I'm Christian And My Boyfriend's An Atheist, And No, I Don't Have To Choose Between Loving Him And Loving God

I love my religion and my boyfriend and shouldn't have to choose between the two. I remember when I started dating my boyfriend and all of my friends and I first learned his religious views.

He shared with our small friend group that he does not believe in God. Of course, I didn't think anything of this and still was excited to get to know him more.

As we started getting serious I also decided that I wanted to get more religiously involved. I started looking into churches more and started talking to family and friends about my relationship with God.

I've always been pretty scared of death and dying, and realized that for me personally, a relationship with God would help ease that fear. I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings with my boyfriend but felt like I couldn't because of his views.

I talked to a lot of my more religious friends and asked them what I should do. On one hand, I had my fair share of wonderful friends that told me to just be honest with him and tell him how I'm feeling.

While on the other hand, I had friends telling me to break up with him and move on to someone that believes in God. This, of course, worried me. I went online to search for answers and kept seeing a lot of the same stuff.

I kept seeing, "just break up with him," or "that'll never work out." Oh no.

Here I am with the most amazing person that I've ever met and I'm going to have to break up with him because of religion.

I was worried sick and didn't know what to do. I either had to choose my boyfriend or my religion, two things that make me very happy.

Later that week I shared with one of my friends what was going on. I went to a campus ministry and went to meet my friends at the gym while crying about my problem. I told one of my supportive friends and she told me something that really struck me.

She looked at me and said, "if God was here today, do you really think he would tell you to give up on him?" Well no, the version of God that I know and love is completely accepting and cares about my happiness.

That night I had a discussion about religion with my boyfriend. He told me his experiences with religion in-depth for the first time and I told him mine. We talked for hours about our perspectives on life and how religion has and hasn't affected them.

We then discussed how we would raise our children and how we would approach any future arguments about this subject. He listened to how I felt about religion and respected how important it is to me.

My boyfriend now is very open to going to church with me and encourages me to do whatever makes me happy. He respects me and always has. I can assure you that my relationship with my boyfriend is wonderful and if God is watching over me he'd want me to be with someone who loves and respects me, who I've found.

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