Petals, my religious strength and practice gone through ups and downs, but I never considered leaving my husband just because he was an atheist, as far as I was concerned I thought it would anger Allah more if I left my husband (I can be illogical like that lol), in the last few years when he was very ill, my religiousness became stronger and stronger, I wanted to pray for him more than anything else really, prayed Allah will guide him and heal him. After his death, I kept fasting and praying for him, I even wanted to do haj on his behalf, I kept asking Allah to forgive his disbelieve and show him mercy, yes I know Muslims are not allowed to pray for dead atheists, but at the time I just knew in my heart that Allah is bigger than that, and I know that the hadith ordering us not to pray for dead non believers must’ve been a silly hadith or a mistake or something. I felt so awful to even consider that he is going through the grave torture/purgatory.
Anyway, I am waffling again, but the answer is his belief or lack of it didn’t make much difference to me, we didn’t have the most perfect marriage, but we were very good partners, and I wasn’t willing to give up such a good partnership.
Are you regretting telling your husband about your apostasy? I know my late hubby tried to hide it from me for a while, but at the end he just admitted it, suppose if you are so close to someone, you can’t help talking about it.
Well I think it is a great thing that you could put your own logic and especially love for him over islam! It sounds very good that you were not willing to give up the good partnership and care you had for each other. I guess what hurts me the most is that my ex WAS willing to give it all up. His religion was more important than anything. I am the kind of person that cannot hide about what I truly feel, I think in a relationship the most important is telling the truth and deeply understanding each other. Moreover as we all know here islam pervades your life in every aspect, so it immediately aroused suspicion that I doubted about the prayer, the fasting etc. You cannot get up at 4 for praying if you are not totally convinced you are getting up for a good reason ;-). So he quickly found out.
How are the fasting people doing on day 3??