My girlfriend’s religion is RUINING our relationship

Dear Jane,

I’ve been dating this great girl for a few months – we met online as pretty much everyone seems to do and went out on three amazing dates before we decided that we didn’t really want to see anyone else.

Those dates were great, we chatted about so many different things and seemed so aligned on everything, and I really began to think that this could be ‘the’ relationship for me.

However, not long after we became ‘official’, my girlfriend asked me whether I’d like to attend church with her. The question took me my surprise because she hadn’t really mentioned religion up until that point – but I agreed because I wanted to be supportive. I wasn’t really raised with any religion so the experience of going to her church was interesting to say the least.

I kind of wrote it off as being a one-time thing; I was obviously more than happy for her to go to church but it didn’t feel like something I needed to do again.

Dear Jane, my girlfriend’s religion is threatening to ruin our relationship – is it wrong for me to refuse to embrace her beliefs as my own? 

Clearly she thought differently, because when the next weekend rolled around and I said I was planning to play basketball with my friends on Sunday morning, she got annoyed and asked if I’d ‘forgotten’ about church.

It also kind of feels like that one trip to church open some kind of religious floodgate for her – all of a sudden she’s saying grace before we eat and she’s getting annoyed if I say things like ‘damn’ and ‘Jesus’. 

Then the other day she ‘casually’ mentioned that she loves that her religion will be something that she shares with her kids.

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I don’t want to jump the gun here and say that we’re ready to become parents because we definitely aren’t, but this whole thing has made me re-think whether this is the relationship I thought it was. 

Everything else about her is amazing and I don’t want to throw all of that away  because of this one issue. But at the same time, can we really move forward if we’re so out of whack on a topic that is so important to her?

What should I do?

From,

God Fearer

Dear God Fearer,

Have you tried talking to her about this? From your letter it would seem that religion is a large part of her life, important to her, and the family she hopes to have.

It’s so easy to sweep the things we don’t like under the carpet at the beginning of a relationship, particularly when everything else is going so well and feels so perfect. 

Religious differences don’t have to be a dealbreaker, as long as both are on the same page. As in, she would have to be okay with you playing basketball rather than going to church, and you would both have to agree on how you raise the children.

Until you sit down and have the big conversation and find out what is tolerable to each of you, you won’t know what your future is. 

Once you do, if you find that she is fixed on a certain outcome, one that you don’t necessarily want, you have your answer.

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