Mixed Faith Marriages
Help for Mixed Faith Marriages, Interfaith Families, and Faith Transitions in California
Mixed Faith Marriages and Interfaith Families are each unique!
We will help you figure out what works for you, even if that doesn’t look like anyone else’s relationship or how anyone thinks relationships should be. You committed to be with your partner because you love each other. You are your best self when you’re around them. You smooth out each others’ rough parts. You are each others’ best friends and favorite teammates. Or at least that’s how life used to be… Your differences in faith and religious belief/practice are overshadowing all that good. You fight more now. You’re lonely even when you’re with your best friend and favorite teammate. Are you even teammates anymore? You wonder how this relationship can possibly work given how different you are.
How you got into a mixed faith marriage
You might have known from the start you were entering a mixed faith relationship and have found out that it’s more challenging than you expected. Your faith differences might not have been an issue until you had kids and have to decide how you will raise them. One or both of you might have lost, changed, or found faith since getting together. This one comes with its own difficulties. You’re both facing huge life changes that you didn’t expect - either a major change in yourself or the effects of a major change in your partner. You might never have chosen this, and yet, here you are.
Challenges Mixed Faith Couples Face
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Different Values
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Finding Shared Community
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Creating Traditions
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Parenting
Feeling connected when you don’t share world views, religious practice, or ways of finding meaning, peace, and comfort.
Finding shared community. Faith-based communities are easy places to find friends and social supports when you both belong. Finding shared friends and shared community as a couple is more challenging when you don’t share religious beliefs or practices
Creating traditions and deciding which rituals and holidays you will observe.
Parenting. This is a big one. Many people who are very comfortable allowing difference with their spouse find themselves in battle when it comes to the kids.
Will the kids go to church, temple, mosque, synagogue, all of the above, or none at all?
Will we introduce our kids to both our belief systems or choose just one? Will that confuse them?
How will the kids get religious education?
How will the kids get moral education?
Which holidays or rites of passage will we introduce to our kids?
What will our parents think?
Will other adults have more influence in the lives of my kids than I do?
Will I become irrelevant, or worse demonized, in the eyes of my own children?
There is hope
IECC owner Rebecca Williams is a mixed faith marriage expert. Whether you work with Rebecca or one of our team of fantastic couples therapists trained by Rebecca, we can help you reconnect, find creative solutions to the challenges you face, and get you back to being best friends and favorite teammates. We know that each mixed faith marriage is completely unique. We will help you figure out what works for you, even if that doesn’t look like anyone else’s relationship or how anyone thinks relationships should be. We believe there is enough love and respect in the world to allow both partners in a mixed faith marriage to:
have full expression of their beliefs,
have access to the places and traditions that bring them meaning and peace,
be full partners in their relationship,
be co-equal partners in parenting,
and to feel completely loved and connected to each other at the same time!
Your relationship might even become stronger and better because of these challenges!
Get some tips for thriving in your mixed secular / religious marriage
Rebecca was invited as an expert guess to discuss the challenges of living in a mixed marriage after one partner leaves religion. You can see the full presentation below.
Get started at home today
We have a free mini course Foundations of a Mixed Belief Relationship that will teach you the most important skill for helping your interfaith or secular / religious relationship thrive.
Read more about Mixed Faith Marriages
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