Can You Date Someone With Different Religious Beliefs?

You and I, when we got together, you were my worst nightmare.

Thank you.

You're a vegetarian.

What do you say to somebody who says, I can only. I want to date somebody who is of the same faith as me. That's really important to me. And I'm sort of. My type, so to speak, is somebody who shares my same religious beliefs. What do you say to those people?

I think there's a. There's probably a difference between a type and a rule that we've set up. So a type would be someone that we find ourselves drawn to for whatever reason, physically. There's kind of some attraction imprint early on in our lives that led us down a certain path with a certain kind of aesthetic. Or there's personality traits that we find ourselves drawn to, either because we saw them in our parents, either for better or worse. It could be that there's a trauma bond happening that keeps happening with every person we're with. Those, to me, are types. There's a sort of unconscious. I just feel drawn to that kind of person. Then there's rules that we set up. And saying I need to date someone from my religion is a rule that we've set up. I almost see that as slightly different from a type. It's a rule. And just like types narrow down our options, the more rules we have for what someone has to be or who they have to be, the kind of person they have to be in life, what they believe, what they do with their lives. The more rules we set up, the smaller our pool is going to be. For years, I've dealt with people who come with some kind of rule around religion or faith. And it's just like any other rule, really. It narrows your pool. And you have to therefore ask yourself if this is every time you narrow your pool, your love life's going to get harder to meet someone. So then you have to ask yourself, how worth it is it to me to narrow my pool in this way? How important? Now, I'm not here to make a judgment on that. That's up to people to decide. But what I do encourage people to do is to ask themselves what's behind the rule? What's actually behind it? You and I, when we got together, you were my worst nightmare.

Thank you.

You were a vegetarian. And I don't have anything against vegetarians at all. Jameson will tell you that there is some part of me that sort of. I think probably for you, too, Jay. We kind of are similar on this, that we've not been able to bring ourselves to stop eating meat. But we sort of do believe that probably we should be vegetarians. I believe that if I was a better person, I would stop eating meat. Correct. And that's sort of the camp I'm in. But that's what's also true, is that there's nothing more exciting to me than going to great restaurants with amazing food and eating whatever is the speciality there. And the idea of being with someone who can't eat that thing with me and be like, isn't this incredible? Would have been something that I would have said, well, that's not what I want. And Audrey, I'm sure on some level may have thought one will be more compatible if the person I'm with is a vegetarian, because it means we think the same way in that department. I don't think it was ever a rule for Audrey. Clearly it wasn't. But that probably, if it was a preference, it might have been listed as a preference. But when we came together, what was clear about both of us, what was clear about you is that you love animals and you also care about the environment. And so there were. There were deep things motivating your decision not to eat meat. And the truth is that even though what we do is different, my beliefs aren't actually that different in terms of what we value. We both value life, we both value animals, we both love animals, and we both care about the environment. But your approach to that has been different. But we still connect in terms of the values driving us. And so we're able to find a home together in that value system, even though the way we live in that home differs. And when I think about, for example, people with religion, I think there's probably a lot of people who actually have extraordinarily similar values to them that get written off because they're either from a different faith or because they're not of a faith at all. Or in some cases, we've had people who I've coached who have said, it's not enough that they're part of my faith, they need to be really devout. So now you even have a narrowing of a pool within the same faith. Again, I'm not saying what people should here to dictate what rules people should have, only that we should consider the possibility that other people have things to teach us and we have things to teach them. And I think one of the great things about a relationship is that when you come to somebody who has different ways of living, that you actually find this the genesis of something new that comes out of the two of you. There is a kind of one plus one equals three situation that happens where both of you learn something and both of you grow. Because a relationship does not need to be an echo chamber. But a lot of us, when we create rules, we act like it does need to be an echo chamber. And that reflects our arrogance that we think what we have decided in life, what we have come to believe is just. That is the truth. That is the be all, end all best way to live. It's the best way to operate in life. That's the best, best way to think. And all I need is to find somebody else who's also discovered all of these best ways of living and thinking. It's an incredible arrogance.

And you might just be on that dating app and just see one thing in the profile, right, that goes vegetarian, and you go, oof, I'm not a vegetarian. Yeah, swipe left, like, instantly gone. You know, you.

You.

These are the heuristics that people make very fast decisions on.

But that's the crazy part, is that that Audrey is a vegetarian is annoying.

To me still now.

But what is driving that is guilt. What is driving that is absolutely one of the things I love most about Audrey. So that's an interesting conundrum, isn't it? But. But that trait that's driving her, the kindness and the compassion and the love that's driving that decision for her, that makes my life so much better.

Yeah.

And so you have to like being obsessed with these things on the surface instead of understanding that the very trait that produced that thing that you think is not for you might be the thing that benefits you most in the relationship.

Sa.