I am a divorced man, raising two boys alone and getting back into the dating world at the age of 43. I’ve been dating this absolutely amazing woman for a few months and I’ve been really enjoying it. She seems to be the total package in many, many ways! She is kind, considerate, empathetic, gentle, sincere, intuitive, honest and many more beautiful qualities. I really like her and I feel like we could have a long, beautiful future, but I recently found out she’s a flat earth. I was absolutely shocked. At first I thought she was joking. After some discussion, she deeply believes in flat earth conspiracies, suggests I just follow what I’m told, and doesn’t seem very receptive to learning more about it.
I cannot explain eloquently how disappointed am I, or why! It defies all logic, observable factsand is absolutely absurd. I feel like I’ve lost so much respect for her and I can’t seem to reconcile that feeling with how I care about everything else she is. And to make matters worse, she teaches her children to believe the same thing. I am a very math and science oriented man and I can even sit her down and show her some basics math, but I doubt it will go well!
How should I handle it? She seems annoyed when I bring it up, and I probably didn’t handle it very well at first. I seriously care about her but i am too struggle with respect to anyone who believes such a nonsense conspiracy theory learned on YouTube. Please help!
Eleanor says: I like the idea that there is something intellectually flawed about you “follow what you’re told”, when she learned it from YouTube, and when she teaches her children to follow what they’re told – by her. This is one of the big problems with fighting conspiracy theories: they often don’t have much internal logic. What counts as evidence? What counts as forgery? Under what circumstances are you meant to believe well? Instead of consistent answers to those questions, conspiracy theories often give you tenets that fit the target belief.
On one level, yours is a question about what role beliefs should play in a relationship. To be sure, some people may be put off deep disagreements in loving relationships (although the disagreements are usually moral or political).
But some beliefs are not so easily set aside.
Our beliefs are not just a barometer of what we think is true. They are also connected to what we value; our attitude about how thinking itself should work. What do you trust? What kind of mistakes will you risk? When will you count something as true? All of us must navigate these questions daily as we figure out what to doubt and what to consider settled. These are not easy questions. As William James pointed out: “believe truth” and “avoid error” are two fundamentally different goals that tend to pull in opposite directions.
Each of us has the chance to decide what sort of of thinker we will be; what values to embody in our spiritual lives. That freedom can be the ultimate realization of mature agency. To discover that someone you fancy has used it to just stick YouTube in one ear and be done – that would be disappointing.
So here’s my question to you: you obviously face a major factual disagreement. To what extent do you also have a difference of value? Is this a strange one-time belief that doesn’t make sense with the rest of her spiritual life? Or is it how you find out her answers about what she values, what she will risk and who she trusts?
It’s one thing to have a few topics where each of you is pretty sure the other is wrong. It’s another thing to have completely different attitudes about how thinking itself should work. This disagreement is not just about whether the earth is flat. It is also about the whole spiritual ecology that gave rise to that belief.
If what you have here is actually a deep value disagreement, it may start to rub off on her as well. No one likes to feel condescending. She’ll be able to sense it if you feel honored to stay with her, and it won’t serve either of you to end up in a dynamic where you’re the rational one and she’s the fool. If you are going to be together, it should be as equals.
A relationship can go well despite a difference in faith. A difference in deep values is much more difficult. Only you know what you are facing here, and whether you can respect each other despite it.
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