My [24M] muslim SO [24F] of 2 years said she doesn’t want to marry me and wants to break up because I’m an atheist. We planned on getting engaged next summer and move in together.

Yeah, feels bad man.

My religious views were never a secret, neither to my SO, my family or my friends. I’ve never promoted atheism and only brought it up if somebody asks me directly. I’ve no problem with people who believe in deity, heck I was a Muslim once, but the only thing I care in people is that they are good, ethical and don’t discriminate anybody else. It is an issue being an atheist in Europe’s third-world mostly-muslim country, but I’ll live.

So I’ve been with her for more than 2 years. We met on the job, and both of us immediately knew that “this is it”. I love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. Four months ago we discussed our future. She is not from the city we live in and she’s renting a place for her college studies. Her place is due next summer and she needs to vacate it. Since I also want to find a bigger place for myself, we talked and agreed to live together. I would buy the place since I’m working full time for 4 years and am extremely financially stable. We also agreed that we love each other and want to get married. I jokingly said I would propose to her then, she said she would say yes and after further talking about this (which initially was a joke tbh) we agreed to get engaged by the time we move in together.

Life is good. Everything is awesome. We both have careers in same field, we want each other, we want to have kids... it’s unreal how good we are to one another. BUT, here comes today. She’s a Muslim, devoted one and I’m not. Tomorrow is Eid, an Islamic holiday which she celebrates and I do not. We started talking about it and after half an hour she started crying. I asked her why, and she said “she can’t marry anyone who’s not a Muslim”. I said I’m not. She walked out of the coffee shop.

Minutes later when I caught up with her she said she wants to break up and cut all ties with me. She said her parents would not let marry a non-muslim, she said she wants her kids to be religious... I tried explaining her for HOURS that I do not have anything against religion. I only want my kid to be a good person, don’t care if (s)he’s religious or not.

She would not budge. She went home, and won’t answer my calls or messages.

I am so disappointed and sad. I literally have no idea how to explain you how hurt I am at the moment.

What am I to do? I understand this is HER decision and that it isn’t me who’s at fault, but fuck do I feel bad. I have no idea how to go from here or how to mitigate this...

tl;dr: my SO is a Muslim. We wanted to move in together next year and get engaged but she broke up with me because “she cannot marry a non-muslim”. I don’t care if someone is religious, if my child is religious, I have no problems with raising him/her like that. She knows this but... I love her. I don’t know how to move on from this, or even if I can fix this in any way.

Submitted June 03, 2019 at 11:42AM by ImportantReveal8 http://bit.ly/2XwtTe4