The Sunday News
THE good news is that couples who have sincere religious differences can often find ways to work them out. Raynes and Gould offer eight proven strategies.
1. “Become confident in who you are,” says Gould. Decide on your religious values and practices and live them as fully as possible. “If you are still struggling and deliberating every Sunday about whether you’re going to go to church, you’re spending a lot of energy on just that weekly decision. But if it’s just part of who you are, it’s not a struggle. It’s not a negotiating point in the relationship, either. It’s like, ‘You like to read. Well, I like to go to church.’”
It may take a while to become this confident. “I’ve gone through developmental stages in my membership in the Church when there was a lot more leeway with, say, Sabbath observance,” says Gould. “We grow in what’s important to us.” Those still reaching for confidence can enlist a spouse’s support, even if the spouse isn’t reaching for the same goal. Just as one partner may train for a marathon, the spouse can cheerlead the effort without donning his or her own running shoes.
2 Respect your spouse by extending the same kind of support. You can encourage a spouse in his salvation, but you can’t hound him because that would be detrimental, says Gould. “Allow spouses to be where they are while encouraging them to be the best they can be. Progress in the Church changes as we mature and grow, and so does commitment to the different rules and practices and doctrines.” But each spouse gets to determine his or her own areas of growth and progress. To share gospel principles and testimonies with a spouse is a natural desire; the key is to maintain a respectful dialogue and not force unwanted gospel conversations.
3 Learn to work out all differences productively, not just religious ones. “Whatever the conflicts are around faith, couples will address them the same ways they address other conflicts,” Raynes says. Couples navigate differences successfully when they are “really good friends with a sense of fairness and equality. This motivates them to find ways around differences—practical strategies that don’t try to change their partners.”
In addition to true friendship, “the couple has to be emotionally mature enough that they can make it work.” In other words, each one needs to “see that the other person’s perspective is as real and important to them as yours is to you.”
4 Collaborate. Once couples respect and trust each other, they can move past power struggles and even compromises. Instead, a couple can brainstorm creative solutions. Collaboration puts both people on the same side of the conflict: they work toward a common goal. Raynes advises drawing on shared core values, “even if they have a different spiritual flavor to them,” and using problem-solving strategies that have worked for them under other circumstances.
When there seems to be no middle ground, loving spouses sometimes learn to recognise when the other person’s need is much stronger than their own. Gould and Raynes emphasise the need for both partners to have a generous spirit, express sincere appreciation when a partner bends, and be willing to give and take.
5 Don’t overcompensate. An active LDS woman for many years felt the need to “cover for” or justify her husband’s lackluster attention to his callings. She found herself offering excuses for him and quietly trying to fulfill his responsibilities as well as her own. It was exhausting to her. Meanwhile, he felt like she was trying to manipulate him into doing things he didn’t want to do.
Gould says this woman’s actions, though well intentioned, were misplaced. “You are not responsible for another person’s choices, feelings, or thoughts,” Gould says. You may be sad but should not feel embarrassed when a spouse does not behave or think as you wish they would. She was setting the rules and consequences for both of them, rather than encouraging him to improve upon his own efforts. Eventually, she learned to value and support her husband’s many acts of service outside of his callings — and not require herself to do both their callings.
6 Parent as a respectful pair. “Parenting is, quite frankly, the biggest issue” facing couples with differing religious beliefs, says Raynes. “Even if ahead of time they agree to raise kids in one faith, when you get to that point, there are a lot of issues. What do we tell our kids doctrinally? What behaviors do we model?” Should a child be blessed, baptised, ordained, and serve a mission? What are rules for entertainment, dress and grooming, dating, and seminary attendance?
Again, mutual respect and problem-solving strategies are the answer, says Raynes. She tells of an active Latter-day Saint mother who took their children to church. Afterward, her less-active husband would question and sometimes debate with them about what they had learned. “It wasn’t sarcastic: he just wanted them to have a reflective faith, to think it through,” she says. “The parents had a friendship and way of parenting where they respected differences” and trusted each other not to undermine their beliefs.
