Would you change your Religion for your partner?

I grew up in a family that didn’t believe in God and my Father hated all types of religion and thought people that were religious were dickheads but my best friend/ girlfriend was a Christian and I started going to church with her and her family and I always wished I could have been part of a family like hers because apart from my sister my parents never loved me and my Dad used to put me down for having Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD and OCD and when I was in church with my best friend I felt like I was part of something and nobody judged me there for having disabilities. I stopped going after my best friend passed away and I went through depression and I tried killing myself a few times because I didn’t see the point of living and I thought nobody would ever truly accept me and love me like my best friend apart from my sister because of my disabilities.

That changed when I met my Wife (Hailey) and she grew up in a very religious family and her Mum is a devout Christian and knows the bible like the back of her hand and while Hailey isn’t as religious as her Mum she wouldn’t marry me unless I started going to church with her because she told me her religion was an important part of who she and my step daughter was so I become a Christian for the second time. I am not sure if I believe in God but I find certain elements of Christianity to be very fascinating and I like the people I have met and being a part of the culture. It also pissed my Father off that his only son became a Christian and married what he calls a Bible Basher so that was a bonus.

Religion is very personal. You don't try to change your partner. If you're partner changes on his/her own, so much the better. I am Buddhist, my wife believes in God but we both think God by definition is unknowable. I was raised Catholic, my wife was raised agnostic.

I'm so sorry you grew up in such a bad family environment.
I can't tell you right from wrong when it comes to this, but I'll tell you this:
From personal experience and from hearing others' stories, it seems to me that whenever a person has a bad experience with something, they tend to turn to the opposite of it. For you it was growing up with bad atheist parents; For me, it was growing up in a seriously abusive christian family.

For a long time, I hated religion, but it was because of my past experiences. I avoided it like the plague.
After I healed (which took over a decade), I was able to come back to the subject and analyze it apart from my personal feelings. I did my research, and became an agnostic, and questioned everything. Eventually I became an atheist, which I strongly feel it was a decision based on logic and what made sense to me. I figured out that there are bad people who are religious, and there are bad people who aren't religious. Religion, contrary to popular belief, is NOT an indicator of goodness or lack thereof.
Because this was such a personal choice that took over a decade for me to make, I wouldn't change it for anybody.

As for your situation; I'm not so sure that changing something as personal as your religious beliefs because someone else told you so is the smartest idea. I know that for me, personally, I wouldn't marry someone who only married me on the condition I changed my own, personal beliefs to match theirs.

I'd advise you to seek your own truth, apart from anybody else's expectations of you. Apart from what your wife wants you to be (she should love you for who you are, without any conditions), and apart from what your father wants you to be. This decision is YOURS, not anybody else's.

Good luck, and I hope you stay true to yourself.

I also wanted to add;
I re-read your post and it sounds like part of the reason you're doing this is to get back at your father. Which is a very understandable sentiment, I've felt that way before. But it also sounds like you have somewhat shallow reasons to become a Christian. You like the environment, you like the people, your wife practically forced you into it, and it's what your unloving father hates... but deep down... do you really believe in it?

What's the point in living a lie?

I agree, Do not convert for the wrong reasons. You need to feel it in your heart. If it's not there, it's going to be shallow. It's a big step. Talk to someone about comparative theology. I studied Buddhism for years as well as a number of other religions, before I converted. Hope this helps!
mike

I wouldn't change anything for my partner. I did that once, for into his hobbies, grew my hair out, etc. None of it was appreciated. It wasn't worth my sacrifice.

Changing your religion is a big step. I still wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't change what I believe, but I would be interested in going to services with him, even to a different religion. A religion isn't just a set of beliefs. It is a community of people who are supportive of each other. Like you said, you felt that you were a part of something and you felt accepted. I think that meets a basic human need, and I'm glad you had that experience.

I think it is great that you go to church with your wife and stepdaughter. You don't claim to have signed on to every doctrine that her church teaches, but you are making yourself open to something that is enriching your life. With her, you have joined a community of people who are supportive of each other. You have your doubts about the great mysteries of the universe, as I do, but you are receptive to the insights that her church offers. I believe every great religion does offer insights that we don't figure out all by ourselves closed off from other people's spiritual experience and heritage. Why accept the mental impoverishment of your father? It seems like you have nothing to lose by moving away from his standpoint and moving towards that of people of Faith.

Keep going, learn what you can learn, take away from it what has meaning for you, and leave there what doesn't. That's what I would do.

I don't see it much different than how I've seen some convert to Judaism, as a way of bonding spiritually into their future spouses family, and a choice in child rearing. My uncle blended himself into the Catholic faith, to choose rearing his family as such. Didn't convert, protestant. He's actually with my aunt godfather to my children. (Because she is, both are able to be). My ex thought he was baptized, but records showed he wasn't. Depends if you needed to, to fulfill a desire for church ceremony. Nothing, uncommon.
I had a tough time with my Catholic faith, based on my fathers and stepmothers behavior, towards me. I didn't complete confirmation, as a teenager.
Searched for many moons, until I made my choice.

I wouldn't denounce my faith, for another, but perhaps, as an act of affection towards them, would share and incorporate rituals or whatever have you.

Seems how this affected your dad, wasn't the primary reason. Unintended, well...in his face consequence.

I did change religion to appease my wife and her parents. Biggest mistake I ever made. The teachings of their conservative church insulted my intelligence, honor, and integrity. I tried to fake it for over a decade until I couldn't do it no more. I left the church and joined its most open critics. I even started a recovery support group for former members on Facebook (got 350+ members). My wife its not happy that I left the church and it put a lot of strain on our marriage. It probably don't help that I joined "the enemy", but it was something I felt that I needed to do.

Our marriage would have been better now if I had never caved into pressure from her parents.

I would support my girlfriend in what is important to her. That doesn't mean I would agree with everything, just support. Hope that helps

No I wouldn't for the most part.

Thank you for the replies and a special thank you to Rose76

It is a bit late to change now.

My Wife and I have been together for over 7 years and we have a gorgeous little girl named Tori that turns 2 in September and my Wife is pregnant with our second child (her third.) I asked this question because I was wondering if anybody else here had changed their religion for their partner and while I still don’t know if I believe in God I want to for my Wife and step daughter and I like being a Christian and the people we go to church with are some of the kindest people I have met and just talking to all of them has helped me overcome a lot of problems from my past. When I started going to church my Wife and step daughter (who calls me Daddy and I love like my own ) were really happy and when I don’t want to let them down and maybe one day I really will believe there is an actual God above.

I know there is a heaven because my best friend is there with my Grandfather now and the fact the 2 women that I have fallen in love with and have loved me despite my disabilities were Christians could be a sign I am meant to be a Christian too. I didn’t marry my Wife and become a Christian to piss off my Father and even though changing my last name to hers didn’t go down too well either I changed that because I didn’t want to be associated with it anymore. As much as I despised what he did to me and my sister when I was a kid I tried to make things work with him after I got married because I thought he might have changed when I found out he had quit drinking but I couldn’t have been more wrong and I have completely cut him out of my life now and I won’t be making the same mistake again.

The only family I want in my life are my Wife, my Sister, my daughters and my cousins and words can’t begin to describe to describe how much my Sister (Kathy) means to me and she has been more like a Mum to me than a Sister and she is the one person that has loved me my whole life and stopped me from cracking when my best friend passed away. After my Father would get drunk and hit me (which was most nights) she would come in to my bedroom and she would look at all the marks on my body and just hold me and she would tell me one day she was going to take me away from there and then it would just the two of us and she did. Kathy and I are still very close and we see each other nearly every day or talk on the phone and she isn’t religious but she understands why I become a Christian.

Growing up I didn’t tell many people I had ADHD, Asperger’s or OCD because I watched children that were more open about having them get bullied on a daily basis and after my best friend passed away it was like every woman I got close to before I met my Wife that seemed to really like me didn’t want anything to do with me after they found out I had disabilities and some of them would laugh about it behind my back to their friends and it made me feel like a freak. Hailey has been very understanding of my disabilities from the day I revealed them to her and she made me feel so much more confident about having them and the people we go to church with have never looked down on me for having them and I don’t feel like I have to hide I have disabilities around them because they look at me and treat me like a person the same way they do with my autistic step daughter.

It's nice to ask other's for advice...and this one is a biggy in my opinion. Bottom line is you have to be authentic or you will be conflicted.... a lot.

I know many many fine admirable people that are atheist and many other people who are believers in a higher power. I think you know this, but do not base you father's actions on to others that have the label "atheist"...that is not even a Christlike opinion. You do not have to be identified as one or the other - it's personal to who you are. You would not want others to make judgements on your labels - ADHD, Aspergers and so on.

Your wife is gets to be the authenic person she is. You love and respect eachothers' shared and individual values...even as the evolve.

I'm glad you are doing so well. Good for you!

I'm a Christian, but I wouldn't insist that someone change his religion in order to marry me. If he admires my belief system and willingly converts then that's fine, or if his belief system is already very similar to mine then it may not be a big deal if the differences aren't fundamental. Also, I wouldn't change my belief system for anyone; since, I'm already fully persuaded that I'm on the right path.

Like you've indicated, you found love and acceptance in the churches you attended. I believe that, above all, motivated your decision to become a Christian. I agree with Rose76 too. Do your own reading and research, learn as much as you can about the path you've already chosen. You may just find that you made the right choice (regardless of what the original motivation was) and that there is much more out there to be discovered.

By the way, as a Christian, my life has been enriched by the positives I've seen in persons of other religions. I'm no longer closed minded because I've come to recognize that no one church or group knows everything about God and life. Something else I recognized too is that my childhood experiences skewed my perception of God. But as I continue to heal and have more meaningful and positive experiences (many of these happen outside of church), my perception evolves. I'm spiritual and inquisitive about life, so if I sound kinda "up there", never mind. I'm a deep thinker.

Punctuation, Bobby...punctuation.

You're conducting your life in a way that is working very well for you and your family. Keep at it. You are overcoming a tough past. Good for you.

I just want to say I don’t have a problem with atheists.

My Sister is an atheist as I mentioned on my previous post and many of her best friends who are also my friends are atheists too and the only things I really have a problem with are alcohol and American media because first of all, my best friend (Jackie) isn’t here today because of a prick who was driving under the influence of alcohol and just over a decade later he is out of prison and is allowed to move on with his life while she doesn’t have that chance and secondly, my Dad was an alcoholic who often beat the crap out of me when he was drunk and I came very close to becoming one after I lost Jackie because I blamed myself for her death but it was my hatred of it that ultimately helped me quit.

I have a lot of problems with alcohol and my Wife does too and her Father didn’t abuse her like mine but he was an alcoholic and he started drinking after her parents got divorced and she would have to pick him up from places around 4 am because he was too drunk to drive. Sometimes his friends used to call her because he had passed out and he was lying in a pool of his own vomit or he had taken his pants off and was dancing around and showing it to people and it was very embarrassing for her and even though she loved him she never forgave him for it. Hailey believes alcohol is largely responsible for most of the problems in our society and I tend to agree with her especially when Alcohol Related Violence in Australia is currently at an all-time high but I don’t dislike people who drink.

Becoming a Christian has changed me in a lot of ways for the better and I no longer see everything in black and white but I will never forgive my Father for what he did to me and my sister when we were young and as hard as I tried I can’t forgive my Mother either because she knew what he was doing to us and she never tried to take us away. My Sister hasn’t talked to our Mum and Dad in over a decade and when I tried to reconnect with my parents she warned me not to and I wish I had listened to her now but I wanted to try because they are my parents. My Father-In-Law made some mistakes before he passed away but one thing I will say about him is he was a decent man when he wasn’t drunk and I have no doubt he loved my Wife and my step daughter because I saw that when he was with them.

My Father, on the other hand didn’t love me because of my disabilities and the fact someone like my Wife could made him hate her too and when I tried to reconnect with my parents he used to put her down too some days and one of the first things he said to me about Hailey was to watch her because she already had another man’s autistic child and was going to use me to pay for the Doctors bills and go off with somebody normal. This delightful piece of fatherly advice was before he knew Hailey had been raped and got pregnant and he sure didn’t mind putting her down for that either and said most women that are raped aren’t innocent and do something to provoke it. This went on for a number of years and he knew putting Hailey down hurt me more than him putting me down and he did the same thing with my best friend and I am better off without him now and my life has been a lot happier without him in it.

No, I wouldn't change my religion for my partner. I was raised in a casual-Christian messed up family, and went to church, but never believed any of it. Now I'm completely agnostic and very open about it, and so is my girlfriend (she was agnostic too when I met her). I wouldn't go out with anyone who was religious because it is unknowable if there is a god or afterlife or anything like that. I choose to simply enjoy life, that doesn't mean I'm a horrible person, I consider myself to be a good person with a good heart. Life is often stressful to me because with my job I feel like I'm not contributing anything useful to society and it seems like a waste that way...but I just want to enjoy my life with my girlriend and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Religion to me (any religion really) seems like a true waste of time. Why spend all this time and money into something you can never be sure of, and angering other people in the process? Just live your life and enjoy what you have. If God exists, how can he blame us for simply being human? Sure there's the Bible, but how can we know for sure that it is all true? We can't. So how can he blame us for not knowing? Also, when God created Adam and Eve, if he supposedly did, why would he make them flawed if he is an all-knowing God and he already knew that they would choose sin? It's like setting us up for failure. No thanks.

This seems like a fundamentally flawed question to me. You can choose to practice your spouse's religion, but what you believe deep in your heart isn't actually a choice, as I think quite a few posts on this thread actually demonstrate. You can go to the services, do the rituals, participate in the community, and say all the right words, but if your heart and soul aren't fully committed, then you'll still always just be going through the motions. If that makes everyone happy, then go for it. Personally I wouldn't waste the time.

No, I could never change. My girlfriend has shifted closer to my atheism, but is still in the realm of being agnostic.

I think it's a very personal choice that only you can make for yourself, not for someone else.

BobbyDavis - Thanks for posting you do not have a problem with atheists. It could have been misinterpreted in your previous quotes.

No sure how much we are allowed to discuss in this forum... I found this quote recently..there is more to the quote if you care to look it up..but I feel I can post this much without stepping on the rules.. from Sam Harris:

"There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences.

There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind.