My boyfriend won't let us raise our future children in the church

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aemcpa said:
That’s not the point. The point is that I will take anything built on (The) Rock over anything built on anything else.
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Because you repeated the word “shack” and used a small-case r on “rock,” I thought you were talking about shacking up with someone you trusted! :eek:
 
aemcpa said:
That’s not the point. The point is that I will take anything built on (The) Rock over anything built on anything else.
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But this relationship is not built upon the rock of Jesus. They are shacking up and having sex before they are married. That’s why she calls him her “soul mate” although he obviously is not even a very nice person.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
But this relationship is not built upon the rock of Jesus. They are shacking up and having sex before they are married. That’s why she calls him her “soul mate” although he obviously is not even a very nice person.
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Exactly. She thinks she has a castle but it’s built on sand.
 
maryjk said:
Actually, you have more than one problem. The first one is that you shouldn’t be living together.
…

This is how the man of your dreams behaves?
…

No, everything else isn’t perfect. Not at all. Not even close.
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Ophelia23 said:
I agree that it’s a deal breaker.

Listen, the man you date and marry does not have to be Catholic. That in itself is not the deal breaker. If he is unwilling to allow you to raise the children in the Church, that is the deal breaker. Why would you want to marry and make babies with a man who will withhold your children’s salvation? How could that even be a consideration?
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These two posts sum it up completely.

Don’t do this. Think long and hard before you invest any more emotions in this relationship. Living together takes away a very valuable perspective on a relationship.

In addition to things already pointed out, you feel a need to snoop on his on-line activity only months into your relationship? Trust is such an important part of marriage and this action seems to indicate that you do not have it, and your ‘boyfriend’ may feel you are breaking his trust by snooping on his on-line interactions.
 
bananas11 said:
Hi there,
I usually google things relating to my problems for solutions, but for the first time, I couldn’t find anything that quite fit my situation.
My boyfriend and I have been together for about 10 months now. We have been best friends for almost 3 years, while crushing on each other ever since :). We have been living together for about three months. I am a Catholic. I’m not as devout as I should be, but I have an unbreakable faith and I believe in and love God with all of my heart.
My boyfriend likes to call himself an “agnostic atheist”. This is fine with me. I have respect for people of all religions. I don’t argue or debate or push my religion on anyone. However, when I get married, no matter who I marry, I plan on baptizing my children, bringing them to church with me, and putting them in Sunday school.
Our relationship is solid. Neither of us have ever had any reason not to trust each other. We inspire each other, play and make each other laugh all of the time, are physically crazy about each other, and have just about everything else in common. Living with him has been absolute heaven… but there’s just one problem we have.
I know it isn’t 100% going to come true, though I’d like it to, but we have often discussed getting married in a few years. In fact I can’t imagine being with anyone else. He is literally the man of my dreams. We both really want kids, and we basically act married now. But he thinks that my religion, or rather the belief in God or anything supernatural at all is unhealthy. For one, he doesn’t want to do with whole Santa Clause/Easter bunny thing. That’s something I’ve always looked forward to do for my kids. He thinks it will encourage them to believe in magic and not be logical. He doesn’t want to put our future kids in Sunday school. He says I can take them to church if I let him tell them what he believes. Normally I would compromise, but I know just what he will say to our children.
He often goes onto certain websites and debates- rather starts fights with other Christians or those who believe in God and the bible. He does this in front of me. I try not to look, but when he’s not home I get curious and google. He dares Christians to come up with any evidence at all. Some of them have some, but of course, he’ll never accept it. He subtlety insults everyone he debates with and tries to belittle them and make them feel uneducated and weak. They can hold their own, but when they do, he gets nastier and nastier. The things he calls them and the condescending way he speaks to them hurts my feelings. I believe in the same things, after all. He claims that the people he debates with aren’t like Catholics, but does it matter when he is debating the existence of Jesus and validity of the Bible?
I have no plans to convince him, as it cannot be done. All I can do is pray. But if he plans on telling the kids that mom is crazy and they don’t have to get up early on Sundays and they don’t have to take the time out of their fun lives to pray, and that can take the easy way out because the religion telling them to do these things is false, I would end up hating him.
Everything else is perfect. I know he is my soul mate, but I feel this slowly eating away at us, and I have insisted that we wait a few years to talk about it, because I am happy and I’m afraid I’ll end up leaving him if the conversation gets too far, but somehow it keeps coming up.
I’m not willing to bend on how I’m going to raise my future kids. But neither is he.
Any advice?
Thanks so much!
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You may not follow my advice now, but you should leave him immediately. He not only has disrespect for Christainity, but contempt for it and its practitioners. It doesn’t matter that he may be a great guy in other ways. At best, he will be resentful of your children’s religious training if you defy him, and he will sabotage your efforts. Without God, what reason will he have for remaining faithful to you as you age? Tell him to find someone who shares his attitude. They are out there by the millions. As things stand, you and he are incompatable.
One chance: Have him read Lee Strobel’s books about the case for the real Jesus, and then the Case for a Creator. Both are powerful, and may sway his thinking, if he has an open mind. 🙂 Rob
 
aemcpa said:
Exactly. She thinks she has a castle but it’s built on sand.
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Work on your metaphors. I thought you were saying that it is better to live outside of marriage (“shack up”) with a good person or within a faith in God (making it a shack on rock) than to be married to someone unsuitable or who has no faith (a castle on sand).
 
My dear, my heart aches for you. For many years, I struggled with being alone. However, I made the choice to wait for the Father’s plan and I have not been disappointed. My husband and I have been together for 3 years, legally married for 2, sacramentally married for 7 months (after his first marriage was declared invalid). He has a beautiful 8-year-old daughter from his first marriage, who calls me her second mother. I have been so incredibly blessed for waiting on the Father’s timing.

I think it is possible that your “acting like we’re married” is clouding your judgment. It is a documented fact that sexual activity causes a release of the hormone oxytocin, which cements bonding between two people. This tends to create issues because it can make a person, particularly a woman, feel “in love” when there are serious red flags.

My husband and his daughter’s mom were living together before they were married, during their engagement. They had already discovered that they weren’t very well-suited to each other and were thinking of calling off the engagement - when they found out she was pregnant. My husband decided to marry her to legitimize the baby and also to be able to stay in the country as he was an immigrant and wanted to be there as a dad for his daughter. The marriage ended 4 years later with her walking out on him.

Please, dear one, don’t settle for this. You are a princess, a daughter of the King of Kings. I know from my own experience that (as a rule) every good father wants the very best for his little girl. How much more does the Eternal Father want the very best for you? My suggestion to you is to seriously reconsider your commitment to him at this point. The sad reality is that it is unlikely, at this point, that you will win him for the LORD. I would strongly suggest that you end this relationship with him, spend 3-6 months in intense prayer and reception of the sacraments, and then pursue a better relationship with a fellow Catholic. You may find it easier to meet one through a Catholic singles group or a Catholic dating web site. I will keep you in my prayers.
 
EasterJoy said:
Work on your metaphors. I thought you were saying that it is better to live outside of marriage (“shack up”) with a good person or within a faith in God (making it a shack on rock) than to be married to someone unsuitable or who has no faith (a castle on sand).
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It’s not my metaphor. It’s fairly common, actually.
 
Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Basically, whoever, even of your own family, stands between you and Christ must be opposed or, in your case, abandoned. Don’t marry–or have a family --with this man.
 
Dump him. Move out immediately. This is not a match. Obviously.
 
EasterJoy said:
Work on your metaphors. I thought you were saying that it is better to live outside of marriage (“shack up”) with a good person or within a faith in God (making it a shack on rock) than to be married to someone unsuitable or who has no faith (a castle on sand).
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For what it’s worth, I read it the same way you did.
 
JackieMom said:
Dump him. Move out immediately. This is not a match. Obviously.
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She needs to look elsewhere for a husband, but this is not going to be easy. When you start a sexual relationship with somebody, to a certain extent you stake the friendship on whether or not that becomes a lifelong relationship that is mutually supportive on every other front, too. When it doesn’t, it is very hard to separate the two again, the friendship from the sexual relationship, and very often the friendship is ruined for many years, if not forever. If the incompatibility is not there, though, yes, that is an inevitable destiny for the relationship. Something is going to have to give, either the relationship or her heart and soul. It is going to cut her to the heart, either way, but yes, it will only be harder as time goes by, and vastly harder if she becomes pregnant with his child.

I don’t mean that she should not stop living with him. I mean that I feel for her and how hard it will be to go through a break-up after having such high hopes and so much on a human level that worked. Yes, you can argue that it was mirage in terms of leading to a happy marriage, because the issue with the children and her faith was always on the horizon, but even though there are fatal defects in terms of a marriage, I don’t doubt that he is a treasured friend. I don’t envy what she has to go through, no matter what she decides. 😦
 
EasterJoy said:
She needs to look elsewhere for a husband, but this is not going to be easy. When you start a sexual relationship with somebody, to a certain extent you stake the friendship on whether or not that becomes a lifelong relationship that is mutually supportive on every other front, too. When it doesn’t, it is very hard to separate the two again, the friendship from the sexual relationship, and very often the friendship is ruined for many years, if not forever.

I don’t mean that she should not stop living with him. I mean that I feel for her and how hard it will be to go through a break-up after having such high hopes and so much on a human level that worked. Yes, you can argue that it was mirage in terms of leading to a happy marriage, because the issue with the children and her faith was always on the horizon, but even though there are fatal defects in terms of a marriage, I don’t doubt that he is a treasured friend. I don’t envy what she has to go through, no matter what she decides. 😦
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It sounds to me that the sexual relationship has blinded the OP to other fundamental flaws in their relationship and even in their friendship beyond the religious issues.

If I had a nickel for every “But I love him…”
 
aemcpa said:
It sounds to me that the sexual relationship has blinded the OP to other fundamental flaws in their relationship and even in their friendship beyond the religious issues.

If I had a nickel for every “But I love him…”
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That, too, but I only meant that there have been stiches in the flesh that are destined to fail. It can be cut or she can wait for it to rip loose and tear, but even the best event, there is going to be pain involved. I really feel for her.

I know someone going through a divorce from an unfaithful, occasionally abusive bi-polar. She’s getting off a roller-coaster that might have killed her if she stayed on it, but it is still painful for her to go through it. So while I don’t mean to say the “procedure” is optional, I want to offer sympathy for what a difficult road she has even if she ends things right away. It’s really going to hurt, and the temptation to wait for a miracle cure are going to be very real. That wait, though, puts her in line for many very bad complications. She does need to leave right away. I’m afraid that if we don’t recognize why she’d hesitate, she might not know we understand her pain.
 
Poor discernment on your part but no blame implied. The young are often confused, frightened, and reacting to things that occurred to them during childhood and adolescence, for which they are (largely) innocent.

If you are Roman Catholic, then you need to learn about your faith. Living with a man not your husband is a mistake on many levels. On the spiritual level, it is considered a sin. On the social level, it is considered tantamount to a guaranty of no marriage in the forseeable future. On the psychological and emotional level, it may very well be the result of abandonment issues from childhood, lack of self worth, misperception of life and its purpose (so hard to have this when you’re so young), a compromise for what one “wishes” and what one interprets one is actually worthy of, on and on.

The vast majority of people (opposite sex) who live together outside of marriage does not result in solid marriage. Statistically, those small numbers that do go on to marriage seem to have a disproportionate degree of failure than those who do not live together prior to marriage.

I urge you to find a good therapist and, first, a good priest. Your situation can be remedied but it better be done soon or you will find yourself in a loveless, angry marriage with children who are suffering as the result of same.
 
EasterJoy said:
That, too, but I only meant that there have been stiches in the flesh that are destined to fail. It can be cut or she can wait for it to rip loose and tear, but even the best event, there is going to be pain involved. I really feel for her.

I know someone going through a divorce from an unfaithful, occasionally abusive bi-polar. She’s getting off a roller-coaster that might have killed her if she stayed on it, but it is still painful for her to go through it. So while I don’t mean to say the “procedure” is optional, I want to offer sympathy for what a difficult road she has even if she ends things right away. It’s really going to hurt, and the temptation to wait for a miracle cure are going to be very real. That wait, though, puts her in line for many very bad complications. She does need to leave right away. I’m afraid that if we don’t recognize why she’d hesitate, she might not know we understand her pain.
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All true.

😦
 
Dear heart, you are confused. It is easy to be confused by someone who is wonderful on many levels - but fails in one. Been there, done that. (PM me if you want details.)

What I take away from your post is that you are waiting for him to change. And he is probably waiting for you to “come to your senses” and give up religion.

You should not marry each other. You should not marry anyone that wants you to change, or that you want to change. That way lies heartbreak and divorce. Ask my mother. 😦

Praying for you,
 
I really don’t like putting you in this dichotomy and I have no intention of coming across as rude of blunt, but these are ultimately, the two you will have to choose between:
  1. A future with this man (who may or may not treat you as kindly as he does now).
  2. The souls of your future children and possibly yourself.
At this point, it seems very, very unlikely that you can have both unless he changes. I say this not to scare you, but to remove any possible clutter and allow you to look at what options I see. And, I think it best to end this before you find yourself in the position of having to deny him while he is on his knee holding a ring.
 
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