My Spiritual Journey #4: Finding Comfort in Yourself

It's still a task to keep true to my beliefs, as different and unusual as they may seem to some. My fiancé doesn't actually help at all, in fact, in many ways Robert is sort of shoving me back into the broom-closet I have been free from since 2003. I know he isn't actually doing it on purpose, but expecting me to hide my altar furniture in a china cabinet, being upset when I want to do the simplest ritual when he's home, criticizing the very basest of concepts that have been proven as fact by historians, anthropologists, and the like... I find it so frustrating.

You know, I used to enjoy conversations with people about our differences in opinion in regard to religion or even a lack thereof. Neither would try to force the other to concede as being incorrect or false, but when I have these conversations with Robert I feel as though he is trying to force me into changing my beliefs in order to fit into his Leave it to Beaver-esque idea of how a family properly functions and how a relationship, even a marriage, works. We are to be of the same religious background. We are to be in total agreement on everything, all the time, and if we aren't, his decision supersedes mine. I have allowed it to be this way for the first month of living in our own house, officially a family, just to see if his way is something I could tolerate, or even accept. I have decided through careful thought that it isn't. I cannot bend, I cannot live in secret, I cannot become some subservient housewife with a drinking problem because that's the only way she can cope with the loss of her sense of self. Granted, I had children at a young age, and to a point, I lost a lot of my "self" years ago. But that sacrifice I made intentionally because I wanted my child (and now children) to know that the piece of myself I lost I got back in her. It sounds cliché, but there are some things I refuse to give up for the love of another. Yes, I will stay home and take care of the household and the children, but when it comes to household decisions, we are to compromise and communicate. The man of the house no longer has the right to dictate his significant other, even in their spiritual journey. Especially in their spiritual journey. I know it's not place to do it to him, and he should respect me enough to show me the same courtesy.