Today’s society offers conflicting messages to couples; make sacrifices for your relationship and never compromise your beliefs. This mixed message can be very destructive in relationships dealing with interfaith and intra-faith concerns where one feels the pull to make compromises for their partner but struggles with the notion that doing so may have spiritual consequences.
Interfaith relationships exist when each partner in a relationship ascribes to different faith traditions. For example, one partner is Jewish and the other Christian. Intra-faith relationships are those in which both partners ascribe to different traditions within the same religion. For example, both partners are Jewish but one partner is Orthodox and the other Reform.
Navigating these waters can be difficult for any couple so here are a few quick tips for bridging the interfaith and intra-faith divide.
Approach the issue with a spirit of celebration and collaboration. Too many couples get bogged down by the temptation to be critical of the others belief tradition. Make your best effort to be nonjudgmental by working together to come up with solutions to the corrosive differences. Every faith tradition has many differences between themselves and other faith traditions or even within the same faith tradition. Although the differences may be glaring, there is no need to be critical of them. The differences are what helped you make a choice as to what faith tradition was better for you, but those differences don’t make any other tradition, or person, less than another. Make an effort to discover together the similar values and beliefs that guided you to your respective religious and spiritual understandings and celebrate the commonalities.
Don’t avoid your religious differences. To ignore what makes each of you the person you are is to miss great opportunities for intimacy. Intimacy requires sharing emotionally risky information and having that responded to in caring and loving ways. Take the time to learn about one another’s faith traditions and discuss them in ways that avoid pitfalls, like making your partner feel wrong for believing as they do. If one partner is made to feel bad about their beliefs, they may feel inadequate or not good enough if they don’t convert. This is harmful as any person in a relationship who does not feel good enough will resent that feeling and may inadvertently cause the same experience in their partner by becoming critical of them as well. Partner up to manage your family’s faith differences. If you are planning a wedding, find ways to include both of your faith traditions in the ceremony in some way. Some couples include elements that are spiritually important to each of them in the wedding ritual. Make plans for worship that only include compromises that both partners can be spiritually excited about. If compromise is not an option, worship separately as unwelcomed spiritual compromise can equal spiritual diminishing. Consider options for tithing. One partner may not feel comfortable having their combined income used for tithing. Discuss how children will be raised. Take the time to remember how you chose your own faith tradition or spiritual path and make an effort to allow your children to make religious discoveries of their own. Demanding your children be raised in one particular religion, or absence of one, does not take into account the autonomy of that child to decide their spiritual path for themselves. Most importantly, support your partner if their extended family does not approve of the inter/intra-faith difference. Try not to make them choose between their extended family and their chosen one.
Most importantly, take time to meet with your clergy. Having interfaith and intra-faith disagreements can be difficult and scheduling time with a spiritual leader can help reduce the tension inherent in these discussions. Many clergy value upholding relationships and would eagerly be available to facilitate further understandings around the similarities and differences in values or beliefs, helping to turn conflict into connection.