In Love with a Believer: A Journey of Compromise
Communication in mixed secular/religious relationships
Submitted by James Fielding
About seven years ago, I decided it was time to tell my partner that I no longer believed in God.
We had been dating for around two years and I wanted to be sure my new-found freedom wasn’t going to cause issues moving forward. Neither of us had been overly religious during the relationship. In fact, he claims to be “spiritual” more than religious.
We just recently celebrated our 9th anniversary, so, spoiler alert, my revelation wasn’t catastrophic. However, that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been a learning process for both of us along the way. That is what this story is about.
We were on vacation in New Orleans and a few cocktails into a gorgeous night on a balcony on Bourbon St. He could tell I had something on my mind and was pressing me to share. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and blurted out “I think I’m an agnostic!” I don’t know what he was expecting but I could tell he was braced for something bad. His response was “Oh, I kind of figured that.”
Needless to say, I was relieved. At the time, I didn’t have a grasp of how agnostic and atheist were non-exclusive terms. I thought agnostic was a stepping stone…
