Kelsey McCray
Midterm
10/5/13
Christian Marriage Interview
The word marriage alone is a very complex but yet simple topic. That’s why I was excited to see the different way someone of the opposite gender felt about marriage. I decided I would talk to my boyfriend’s roommate who is 20 years old and single with no children. I decided to talk to him about faith and God in a relationship, knowing everything about your partners past vs. don’t ask, don’t tell and reasons for separation or divorce. In the beginning of this interview I let him know that I was not judging any of the answers he was giving me and that I was more interested in learning about a different viewpoints. Faith and God in a relationship is something that was very important and he says it is because of the way he brought up. His family believes in religious values in all aspects of their life. So, when I asked him whether he felt religion should play a big role in a relationship, he looked at me and said, “why yes of course” as he chuckled. He then began to speak about how he looks up to his parents as a couple because they stick with all of their religious values. He also feels that God brought them closer together and gave this beautiful life to thank them for being so faithful to him. And when he said that I could not help but think about how beautiful it sounded to be automatically faithful to a relationship in the same way your faithful to your own religion. I proceeded to ask him my next question about how he would feel about being in a relationship with someone who is involved in a different religion compared to him. He answered quickly by saying that he does not want it to look like he is very strict about religion but as long as his partner believes in God; he does not care which interpretation they choose to follow. This also brought on the topic of children. I asked him what he would influence his children on when it came to religion. This included which holidays they would celebrate depending on the religion. He answered by saying that he would not force a certain religion on their children especially if him and his spouse believe in different religions. The reason he felt this way was because his parents never enforced religion upon because they did not want him to reject it later in life. By letting him fall into religion he felt more free of choice with his relationship with God. My final questions for this topic was asking if he would ever convert to a different religion in order to marry someone and he said yes he would. The defense to his answer was that if he found a religion that made him feel closer to God and he truly loved her then he would have no problem with it. Along with saying this he explained that just because he would convert doesn’t mean he feels it would be right force your partner to convert because you should love the person for who they are no matter what. This lead me to my next topic which discussed whether you would feel the need to know everything about your partners past or would rather just don’t ask them and they won’t tell you about it. This was something he felt strongly about because of something that happened in the past with one of his ex-girlfriends. About six months ago him and his girlfriend broke up because he could not get past something that happened in her past. And when he found out about it, he could not even look at her the same which made it difficult for them to be together. When asked, how he would feel if he found out his current girlfriend used to be a stripper, he had a hard time answering this question. I found it interesting that he could not answer this question because he was said he would know how to answer this question since he has never been in true love. By saying this he meant that it would be hard to not be someone you love just because of something they used to be. But he also felt that you would want know exactly why she was a stripper or for how long. So it