Should You Change Your Religion For Love?

We meet, we fall in love with that person without necessarily thinking about all the issues that come up as it doesn’t seem important then and we can always deal with them later, and in most circumstances now it doesn’t matter.

Regarding religion and love, it used to matter a lot but now not so much with people being less religious now than in the past.

There are certainly circumstances be it due to tradition or political reasons where it might be a matter of course that the one of the partner change their religion before marriage. For some people like marrying into a royal family it is expected and even a requirement for the new partner to convert to the family’s religion. The reason behind this is political. An example of this was Princess Mary when she married into the Danish royal family, she had to also convert from Anglican to the Danish state religion of the Lutheran Church. It made sense because you can say the royal family is the epitome of the country and therefore has to represent the country, and especially since she will be their future queen she should also be in their state religion as she will be representing the country.

For everyone else this issue now seems a non-issue. However it would matter to certain people and a partner may ask or even expect you to convert. How many arguments have there been over that issue? “my religion not yours”.

Now should you convert? Some think religion is no big deal so it doesn’t matter, “I’m not religious anyway so I’ll convert to avoid arguments”. Others would feel hurt, “well why won’t you convert instead of me?”, and certainly some religions like Islam you have to convert to marry any Muslim and never are they allowed to convert out or leave their religion. Anyone that knows better, please correct me if I’m wrong. People will make up their own minds.

My view is that wanting you to convert is in effect wanting you to change yourself. It’s a case of if you fell in love with me then why would you want to change me? The person you fell in love with was shaped by the beliefs they grew up with and became the person you fell in love with BECAUSE of those beliefs. By asking them to change their belief system is also saying to your love one that what you are and the person who you are isn’t yet good enough. It’s a case of “you also need to change a part of your belief system to be like mine.”

For me, I would see that as a form of insult, an insult to me that I am not good enough. For if I were to change my beliefs then I would no longer be the person that I am, the person you fell in love with.

Whether you agree with my view or not consider this, at the end of the day though can you really change what you believe in? Have a good think about it.