Atheist With a Christian spouse

[LancetChick]

85. To me that would be like being married to someone who worshiped the tooth fairy.

Ridiculous, illogical and completely foreign, not to mention utterly primitive. I was married to a Muslim-raised Middle Eastern guy whose father was a Mullah who prayed the same way he breathed... all the time. What a nice guy! I couldn't have asked for a better father-in-law. His reaction upon discovering I didn't believe in god was one of real sorrow, which I found touching, because I knew he cared. I loved that he went out of his way to find me a Koran in English. But then, I wasn't married to him. I was married to his son, who thought the notion of god was as ridiculous as I did. Belief in god or non-belief are two entirely different ways of being. How can you be married to someone and not know?

But now that you both know, it's a little like Mary Matalin and James Carville. Or me and my virulently conservative parents and sister... you just cannot discuss it because there is no way you can agree. When religious people and conservative people open their mouths about religion or politics, it ceases to be about logic, and I cannot follow. The conversation must stop or I will go insane. It's worse than being dumped in the land of Idiocracy. It doesn't mean we can't speak, it means we can't discuss religion or politics. And that's hard to do, I think, with a life partner. My parents, ok, I see them every other week, and my sister I see once a year. If you can do it with someone you see every day, then you are to be admired.