In this episode I share my answers to 2 questions recently presented to me. They are: (1) What advice do you have for active believing members and (2) What do you wish active believing members understood?

I’ve seen my clients in a mixed faith marriage struggle with the criticism and defensiveness cycle. In order to break a cycle it is important to understand it and take responsibility for it. This podcast starts you on that road and offers some questions to help you learn about your part in this cycle.

This week’s podcast discusses the difference between care and care taking. Often when we love someone deeply we want them to always be happy and never be hurt or disappointed. That’s a beautiful thing until we step past caring into caretaking which can open the door to control. In this episode I give several examples of what care and care taking looks like in a mixed faith marriage.

I have heard from my clients that they don’t know what to do when their spouse has a negative opinion of them.

What are the supposed to do if their spouse thinks they are a racist, looks like a drug addict because of their tattoos or that they are untrustworthy due to their faith transition?

I suggest one initial step and then a series of questions to help explore the next steps.

A mixed faith marriage can cause some to question marriage as an institution. It can open up questions about why you got married and why you stay married. In this podcast I discuss some of those questions that may look like:

• What do we have in common without the church? 
• He only married me because I was a good mormon – does this mean he doesn’t want to be married anymore
• I ony married him because he ticked the boxes, he was what I was told to marry- now what? 
• Do I want to stay married? 
• Do I want be be married to this person – any person 
• What do I think of marriage? 
• Do I want to be married to someone who believes or doesn’t believe the gospel? 
• How do we build a new foundation? 
• What if they don’t want to build a new foundation? 

A LDS mixed faith marriage often means the loss of certain dreams. There may be many lost dreams: the dream to be senior missionaries, to attend the temple together, and to raise kids in the church together. Here I talk about the loss of dreams through the lens of codependency.

The loss of a dream will trigger the grief cycle. When you can allow the grief cycle and work through that process you can end up in acceptance.

Acceptance is the key to moving forward in your relationship when dreams are no longer viable.

 

I address a listener’s question about wanting to talk about certain issues in her marriage and wondering if she is wanting to be right versus happy or just suppressing herself.

Here I explore how I would work on this in a coaching session.

A faith transition can prompt one to want to try new things- coffee, alcohol, tank tops, etc. In this episode I talk about some emotions that come up when we try new things and one thing to try to help address the fear around trying new things.

Chris Rich is a fellow life coach and a good friend. In this podcast we talk frankly of our stories and experiences in a mixed faith marriage. We talk about tithing, garments, general conference, temple, and kids.

If you have experienced a faith transition/crisis you have probably faced uncertainty. Here I talk about one way to frame uncertainty so you can keep moving forward in your life.