Only Two Problems With My Marriage...

God is love apart from Him love is impossible.

http://www.xenos.org/classes/papers/cf_love.htm

http://bereanprcp.org/resources/5ECCLESIOLOGY/ChristianLifeandFamily/Marriage%20Divorce%20Remarriage.htm

Wow, I'm truly thankful for all the thoughtful, supportive resposes. I come here often but am typically just a lurker.Like most of us, I pathetically hope if I keep reading I might find a solution but of course the odds of a happy ending are negligible. I know I have no chance of ever having a satisfying relationship if I stay, but I've got this self-image of being a faithful, loyal, responsible person to maintain. My kids are 5 and 6 and I just can't yet bring myself to break up their home. My wife and I do a good enough job of putting on happy faces so they are not in a toxic environment.I think the only way I get out of this is if she gets enough advice from the Christian community that she should divorce me. Maybe I stop going through the motions and she gets fed up and does the dirty work?

This marriage is over, and I have another issue to throw on the table. My mom is an atheist and my dad was Jewish so I have seen this dynamic before. You have developed disdain for religion and now look down on it, and thus do not respect your wife at all. Even if she had a sex drive this is enough to kill it. You are now an enlightened atheist and she is still a stupid, childlike (your words) person of faith. How do you suppose you can have relationship of equals with this dynamic? You're lonely but I promise that your wife is lonely too; she thought she was getting a person of faith and now she's got someone that not only has no faith but looks down on those that do have it, and yet still expects sex. I'm not particularly religious and my husband is methodist but I still respect him and his faith because I don't claim to have all the answers. Without mutual respect there can be no relationship. End the misery now.

I feel really sorry for you. I really do. Unfortunately, your wife's fate was arguably sealed for her before she was even conceived. Maybe yours as well.

Your wife comes over as someone who is strong-willed, obtusely so, but as someone who is completely and utterly intransigent. You do not have to be a 'believer' to be like that, but it may well be a flag for your general demeanour.

Your marriage is certainly over, given the chasm that divides the pair of you on your fundamental outlook on life. You can accommodate doubt and deal with it and your wife cannot. It can't get more stark than that. Your wife's instinct is that your are treacherous, a traitor, a turn-coat. It is that bad. You are only good enough if you continue to be an adjunct to her personality, her singular way of conducting her life. Consciously or unconsciously, she 'chose' you because that is what she wanted, expected. "Be with me or be against me", so to speak.

Faith, such as this, is neither strong or weak; it just is. It either exists, in it's purist form, or it does not exist at all. Just like a bubble, and when the bubble is burst...

As you are just venting I would not be impertinent to offer 'advice'. You'll figure it out for yourself. After all, you have the strength and the intelligence to do that. You will need time, whatever time you need or want to do so.

As for your kids, well, is history to repeat itself, ad infinitum, generation-to-generation, or does it stop here? Only you can decide that. Even your wife doesn't get a say in that.

I hope that you can find the strength within yourself, from deep within, to not only keep your head above water but to flourish in your own small way, in the longer term and that you can find some happiness in this world that you can cherish before passing from it. After all, you have decided that this is it, it is no dry run.

I really really feel for you! I know saying that doesnt help anything. I am agnostic (not open to religion, but not saying I know what happens after death..because i Dont?!), and I was surrounded by religious people at Uni because of where I was studying and felt alone, so I can only imagine what your feeling. I think you should lay all your cards on the table and tell her, you simply cant keep living like this. Your views wont change, it would be easier for you to believe but then your just lying to yourself. she probably deep down feels like you, but is scared that if there is no "god" firgure it will scare her. Her rejecting you until you "BELIEVE", is ridiculous, and will just carry on pushing you away. if she cant accept you the way you are, then thats the end of it. better to separate now if the kids are very young. good luck

A few suggestions:
1. Can you arrange for a transfer in your work to a larger, more diverse community?
2. Can you talk honestly with your spouse, to the effect of "We are both good parents, but we are not suited to each other. Maybe it's time for us to share the parenting duties, and move on to find more suitable mates. I will always respect you for being a great mother to our kids and for making your own way in life, and I deserve the same respect in return. I hope we can move forward and work towards putting our kids first, as separate rather than together".
3. Make sure you expose your kids to other ways of life: get yourself invited to friends/relatives in other cities/states/provinces and visit, show them how other people live. Invite colleagues/friends over to your house to show them how you live. etc.

best of luck.

I have a story to tell you....
My H grew up in a strong German Lutheran family in the Midwest. I grew up in CA in a loose protestant denomination. I ended up at a Lutheran College and started attending the church. I enjoyed it and am grateful for the spiritual foundation it provided for the kids. We also attended church each Sunday and participated in programs for the kids.

When I began confronting my SM, I found the pastors of my church to be unhelpful. Nowhere in their message, whether to me personally or to the general congregation, was there space for loving myself and honoring myself above others. I also began to question what I really believed and found my faith was very different than the faith that was described to me at church. I stopped praying at the table because the rote prayer seemed insincere to me. I stopped saying the creed because I don't belive it anymore. My kids wondered but I was open about my feelings particularly as it related to being a female in a structure that diminished women. As time passed, my children started questionning their own beliefs too which is important for their development as authentic people. It's not so important to me what people believe as long as they understand why they believe it.

Fast forward to just last night. I went to dinner with the mother of one of my best friends. She is the widow of a former Lutheran Bishop. While I had told her son (my BFF) my story, she did not know the details. So I told her. I hadn't disclosed any of this to her or her husband before he passed beacuse I was afraid of being judged.

Here's what she told me..."My husband and I also had some problems. He became impotent in his mid 50's and wouldn't deal with it. I felt awful and alone, but over time we worked it out. After 6 children and knowing he was going to be a bishop, I just couldn't make any other choice." Then she said, "You did the right thing. You are an alive, vital woman and should have what you need in your life."

I would say the same to you. It's time to be your authentic self.

I wonder what happened to the last comment I posted on this story ....

A fervent believer will choose their god over their spouse, over their children, over their own lives at times.

I was born into the Lutheran Church. Despite the fact that I started to develop very strong feelings that the 'religious instruction' I was receiving at age 8 made about as much sense as Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny or Grimm's Fairy Tales, I spent a lot of my socialization in a religious environment - many of my teachers were ordained pastors, but they were humanist philologists, not fundies. They believed in exposing us to as much thought as they could immerse us in, including Sartre, Camus, Marx, Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard and the rest of the gang. Deists all of them, bar one theist.
I spent a lot of time hanging out with pastors and church social workers 10-20 years my senior. I even studied theology for a couple of semesters at uni.
Nobody with one exception in my environment would've taken a stance of pious fervent intolerance and rigidity as your wife. I actually perceive that as alien to the basic tenets of the Lutheran Church, but then I guess the L.C. in North America has developed in a different direction from the one in Northern Germany. {sigh}

I think you should _insist_ that your children get more than one point of view, if you want to do justice by them.

I think that your wife's contention that you should be the spiritual head of the household is bunkum in view of the fact that she refuses to follow your lead, or to even just give it a hearing. She just wants you to believe as she does, and you know that ...

So long as she loves the god she's made up in her head more than she loves you, there's no hope.

-P.

My husband and I are both atheists (small a, not rabid atheists, just non-believers). My son goes to a school with a Christian ethos - i.e. they teach them about Jesus and so forth in weekly religion classes. I feel some discomfort in it, but I'm letting it slide. I'm lying more by omission. I'm kinda going along with it like I go along with Santa. But at least we agree on that.

what you have is fundamental rift. I understand why she might be disappointed with your 'fall from grace' - but these kinds of things can be overcome if both parties want to.

Wow, your journey through religion is very much like my own. Unlike you, I did get the opportunity to share what I found in the scripture with my wife and she joined me in apostacy. Now this was long after the marriage had gone sexless, so, for us, one didn't really have much to do with the other, though our anchor of Christianity disappeared, exposing parts of the marriage that we had glossed over with Christian dogma.

That she continues in her faith is definitely a major problem for you two. I know, for me, I quit even going to church at all and haven't set foot in the walls of church in a long time. By your "faking it" on Sundays, and her persistence in the faith, it's creating a rift/wound that won't ever heal. Something has to give. Religious differences, especially those that are onset after marriage, can be as important as a matter of fidelity insofar as the damage it can do to a marriage.

She interprets your atheism as a rejection of her...not God, her.
So she's rejecting you "back". That's my take.
...When my wife went from quiet disbeliever to flaming atheist...I felt rejected too.
My ritual partner, in my mind, seemed to be mocking my Paganism, so I started practicing witchcraft alone. :(

You know...I don't have kids, so I'm probably saying this in way more of a glib manner than I might were I in your shoes...But to lie to people really, really bothers me.
I think she's making you do something I personally would find unacceptable.
Admittedly telling the kids you do not believe in God is going to confuse them, but it would hopefully lead to a dialogue on tolerance-something you want your kids to have.
.
I hate to abandon my spouse (and she's still in my house because she can't afford her own place yet). We are separated.
Some time recently, I realized she abandoned me first.
...Going by actions here, your spouse has abandoned you.

I wish you happiness.

Religion is often a bigger issue than even sex. I don't have any answers for you, unfortunately, but atheism and Christianity cannot co-exist in a marriage with children.

I have a bit of the same issue but my wife is much more accommodating. I am allowed to voice my positions and I do not attend church.

But her views make sexual connection impossible. Well to be fair we will decide this for certain in the coming months.

But your situation is much harder to bridge. Read and vent, both are good. But for now you seem to be picking door number one over and over " live in misery". Seems a hard path to me looking back.

She's a True Believer. As such your chances of having a real human relationship with her are about the same as her god existing. Actually she's using your atheism as an excuse to avoid intimacy. If you were a TB yourself it would be something else with the same end result.

There is a way out. It is painful and you will feel like you are murdering something you once loved. But you are that rare breed who escaped toxic monotheism, and once you realize your wife and your community are insane, there really is little choice.

My initial re-action here is that the Deity question and the sexless question are one and the same.

Your missus has a viewpoint on religion which you regard as childlike and niaive, and that you are pro-actively trying to fix her view up to be more in line with your overview on the matter.

I would suggest you cease and desist from this strategy.

For one key reason. It won't work.

You can present your case, make your point, and that is ALL you can do. You can't make her choices for her. She alone can do that. And clearly at this point, she chooses to stick with her beliefs. You have to respect that. You have to accept that. You can't control that. You can't "fix" that. And from her perspective, there is nothing to "fix".

If this matter is a fundamental core value of yours then the question arises, is it a dealbreaker ?? Because that throws the future of the dynamic into question.

Now, go back and re-read the above again, this time insert "attitude to sex" instead of "religion"

Do you see the connection ??

Do you see how far down the chute this is ??

Tread your own path.