This is the first in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing [email protected]. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)
Guest post: Brooke Booth is a certified life coach through the Life Coach School and a JD. She also has an advanced certificate in feminist coaching.
As an expert in LDS/Mormon mixed faith marriages and faith transitions, Brooke has established a busy coaching practice serving those populations.
Brooke’s knowledge and skills have been cultivated in her own mixed faith marriage and mixed faith extended family as well as her extensive professional work with clients.
She is the host of the Mormon Mixed Faith Marriage Podcast, a platform dedicated to helping others find hope and solutions for the issues in their mixed faith marriage.
Brooke works with her clients to help them become empowered in their marriages, develop skills necessary for a strong relationship and to find connection as they relate to their spouse in new ways. She also helps them process their faith transition, or their spouse’s faith transition and to navigate those changes with love.
Brooke has been an active member of the LDS church until her own faith transition (after 15 years of marriage), a stay at home mom, a complex business litigator and a certified life coach.
Her skills and experience are unique and effective in helping her clients navigate mixed faith marriages and faith transitions.
I have been in a mixed faith marriage since 2018 and I have spent countless hours working with clients in a mixed faith marriage.
On a personal and professional level I have seen marriages go through what I call the “phases of a mixed faith marriage.” I am going to share a little about the various phases here.
First, I want to be very clear that not everyone goes through every single phase. Not everyone goes through them in the same order. Spouses do not go through them at the same time. You will not experience them as linear, meaning you do not experience them in a particular order. You may repeat a phase or skip a phase. This list is not comprehensive, just the most common ones I have seen or experienced. Some of the phases overlap with the grief cycle. That is intentional as there is significant overlap.
With that said, here are the phases:
Ignore It And Hope It Goes Away Phase
This is also known as denial. This phase sounds like, “This can’t be happening,” “This is a phase,” “They/I will get over it, I don’t need to do anything.”
Both partners can experience denial.
For the transitioning spouse they may have denial about their own faith crisis. This was certainly my experience. I was not aware I was in a faith crisis for some time, because I was just working through some things, and an actual faith crisis wouldn’t happen to me.
For the believing spouse, they may not want to give that much credence to what their spouse is experiencing because it’s going to pass anyway.
We often refer to denial as if it were a bad thing. It is not. It’s a coping thing. It is a normal thing. It’s ok to be in denial from time to time as It’s how we deal with overwhelming events. Just like anything, too much of it can be problematic.
Walking On Eggshells Phase
This phase is often when things feel on edge and when someone is angry. It’s also known as the angry phase.
Again both partners tend to experience this phase.
The focus is often on the transitioning spouse’s anger. They may be angry at the church, their past choices, or their spouse for not being able to understand their choices and motivations.
The believing spouse may be angry at podcasts, their spouse’s support group, or their spouse for following a path away from the church.
This phase can be embarrassing. Many shame themself for their behavior in this phase.
I think how you respond to your spouse’s angry phase speaks volumes to the health of the relationship. And how you respond to your own angry phase speaks volumes to the health of your relationship with yourself. (NOTE: I am not referring to people who are chronically angry in their relationship or narcissistic, that is not a phase, that is a way of being.)
This was an area where I personally struggled. We could not tolerate the other’s expression of anger and we retreated into what I consider the “demilitarized zone” where we stopped talking about church stuff altogether. Learning to be gentle with ourselves and our spouse in this phase can be a game changer.
Anger, like denial, is okay. It’s a normal human emotion. Feeling anger does not make you a bad person, it makes you human.
Why Can’t You Just Change Phase
If you are familiar with the grief process this phase can be like bargaining.
This is when you try to get your spouse to join you.
Come join me on my faith transition.
Or come join me back on the pew.
There may be podcasts or conference talks being sent back and forth.
I wanted my spouse to agree with me because I wanted my choice to be validated by him.
I see this with clients I work with as well. It can alleviate stress and fear to have your spouse confirm your decisions and conclusions.
For me, I wanted him to understand why I was doing what I was doing so I didn’t feel so alone and crazy. I wanted him to see my reasons as valid. I wanted him to say,
“Dang you are right! This makes perfect sense.”
I think that validation can be a great part of a relationship. I think there comes a time when we need to give ourselves the validation we are seeking. External validation can become like a hamster wheel and we are never really satiated. Internal validation is much more sustainable.
If They Really Loved Me They Would… Phase
I see this one all the time with clients. Here is how it looked for me.
If he really loved me he would ask me about my faith transition.
If he really loved me he would understand why this matters to me.
Here is how it looks for some of my clients.
If s/he really loved me he wouldn’t want to try coffee or alcohol or take off his garments.
If s/he really loved me he wouldn’t have this faith transition.
I actually think this phase is about acknowledging loss and pain and dealing with life when things are not how they are supposed to be.
I think what is often meant is:
He is supposed to ask me about my faith transition.
He is supposed to understand why this matters to me.
He is supposed to not want to try alcohol or coffee or take off his garments.
He is supposed to always be active in church.
Letting go of “supposed to be-s” is a skill I would recommend to anyone. Holding on to “supposed to be-s” causes so much suffering.
Maybe This Will Work And Maybe This Won’t Work Phase
This phase can feel like fits and starts. One day it’s all hopeful and the next day someone doubles down or something unfortunate is said. It’s hot and cold or up and down.
It usually feels better because you might now have some ups.
For me I started to notice the ups. We could joke about things again or even just talk about certain things. He could tell me about a talk in sacrament meeting. I could mention something I had heard about the church and it was okay.
This is a phase when some of the initial emotional upheavals start to calm down and more cognitive work can be done. Some people can now look at their beliefs around gender roles, purpose of marriage or divorce.
This Is Good Phase
The hallmark of this phase is acceptance.
Acceptance does not mean you approve or you agree.
Acceptance is acknowledging the reality of the current situation and not ignoring it, resisting it or avoiding it.
It might be accepting they are an adult and can make their own decisions regarding their faith.
It might be accepting that you would not want to dictate decisions for them because you love them and do not want to force them to be different.
It might be accepting them exactly as they are.
One of the most painful messages to receive from your spouse is, “I’d like you more if you were less like you.”
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Whatever phase you may find yourself in is okay. It’s part of the process of being in a mixed faith marriage. There is nothing wrong with any phase. I share these phases with you to give you perspective of where you have been and where you may be heading and not to label your experience as bad or wrong as it’s enough to manage the transition of being in a mixed faith marriage.
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This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.
Your post helped me see that I have actually been in a mixed faith marriage all along and that I really can’t pin down a stage we are in, because the long standing rule of never discussing religion. For most of the marriage, I was trying my best to be a good Mormon, and still believe in a God who is fair and my husband believed in Mormon God. (It would take a book to explain) Our first real argument was over religious differences and every time we tried to talk we fought, so we stopped talking about religion. I gradually became more of a feminist, more of a heretic, until I just couldn’t even pretend Mormonism any longer. So, we were in “don’t talk about it” for some 30 years. I guess my never being typical believer coupled with always being a feminist and slowly transitioning until I consider myself out of Mormonism meant we went through the stages with each step my husband knew about as I stepped slowly away. So, long periods in one stage, followed by adjusting in stages, and some jumping around as I went inactive, then reactivated, then went inactive again, before my final step of declaring that I will never go back. There are still a lot of ways we just don’t talk about it, so I can’t really say what stage we are in after 50 years of marriage. He accepts it, and loves me anyway, and in some ways understands, but other ways he just accepts it as the way it is. And we don’t talk about the deeper feelings. But he can tell me how church is, and I encourage him to attend, and sometimes I will mention the problems, but it usually leads to silence because he doesn’t really want to know the problems. He actually protects me from any pressure from the church to repent and attend.
My therapist said that there are mixed faith marriages, but then there are also people trapped in high control groups whose relationships were engineered to fracture when one of them leaves because group affiliation required them to marry insiders only. Leaving Mormonism is much harder on a marriage than leaving, say, a Methodist church
This has been my experience.
The church as an organization makes it harder to adapt from a “marriage as a high control group affiliation” model to a “2 people self-control” model.
As I transitioned out of the “active” status, the biggest struggle I had was “what are the rules of engagement now that I don’t do what I used to do?” . Eventually it got refined to “what are the rules of engagement now that personal values have replaced gender performance values?”.
As the active female, it was never about “what are your values now” and it was always about “I need to prevent you from pulling the family away using your feminine magnetism and executive functioning abilities – everybody knows that mothers pull their spouses and children away from the church too”.
I love your compassionate take on a mixed-faith marriage formed by someone transitioning out of the previously shared faith community/beliefs. As someone who knew I’d marry my now-husband (an agnostic) before I converted to the church, I know little about the unique pressures and traumas of transitions like this for couple who were told their whole lives that uniform faith is essential to a successful marriage and that any deviation from that model should inspire fear and pain. This was an illuminating read.