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Married to a Christian.

If you are married to a Christian is it possible to have a lasting relationship?

Runabout1952 4 Apr 13
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Yep.

argo Level 4 Apr 19, 2018
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Since my recent deconversion, my wife and I have been trying to make it work. Thus far we're coming through, but we haven't really settled the new "religious" differences, so we'll see. We're not out of the woods just yet.

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As @Coffeo suggests, the more liberal the Christian, the less problematic the relationship in that regard. However I was once married to a rural Methodist, who was for all practical purposes a fundamentalist (maybe a moderate fundamentalist; her church sent her and her friends to Explo '72, the Christian Woodstock, when she was a teen). That marriage ended in her death, not our divorce. My deconversion during that relationship, she saw as unfortunate but understandable. She argued (weakly) against it, in a friendly and respectful manner. But it was not a matter of particular concern on her part. None of the histrionics you sometimes hear about, the whole "now I'm married to an icky atheist, I didn't sign on for this, you decieved me" routine.

I think this was in part because for different reasons we had both drifted away from church somwhat by the time we met and married, and our relationship was not based on that shared experience in any deep way. I was drifting away because of my own doubts, and she was drifting away because she was physically not able to keep the kinds of obligations most such churches expect: regular attendances at at least 2 to 3 services per week, volunteering for various things, going to women's Bible studies and the like. Her symptoms were highly variable and unpredictable and untreatable, and it made any sort of social involvment dicey. It also revealed the unloveliness of fundamentalist demands for your attention and time; if you couldn't provide them, they had no interest in you. Behold, how they love one another!!

Also, toward the end, just coping with her illness and staying alive occupied her attention and energies, she had way bigger fish to fry, practically speaking, than whether or not I was believing in her god. Illness tends to focus you on what's really important.

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In some cases. My wife and I have just celebrated our 40th anniversary. She describes herself as a Christian (specifically Anglican), and wants a religious funeral service in the event that she pre-deceases me. But she is no longer a church-goer and can't stand fundamentalists any more than I can, so she's a pretty easy sort of Christian to get along with. A while back she wanted to find a particular psalm, but had to go online because she couldn't find the bible. (I found it later.) Some Christians are OK. 🙂

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