i am very sad. i ask for grace all the time but i still feel stuck in the same problem. two priests told me i should wait and see how things develop between me and my (non-believer) boyfriend, another said i have to decide now whether to marry him or not, that i cant “sort of” be in a relationship. meanwhile i feel like i need his help - driving to appointments and emotional support since i am thousands of miles from family and dont really know anyone out here. yet seeing him, i want to be affectionate with him and i have feelings for him which i am not sure are sinful. sometimes my thoughts definitely get sinful but mostly it is feelings of desire which im not sure about. what does God want me to do? move away and never see him? what am i supposed to do?
Well, anyone we date, we need to consider as a potential marriage partner. If the person isn’t what we would want to consider marrying, we might want to reconsidering dating.
Assuming you one day get serious and get married, in the best of circumstances, you would probably go to Church on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. He’d probably stay at home.
If you have children, again, in the best of circumstances, you’d go to Church on Sundays and Holy Days, take the children with you while he stayed at home or went elsewhere.
If you marry, if you marry in the Church, he’d be expected to promise to allow you to raise the children Catholic. However, actions and example are everything. Even if he allows you to have them baptized (some atheists would not give permission, and without permission from both, you would not be able to have your child baptized), your child(ren) will see that Dad always gets to either stay home, sleep late and do “fun” things while they have to go to church.
What will you tell your children when they ask, “Why doesn’t Dad go to church?” What if they say, “I want to stay home with Dad. I don’t want to go to church”?
Is your husband going to back you up? Even if he does, his example speaks louder than his words.
Will your boyfriend respect your wishes to stay celibate till marriage? Later on, will he respect your wish to use Natural Family Planning instead of contraception?
Will he allow you later on to put up religious articles in the house?
Will he ever pray with you?
I am divorced, had married an agnostic. I never could pray with him when things got tough. On Thanksgiving, he hated the idea of the word “God” so much that he’d leave the room if someone so much as tried to say grace. Many disagreements we had were over religion.
When we said the Pledge of Allegiance, he’d also leave the room, because it’d say, “…under God”.
I suspect issues will come to a head moreso when you have children together, though, over raising children in the faith.
Is he baptized?
Does he even believe in marriage?
The Church strongly encourages us to marry others of the same faith, and this is with good reason.
I can’t tell you the number of times people on the forum have regretted marrying a non-Catholic and all the fights which have come as a result of that. The Protestants refer to the concept of one believer marrying a non-believer as being “unevenly yoked”. Well, in other words, spiritually, you’d be trying to do all the work.
This may not bother you right at this moment, but I think eventually that it would.
Why not consider dating someone of your faith?
