Hi everyone so my boyfriend and I got into a fight last weekend. He is a devout Christian, he made this clear to me when we started dating. I told him pretty much that it’s fine for me but that he shouldn’t expect me to convert for him. Obviously I will respect any traditions he wishes to follow as long as he respects me and my authority. For a couple of months he has been a bit more pushy about it.
We had a conversation at the time, he told me that he believes it’s his responability to at least try to get me into the lord’s light. I put an ultimatum then, that he was to respect my views on religion or we’d be done. Things were a bit awkward after this since I didn’t feel like joining him for church anymore after this. (Before i went with him once in a while to show that i care about him.)
Now last weekend we were invited by his mom for a dinner party, like him she’s very devout but a sweet lady. So before dinner she likes to pray and read a bible passage. No big deal I am holding hands and waiting patiently untill the food comes out.
While eating she asked what I thought of the passage she had read. It was the passage where king Solomon offers to cut a baby in half to appease two claimed mothers and the real mother giving up her baby to avoid harming it and thus proving she’s the one. I just told my MIL my thoughts on it, how it is a beautiful passage and shows that sometimes people can cause a lot of harm by pretending and claiming things that isn’t theirs. She was happy and smiled and praised me for how “wise beyone my years” I am.
So my boyfriend just kinda snickered and said that it was funny since this was all an act from me. He exposed me as not being Christian and that I didn’t even allow him to try and convert me. His mom just kinda looked sad and said something like everyone gets to choose their own path but dinner was very awkward after this.
So obviously I confront him after, that what he did was not cool. I am fine standing still and “praying” I am fine listening to a bible text and discussing it. I am just not fine being asked to convert and do these things every day, and I am certainly not fine being exposed for something as silly as that. But he told me that leading his mom on is dishonest and I should have made the same thing clear to her. In his words pretending to be a Christian is much worse than just not being a Christian.
So yeah in my opinion I was just participating in a family tradition with good intentions, in his opinion I was deceiving his family. Am I really the asshole for not making it clear that I don’t believe in it?
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Hi everyone so my boyfriend and I got into a fight last weekend. He is a devout Christian, he made this clear to me when we started dating. I told him pretty much that it’s fine for me but that he shouldn’t expect me to convert for him. Obviously I will respect any traditions he wishes to follow as long as he respects me and my authority. For a couple of months he has been a bit more pushy about it.
We had a conversation at the time, he told me that he believes it’s his responability to at least try to get me into the lord’s light. I put an ultimatum then, that he was to respect my views on religion or we’d be done. Things were a bit awkward after this since I didn’t feel like joining him for church anymore after this. (Before i went with him once in a while to show that i care about him.)
Now last weekend we were invited by his mom for a dinner party, like him she’s very devout but a sweet lady. So before dinner she likes to pray and read a bible passage. No big deal I am holding hands and waiting patiently untill the food comes out.
While eating she asked what I thought of the passage she had read. It was the passage where king Solomon offers to cut a baby in half to appease two claimed mothers and the real mother giving up her baby to avoid harming it and thus proving she’s the one. I just told my MIL my thoughts on it, how it is a beautiful passage and shows that sometimes people can cause a lot of harm by pretending and claiming things that isn’t theirs. She was happy and smiled and praised me for how “wise beyone my years” I am.
So my boyfriend just kinda snickered and said that it was funny since this was all an act from me. He exposed me as not being Christian and that I didn’t even allow him to try and convert me. His mom just kinda looked sad and said something like everyone gets to choose their own path but dinner was very awkward after this.
So obviously I confront him after, that what he did was not cool. I am fine standing still and “praying” I am fine listening to a bible text and discussing it. I am just not fine being asked to convert and do these things every day, and I am certainly not fine being exposed for something as silly as that. But he told me that leading his mom on is dishonest and I should have made the same thing clear to her. In his words pretending to be a Christian is much worse than just not being a Christian.
So yeah in my opinion I was just participating in a family tradition with good intentions, in his opinion I was deceiving his family. Am I really the asshole for not making it clear that I don’t believe in it?
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You weren’t “pretending,” you were just being polite and participating in their family tradition without making it about your beliefs. Your boyfriend put you in an awkward spot by outing you like that especially after you’d already made your boundaries clear to him. Respecting someone’s faith doesn’t mean you have to declare your own beliefs at every meal.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I didn’t tell my MIL that I’m not a Christian, this has shaped her feelings towards me differently and might have felt like a betrayal.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
You dumped him, right? Right?
NTA you hearing a story/parable and taking the learning has nothing to do with being christian. Your boyfriend has serious issues. If you did agree to go along he would then want you to dress a certain way, talk a certain way. Probably time for an exit strategy. I’m guessing you don’t live together because that would be a sin.
PS. She’s not your MIL.
NTA. You didn’t pretend to be a Christian, you expressed your thoughts on a Bible story, and you were respectful to his family’s dinner rituals like holding hands and praying.
Also, I hate to say it, but you’re clearly not compatible with your boyfriend. He wants someone Christian, and clearly wants to convert you.
NTA for being a polite guest, which is all that happened. That is, until your future ex-boyfriend decided to get his digs in. He doesn’t believe that you’re acceptable and he wants everyone to know it.
Your boyfriend is a jumping jackalope. You didn’t do anything wrong, in fact you did perfectly well. He’s the one shoving religion at you and trying to shame you for something you have been completely open and transparent about.
Dump him like a bad habit NTA
NTA, that’s not subterfuge, it’s literary analysis!
I don’t think a relationship requires sharing belief but it does require respecting belief, and he doesn’t respect yours.
Nta
In general, different religions do not mix well. Please just break up and let the ass find a Christian girl
NTA.
Christianity is like a large crowd of people, walking behind Jesus Christ throughout history and all over the world. That’s it. You can join the crowd because you strongly believe in whatever JC is preaching, because you like the music, because you were already going in that direction and you just stumbled upon this group on your way, or because you met one or a few people in the group and decided to join them, or join for a while to see what it’s all about. All of that is fine. And all of it would allow you to call yourself ‘a follower of christ’ if you want to, or not, if you don’t want to and feel like it’s not him you’re following, but you just happen to be here at the moment.
Funny. First time you’d have a husband problem and no MIL problem. The mom seems fine but that boyfriend of yours is exhausting.
I guess he’ll soon be an ex and that would be the correct decision! You did absolutely nothing wrong! NTA.
Your boyfriend doesn’t respect you.
How is that relationship supposed to work?
nta. lmao i went to catholic primary and secondary school and i could talk about the bible passages out my ass like there was no tomorrow. being able to talk about the bible does not a christian make, you never said you were you just made polite conversation.
NTA, but for both of your sakes you should break up.
please dump this child, he is TA here
Do you and him have a sexual relationship?
NTA, you were discussing a literary passage and being nice to his mom. He decided to try the good old guilt method to get you to convert.
You guys are incompatible if he’s ignoring your desire to not convert.
Nta, but I can’t understand for the life of me why people would date someone who believes they deserve to be tortured. That alone is a deal breaker, but to be a smug asshole about it is what makes it disgusting. Find a rational person who doesn’t think you should be tortured to date, probably safer. Not to mention the manipulation.
Nta
You guys have serious differences and should not be together
Yeesh. Politely responding to a question about a book you presumably don’t believe in makes you a decent human being, not a pretend Christian.
After a period of pretending to respect your boundaries, your boyfriend is finally showing you his requirements for a girlfriend, and you obviously don’t measure up in his eyes. Time to stop casting pearls before swine.
NTA, OP was being a good guest, by respecting the host’s religion. Being able to discuss a bible passage intelligently isn’t something that is restricted to followers of the specific faith.
OP really needs to rethink this relationship, as the BF isn’t on the same page as her in regard to respecting someone’s beliefs. He will continue to hound her about converting to his religion.
NTA. Also, please run. That guy is not good people, no matter how much I’m sure he insists.
NTA but it does sound like you may have to reconsider the relationship. It seems like this is a dealbreaker for him and you shouldn’t have to change your beliefs for someone else.
They shouldn’t have put you in that situation in the first place. They can’t assume every guest is a Christian or even super religious.
NTA. You are seeing your future with this man. Is this what you want for your life? He is bullying you. Accusing you of being a “pretend Christian” because you don’t walk around shouting you are not and having an adult discussion with his mother? Nope, that’s what bullies do. They lie to create guilt to use as manipulation. If you poke at the guilt hard enough, it exposes the lie that it is built on. In this case, the lie is the “pretending” while you did absolutely nothing wrong.
Now BF has manipulated you into doubting yourself so much that you are on reddit. You are completely missing the disrespect in all of this. BF deciding to “expose” you to his family to humiliate you. That’s all that was. It’s a pattern. He’s a bully and uses faith as his weapon.
NTA – boyfriend is very immature and doesn’t seem to respect you.
His mother seems genuinely caring and hopefully she can sort him out. Either way, I think you should hit the brakes with this guy. Lack of respect is a relationship red flag.
NTA, Girl, dump this fool. He thinks you being polite with his mom is equivalent to “fooling” her? He is clearly judging you and harbouring resentment towards you. Why continue the relationship?
NTA but also why are you dating a guy who is with you because he thinks you’re wrong and wants to fix you by treating you like shit until you give in?
You didn’t pretend. You can have an opinion on religious stories whether or not you’re religious. All your boyfriend is doing is quite literally bullying you in front of his family in order to make you submit to his goals for you. He doesn’t respect people with differing opinions than him and he doesn’t respect you. He is the one who was pretending to be ok with who you were from the very beginning.
These kind of things may seem innocuous (not that much in this case, he disrespected you in front of his mom who was more understanding than him), but they’re fundamental and will only become a larger source of heart ache as time goes by.
NTA.
But it should be ex-boyfriend soon, if not already. This is not something that will go away.
NTA if your boyfriend is too devout to stop trying to convert you, he’s too devout to date a non-christian. It even says in the bible that believers should avoid being “unequally yoked with unbelievers”. It’s fine if his faith is important to him, it’s not fine to pester and disrespect you. You aren’t compatible with each other.
On another note it’s pretty intellectually narrow-minded to think that only Christians should discuss the bible or that discussing the meaning of a religious text without subscribing to that religion somehow makes you a faker.
NTA I wouldn’t say you were pretending. You were being respectful of their practices and beliefs. You are allowed to have thoughts on the Bible, especially if it is a well known story. Discussion leads to knowledge. Him guilting you goes against what the Bible teaches.
NTA, she likely looked sad because of her son, not you. You aren’t pretending just because you like or understand the text (plenty of people appreciate poetry without worshipping it). I’m a Christian, and I’ve always believed that if you don’t practice, observational respect is what you should do, and those that do, shaming the other person is literally the worst thing you can do. His mom is sad because her son clearly didn’t respect her example either.
NTA.
Plenty of non Christians get value from the teachings of the bible. You bf is the one who made it into something dishonest.
Just end the relationship
It’s never going to work ., trust me, I’ve been there.
You need a pretty strong backbone to deal with this, and after a year you ask yourself if it really was worth it.
Just leave this relationship. You both want the other to believe and be something you are not, to the point of sabotaging your relationship with his family. He has beliefs, like pretending to be a Christian is bad and you have beliefs that Christianity isn’t real. It will never work. NAH