How to approach a believing Christian spouse with our new truth

[◊ Weezer ◊]

1 hour ago, PurpleLilac said:

 

How can he be at peace with his wife deciding I can trust myself? 

 

We ALL trust our own judgement.  In a sense are all our own god.  The difference is where we anchor our judgement.  Some anchor their judgement on the collective consciousness of mankind by looking at different religions, philosophies, science, etc.  Some anchor their judgement on the bias doctrine of a specific ancient religion or ideology.  Personally I prefer to anchor my judgement on the broadest range of knowledge available. 

 

It just occurred to me that I guess, in a sense, I have co-gods.  My own brain, and the collective consciousness of mankind. 

 

If he fears you won't be faithful, tell him in my 35 years of experience in a profession where I saw it happening in the general population,  I saw more infidelity with religious women than I did with non-religious.  When it came to character, I saw no difference in people from religious backgrounds,  and non-religious.  And in studies comparing the 2 groups, no difference has been found.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

P.S. to the above.  Actually we all anchor our judgement on a variety of sources.  More or less on a continuum between the two mentioned above.  But I think you can get the idea.

[DanForsman]

4 hours ago, PurpleLilac said:

Weezer,your comments tie into an above poster who mentioned that I am my own god now. I’m learning to be kind to myself. To trust that I can make good choices. 

My husband is still tied in at least some way to the doctrine of “you are broken” and sin nature. He can’t fully trust himself under that weight. 

How can he be at peace with his wife deciding I can trust myself? 

This topic may be a ways down the road for you husband. He has to decide if he is willing, considering the children and all the other things you have in common and your continued commitment to him, whether or not he is willing to give the unequally yoked situation that you are proposing a try. How trustworthy and how changed you are or are not can only be discovered through the trials of time. There is a starting over aspect with some genuinely new ground to cover so quite possibly the only way to move forward will be to go slowly one small step at a time. He’ll need to do some reconstructing of his doctrinal views (but in fact this is something Christians are pretty good at once they really want something) so just stay on your path and allow him the time and space to make a well considered decision. He has a lot to lose PurpleLilac so I think you can more or less hang back and let him figure that out for himself. It will quite possibly come up that you’ve broken a promise of commitment to God that he counted on as fundamental to the marriage and I do think you are on very solid ground there by explaining that your beliefs are not something you decide but are based on what you truly believe looking at everything relevant to the subject and that a lot of information regarding Christianity was not even readily available to you at the time of your marriage. I call this safe ground because you are not saying that your conclusion is absolutely correct you are only saying you have done your very best to come to a well considered opinion and at the present time you have no real choice but to stand behind that opinion. I’m sure we’ll all, including lurkers, be interested to find out whatever your telling about you counseling sessions. We’ll be pulling you; you can count on that.

 

[PurpleLilac]

Well. We went to the initial meeting where we talked about our backgrounds and our marriage for an hour with a counselor. When it was my turn,I could see the man trying to hold compassion for me and take in my trauma while also holding onto his own worldview. I remember doing the same on occasion.

My husband feels that when he talks about his faith,I attack him. And that’s important for me to know because I thought he was simply listening to my impassioned thoughts on whatever it was. 

Young earth creationism briefly came up because it’s very important to him. I commented that I feel like I need to protect my husband because it means so much to him but at the same time want my children to learn about modern science and want them to be able to see the world from more than one perspective. 

Sigh. So our real work begins with a local couples therapist next week. 

 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

10 hours ago, PurpleLilac said:

 

Sigh. So our real work begins with a local couples therapist next week. 

 

 

 

GREAT!  Sounds like things got off to a good start.