Firstly, a huge and massive you to Eileen, to Erika and to Kate for enlightening me on what marriage preparation in the evangelical Christian sense involves.
(And to reassure Kate, no he hasn't and yes I would...)
I also found a marriage preparation manual at the local Da'wah (ie Islamic outreach) bookshop attached to my local supermarket, which I bought for £3.99 and devoured with paneer on toast. It said essentially everything which Eileen and Erika said (learn to relax and laugh together, talk about everything, don't let arguments linger, make sure you share the same approach to money/children/worship) though Kate's question (about donestic abuse/violence) was noteably absent. What it did include was a great deal about sex, both in the anatomical and erotic sense. That's also what I'd been asking when I said there were things in needed to know. To know in the Biblical sense...
It seems to me there's a real gap in provision and/or the market here. Whereas there seems a fair amount of didactic/pastoral provision for those from a same or similar religious tradition forming relationships/getting married, there's nothing out there for couples of differing faiths from one another, who don't do organised or institutional religion, or who consider themselves spiritual-but-not-religious. There's a fair amount of generic stuff online about how Person of Religion/Ethnicity X will experience/relate to Person of Religion/Ethnicity Y and the majority of it tends to be hugely oversimplistic, overgeneralising and promoting rather than challenging labelled and stereotypes... certainly in the case of Fiance and I, it has been utterly counterproductive as the church continues to treat him according to amassively irrelevent ethnic archetype.
What's needed, I think, is some material that provides some basic relationship/sex education from a clear universal perspective promoting respect, mutuality, discussion and non-violent conflict resolution alongside some sex advice for the totally clueless, but that promotes questions which may be raised in relationships where the couple do not both come from the same religious tradition.
Open-ended qestions such as
*If your methods/standards of cooking/housework/timekeeping/personal hygiene differ, does one of you need to defer to the other or can you compromise? How would each option feel?
*How will you provide a united response to incidents of racism or ethnic tension which catch you at unexpected moments? If violence or intimidation are involved, would you want the police involved, or would you want it left with family/community leaders?
*If either or both of you have children, do you need to parent them in the same way and, if so, how? And how do your children feel?
and plenty more...
Hmmm. A project in there, perhaps. Or has someone else got there first??
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7 comments:
Hi Grace
I haven't got time to do thorough research on this, but googling with "interfaith marriage" brought up few possible options for further exploration:
http://www.interfaithmarriage.org.uk/ (run by Churches Together. Has an open discussion forum: http://www.interfaithmarriage.org.uk/forum/ )
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“Interfaith Marriage Stumbling Blocks”
Every marriage will have some stumbling blocks, but interfaith marriages have a few extra challenges. These issues need to be discussed and dealt with prior ...
www.marriage.about.com/od/interfaith/a/interfaith.htm
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“The Emotional Challenges of Interfaith Marriage”
Psych CentralThere is a rapid rate of intermarriage among people of different faiths in the United States. Estimates are that 50 percent of Jewish men and ...
www.psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-emotional-challenges-of-interfaith-marriage/
All in all, there are over 61000 Google hits. If you narrowed your search down a little you should be able to find some help without having to reinvent the wheel.
Good luck!
I wish I had done some marriage preparation when we got married 20 years ago. Many of the issues that eventually resulted in our divorce might have become apparent early on.
We both wanted to create a stable family and were determined to do well financially, so we thought we shared the same principles. Eventually we realised that our core motivations for this were diametrically opposed.
My husband wanted a nice small stable family, a big house and all the security money can buy, so he could shut himself away from the world.
I wanted a stably family base from which to grow and expand outward, drawing more and more people in. Money was helpful because I could afford to work part-time from home, spend time with the children and in my local community without having to be totally work-and-family-me-focussed.
When we got married, we were both agnostic, although I had had an active Christian background, so we never thought faith issues would become important. If someone had helped us dig deep enough, we might have discovered that his agnosticism was based on hostility, mine on just not finding a positive answer but still sort of seeking. When I finally found a very much alive faith, the seeds for our eventual divorce were definitely beginning to sprout.
To end this boring lecture – I think it’s important not only to realise what separates and what unites you, but WHY this is. You will both change and grow in years to come. Understanding the underlying motivations of your lives better, may help you predict which direction that change might take, and whether you’re likely to take more or less the same turnings, or totally different ones.
Interesting. Thanks (and I'm sorry I missed your call yesterday!)
I think what I was trying to get at yesterday - and I don't think I expressed it very well or very clearly - was that the whole "interfaith marriage advice" stuff out there tends to assume that each party comes from a clear and easily categorised religious position. As you've illustrated in what you're written about your marriage, I suspect that's usually not the case. Questions of ethnicity and identity go so much deeper than the labels or categories that people can put on one another. And for Fiance and I, seeing it all in terms of Her being Religion X and Him being Religion Y just doesn't help...
Grace
I see what you mean.
But in that case, all you can do is take two people in all their complexity and ask them to talk about their families, their upbringing, their background, what they think might has shaped them.... there's no point asking anyone else for advice, because ultimately, it's only ever between two hugely complex individuals.
I liked the list of questions you wrote. Why not start by both of you writing a list of questions (that alone should be interesting!), then answer them for yourself and try to predict how your partner might answer them. Let him to the same.
You should end up with a fair number of things to talk about more deeply.
Or you look at the standard interfaith questions and decide which one might apply to you and which one doesn't - and why you think that. You can still use them as a starting base for formulating your own questions.
"But in that case... there's no point asking anyone else for advice, because ultimately, it's only ever between two hugely complex individuals."
I take your point - and if I/we come across as somehow above or beyond or excpetional to what's already available, I apologise. We're far from unique, I'm aware... or only to the extent that we all are.
So maybe questions are all that can be asked. Now, there's a project... where to start ;-)
"Now, there's a project... where to start ;-)"
Here and now.
And continue for the rest of your life, still interested in each other and in new answers.
Maybe that's the only secret.
I think Erika makes a great point in talking about what role religion/spirituality play or don't play for you, and why.
I was always spiritual, but had a real crisis and was pretty agnostic for a long time. I found the Episcopal Church and fell in love.
My husband, believes in God, but not in organized religion at all. It makes for a lot of difficulty between us.
So, a secular marriage exploration with some pertinent racial and relgion/spirituality questions might be a good resource.
Glad I said something useful!!
Everything you've ever said has been useful :-)
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