Has anyone felt this guilt?

[Jeffju]

My church doesn't accept people living together unless they are married. I would have to leave if I wanted to live with someone.

If this choice ever happened in my life I would have to leave the church which I have been with for years, I couldn't expect a partner to suddenly be a 'believer' with all it involves. I would find this really hard. Has anyone been through anything similar and if so how did they cope?

[Octavius]

Why should they have to be a �believer�?

If they accept you for who and what you are then they may also respect your beliefs and your desire to stay with a church which will not accept cohabiting outside of marriage. If they don�t then you have a decision to make although judging by your post, it would probably be already made for you.

If you are referring to a person outside of your church, then you either have the freedom of choice to forgo the relationship, hope that they respect your beliefs, or let them decide whether they want to share your beliefs and join the church or not, and then accept and respect their freedom of choice and decisions.

If it is someone inside of your church, then I presume you would both feel the same way anyway.

[naomi24]

If leaving the church would be a problem to you, and if you loved someone enough to want to live with them, why not get married? Problem solved.

[jake-the-peg]

I imagine that the church in question is one where they rather expect you to marry another believer.

Jehovas Witnesses perhaps?

Leaving churches like this is made very hard as you're cut off from all your friends and family who are members of the church and they'll not even speak to you.

I do know someone who left the Jehovas and yes it was hard but she's very happy that she was strong enough to do so - some people have the misfortune to be born into very restrictive communities like this and it's realy difficult when you've grown up in the community and it's restrictions to see how repressive it really is.