How my relationship with religion mirrors my relationship with my ex

Maybe this perspective can help you too

Why did my ex behave so erratically and unpredictably? We had a child. How was this helpful? If she’s doing X, what’s stopping her from doing Y and Z? Is there anything I can do? How do I stop her? Can I stop her?

I initially decided to take it seriously because the Bible is Lindy. It survived for millennia. It will likely survive for many more. Blood was spilled over the contents of the book. Many other religious texts did not survive. Trying to be rational only got me so far, and was of little help in the relationship department. But the Bible also teaches on morality and community. These were things I needed help with.

I met a couple Christians in the depths of my despair. I met one guy at Starbucks and couple friends at a Temple coffee. And to my surprise, my lack of faith was not met with resistance, but understanding. I didn’t feel judged for having questions or entertaining doubts. They understood that I was suffering and looking for answers and they were accepting. This was unlike the kind of Christianity I grew up in where non-believers were routinely demonized.

Browsing on twitter, I came across a stat that stuck in my mind. A month or so later I tried to find the tweet again. I wanted to know how far I should go to protect my daughter’s innocence. Her risk of losing it prematurely was 20x higher than if she was in a stable married family. At that moment in my life, people were not forthcoming with believable answers. I sensed something was deeply wrong in my relationship, and the stat helped explain that maybe something in my biology was wired to respond to a real and not just a perceived thread. Something like 1 in 5 girls are sexually abused one the whole. So it’s not like her risk went up 20x while her actual risk remained low. I had a hard time looking at the research. I should have delved deeper. I wanted to believe it was true because it would justify my feelings, but I also hoped it wasn’t true. I started to boil inside. I became resentful for never having heard of this risk. I grew up watching shows that said step fathers are a good thing. Now it felt like I wasn’t just betrayed by my ex, but by a lying society.

I wanted to protect my daughter, who was too young to speak, but I had trouble telling anyone. And when I did tell people, I got unsatisfying answers. Nobody said, “this is a massive problem and you’re right to worry about it. Here’s what you should do .” I started to develop a mostly cynical perspective of the world. I stopped trying to tell people about my fears, but I tried to hold out a secret hope.

Though I was drawn to Christianity, my relationship with it was already soured. When I was younger, I believed in Creationism. And I believed that science justified the Bible. When I saw the other side, how thoughtful and considerate they were, I became an atheist within a month.

This time, I was offered a books on Christianity to assuage my fears. I flipped through the pages, and for the most part it did little. My primary questions were moral and relational. But most of the Christian apologetic books held out a hope that their texts would lead someone to Christ and the Bible. This kind of motivated reasoning was familiar to me.

I was interested in moral instruction, and I was quickly finding myself in quicksand. I certainly sounds easy to be a good person. On some level, anyone doing a deep dive might actually be looking for rationalizations and not answers. But close to half of Christian marriages end in divorce. Being a good person doesn’t seem to be enough.

But what struck me was Christ’s example. Even if most Christians and most denominations were wrong, I still felt there was something there. I assumed that I needed to fight back against my ex. But I also didn’t want to sue her. Jesus did not fight. In fact, he didn’t even want you to fight for him—at least not physically. Jesus rebuked Peter for pulling out a sword in Christ’s defense. The lesson I took was you don’t fight for what is right with force. Instead, you endure evil until it exposes itself in the process. That was the lesson of Christ’s crucifixion. But of course now the question was how to live. I was lonely, increasingly lacked energy, and was depressed. This was difficult for me because I shared my daughter half the time and it was a lot to bear. If something bad happened to my daughter, how could I expect her to forgive me? What would be my moral justification for not doing anything to stop it?

And I had another issue with being accepted into a group. Jesus also favored the outgroup. So while I kept one foot in the rationalist sphere (on Twitter and in person), I kept another in the religious sphere. Organized religion was more hands-on and personal but asked me to believe things I wasn’t ready to believe. They were more eager to convince me. Rationalists spent no time trying to convince me. But they also attracted people who normally found themselves in the outgroup. They were more likely to listen than to offer advice, and this made their advice more believable. And they were also against violence, and for using a careful and humble approach to reasoning through problems.

At some point, St. Augustine entered the picture for me. He extended Christ’s example to say that being a victim of rape does not diminish your worth. It was a relief to read that. I didn’t have to bear that responsibility on myself. St. Augustine is an important church father and if he said it, I could lean on his credibility.

Christianity also taught against divorce. It allowed for it, but it was highly disfavored. But I had trouble applying to my situation. I wasn’t legally married to me ex, but the breakup had much of the manifestations of a divorce. It certainly felt like divorce. But I also didn’t trust what Christians said about marriage. They leaned too much on the legal definition. But what does the Bible say? Why should I sign a piece of legal paper? Aren’t you Christian? It was confusing and alienating. Why were people pushing this on me? Would it really fix my problems? I looked at rings online. It was bizarre. How would this ring or that ring fix anything? It seemed like everyone asking me to propose was more interested in kicking the can down the road than talking through this with me.

Christianity was not easy to make sense of, even aside from Christian culture. There were too many claims that could not be justified. I figured that I would put on the religion like glasses and try to see the world through Scripture rather than judging the lenses from afar. If I put them on and I see more clearly, then I’ll know it was worth it.

I eventually discovered Jewish thinking. At first it was just a trickle. I’m not Jewish. But I was interested in what makes successful relationships, and Hasidic Jews seemed like they knew what they were doing. They had big families and most of the stuff I saw seemed like these couples were happy. The only problem is they were a little weird, and they didn’t accept Jesus. It was possible that their insular religious ideals did more for them than any specific view on marriage.

I eventually discovered rabbi Manis Fridman. And that’s when I realized that maybe these Jews did know something about love that I didn’t know. He said things like: marriage is not about things, and love can become a thing. If you marry for love, why do you need the other person? You married the love, not the person. He said you should marry the person. And that to become one means you remove everything that stands in your way. And I was even swayed by his tautologies. He would say that divorce should not be an option. But if divorce needs to happen, then you should get a divorce. In effect, he said marriage is good, and divorce is bad, but sometimes needs to happen. There’s no logical answer. That’s fine. I can live with that.

So here I am with a 4 year old daughter at this point, and I’m bawling my eyes out on a weekly basis. I’m still stuck on my old relationship. And I’m running out of money and I still don’t have some kind of fool-proof answer about what I should do. Instead, I just know what I can do, which just isn’t satisfying. I think: maybe I should get back together with her. Maybe it can work. But then I think: would it be right? She has a boyfriend. She’s been with him this whole time. I can’t do that. Plus, it’s a little weird. I don’t have any reason to suspect he had any insidious motivations. Suppose my ex never really liked me, that I bring out the worst in her, and that she only ever wanted to like me without there being anything underneath it. And maybe my feelings toward her are themselves lies. If it wasn’t for our child, would I still feel so strongly about her? And hell, I hardly knew anything about her. I was judgmental, and I was bitter. Why should I commit to her? But in my mind, I was increasingly convinced that if I was going to be with someone, I should be committed. And with so much distance and time, I could build up any story about her. Maybe I was extrapolating too much from too little data. Maybe the hope of anything working out is an illusion. Maybe all the confusion I’ve felt wasn’t because I did or didn’t do something. She just didn’t like me, and any reasons would merely serve as deceptive cover for a more mundane answer. You see—I kept thinking I could earn her favor in some way. Nope. Maybe there was nothing I could do, and maybe I should even feel grateful for her not giving me reasons to try to appease my rational mind and have me spinning my wheels senselessly. Maybe her lack of communication came with a bigger benefit than I expected.

But at this point I’ve dated but haven’t had a girlfriend. And I was too caught up internally to really date. My mind was too much of a mess. And my feelings were too erratic. And I was too lonely. And I wanted to date the right way, and every time I did, it ended up being the wrong way. And this only exacerbated my fears.

There’s this weird and inexplicable thing where when I’m bitter toward her, life itself feels like it closes in on me. I can’t explain it. It’s so deeply rooted that it might as well be a physical law. It’s easy to say I should just accept that it’s over between us. But I can neither get too close without sparking her ire, nor can I put her out of my mind and move on. Forget sex, a relationship, etc. I feel awful when I’m judgmental of her. I want to see her in a positive light. And it’s taken me a while to get there. But I don’t actually know if it’s gone. Again, we hardly communicate unless it’s strictly necessary. And when we have, the judgement did come back. How much would it come back? So I’m clearly still getting there. I want peace with her, and I can’t manage to both get there and stay there.

So in some sense, maybe I should just move on. But it’s awful. I’ve been stuck researching moral questions on what to do and I still don’t feel comfortable.

The thing that got me into the relationship was in part because when I could tell she wanted me to be her boyfriend, I gave into the invisible social pressure ask ask her to be my girlfriend. Maybe you don’t believe me. But I’m sure you know when a parent or teacher is looking for a specific answer, and it’s not the one you’re thinking of. She was driving the getaway car and I was holding the gun. And together, we were partners in a crime against each other. Everything quickly became confusing. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. She was depressed and lacked energy. There was nothing I could do to appease her.

I tried to understand things from her perspective, but since we hardly communicated, I had to instead figure it all out from first principles. I couldn’t use what she said or did because there was little signal there. One insight I had was that since American politics was divided, and because it felt the same as my relationship with her, that maybe understanding politics would help guide me. And then I learned about national divorce, and politics only seemed to heat up. This was awful and it seemed to spell doom for my own relationship. But it was still tempting because in politics you can actually see the two sides. And you could even see how individual neurons (humans) fire.

Then when I got into religion, I started to see how the relationship between God and his followers was described as a marriage. So again I had something that I could potentially draw upon.

But I also saw the insidious way in which both seemed to work. I emotionally lied to my ex. I tried to lie to myself about my ex, and this made her life tricky because I’m sure she didn’t know where I stood and I didn’t know where I stood. And even if I proposed, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It was all very muddy.

I gave in to my ex in part because I was looking for approval from her. I wanted her to give the OK. I also wanted her to let me lead. It was weird. I wanted to lead by facts and logic. And when it didn’t work, I became frustrated and uncomfortable. I figured she was irrational and that it spelled doom for us.

But then I would often go back and think it over and realize that her irrationality bought her something. It was a kind of currency she could spend. And so I also started to justify her irrationality. I didn’t want to believe she was irrational. I wanted to see her in a good light. I wanted to see her as capable and competent. And so I attributed unspoken reasons to her actions. But those reasons, though rational, were often insidious and cynical. And I, as a result, became cynical when I thought of the reasons.

It couldn’t be more obvious to me that she was against me. At the same time, I could understand her actions from a cynical angle. She wasn’t again me. She was for herself.

So sometimes I fawned over her. I presented myself meekly and humbly in the hope that if I didn’t seem threatening to her, that it would fix things. And I remember early on when she did the same with me. And I assumed then that it meant that she liked me. But now I’ve looked into what the fawn response is and it’s not anything like love. It’s closer to a survival response than a genuine loving feeling. It wasn’t that she liked me. She was in some sense afraid of me. And this would explain her playing loosely with the truth. I started to fear that I would be falsely accused because why not take a lie and push it further? If she could get away with it, and if people believed her, what’s to stop her?

Recently I’ve realized why I am so turned off by religious people pushing their faith in even the smallest of ways. As soon as they apply the smallest pressure, I’m out. I don’t want it anymore. And this ironically resembled my relationship with my ex. If she felt that I was unhappy with her for any reason, or that I want to lecture her in even the smallest way, she turned off immediately.

And in the same way, when Christians told me anything about the value of commitment, or gave me any assurance that faith would be good for me, I would be immediately turned off. I didn’t want to be comforted. I was willing to suffer. I just wanted to suffer for something worthwhile, and not for a lie. I didn’t want to be comforted when I saw a discrepancy or a problem. I wanted to be taken seriously. And if I was only valuable to them insofar as I was a member of their church, and if their outpouring of love was contingent on my own commitment, it felt like a trap. If they were for the truth, why push it? Wouldn’t I come to them? All they needed to do was to make themselves available. But then, of course, who would take me into their religion? I’m a difficult person. I’m not that easy, just like my ex.

Religion is about making a leap of faith. Relationships are the same. But if you take the leap carelessly, you’re foolhardy. And you won’t be able to stick with it. And then people will point and laugh at you for lacking commitment.

But if you never pick a side, you’re a fence sitter. You’re unwilling to fight or die for any cause. You’re a tourist. You’re an unserious person. Again, people will point and laugh because you lack commitment to anything. You make mountains out of mole hills. You stand for nothing. And you’ll die alone.

And if you stick with something in spite of the facts, and you push them aside, then you’re no ally with the truth. You’re selfish. You’re willing to give up truth so you can keep your precious principles, no matter how wrong they may be.

And so faith and relationships are the same. It’s a leap of faith. It shouldn’t be a blind leap, but we also don’t live forever.