I recently read a letter sent to an advice columnist that really bothered me. One of the college blogs that I follow,
CollegeCandy, has a popular columnist named
Tuffy Luv (not her real name, of course). It's exactly how it sounds, Aunt Tuffy Luv will give you some tough love and say it how it is. The advice that she gives is funny and sometimes much needed.
But the most recent letter deals with a problem that I have encountered once before (a long time ago). And I'm sure it's a frequent and important problem that has been dealt with by many people.
Here's a gist of what that letter said,
Dear Tuffy Luv,
I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost all of college (we’re seniors) and he’s my perfect guy. I never believed in soul mates until I met him. We get along great, we have so much in common, we have almost all the same friends, and it’s just a great situation.
Perfect, right? Well, I thought so.
We’ve been making plans to move in together, and he seemed totally fine with that, but a couple of week ago I mentioned in passing something about getting married (I know, I know) and he threw a major curveball at me. It turns out that he won’t marry me–unless I convert to Catholicism.
I never knew this was a big deal for him. He doesn’t seem to be very religious (I’ve never seen him go to church except Christmas and Easter) and he’s never brought this up before. But when we talked about it a couple of weeks ago he was really clear that I would need to convert or else it wasn’t going to work....
You can read the rest of the letter
here.
Basically, this girl found out that the boyfriend that she's planning on moving in with doesn't want to marry her unless she converts to his religion. But the problems lies in the fact that she's not religious at all and she doesn't want to pretend to be religious when she's not.
I can relate to this because I have never been the religious type either. My parents didn't have time to teach me their religious faiths (nor did they really think about it much). I like the freedom of not being held down by a certain set of beliefs. I like not have a label. I must admit that I sometimes feel left out or awkward when I'm at a friend's house for dinner or a holiday party. But I'm okay with that. No, really, I'm okay with not being religious.
I had a conversation with an ex of mine last year about something very similar to this. Simpally he didn't care what religion his kids believed in, they just had to believe in something. This is all fine and dandy, but the conversation soon turned sour as my ex tried to imply that people who converted to a different religion aren't really of that religion.
Let me give you an example. He says a person can't grow up without religion (or as a Christian) and convert to Judaism. Because that person is not truly Jewish. Just how kids have to practice Judaism all their lives in order to be Jewish. (My ex was Jewish.)
*Warning: This wasn't the whole conversation but it's what I took away from it and remembered.*
