How have other people dealt with a partner becoming increasingly religious during the relationship, especially when it creates worry or distance?
For starters, I want to preface this by saying I’m not trying to disrespect anyone’s religion. I believe in God myself. I actually think religion can be a beautiful thing. I just didn’t grow up religious, and building a relationship with God has been difficult and gradual for me. Honestly, my boyfriend is a huge reason I even became open to faith in the first place.
My boyfriend and I have been together for two years. His entire family is Christian, and I genuinely love them so much.
I think my discomfort around certain religious beliefs started when my mom stopped attending a church she used to donate to because they preached homophobic ideology. My brother is gay, and she knew that since he was little. She couldn’t sit in a place that viewed her child differently because of who he was.
The women in my family have never believed homosexuality was wrong — not my mom, not my grandma, not even my 90-year-old great grandma.
The reason I’m posting is because recently my boyfriend and I had a deep conversation about religion, and I asked him where he stood on homosexuality. His dad is gay, so I was genuinely curious.
He told me: “If God says it’s a sin, then I’m going to believe it’s a sin.”
He also said he still loves his dad completely, would never judge him, and doesn’t think he’s “less than” in any way. He said he would simply pray for him.
But I can’t lie — it unsettled me deeply.
I love this man, and I’ve genuinely imagined a future with him, but I keep thinking about my brother. I cannot marry into homophobia. I just can’t. And I keep imagining a future where one of our children comes out to us someday and hearing, “I’ll pray for you.”
Maybe he would still love them unconditionally. I think he would. But I personally will never believe being gay is a sin.
Has anyone else navigated a relationship where your values around religion and homosexuality didn’t fully align? How did you approach those conversations, especially when love was still very much there?