Non-Member Seeking positive ways to approach Member Spouse

[Rix]

Welcome NAM! I can see the challenge you have, but think you may have an advantage that many "mixed" couples don't have -- you "fell in love" at a time when you didn't have a committed religion in either of your lives. IOW, you came to love and commit to each other without a religious dogma dictating what that marriage should look like. I would think it would be helpful for you to frequently discuss and remember the things you "love" about each other.

A short time ago I facilitated a program called "LUV" (love = unconditional vows), which was a process whereby one person was active LDS and the other not (either exmo, nevermo or NOM). Of course each case is unique, but a few things I found helpful for most was to re-define what love was in their marriage. A very common challenge in Mormonism is what swim mentioned above -- codependency. It is popular (as an active LDSer) to believe that your spouse must also be active to make it to the highest degree of heaven. There are many talks given by church leaders that indicate that, and others that don't. I think we are seeing a transition away from the hard-core teaching of such. If your wife is of that mindset, that can be a problem. At the core, I think it is necessary for true intimacy to believe deeply that your partner is equal in every way to you. If she/he is seen as broken, it willl be difficult to grow deep love in the relationship. I love swim's statement:

How to be "one" with a spouse when our faith journeys are separate. For us, paradoxically, it was finding a way to completely and totally accept each others' individual journey as equally valid, that allowed us to grow together in intimacy, love, respect, and "wholeness" as a couple. It seems counterintuitive, but, amazingly, it is the "over the rainbow" place that was always promised but never delivered in the co-dependent faith system that we shared previously. I'm not insinuating that a couple "needs" disparate beliefs to find that place, but, having grown up in that authoritarian system, it's what has worked for me. And, it's fantastic!! At every level.

Commonly in Mormonism, there is judgment about another's beliefs and actions. I see much "conditional love" == a term I consider completely oxymoronic -- but is a common attitude. When this is pointed out, and an emphasis put on allowing the partner absolute freedom to traverse on their own spiritual journey, and simply rejoicing at the other's inner peace and happiness, marriage improves exponentially. It is a paradigm quite foreign to many LDS. But like swim, once found, the relationship can be amazing.

So I think communication may help keep the love alive -- remember that true love doesn't need the other to believe or act in a specific way that another prescribes. It is when two people can completely share their lives with the other and revel in each other's journey.

Good luck!

[NotaMember]

What a warm welcome! Wow, you guys are awesome; there is a lot here to digest. Thanks for your thoughtful replies. This site has already helped me greatly, especially the "How to Stay" essay. It really helped me pull back from some of the negativity I was experiencing shortly after my wife's endowment. It's easy to find bitterness on the web; it's much more difficult to find constructive voices describing ways to move forward.

Also, it's very cool that the eleventh article of faith explicitly requires tolerance. Thanks everyone; it's great to be here!

[Bill Atkinson]

Hi NotaMember

I think one of our standard "heros" here on StayLDS may be worth you reading, M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled. What is important in his book is that love takes effort, it is work. A kind of summary that I nabbed off of Wikipedia about love is:

Instead "true" love is about the extending of one's ego boundaries to include another, and about the spiritual nurturing of another, in short, love is effort.

The real point is that the book does give one a lot of insight into both how people avoid dealing honestly with each other (and of course themselves) and how you can avoid all of that.

Though no one has mentioned it yet one of the "defense mechanisms" that lots of us on the site seem to use is the "mental bookshelf". This may be useful for you in dealing with Mormon doctrinal ideas or the temple for that matter. Many of us have serious questions about the Church but have experienced and lived enough spiritual moments that we know that there is something at the core of it all, so when we run into something that we can't understand and that continues to bug us we take that problem and "put it on the bookshelf" and leave it there until we are more able to deal with the issue.

Welcome to the board, don't expect perfect answers, all of us are struggling but we are willing to share that struggle.

[Tom Haws]

Though no one has mentioned it yet one of the "defense mechanisms" that lots of us on the site seem to use is the "mental bookshelf".

And there are others of us whose bookshelf broke, so we gave all the books to Deseret Industries. Another valid approach.

[Ray Degraw]

Yeah, DI has a lot of stuff people just want to get rid of. A big bonfire works just as well.

[richrich]

Yeah! Garner Ted and Herbert W! I remember those guys on the late night radio(which dates me for sure). wait a minute those the guys were with the WCG, right? if not disregard previous transmission....
so now with the big question, is your wife reasonably happy with her church and you at the same time? then you are pretty lucky.
if mama not happy, then nobody happy. Im just sayin.

[NotaMember]

Yes, I grew up in Armstrong's WCG. What a mess. Given the subsequent events, it's hard for me to take any church too seriously.

Fortunately my wife is happy with both me and her church, and I'm learning not to scoff, so we are getting along beautifully. It was our turn last week to clean the church, along with two other couples from the ward. As it turned out, the two other couples were in very similar situations as we are: the wife is a member, the husband is not. It's nice to know we're not the only ones.