Interfaith dating
May 26, 2008
Every woman is unique. As men, we spend our lives devising rules, divining patterns and deciphering clues. Women are the emotional representation of a lifetime of influences, impressions and relationships distilled and filtered through their own personalities. Not even Einstein could come up with an algorithm for figuring all that out.
In interfaith dating, it is important to know that you and your date are sitting in a corner booth, laughing over a clever joke. For hours, you’ve sat entranced, unwilling to give the slightest nod to others in the restaurant. You like him, he likes you. Perfect. What’s not to like? That all depends. Sure you’ve connected on some level, but how well do you really know him or her? Do you share the same interests, the same values? The same faith?
For the spiritually minded teen, the question isn’t whether the issue of interfaith dating will come up; it’s what to do when it does. Eighteen-year-old high-school senior Alli Silverman has been dating a boy from outside her faith for some time. He’s Catholic, she’s Jewish. In interfaith dating, it is important to know that they attend each other’s religious events and spend time with both families. “There are issues that we disagree on,” says Alli, “so when we see his family, we do things their way. And when we’re with my family, we do things our way.”
The best bet we men can hope for is to take whatever universal building blocks there may be and use those as the foundation for our new railway to a woman’s heart.
One such foundation is religion. This is a fiercely religious land we inhabit, but the demographic is changing. More young women than ever before are changing or leaving faiths altogether. Your problem is that she still carries with her the impressions of her upbringing and her parents are still devout followers. In interfaith dating, it is important to know that religion can be a contentious issue that could wear down any relationship.
Actually, people who come from different faiths can have successful marriages if they completely explore the important religious issues before they make the final decision to wed. The process of exploring these important issues connects with what each considers being of such great importance that they cannot compromise. For example, two people from different faiths may have intense beliefs about how they want to raise their children. In interfaith dating, it is important to know that if someone is firmly Catholic they may have find Lutheran teachings to be unacceptable. The same may hold true for people who are Muslim, Jewish, and any other religion with which they are raised. This can be a difficult and insurmountable problem for people from the same faith as exemplified by the differences between those who are Orthodox versus Conservative Jews, Shiites versus Sunni Muslims and so on.





























