Interfering Religious Inlaw(s) or Parent(s) of Partner

[Endurance Swimmer]

I am interested in hearing stories that members of TTA have about problems in relationships caused by differences in beliefs, not so much between you and your partner but when either their parent(s) or yours have strong religious beliefs and they see that as a reason to interfere and push their beliefs on you, and if you have children them trying to push their beliefs on them.

Without going into the full details about 2 years ago I had a huge argument with my fiance's Mother who held strong Catholic beliefs and who mistakenly thought that her daughter held the same beliefs that she was brought up on. Her daughter (my ex) had been brought up Catholic but was already pretty skeptical when we had met. From the outset she (my fiance) knew I was an Atheist and she made it clear she was not a practicing Catholic and soon after told me that she didn't believe in God. When her Mother found out that we would not be getting married in a church and would not be baptising any children we had, she made some choice comments on the phone to my fiance (now my ex) that really showed her ignorance about the world and I knew we were in for some rocky times. Of course it might have been made easier if my ex had stood up for what she actually believed earlier but she had avoided the subject in the past because she didn't have particularly strong views one way or the other, most of her friends were Catholic and she didn't want the conflict.

After a few drinks one night at a small family gathering (my ex's family) her mother pushed me on the subject of respecting her daughter's faith. When I pointed out that neither of us believed in God things went downhill and it ended up in a really unpleasant argument. She insisted I was wrong for not wanting to bring up children with religion. Needless to say I disagreed. We never really got past this and despite compatible views on religion, my ex I found to be still somewhat sympathetic to religious beliefs which most of her friends had (Ie what's the harm of it), and less so to my views when I became more outspoken about my own lack of belief (this confrontation was the catalyst for me researching the subject in depth and what I found just underlined my Atheism and that there was no way I would ever want to indoctrinate children of mine).

Like Seth, the more I found out about religion, the more passionate I became about rational and critical thinking. Despite for the most part agreeing with me, I think my ex would have prefered to me to just keep my views to myself so as not to upset the apple cart but while I never went out of my way to make people feel uncomfortable in social situations, the same can not be said for many religious people and I felt that if confronted in the way I had been by her Mother irrespective whether it be by her friends, family, colleagues or strangers, I had the right to stand my ground using rational arguments. She didn't like the idea of this and ultimately we never really sorted things out. Her Mother never apologised and I'm pretty sure the issue would have raised it's ugly head again down the track. We broke up just over a year ago and despite numerous attempts to try and reconcile I felt nothing had really changed and that the elephant was still in the room. As such we didn't get back together.

Just interested in hearing other people's similar experiences particularly where a partner's parent(s) have brought the issue up and made a problem out of it.