A couple of weekends ago, The Cuban (Did I mention him before? I was dating a guy I refer to as The Cuban.) dropped me an email and said he wanted to hang out. Quite against my better judgment, I told him that I would give a go at being his friend.

I think that if you were serious about a relationship, it is next to impossible, if not impossible, to make a successful friendship out of it. Some people do it and do it often. I have no idea how because it makes no sense to me and I've never ever been able to make it work.

Well, The Cuban and I (so called because he is actually Cuban. Well, he's American, but first generation from some Cubans.) went to dinner and we had a fun time.

So, he invited me out to drinks with him and his best friend.

When we dated, The Cuban and I had a great time. We laughed a lot. We did fun things. We got along great. And I met his friends and they all loved me, especially his best friend. So, going out for drinks with them was not a weird request.

So, I went.

Weeeellllll, one thing led to another and we wound up talking about getting back together.

Why did we break up in the first place? Because he's a Christian. I always check before going out with someone or on the first date to make sure they don't believe in any hoobie-joobie mumbo jumbo garbage. I do not have time for it in my life.

Well, The Cuban led me to believe, perhaps unintentionally, that he was agnostic. I will grudgingly accept an agnostic if all other factors are in place. But he's not agnostic. The man is Catholic. He just doesn't go to Church.

*SIGH*

I didn't really figure this out until after we dated for about a month and a half.

I know, you're thinking, "How do you miss a crucifix around someone's neck for SIX weeks?"

I didn't miss it. He never took it off! But when I asked him if he believed in God, he responded saying that he isn't religious. When I asked him why he wears a replica of a corpse affixed to an ancient execution device, he told me it was a family thing. I don't talk about religion very much and I also tend to be rather trusting of people to be forthright with things, so I didn't probe very much.

But it bugged me and I did wind up asking more questions and he admitted that he is Christian.

I dated him for a little while longer after that, but decided I couldn't take it.

He's a nice guy. We get along great, but there's more to a relationship than laughs and physical attraction.

I started worrying about our kids. What will they think when one daddy tells them not to believe in made-up magic crap and the other one is hanging corpses around their necks and flinging water in their faces?

An it's merely my own restraint and a sense of common courtesy that keeps me from openly deriding people's religions every time I encounter it. I work with a lot of Jews and Catholics, too, so I'm VERY restrained.

As I told another friend of mine, when times get hard, I don't want a man who will fall to his knees and pray, I want a man who will stand up for himself and kick some ass.

And forget the hard times. What about the good times? How can I possibly talk to a Christian about some esoteric point of science or economics or ethics or epistemology when I can't even trust his intellectual methodology? It makes no sense! Physicists don't call up L. Ron Hubbard (Yes, I know he's dead.) to see what he thinks of their experiment results.

So, that's why I won't date Christians and why I broke up with The Cuban.

Well, when I saw him again, I remembered all the things I enjoyed about him, but the inner conflict came back. How can I date someone with a fundamentally different view of reality? What is the best possible outcome for a relationship like that?

Well, I concluded that I can't. So, last night, via IM we got into it again and this time it's over for good, I think.

If you're at all interested, an excerpt from our chat appears in the extended entry.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 04:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Category: Romance
Post contains 2617 words, total size 16 kb.

Do you suppose that Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius, can only date other super-geniuses because unless they're a super-genius he can't relate to them very well?

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 10:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Category: Romance
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.