Wondering if anyone has a successful marriage where you are not active LDS and your spouse is?

My husband and I have been married for about a year and a half (got married in the temple). I am no longer active and we are on the verge of divorce because we can't come to a place where we are both happy. I want someone who doesn't look down on me or pity me or force me to go to church and he wants someone to go to the temple with him and raise an LDS family.

We are very in love, but can't seem to figure this thing out.

I've shared how I did it.


REPOST-Long: Staying Married-How I made it work with a believing husband.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1584358

Sorry, Susie, but it is misleading to say that’s how YOU did it. More accurately, that’s how HE did it. He was driving that train. The TBM spouse is in total control of how much they tolerate a disbelieving spouse. If they do not, there is not a thing the non-believing spouse can do to make it work.

The longer I live, the more I question why people stay together when they aren't in agreement on core issues. I believe people can be happy single or married and everyone deserves to be happy.

Being around someone who thinks lowly of you is a downer no matter how you try to twist the knot. Life is too short to accept being relegated to an inferior position.

My desire is for my children to be happy, period. If they feel put down by their partners, I would hope they do something about it. That might mean therapy or just calling a spade a spade and calling it off. Doesn't mean they hate the other but if they are wise, they will move things on before it gets to controlling through shame, guilt, and other forms of manipulation.

People stay together when they don't make a core difference an issue. It's as simple as that. Easy to say, hard to do, sometimes.
He suggested we: "agree to disagree" on that issue, and that worked. Took me awhile to find a way to share our lives in Mormonism and be kind about it. I had to free myself of any negative emotional attachment to the religion. I changed my mind. I had done that before. I could do it again and be fine.

Read my article on how I did it. https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1584358

It has to do with respecting our personal rights.
Even though my husband and I no longer agreed on religion, there was no way I would ever give up any part of my investment in our lives, homes, children, grandchildren, or our long history together.

I converted in 1961, married in the temple in 1962,left around 1998, resigned officially in 2002. He died in Jan 2013 after a progressive difficult illness. I was his caretaker.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2018 07:17PM by SusieQ#1.

Thank you for sharing your story. Very helpful! I think our main difficulty right now is how to raise future children. I care about their happiness first and foremost. If they choose to be LDS, I will be fine with it. My husband wants it less of a choice and more of an expected thing. It feels like he cares about church more than their happiness. Baptized at 8, missions, temple marriage, endure to the end type of stuff.

But how do we expose them enough to they understand it to make an informed decision, but not too much that they are brainwashed by it? (if that makes sense).

I don't think you can do a middle way with kids. The reason being that the church doesn't respect that kind of half commitment. With the church, it's all or nothing. You're either a believer, or a bad person to be pitied. Except in very unusual cases they make part member families lives very marginal.

I think most kids need to be taught to fear God, otherwise there is a big risk that they will become reprobates, (not all, not all, but most). So it's admirable that you want to raise them in some knowledge of religion.

How about focusing on the good things like serving others, being nice, respectful of animals and teachers, good manners. And don't bring up questionable things that are in LDS doctrine like polygamy, black peoples curse, hatred of lesbians, etc.

And when the kids have questions tell them straight up how you feel about those things. I think the kids will respect your views if you have taught them all the many many right things and showed them how to live a good life.

You can't go wrong on this.

Of course church-supported personality clashes may enter into the picture, but a lot of the anger expressed on this board has to do with church hypocrisy in whitewashing past history. This one was a pedophile and philanderer, that one a bigot who ordered murder, etc. (It seems to hold that such covering up continued in contemporary times, but the church no longer extols such actions as God's command). In other words, things that many if not most Mormons are not aware of themselves.

Yes, they learn a mythic history. But Santa is also a myth, so is the First Thanksgiving; in fact, until secondary school or sometimes later, all of American history taught is "American mythology" (and that goes for the social justice revisionist views as well). So concentrate on the virtues, the prosocial and spiritual values you hold in common. You can keep from being tripped up by past injustices from a point of understanding just as they can from a point of obliviousness and perhaps ignorant innocence. Goodness has no limits.

anono this week Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think most kids need to be taught to fear God,
> otherwise there is a big risk that they will
> become reprobates, (not all, not all, but most).

Complete bullshit.
In fact, the opposite of fact.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/11/05/religion-morality/#f0dc3277aea9

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html

To 'fear god' is to become a person who believes in case there is one.

To claim a person who does not 'fear god' will become a reprobate demeans and criminalizes atheists.

It was impossible for me when I was married to a non-believer as an active TBM. The differences were irreconcilable. Years later as I reflect back it wasn't only the religion that divided us. But it certainly didn't help.

Being a devout Mormon makes it difficult to compromise your beliefs, period. It's an all or nothing type of religion. Inter-faith marriages may work better elsewhere, but Mormon to non-Mormon or inactive w/an active member are going to remain at odds IMO. You're just not equally yoked. If your husband is willing to meet you half-way, and vice verse it could work.

But it takes both of you to want it to. You don't want to be the only one making the compromises to save your marriage, do you?

Some women do. It's a judgment call. In an egalitarian marriage you wouldn't need to though.

Amyjo:
But it takes both of you to want it to.

Both of us saw no need to dissolve a marriage over a difference of opinion over beliefs. The damage would be too severe and nobody wanted that. It had to do with integrity. We we "agreed to disagree" our word was our bond.

My view is that some people just can't recognize that other people have the same rights as you do. We all can change our mind about our beliefs which is about faith.

If one is a "Right-Fighter" it won't work. If one person is resentful, hateful, angry, nasty, passive-aggressive, etc. it won't work.

It takes a level of emotional maturity also that often is not evident when emotional attachments to religious beliefs override everything else.

Truer words were NEVER said. It takes two really mature people to overcome this kind of obstacle as well as real energy.

The Mormon mindset is not really conducive to such a compromise between one believing mate and a non-believing partner in marriage is my point.

You don't really meet very many, if any, successful inter-faith marriages in a Mormon/other faith or no faith marriage.

The ones I've known are where the woman leaves her religion for the husband's, or the husband changes his for the wife's.

When a Mormon mate defects TSCC, the other one typically digs their heels in deeper if they're BIC TBM to their religion. It is the religion that encourages marital division between the spouses to the degree it becomes unmanageable over time. The church actually condones divorce rather than stay married to a non-believer.

Both spouses may be well meaning. But it becomes impossible for them to stay married where compromise is out of reach.

With a BIC TBM husband there is also the problem of his being the priesthood holder aka family patriarch. His word goes inside a Mormon household. So, if he is the controlling type like many Mormon husbands are, unless the wife is able to capitulate to his demands, &/or he refuses to consider her feelings and is disrespectful of her autonomy, the marriage is more likely than not doomed IMO.

Get into marriage counseling quickly. I doubt (from your description) that the two of you will want to move forward wuth marriage, but either way, the counselor will help you stay together or depart with as much dignity as possible. The longer there is a marriage the more property and other issues compound—including children. Best wishes.

A lot of Mormon men, at their core, don't really respect women.

He could overcome this, or he could be the exception, but it doesn't sound like it from what you've written.

If this is a solid part of his belief system, you and any daughters will always be in the one down position.

My dad truly believed that any disagreements we're automatically --she's wrong, I'm right-- simply because my mom needed to honor his priesthood.

My sister an I were denied any financial help for higher education simply because we were female.

Authoritarians make terrible parents in my opinion.

Amen, Dorothy.

I do not take divorce lightly, at all, but in a case like this I'd say you may be better off parting ways before children enter the picture. Once you have a child, or children, if you divorce after that, it will be immeasurably more difficult than if you divorce without kids.

It's a big, wonderful world, love is everywhere, and there are plenty of fish in the sea.

I agree with psychologists and the posters her who say that men who disrespect women do not change.

I know a lot of mixed-religion Christian couples. They completely change religions quite a bit, depending on moves they make, changes in clergy, wanting to be with various friends, wanting a better youth program, going to a closer church building, changing meeting schedules, or whatever. They usually remain within Christian parameters, though.

Unfortunately, I know of very few mixed-religion marriages that have remain intact when one is a Mormon. The Mormon will not accept any other religion, period. It's a cult, and is opposed to all other religions. It demands absolute obedience from the members and their children. No room for error.

Mormons are taught to put their cult FIRST, above the marriage, above the children. Jesse wrote: "It feels like he cares about church more than their (the children's) happiness." That is the problem.

I'm sorry for you, Jesse. (((hugs))) Maybe someday he will see through the lies.

>> I want someone who doesn't look down on me or pity me or force me to go to church...

Well, of course you do. Mixed-faith marriages only work when there is mutual respect.

My best guess is that your husband never saw this as an egalitarian marriage. If you can't find a way to get through to your husband that his behavior is completely unacceptable, it might be best to cut your losses.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2018 01:42PM by summer.

"Force me to go to church”

Ï am not sure what this exactly means, but nobody should be forced to do anything in a marriage. You do not give up your right to being you just because you said “I do."

Ïf you are feeling bullied, shamed or forced to do things in your marriage, that needs to stop now. If he isn't capable of treating you with respect, then divorce him now and quit wasting your time trying to hold something together that is likely to just get worse the longer you are in it.

jesse Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My husband and I have been married for about a
> year and a half (got married in the temple). I am
> no longer active and we are on the verge of
> divorce because we can't come to a place where we
> are both happy. I want someone who doesn't look
> down on me or pity me or force me to go to church
> and he wants someone to go to the temple with him
> and raise an LDS family.
>
>
It seems to me that your answer is right in that last sentence of this paragraph. What you want is totally different, and if those are things that you truly want, IMO, you have yourselves an honest-to-goodness deal breaker. He wants a wife who will raise (many? a passle? a whole brood of?) LDS children and you will all go to church together and be the perfect LDS family. You do not want that. You have decided you are not LDS and don't want any part of it, and his vision of a happy future is quite different from yours. Deal breaker, without a doubt. Have a serious sit-down conversation and tell him that you are terribly sorry you didn't realize before you married that this topic would be a deal-breaker, but now you see that it is one. Tell him you care about him and always will, and you want him to be happy, so you are cutting him free to go find his happiness, since the things you want out of life are diametrically opposed. He will never have what he wants with you--and vice versa. You both deserve to find your happiness, and while there is love present, there are other vitals that are not. Then stop pretending you can "make it work," kiss each other goodbye, and call a lawyer.

Firstly, congratulations on your discovery of the truth about the church. It is a club/cult that tries to control all aspects of your life.
If I were in your situation (that would require a gender change and time machine), I would definitely not start a family. I would finish my schooling and then start a career. I would give my spouse time to discover the truth while I got my own life in order.
If he has not woken up while watching you progress, he probably never will wake up to the truth.
You may have to put starting a family on hold, but you should not put the rest of your life on hold.
Definitely give him a chance, but be prepared to leave.

Define "successful".

My wife and I have been married 5 1/2 yrs, and she knew even before we married that I wasn't going to convert. She has periodically (most recently a couple months ago) stated that she must choose between me or the church because I won't convert. However, she still claims to love me and says that I treat her better than her RM ex ever did.

If that passes as "successful"; then yeah, it's possible.

If you don't have any children yet my advise would be to WALK AWAY, and quickly.

There is no living in peace with a cult.

My wife has to face the possibility that she won't be with me (I joke and tell her she will be one of Joe's many wives) in the hereafter and I have to face the possibility that she will eventually find this rebel, crazy man, drinker, and godless heathen unacceptable one day.

It is a razor's edge but it does keep things interesting.

One of mt TBM friends is married to a neverMo atheist, and as far as I can tell they seem quite happy. However...

1) He was an atheist before they met, just as she was a Mormon before they met, so they went into the marriage knowing what they were getting into. I think that's very different from one spouse changing/losing religious beliefs after marriage. It's not that people don't have the right to change their beliefs, obviously, but one spouse, or both, may decide that isn't what he or she signed up for.

2) Atheist hubby is fine with their kids (they have five) being raised Mormon, and he even goes to church with the family sometimes. In fact, I have even heard him vigorously defend Mormonism to people. He once told me, for example, that while he believes "All religions are stupid," that he nonetheless thinks Mormonism is a good religion in which to raise kids, especially his daughters. (I know, I know....)

Anyway, my point is that even an atheist can be successfully married to a Mormon, BUT my TBM friend's hubby obviously has no problem with his wife's beliefs, nor with his kids being indoctrinated with them. By stark contrast, your husband (the OP's) does not feel that way in regard to what you believe, nor do you feel comfortable with having your future children raised as Mormons. I'm sorry to be pessimistic, but I simply do not see how you can make this work. You are setting up yourself, and worse, any children you have with this man, for a lifetime of problems and pain unless he has a MAJOR change in outlook.