When an Atheist marries a devout Christian

Debate Room
1

After almost 25 years of being together, my wife has returned to Christianity (she was raised a Catholic, but rejected the church and Christianity in her late teens). In the space of about 6 months, she has literally become addicted to her new found faith and beliefs, starting off with just attending Sunday church service, then soon after attending early morning prayers every Wednesday, then becoming baptised, then attending bible reading every Friday night, then becoming a full member of the Church, and now most recently being elected to the church committee and attending weekly and monthly committee meetings and doing lots of work at home as the committee secretary. This is all on top of praying for 30 minutes every morning, and reading the bible for an hour or more every night.

I have never really thought too much about religion before my wife become so engrossed in it, but now that I have been pulled into it, I have quickly come to despise religion and every thing it represents (I believe religion is the primary cause of most of the suffering and bad things that happen in the world). I also strongly resent the fact that my wife donates money to the church every week, (most if the money donated go to paying the salary of the paster). My wife gave up full time work on the premise that she needed to destress, and she would find a part time job, but she now doesn’t want to work at all because it would interfere with her religious pursuits. So in effect, I am working long hours in a very stressful job, to pay the salary of her pastor (not happy!).

Her church activities have seriously curtailed our personal leisure activities i.e., going to church and all of her bible reading and prayer sessions take precedence over anything that I might like to do together such as going camping on the weekend, or going out for dinner on a Friday night.

I’m sure others have experienced something similar. How have you dealt with this?

2 Likes
2

Wow! Looks like you have some decisions to make. What do you want the rest of your life to be like? Do you have a partner who is willing to work with you?

You don’t want to ask me. I was only married for 6 months. Once the honeymoon phase was over, my wife decided she wouldn’t work. Then she began insulting me, in subtle ways, and talking to her friends about our relationship; gossipy stuff. Once I caught her with cocaine. She had it in her purse when we went on vacation. She crossed the Mexican border with it, and I was with her. After that, I sat her down, and told her, “This is not working out. I will not allow myself to be treated as you are treating me. I will not go through the rest of my life like this. It stops or I end it.” I filed for an annulment soon after.

One of the happiest moments in my life was the day I got married. The saddest day was when I sat down and told my wife, this was not working. I crushed all my future hopes and dreams. I faced the reality that I could not make it work no matter what I did. I failed. It was crushing. And with that said, I would do it all again in the exact same way. (But that is me and my experience.)

This is an unfortunate situation to be in. I know some others on the site have dealt with similar situations. Perhaps they will share.

I think the most important thing you can do is to take care of yourself. Get sleep, exercise, and stay healthy. You can not make a good decision if you are not in a good physical and mental state. Take care of yourself. Life continues and all you get to do is make choices. I hope things work out for you.

SIDE NOTE: (Someone asked me to check the papers previously. The annulment was filed and accepted based on irreconcilable differences." (Perhaps that’s just California for you.)

3

We have been together for almsot 25 years, and had lots of ups and downs, but mostly ups and have built a great life together. I love her dearly. We were always very likeminded about religion i.e., others can practice it if they want, but don’t push it on me. So it came as no small surprise when I found out that she had returned to Christianity, but in the beginning I was able to sort of ignore it, but it’s now taking over her life and by default it is pervading our lives. She would never push it on me out of respect and knowing what my feeling towards religion are, but she is also not understanding (or maybe admitting) that when we cannot do things as a couple because of her religios activities, and it is me working to pay the salary of her Pastor, she is in fact forcing it on me.
I am sure there are lots of mixed Atheist / Religious couples who have made it work, and so I looking for ways and means to move forward, as I cannot bare the thought of losing her.

2 Likes
4

Howdy, Shane. Welcome to the AR. Sorry it has to be under such unfortunate circumstances, though. Sounds like you have some major decisions to make in your near future. How recently did she get “born again”? And, if you don’t mind my asking, what age bracket are you two in? Seeing that you’ve been together almost 25 years, it stands to reason neither of you are “youngsters”. So, with that in mind, I’m sitting here wondering what (if anything) happened to cause her to seek comfort in the church?

See, from my personal experience, there was a brief period back in my earlier years (mid-twenties) I was going through some highly stressful personal difficulties. And during that time, a good friend of mine invited me to his church in an effort to “help me with my problems”. Got sucked in after only a couple of visits. Even went so far as to get re-baptized. (My first baptism was at age 8.) Then I became an assistant leader for the Youth Group. Over the course of several months, the church was my only focus outside of work. Wasn’t in any sort of steady relationship at the time, so nobody else had to “suffer” with my church activities taking up all my spare time. Kinda hard to remember now, but I think it all lasted for maybe a year until my shift and off days changed, thereby preventing me from attending church and youth group activities regularly.

Here’s the thing, I never really felt comfortable with all the religious stuff from the time I was 7 or 8 years old. Hell, even during that time period I just told you about, I never really felt at ease in the church, especially during the Sunday bible study discussions. I rarely participated in any of them. Just mostly sat and listened to everybody else. Hindsight being what it is, when I look back, I can safely say I was there primarily for the feeling of “companionship” with people who seemed to actually care about me. When it came right down to it, though, the whole God and bible thing NEVER sat well with me. Too many inconsistencies. Too many contradictions. And too much hypocrisy from those who claimed to be the most “faithful”. So, once I finally got away from the church again, I did my best to avoid anything related to religion as much as possible. Was just too uncomfortable a subject for me. Long story short, I was (thankfully) finally able to fully break free from my Christian indoctrination near the end of 2017. Haven’t looked back since.

I tell you that story because even though I never felt comfortable with religion, the stresses in my life at that time left me vulnerable and seeking any comfort/“shelter” I could find. Therefore, it makes me wonder if your wife was experiencing unusual stress or maybe experienced some type of “traumatic” incident prior to her going back to church. Could be a good starting point in helping decide what to do about your situation. Hope this helps.

1 Like
5

Hi mate, thanks for your questions and experience. We are both around 60 years old (my slightly younger). As I mentioned my wife was brough up in a strict Catholic family including doung all of her scholling at Catholic schools. However, she and all of her 8 siblings turned away from the church as they became adults and left home, and she is the only one to return to the fold (albeit not with the Catholic church). I initially had no idea why she had turned to “God”, until I attended her baptism. When asked by the Pastor what had brought her to commit herself to God and being a Christian; she said that about 2 years ago she realised that there was real evil in the world, and if evil existed, then so too must God i.e., good. She also said it wasn’t a conscious decision to become a Christian again, rather she had a revelation in which God had spoken to her. My wife and I are both very like minded when it comes to having a great dislike towards all the stuff happening in the world now e.g., LGBTQ / Transgender rubbish, Covid, the WEF and UN, Digital ID and Centralised Currency etc. And we have both become somewhat active in pushing back against these ideologies and agendas. But somehow for her that led her to belive God existed and she needed to commit herself to God and Jesus, whereas for me it just strengthened my resolve to keep fighting.

If it was just a case of her deciding to attend Sunday mass which was the case for the first 2 or 3 months, I could probably accept it far easier. But instead, she has literally thrown herself in boots and all, and is almost consumed by being a Christian and part of her church (or as I said her, she has become addicted).

From my perspective, I am now in a 3-way relationship (me, my wife, and her God)

She continually tries to assure me that it won’t effect us, but how can it not. She also keps saying that her commitment and love for me hasn’t changed, and so I should not feel threatened or as if I come second to God. But as I said to her, she will never leave her God, but there’s always a possibility that she will leave me, which she admitted was true. So yeah, her committment to God is stronger than her committment to me.

I told her that in my opinion there are only 2 types of people who follow religion. The first type being people who want to control others and use religion as a cover or excuse for doing bad things; and the second type being weak people who need a book and a preacher to tell them how to live their lives. You don’t need a bloody book to know what is right and wrong!

She has always been a very strong willed and independant person, and yet when I said this to her, she told me that only now has she become strong because that’s what Jesus does for you.

1 Like
6

A lot of this sounds very familiar, I’m a lifetime atheist who’s been married to a devout christian for 42 years as of today, it’s our anniversary. When we got married in 1982, neither of us was very religious, but that all changed after our son was born. She decided that she wanted to go back to church and to raise him as a christian.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, and told her to count me out. We fought and argued for years over the subject, she was convinced that if I didn’t accept Jesus into my heart that I was going to burn in hell. Our daughter was born a few years later, and they did their church stuff, and I worked all the time.

About 20 years ago, I finally convinced my wife and kids that they were never going to convert me, so we’ve agreed to disagree on the subject ever since. Both of our kids have families of their own, and of course they’re all devout believers, and I’m the family heretic, which is fine with me.

Our son’s girls are older than our daughters’ kids are, and they know that I’m an atheist, and have no problem with it.I’m just crazy old Grandpa with the long hair and tattoos. Our daughter’s 2 kids are 5 and 8 years old now, and both have asked me why I don’t believe in god more than one time. I think she still thinks I can be “saved”, but it’s not going to happen.

My wife also spends a LOT of time helping out and volunteering for things at their church, and gives money to them every month, which really pisses me off. She’s gone every Wednesday night helping out with Awana, and is gone for almost half of the day every Sunday.
From my experience, I know that you can’t change other people’s behaviors and/or beliefs, all you can do is try to make the best out of your situation. It isn’t always easy, but you either belong together, or you don’t. After 25 years, I think you know the answer.

7

In my case, I am fortunate that I am very confident that my wife will never try to pull me into being a believer (but I am sure that she secretly hopes it will occur). The same cannot be said for other people in her church. Whan I attended her Baptism (which in hindsight was a big mistake but I did it for her as I knew it wa important to her); 3 people including her Pastor dropped hints when talking to me about me attending church and how Jesus brings joy and makes your life complete. I told my wife that it would be the last time I ever attended any Church activity.

I guess for me it has come as a huge shock, and I am still trying to process in my brain; the fact that after so many years of being very anti church and religion, she has suddenly become a born again (many years ago she was so critical of a good friend of mine became very religious and displayed all the normal hypocrisies that so many so called “good Christians” exhibit, yet here she is doing the same thing).

As I said to her many times, which has caused a lot of disagreement; critical thinking and believing in dieties cannot co-exist, because as soon as you apply critical thinking, it becoomes obvious how many lies and outright fantasies are wrapped up in religion. In every other way, she is a very critical thinker, and yet she does not apply it to her religion or beliefs (I cannot and probablyt will not ever understand it).

There will need to be a lot of compromise if we are to survive, and unfortunately most if not all will be from me, as she has made it clear that her attendance at all of her church activites will take precendence in her/our lives. So I now need to reconcille this internaly so that we can move forward.

8

Hang in there, hopefully you 2 can find a way to make it work.

9

“I initially had no idea why she had turned to “God”, until I attended her baptism. When asked by the Pastor what had brought her to commit herself to God and being a Christian; she said that about 2 years ago she realised that there was real evil in the world, and if evil existed, then so too must God i.e., good. She also said it wasn’t a conscious decision to become a Christian again, rather she had a revelation in which God had spoken to her.”

Maybe it would be interesting to ask yourselves - you yourself and eventually together - questions about the events related to and the thoughts and feelings that occurred that marked her consciousness so profoundly about the reality and existence of evil.

There may be some (early life) trauma that got triggered by the event(s) and or thoughts that made such a deep impression. Which caused this behavior of life.

What did evil mean to her before ? How did she handle evil before ?
Could she share the experience of revelation with you ?

Try to find out, both of you, what revived the fear that made her want to seek protection by going back to what she was taught as a child in church, aka good vs evil equals god vs satan.

The root cause for suffering is fear.

Wishing you the best.

1 Like
10

Evil is subjective, it isn’t objectively real. The actions are real, and the consequences, but our perception of them as evil is a subjective belief.

I was under the impression she had for many years abandoned theistic belief? If so why would you assume she had previously claimed to have experienced revelation?

I’d have thought there are a myriad causes of suffering.

As long as she keeps her beliefs to herself, and respects his right to believe whatever he wants, or disbelieve of course, it might work out, but that is not the impression I am getting.

FWIW I’d quietly and politely tell the pastor that you are an atheist, and have no interest in religion as it is unsupported by any objective evidence, and while you might be happy to discuss religion, it would only be if it could be subject to the same critical scrutiny you’d use for all claims, and tell him you are uncomfortable with attempts at proselytising.

I am inclined to agree, the best you can hope for is mutual respect, and don’t discuss it.

11

No, this had nothing to do with previous trauma in her life. It was very much driven by what is happening in the world now e.g., all of the leftist woke garbage that is being forced on society, the lies, deception and corruption surrounding Covid and Climate Change, the insidious Pride and Transgender narrative. I feel exactlyt the same way as her about all these things (we talk constantly about them and have both become very vocal and active in fighting against these agendas).
However, somehow for her this transpated into “if there is eveli then there must be good, and good can only lie in believing in God and Jesus”.

The 2 things that have shocked me and rocked my world are:

  1. She is an incredibly intelligent person, who applies critical thinking to pretty much everything, and yet if you apply even a small dose of critical thinking to religion, it becomes very apparent how ridiculous it is; and
  2. The extendt to which she has immersed herself in religion and the church i.e., rather than just say prayers every night and attend Sunday mass as most Christians do, she spends around 30 hours every week engaged in church or personal religious activity, plus she has given up some activites that she loves in order to attend church or other activies e.g., bush walking and cyclng, and she has even become distant from a couple of her good friends because she is so engrossed in her church activities.

She definaley will not share the revelation with me. She said it is deeply personal and is only between her and God (and I am also guessing her Pastor also).

1 Like
12

I have made it very clear to the Pastor that I am an Atheist and that I despise relion and everything it represents. He would be under no illusion.

1 Like
13

It seems that those two paragraphs contradict each other.

The rejection of the vaccines and covid precautions is a flag wave to the slide down into maga misinformation and division.

Looking at your post you seem to already accept conspiracy theories and be anti sections of society so it is only a short step to accepting a wholly imaginary father figure who divides into sheep and goats. As that divide is your starting belief maybe you should just stfu and join her. .

2 Likes
14

Well considering the vast majority of “conspirancy” theories over the past 4 or 5 years have now proven to bafact, and the only reason the world is starting to come back from all the garbage and lies being peddled by the left, is because there have bene enough peple willing and able to critically assess each of the agendas being pushed.
The left and the brainwashed sheep, have attempted to equate critical thinking and intelligence with nutters pushing things like the Earth is Flat.
Remember “the vaccine is safe and effect”? anyone who is still peddling or believing that lie is not the brightest spark in the fire, or is on the Pharma payroll.

2 Likes
15

Wrong wrong and wrong. Please advise your sources of information for this statement. I am all aquiver.
Alan Jones? Convict Brannon? Truth Social? Any serious sources you have that the “vast majority of conspiracy theories have been proven to be fact”.

I suspect that neither of you have a critical thinking bone in your body as you have obviously drunk the QAnon and Fox and Friends Kool Aid to the exclusion of actual fact finding.

Which particular vaccine are you saying is not safe? Polio? Rubella? Diptheria? Be specific please and supply academic proof of your statement.

Evidence for this statement as well, as it is inflammatory, offers a false dichotomy and illustrates the accuracy of “the left and brainwashed sheep”.

Here’s a tip, posting unevidenced shite on this forum will get you into a world of intellectual hurt. It also confirms that you and wifey make a lovely pair of the intellectually bereft. There are views all over the spectrum present here. We all have learnt to reference any assertions we make.
You would do well to emulate that process.

3 Likes
16

What quantity is vast majority?

2 Likes
17

Yes, unfortunately there is a lot of lies, deception and corruption surrounding the topic of climate change. First and foremost from the oil and petrochemical industry and their lobbyists, lackeys and errand boys that downplay and/or deny the changes, but also from science denying politicians and other influential people. To deny the solid scientific evidence for climate change you have to be quite ignorant, incompetent, or corrupt. Or any combination of the above. In any case, the climate change denying crowd approaches more and more the characteristics of a cult.

3 Likes
18

You are here making claims that you don’t back up with arguments or documentation. Thus, we can easily turn this around and claim the opposite: The only reason the world is starting to turn towards all the garbage and lies being peddled by the right, is because there have been enough people willing and able to uncritically further and peddle the agendas pushed.

In short: If you want your claims to be taken seriously, you have to back them up with arguments and documentatoin. Otherwise, they can just be dismissed by claiming the opposite.

1 Like
20

You mean, like climate change deniers accuse practically the entire body of climate researchers of scientific fraud?

It is a demonstrated fact that the oil industry have known about and suppressed information about climate change in the past, and that they have been and are actively lobbying to oppose the transition to renewable energy sources.

Well, I am speaking with both my money and my actions, for example: I have replaced my old clunker of a fossil fuel car with an EV charged by hydroelectric power, and thus do not buy petrol or diesel; I have drastically reduced the amount of travelling I do by airplane; I walk or use my bicycle to and from work instead of driving; When practical, I use public transport instead of driving my car; I try to do my part in reducing the amount of unnecessary plastic products I use (including but not limited to using reusable shopping bags and using a backpack to carry items I buy at shops instead of using a single-use plastic bag); I make a conscious effort to prioritise buying local produce and foodstuff, when possible. Also, at work, we are increasingly doing work meetings online instead of travelling to remote locations by car or by airplanes.

What do you do?

Edit: I notice you deleted your reply, but since I finished typing this up before you did, I’m posting it anyway.
Edit 2: Fixed a mangled sentence and a typo.

1 Like
21

I am not aware of any such lies? Though some misinformation was spread to try and resist the efficacy of wearing of masks, and the widespread use of vaccines to slow the spread of the pandemic, but these were transparently stupid for the most part.

Climate change is well evidenced, and pretty much all scientists from the relevant fields agree it is being caused by human actions.

Such minorities have been persecuted for a long time, and now things are changing for the better, I see nothing insidious in that?

What agendas?

Just as applying the same critical thinking to climate change deniers, and homophobia, exposes how those ideas and beliefs are ridiculous.

I thought so, it seems the word woke is being used to demonise again, rather than challenging specific ideas.

Oh dear.

Give me some examples please, as this kind of generic sweeping bias seems like bigotry to me.

That is utter garbage.

More ignorant garbage, what vaccines are you claiming are unsafe, and what objective evidence can you demonstrate to support this?

2 Likes