So i recently told my wife that i am no longer a christian. it was tough. we've been together for about 10 years, married for almost 8. she took it pretty hard. but gradually things are getting back to normal and we are figuring out how this is going to look from now on.

when we got married we had both been life long christians, born and raised, essentially. we both believed that christians should only be married to christians.

but now we have a new reality. for awhile i was worried that she wouldn't be able to handle it. but she is surprising me by not only accepting it, but almost embracing it. our discussions about religion now are totally different than they used to be. i don't think she will change her mind about her faith, and i'm not even sure that i want her to. but i think this is all going to work out a lot better than i imagined.

so what about you? could you handle being married or committed to someone who had a totally opposite belief system than you?

I "could" be with somebody that was religious. My GF of four years was actually a baptist when we first got together, now, she's an atheist. I'm not sure just exactly how much I had to do with her changing but there's no doubt I had my influence on her. But she has asked me before. "What if i was religious could you stay with me?" I say yes. But I would riducule her, talk so much s***, and be just as mean and obnoxious as you know I can be about it. So she would have no choice but to leave me. Not the way I would necessarily want it but it's the way it would be.

Dude I would NEVER have pictured you being with a religious girl. From how you talk on here, I'm surprised you kept it under wraps as long as you did!

Anyway, I suppose I could, given that she wasn't a super-fundie. Your average Christian? Sure. The ones who insist that contraception is the devil's work, Creationism should be taught in schools, and the Devil put fossils on earth to confuse us? No way.

i am a massive contradiction

if you were to make a scale of liberal christian to fundie, my wife would defintely land on the right leaning side. but she isn't dogmatic, which i think is what is making this whole thing doable.

I recently told my fiance that I'm not sure I believe in God anymore. She was cool with it. It doesn't make me less of a person and I was never nice to begin with so it didn't really change her views of me I guess. Theres just too many discrepencies in the bible and the whole thing seems like a big fairy tale. I'm in the I don't really know what I believe stage right now.

it seems we are in the middle of an epidemic of failed belief

I love it.

it all goes with the whole end of days speech in the bible.

Yeah, my wife's Lutheran.

no s***?

hmmmm....true....

No s***. Has been since I met her. We've been married for 10 years, and were together for 4 before that.

so how do holidays work then? you celebrate pagan fertility on christmas and easter, she celebrates the birth, death and resurrection?

They tend to overlap.

When Christians were forcing their religion on the population at large, they adopted many of the symbols and practices of paganism. The 12 days of Christmas comes from the twelve day long celebration of Yule. Even the idea of staying up past midnight and partying on New Years Eve comes from paganism. So do the Christmas tree, the idea of giving gifts during that time of the year, the Easter bunny, and Easter eggs. Now I will admit that this year was a little screwy-er than others, because she had Easter so late, while Ostara was on the 20th of March, but they can't all be perfect.

all

lol it seems that way.

Don't forget All Saints Day and Samhain...

Basically, whenever there was a big pagan holiday the locals would be unlikely to want to give up, the church came up with some Christian reason to celebrate at the same time so they would have an easier time converting everyone.

even before i stopped believing, it always made me both laugh and get angry when i saw christmas trees on the stage at church. "praise jesus and pass the fertility symbols"

I was under the impresion that the Christmas tree started out as a symbol of the god Baal's wife, because she was the goddess of the forest, and having a star on top, which was a symbol of Baal himself. Just what I heard a long time ago.

i have never heard that, but that doesn't mean its not true.

I never heard that one.

I'm sure there are a lot of cultures that can lay claim to various things.