While I have considered leaving I don’t think that is the best option for me right now. I don’t have a recommend although I could get one. I just don’t care to get one. I go to church to support my husband and children and I am trying to redefine myself spiritual and really decide what I believe in.

I can see that there is pain on both sides for the spouse who changes and the one who doesn’t. What I got out of reading this the importance to love eachother and to accept that people change even in marriage.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.

I think sometimes it is hard because we are not on the same page. My husband remains quite on most things out of respect for what I believe. He allows me to teach my children without interference. But it is so strange and hard to continue to do things where he is not included. The examples I can think of today are going to church without him. Watching conf. while he disappears into the basement. The sunday before school my kids asking why they arent getting their school blessings. Trying to help my 7 year old understand she has to have someone else baptize her. I am not sure if he will even participate.

It is a struggle when two married people are not somewhat on the same page. It sometimes separates us. But should I give up what I believe or should he be forced to do what he doesnt believe. I dont think so but working around it all can be difficult. My struggle is to do it while showing him love and respect. Without becoming a marter. Remaining happy in my new life. And raising healthy children in the gospel while not putting their father in a bad light.

I think most of us dont end up with the life we imagined. I imagine or am trying to image that is getting over the loss of what should have been and making what is good.

One last thought is that often it becomes hard because everyone around you pulls way back. They treat me differently. They are confused I think because they are trying to understand something they cant. They want me to explain but boy I dont want to go their. I hate being felt sorry for. I would just like real love and frendship without judgement. Or people saying to me how amazing I am for putting up with things the way I do. That is probable the worst. I am not amazing and would not have choose this. Sometimes my children get treated different as well. I just wish people would just treat you I don’t know just different then they do. It is like right now people are questioning why I am having another child in my “situation” like I shouldnt have another child in this “mess”. There is so much people fail to understand when their life doesnt have these differences.

I actually went into marriage expecting change as a typicality, really (not that I have everything figured out!).

I really like who we are as a couple right now and where we don’t know we’re going.

Overall it’s paradiasical wedded bliss for us, partcularly because we expect bad days, bad moments, & barrels of hell some weeks which, I feel, is an inevitable thread of our progress together as committed partners (he was really, really hard to find!)

There’s much of me that is the same–crazy, whimsical, book&film freak, in love with LDS youth in Young Womens(though all these things have been augmented in my heart moreso since marriage & I have discovered that nuptials have grounded me in odd ways that have never hampered my wanderlust or freedom to develop the multifacets of me). Also, let us not forget how sexuality has soothed my pre-marital jitters.

Rob, too, is very much the same dude: sports, current political events, deep religiousity, won’t ever drive over the speed limit (this bugs me!), non-member who hates Joseph Smith, in bed long before me at night. I like to think that with me, he, too is gifted with the space to further carve out who he is over the next several decades we are married.

That doesn’t mean some days aren’t pissy, moody, angry, a bewilderment, a disappointment, a sadness, a boredom for me&Rob.

We kinda got married into a huge, nebulous “it’s gonna be alright–just chill & be wary of the many rocks ahead” kinda mentality–an unexplainable melding of all things ‘tossable’. Really weird.

And I think what made our choice to marry more comfortable (for the most part) was that I was 29 & he was 32—not fresh outta high school or off from a mission.

I think we just knew what to do & expect after our elopement “I do’s” having experienced a bit of the world each on our own–replete with our own set of disappointments and self failures along with self victories & self realizations, & having lived our own crazy singularities long before we met.

By the time we tied the knot (after a year of dating), it had been years since I officially got rid of useless Gen Auth demands for ear piercings–as if Rob or I care about that(though I like to keep the useFUL advice from the pulpit at times).

I think my biggest change is how my love for all people, regardless of spiritual paths, has grown. I like to think I’ve always been this way, but marrying a non-member (who, since marrying me, has increased his faith in Jesus in his own 1-to-1 relationship with the Saviour—-they have an understaning of each other, so it seems) has really sealed that deal within me. I really love how I’ve developed a wonderful sense of non-exclusivity because of my marrying a wonderful nonmember (btw, this doesn’t mean he poops ice cream!)