Hi musivore,
Kudos to you for participating in this radio documentary.
My thoughts are:
- Your wife is the one who should apologise to you and your son not you, since she married you knowing you didn't believe in God or were not religious. She is the one who changed (in terms of religiousity) since marriage not you.
- Personally, I don't think I could love someone who treated me unkindly and didn't love me back.
- I have never seriously considered reverting to Islam. Never. Once I realised it's all bullshit, there was no way I could make myself believe it. Going back in the closet, possibly. But there are costs to living in the closet, and the benefits are not strong enough for me. For some people the costs of living outside the closet are too high, and that's fair enough. Everyone's circumstances are different.
To add to my joy of hearing from GRB, I see you've popped in also
I get the impression that you go away, climb a few mountains, do some amazing charitable deeds, hike around the world, and then pop back in here and say hi occasionally. Have I got you worked out dude?
For me, I feel that it is worth being in the closet at the moment. Abu sums it up really well above. It is perhaps about trying to steer the path of least pain for all?
For one thing, I honestly believe that my son and I are both better off living under the same roof as each other every single night of every single week. I hate the way he wakes up at 5 at the weekend and scuttles into my room and peppers me with kisses till I awake. I hate the way he expects me to carry him when he's tired, pick him up when he falls, comfort him when he cries, patch up his toys after he's deliberately broken them, and feed him when he is too busy to put the fucking food in his own mouth. I hate that he makes me search the entire house for small inconsequential Lego pieces that he regularly somehow loses. I hate that I am responsible for another human life, and that I have to make sure he is always warm, always safe, always protected, always well fed, and always loved. I hate that I have to be there always, doing everything I can to make sure that he grows fully into the wonderful individual that God has chosen him to be one day. I hate all of that, but I cannot possibly contemplate a life where I can do those things for him only at weekends, or only at alternative weekends, or even only at the occasional midweek nights.
Secondly, I have made a vow to my wife to be there for her, and with her, to my dying day. I'm not going to let a stupid crazy little thing like religion get in the way of me keeping that vow. She may do, but I will never give up. I will continue to love her, continue to put up with her nonsense, continue to hang in there and continue to fight for our marriage. One day, when she hopefully rediscovers sense, and comes out of the darkness that currently plagues her mind, she will find me there waiting on the other side.
God, I've ranted much more than I planned to. Apologies for that....But thanks Ateapot and Abu for your incredibly kind words
Topic: I'm married to a Muslim