A Friend asked me this question and my first thought was "No, it can't". But, after thinking some more, maybe it could but it wouldn't be a happy marriage, or could it? As an inactive person myself, being married to a non-member would certainly be a plus. What would it take to make a marriage like that work?

SusieQ#1 can answer this.

Yes, sometimes. It has a much better chance of working for an inactive as opposed to a TBM. One of the problems is that sometimes inactives get reactivated once they get married, or especially when the kids come along. The fact that their spouse is not Mormon starts to wear on them. Plus there is usually pressure from TBM family members for the nonmember to convert. It is for this reason that we normally do not recommend marriage between a believing Mormon and a nonmember.

It isn't like a typical inter-faith marriage between other faith religions. Like Catholicism, or Protestantism, Judaism, or Lutheran etc. It never quite fits between the non-member and member. The more active the member the more pull and tension there will be to convert the non-member.

My children's father was Catholic. Right up to our marrying I had the RS visitors come to my home begging me not to marry him, telling me it would never work. They were both married to inactive LDS, and told me how difficult their marriages were being married to inactives. Their husbands never could quite support them or their children in their church life. The women never felt like they were equally yoked. And there they were telling me who to marry?

Sadly, they were right about my ex. I doubt it was merely a religion thing, although the religion factored largely in our marital discord. He brought some things to the marriage I didn't foresee or anticipate, and it was for the best we split when we did. The Mormon factor was definitely a wedge, but by no means the only one. He mistakenly believed by marrying a Mormon he was going to get an automatic subservient doormat for a wife. Boy, was he wrong there!

Question for Sunbeep: Do you really consider yourself an "inactive" member, or "over it?" Because I consider someone who is inactive but still a member somehow still vested in the religion, who ascribes to some of its teachings, like both my parents did in their later years.

Someone who has left the religion altogether but who just didn't bother to remove their name from the member rolls by resigning, is that really inactive? I don't see them as being the same thing if you've mentally checked out.

If you're only a member in name only, how do you see yourself as inactive? That infers you might be reactivated at some future point. I would see your name on the rolls as "dormant," because you didn't bother to remove it when you consciously made the decision you no longer believe in its fallacious teachings.

I may be in a unique situation with my marriage to an active member.

-- We are outside of the Morridor.
-- She is a convert, as is her sister and mother.
-- Her sister is married to another convert.
-- Friends and in-laws are all a mix of members and non-members.
-- I compare quite favorably to my wife's RM ex, who everybody agrees is an a$$ and who would beat the most extreme Minnesotan in a contest of passive-aggressiveness.

All that being said, we have had some issues about our different views of Mormonism. In the four years we've been married, virtually every argument we've had has been related to my unwillingness to convert, despite me stating before we married that I would not.

She has almost reflexively suggested that we should have never married or that we should be divorced. I say reflexively because when I've called her on it she seemed to genuinely not realize what she was suggesting until I repeated it back to her.

She insists that I am her blessing for a faithful life, and we have settled into a fairly comfortable status of agreeing to disagree about the church. That pretty much consists of me biting my tongue whenever she, or some other member in our circle, raves about the wisdom of some doctrine or the "truth" of the BoM.

I've had a lot of practice growing up a non-believer in a family of devout Catholics, so it is very easy to let overtly religious and insensitive statements (i.e., suggestions that I am in league with Satan) to usually run off my back. They don't even realize most of what they say, and probably don't mean half as seriously as it sometimes sounds.

I love my wife, and know that she loves me. That makes it a lot easier for me disregard a lot of the noise the church has conditioned them to emit without thought.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2016 09:46AM by GregS.

Yes, it can.
But the odds are certainly against it.
Those who have defied the odds (some of them are here) have worked really, really, REALLY hard at holding it together.

Yes, it can. I was married for 30 years to a non member. I think it helped that I was a member when we got married and he knew I was going to raise the kids in my same religion and knew "who" I was prior to marriage. He was supportive in my beliefs and occasionally went with me, sometimes just to help with the children. Do it cause some issue's? Yes, but we always knew we wanted to be together so the issues were nothing that caused huge conflict.

Having said that, the last 10 years of our marriage I had left the church and thing's were even better. I was free to love him for who he was in a deeper way then before. One of my biggest regrets with the church is not leaving sooner. And the only thing DH said to me was, "I'm surprised it took you so long."

I have a good TBM friend who has been married for about 15 years to a neverMo atheist (he was an atheist when they met). They have five kids and have always seemed genuinely happy to me. Despite once telling me that he believes "All religions are equally stupid," the hubby has also raved in the past about, for example, "All the charity work the Mormon church does," etc., so eve though I can't see the guy ever converting, he clearly has sipped at least a little of the Kool-Aid. He also is letting their kids be raised TBM.

It probably helps too that they live in the SF Bay Area. My friend once told me that there are "several" other women like her in her ward here: Mormon but married to neverMos. Therefore, she said she doesn't experience any social disapproval at church.

I had a couple come into my Catholic store. She was a Mormon and had started RCIA to become Catholic. They have been married for 37 years.

It's a good idea in marriage to be compatible in the important area of religion.

Could both spouses agree to compromise? Yes, but that would require tricky negotiations and probable discord.

I've been happily married for nearly 6 years to the LDS man I was engaged to back in the 80s when I was a very believing young single. Granted, he's less active, and I'm good with that, but we have to make a conscious effort to overlook our differences on politics and religion.

He claims to really believe in the church, he just fell out of the habit of attending, especially since he'd be going alone for the first time in his 50 + years.

I think it is easier when the difference is clear from the start, than when it starts as a temple marriage, and one person comes to see the fallacy years down the line.

Yes, it can. For years I was the TBM while my wife was inactive and though she hadn't resigned (we didn't eve know about that at the time) she didn't consider herself a member.

As others have stated, the odds are against it. Here are a few things that the TBM gets to look forward to when going to church with an inactive/non-member spouse:

- Being told on a regular basis that they should leave their spouse.

- Being asked "how are you coping?" from people who assume that your spouse is making your life hell because they don't believe the way you do.

- Not getting "good" callings because people assume there must be something wrong with you because you haven't been able to get your spouse to attend with you.

- People openly or subtly hitting on you in an attempt to get you to leave your spouse for them, since they are so much more worthy.

- Being invited to functions without your spouse since they "wouldn't feel comfortable" as if a non-member is incapable of normal social interaction (OK, let's be honest, non-members feel uncomfortable at Mormon functions because they are capable of normal social interactions and many Mormon's aren't, so they may have a point on this one.)

- Bishop's, Parents, well meaning condescending snobs giving you constant advice on how you "need to set an example", "maintain your standards!", and basically any statement they can come up with that boils down to "It's your fault they aren't a member, your family's salvation depends on you!".

The non-Member spouse gets to deal with the following:

- A spouse that is never home because there is always some church function that is taking their time.

- Wondering why, when they are home, they are reading church materials to come up with a lesson, a home teaching or visiting teaching message, etc. instead of doing something fun or doing something together.

- Helping to create some (usually cheap) crafty item to be delivered to someone else, but not actually delivering it, because that would be awkward.

- Receiving notes/cookies/cheap crafty item from complete strangers about how they are loved and how great it would be if they would just relent and come back to or join the church.

- Awkward meals with missionaries when it's your spouse's turn to feed them.

- "Discussions" over how the kids will be raised, who's religion will be taught to them, if any, and constantly worrying about what's being said to the kids by teachers at church ("Non-members are all but evil incarnate, this is important)

- Constant worry that your spouse is going to up and leave you for the "Perfect Mormon" spouse you're worried that they secretly wished they had married, no matter how much they state otherwise.

- Awkward visits from the in-laws who make passive aggressive comments suggesting that all your problems in life, marriage, work, etc would all simply go away if you were a good member.

Really, it can work, my wife and I made our marriage work, because we do love each other and that meant more to us than religion did. But it isn't easy and the church does everything it can to either convert the non-member spouse or break them up. Often, they don't bother too hard with the conversion attempt and work on breaking the couple up.

After awhile of dealing with all the crap, I went inactive myself, even though I still believed, I just wanted to believe without constantly being told that my marriage must be horrible and my wife must be an evil person who I should leave because she didn't want to go to church with me. I didn't care about that, it wasn't why I married her... So our marriage survived. I'm glad it did.

23 years and counting. My wife is a RM. I grew up Methodist, but figured out early that there were too many things that didn't make sense, logically and scientifically.

I did not know anything about Mormons until I got married. Enter the internet. My wife was active, but we moved around a lot and she is now inactive. I'm sure she still believes, but it is just not one of those issues we discuss.

I'm skeptical by nature and always fact check and issue if it doesn't sound right. When I was doing my research and the BOA came up supposedly written by Abraham himself, I'm thinking why have I not heard of an ancient manuscript that is older than anything known? Well, we all know that it isn't real, that's why I hadn't heard of it.

My wife's family did not know me before we got married, I only met my future in-laws one time, and we got married at the JOP in the state I was living in at the time, and there is where we settled for the first few years of married life.

Just to be clear, my in-laws treated me very well, and never pushed the religion button on me. I think they just wanted there daughter to be happy, and my wife is the only 1 (of 8) that the in-laws didn't have to worry about.

Yes, it can, however, it requires an ability to accept each other regardless of their religious belief. If one or both become "Right Fighters", there is not much point in a marriage as no one is willing to compromise and give and take.

I've written a long article on how I made it work with a believing husband.
REPOST-Long: Staying Married-How I made it work with a believing husband.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1584358,1584358#msg-1584358

I have a friend who served a mission who told me that it does not matter to him what religion his wife associated with as long as she taught his children good values. He is by far the only Mormon I know to have an open mind and that kind of tolerance. It came from his upbringing --- he was born and raised in Utah to Mormon parents. His parents went against the norm, however, and decided they were going to allow their children to decide what was right for themselves and they did receive a lot of backlash about that from their communities.

He's been to BYU and has seen bullying amongst non-LDs and LDS men who have not served missions. He even walked in on an orgy with relief society and elder's quorum president there. He even had premarital sex. He's active in the faith and some times doesn't even wear his garments because "the Lord is forgiving." He's questioned his faith a few times, too like why heavenly father blesses some and not others and the WoW.

I've decided at this point that an ex-Mormon would be more compatible for me.

Ours has, now in its 22nd year.

On the other hand, we're both tolerant liberal Californians in the Bay Area, the ward in question is also a reasonably relaxed and tolerant one, and my spouse was an adult convert and the only Mormon in the family on both sides. So it's been easy, really. Doubtlessly a very different situation if one partner were from a TBM family in the Kingdom. (Spouse lived in Stansbury Park, Utah for two years before our marriage and HATED it, a conformist theocracy, fled back to California.)

Which I would have seen before I became involved...

https://youtu.be/dseElYxoEZM

That depends totally on what kind of Mormon the member is IMHO. When I met my Catholic wife she learned early on that I was a Mormon but also that I was a hell raiser. I never once took her to church...or in any other way tried to Mormonize her.

RB

Hell..even an inactive member cant be married to a tbm..ask me how i know.after 40 yrs.

Mormonism is a Hyper- intrusive faith & culture, few 'free-thinkers' survive the over-the-top micromanagement.

It might be easier to tolerate outside the Moridor, but Alpha types (male & female) can be Hell On Wheels when they focus on a vulnerable (part member family, life crises, et al) individual.

I Swear those Alpha-type people can smell a vulnerable person/situation a kilometer away...

DH and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last October. I met him in the Mormon church, was deeply impressed with his kindness, integrity, intelligence, and oh, yeah - he is bilingual, just like me!

About 12 years ago, I couldn't tolerate the Mormon church any more. I had found this site, and with the kind help of the members and the late, great Kathy Worthington, I realized that I could resign - and did.

At first, my DH was terribly upset. He was afraid that we would not be together in "eternity." After I resigned, he stopped attending - not because he stopped believing, but because he did not want the issue of religion to come between us.

I occasionally attend a local Presbyterian church, because that's what I grew up with and feel comfortable there. And DH attends with me.

What's most important - and this sometimes amazes us - is how much we love and cherish each other. Just being together is so special! We are well aware (having both been married before) of how very lucky we are, to have found each other and to love our life together.

Yes, we have been married almost 20 years. I am Catholic and my Dh is LDS. He was elder's quorum president when we got married and i attended for a while after we first got married as I tried to be supportive but soon realized I was not happy and stopped going. I disagreed with too much of what I saw. My Dh never tried to convert me and would never have believed it if I suggested it. Having kids actually deactivated my Dh as he realized family was more important. He still believes but does not attend any longer. You have to respect each other if it going to work and compromises are made.

To every non/exMo who is married to a Mormon, thank you for sharing your stories and wisdom.

As long as the non Mormon gains a real testimony that the Church is sincerely the most honest and truthful true church ever then it can certainly survive because the non Mormon will become a Mormon :)