Seven Years of Steamy, Forbidden, Interfaith Love
Paul had to work all day and I had a rather full “domestic” day ahead of me. My day would consist of grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment and attending an LDS ward social, all while managing Harley on my own. When Paul walked out the front door at a quarter to 10 AM, I knew I would not see him again until after 8 PM that night.
Suddenly, a thought hit me. “I should dress up really sexy and surprise him when we see each other again tonight.” So I went about the routine of curling my hair and putting on make-up, earrings, and perfume. I selected a pair of black hip-hugging pants and one of my sexier bright red tops and went about my day: grocery shopping, housecleaning, ward social and all. I did not speak with Paul all day and told him nothing of my plans.
I walked through the door to our apartment just shortly after 8 PM, Harley in tow, expecting Paul to be thrilled with how great his wife looked.
Paul was wearing one of his nicer black button-down shirts and his best pair of jeans. He’d gelled his hair just the way I like it and put on his best cologne. As I later discovered *cough*, he’d even ditched the garments for a nice pair of boxer shorts.
Apparently he’d had the exact same idea I’d had.
Did I mention that this post is, like, totally rated G?
I did not share this story to flaunt my awesome sex life, though I suppose it serves that function as well. I shared it because I think it shows that, even with our religious differences, my husband and I connect really well in a lot of other areas of our lives. We each know exactly what the other person loves and how to please one another, we’re tender and affectionate towards one another on a regular basis. We are deeply in love.
But, there is that religion thing. And admittedly not having a spiritual connection with my husband is something I’ve simply learned to live with.
We continue our routine of visiting each others’ churches once a month whilst alternating the church that our daughter attends. We read a passage of Scripture to our daughter every night, usually from the Bible but sometimes from the Book of Mormon. We pray with her before we put her to bed. We have religious artwork on our walls and our shelves are decked with a wide assortment of Mormon and evangelical theology, doctrine, devotional, and history books.
But we don’t pray with one another, and we don’t talk about faith with each other. I quietly live out my faith, and Paul quietly lives out his faith, and each of us tries to not get in the way of the other.
I certainly try to discuss religion with Paul sometimes. You would think that, running a blog like this and participating in interfaith blogs and discussion forums as often as I do, I would be pretty good at discussing religion with most people. Still, when it comes to attempting religious discussions with my husband, it just seems like one of us inevitably winds up offending the other and we end the conversation in anger. It’s reached a point where I simply try to avoid any religious topic that could be even remotely controversial for fear of another long night of feeling sullen and not speaking to one another.
It’s hard to quantify how I feel about that. Religion is a huge part of my life and my inability to discuss it with my husband saddens me. At the same time, I imagine there are a lot of things that could be much more wrong with our marriage than lack of a spiritual connection, so I’m letting it go until I think of something better.
At the age of four, our daughter Harley continues to attend both churches as often as possible, and she genuinely seems to enjoy them both. She may have a slight preference for her father’s church, but it’s far too early for me to feel worried that she’ll choose to be LDS indefinitely. I simply tell her that, if she wants to choose her father’s church when she’s older, she can, but until then she needs to come to both.
There was one incident that gave me pangs. I was pulling into the parking lot of her father’s church when she recognized where she was. She began to excitedly chirp, “Daddy’s church! Harley’s church!”
Now, it wasn’t the fact that Harley identified the LDS church as her church that pained me. Like I said, it’s way too early for me to worry about that. It was the fact that we never teach her to identify either of our churches as her church. We always call them “Mommy’s church” and “Daddy’s church.” We don’t say, “Come on, Harley, let’s go to our church.” She began calling the LDS church her church on her own. Part of me thinks that letting her decide on her own is the correct way to do this, so I shouldn’t be worried about it. The other part of me is concerned that we aren’t giving Harley a tradition to identify with at all.
In any case, here we are, seven years into our marriage and over four years into raising our first daughter. We may be spiritually lonely, but overall I would say that we’re a happy and stable couple, and we plan to keep things that way.
Other Posts:
Five Years
Six Years of Steamy, Forbidden, Interfaith Love
Seven Years of Steamy, Forbidden Interfaith Love
Six Years of Steamy, Forbidden, Interfaith Love
Seven Years of Steamy, Forbidden Interfaith Love
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