what it means to be an atheist. (And that’s not to put her down, some people just don’t know that stuff.) My SO asked where I got my morals if I didn’t believe in God. After explaining morality, what is moral, and using illustrations from Christianity that aren’t what we would consider moral anymore, his apprenhension was assuaged.

So for Munch, I’d have you ask her what are her hang-ups for this. Have her go through them specifically and find out if they are surmountable or not.

15

I think you are doing all the right things. I think you going to services with her is pretty amazing, to be honest.

If she can’t see the value in having a guy who would do that for her (and I don’t mean going every Sunday - but more not afraid to go on occasion) then hopefully that little flaw will make it easier for you to stomach losing her.

I don’t think there’s anything else you can do beyond all the good stuff you’re already doing.

I’m a religious person FWIW but I have never held religion for or against a guy I’m dating. I can see where she’s coming from, though. I have avoided dating some guys because of my family. It happens. Kudos to you for not freaking the fuck out.

16

:dubious:

WTF is stopping her from going to church if she wants to be a church-goer? Did they start charging admission when I wasn’t looking and she can’t afford it? Is she waiting to have her horns and tail removed before she can go in? Are there some knights at the door who won’t let her pass until she brings them a shrubbery and all the garden centers are closed? What, ffs?

What it sounds like to me is that she doesn’t want to be a church-goer, she wants to want to be a church-goer. Basically, she wants to be a good person and she has it in her head that religious feeling/church attendance is part of what makes someone a good person. That’s why you being an atheist is causing such cognitive dissonance for her–she’s having trouble reconciling the part of her that knows you’re a good person with the part of her that’s sure you can’t be a good person if you don’t at least pay lip service to religion.

Actually, it’s not even the cognitive dissonance about you that’s really causing trouble. It’s the cognitive dissonance about herself that’s the real problem. Functionally speaking, she’s no closer to that internal definition of a Good Person than you are, but that’s something that’s pretty easy to sweep under the rug. Except thinking about you and your atheism sweeps that back out and shoves it right in front of her, so she has to think about it.

Unfortunately, this is something she’s going to have to come to terms with or not in her own time.

17

Your OP sounds very very familiar.

When I met my first husband, I was a nominal Catholic and he was an atheist. I basically said, “Oh, we can go out and stuff but I can’t see myself having any long term relationship with an atheist!” The word husband will probably give a slight clue that I changed my mind.

I never went to Mass, never prayed, didn’t think about religion, etc. But I think in the back of my head there was this idea that some day, I would want to do these things. Some day I would have a great burst of maturity or the like and suddenly religious practice was going to be so, so important.

In reality, I think I knew that if I married an atheist I would eventually abandon my religion altogether. And I was right.

So, there could be an element of insecurity in what she’s saying. Maybe she someone without a deep faith, who has this vague notion that the spirit will someday move and she’ll have a religious awakening and she’s a little afraid that a relationship with an atheist will pretty much eradicate any such possibility. Feeling like you should be religious when you aren’t is a rather nasty feeling to have.

So my late husband could have written your post. It worked out, essentially because he just said, “Okay. If you need to stop seeing me, I understand.”

18

Well, true, but Judaism is a bit different, not least because it is not an actively proselytizing religion, and also because the culture is much more different than the mainstream than (say) mainstream Christianity. (I see where you’re coming from – I hail from Mormon culture, which yeah, can we say different and sometimes separating? But I think that this is not necessarily such a problem for the OP.)

Fallacy of the excluded middle? Perhaps she is saying “Wait a second, I never saw myself dating an atheist, because I had this idea atheists weren’t good people… does that mean you aren’t a good person? Oh crap now I’m mixed up, what do I do?” It doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t want to date him personally.

Yeah, that’s what it sounds like to me too. It turns out my high school boyfriend was an atheist, but he didn’t “come out” until college because he knew people would make weird ignorant assumptions about him, because no one where we grew up knew anyone else who was an atheist. I too made ignorant comments about atheists at the time – I think I probably did say at some point “I don’t think I could date an atheist,” not realizing I actually was!

But hey, I grew up, I met some atheists, I found out people I liked were atheists, I figured out more about what I thought about particular people who were atheists instead of assuming things just because I’d always taken them for granted. I’m not saying the OP’s girlfriend will necessarily be able to do that, but hopefully, with Munch’s help, she will.

(And then I became an agnostic, but that had nothing to do with knowing atheists and everything to do with being a Sunday School teacher and as a consequence doing actual research into my religion, but I digress.)

19

I agree with even sven… If she wanted to make it work, she would. She’s probably just not that into you. You’re doing everything right, and if she’s into you - it’ll work out.

If she can’t get over this and the relationship ends, please do not be completely shocked if six months from now you find out she’s engaged to an atheist.

Also, if the conversations she’s having with her friends about this are really as difficult as she’s making it seem (so much so that it’s making her freak out about talking to her family), you have even harder obstacles to overcome than religion. Friends that are that against her dating you (can’t imagine the conversations would have been hard if they were excited about you) are quite persuasive. Regardless of what her family might think of you, her friends are your biggest obstacle at the moment.

How close are you to any of these friends? How tough would it be to win some of them over? Maybe ask her if you could have dinner with her and several of her more vocal friends, that might give you a good chance of getting them on Team Munch.

20

The trouble with a non-religious person dating a religious person is that the religious person thinks they are in the right, and the non-religious person is in the wrong, and the non-religious person should be constantly pressured to become more religious, rather than the religious person becoming less religious.* Look at this ridiculous discussion we’re having here, where non-religious people are discriminated against by the religious with impunity.

Munch, maybe your response to her should be, “Well, I can’t see myself dating someone as prejudiced as you are, so I don’t see a lot of future here.”

*Yes, I do have some baggage about this. I didn’t care for being pressured by my ex-boyfriend and his family.