I'm wondering how many of you, if any, are married to a spouse who is of a different religion to you or are athiest?
Does this in any way interfere greatly with your marriage, or has it never been a problem, or have problems gradually grown throughout the years due to differences in beliefs?
How do you decide which religion to raise your children?
Also, if your parents had problems with it while you were dating, how did you overcome these?
When my parents got together they were both atheists.
My mother became a christian about 15 years into the marriage and is very devout.
Surprisingly, this does not appear to cause any problems in their marriage. Perhaps it is because my father has few vices.
I am sure it would cause a large problem for me if my current fiance decided she believed in god. I don't think I could respect that belief from someone I'll be spending the rest of my life with.
I'm interested in peoples' experience as well, as I am dating an agnostic-slash-atheist. And, as I mentioned in my thread a few weeks ago, my own faith is in a weird place right now - it's no longer what I grew up with, but I'm not sure what it will ultimately become.
By way of example: my mom is a Christian, my dad is not. They've been married for 42 years, but mom says in some ways she regrets marrying Dad b/c she's felt isolated and alone in her faith walk. She's pretty conservative and while Dad never objected to her involvement in church, or in taking us to church, he didn't participate except at Easter and Christmas.
Mom has beat into my head the idea that it's a sin to marry an unbeliever and that I will have a miserable marriage if I do so (sort of ironic since I know she loves my dad and they still enjoy being with each other).
No doubt there are lots of shades of grey in this... so again, would love to hear others' experiences...
Nice to know that the jersey devil is still alive and well. Give my regards to your mother in law. Stories of the Jersey Devil scared the crap out of me as a kid growing up in the pine Barrens.
I'm a luke-warm Jew married to a practicing Catholic. We are raising our kids Catholic with a side of Judaism. Of course it causes problems sometimes, but we have found a path that is working for us, more or less. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Feel free to ask me any questions.
I have a hypothesis (feel free to challenge): that spouses with different religious traditions may struggle a wee bit less to raise kids than a religious spouse + an atheist/non-religious spouse.
My thinking is that at least in a mixed faith marriage, both spouses do see the value in spirituality/religion. It may be tough going to negotiate how to mix the various traditions, but at least there is a core agreement/experience that there is some value to the spiritual side of things.
With an atheist-religious pairing, you've got one partner who might think there's no value whatsoever to spiritual matters, while the other does. Seems to me that childrearing becomes an even harder issue to navigate as far as what kind of exposure kids will have to religion.
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