Do You and Your Partner Have a Shared Faith or Ideals?

Every one of us has faith in something, whether we are aware of it not. We use faith to make sense out of our world. We use faith to make peace with the things we cannot control.

When I talk about faith, I am not referring to organized religions like Hinduism or Christianity, though these are good examples too. I am talking about the concept of imagined reality, which is defined in Sapiens as follows:

“- an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. The sculptor from the Stadel Cave may sincerely have believed in the existence of the lion-man guardian spirit. Some sorcerers are charlatans, but most sincerely believe in the existence of gods and demons. Most millionaires sincerely believe in the existence of money and limited liability companies. Most human-rights activists sincerely believe in the existence of human rights.”

- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari

A person who invests in the stock market does so because of their faith in capitalism. A person who stops at a red signal and continues at a green signal does so because of their faith that other vehicles will follow the same rules, and not crash into them.

These are large-scale frameworks that billions of people understand and follow. These frameworks are needed so that multiple people with different lives and different points of view can work together to produce a result.

What does it mean to have shared faith as a couple?

A couple is also a set of people with different lives and different points of view who need to work together to produce a result. These “results” could be related to any goals that you set out to do — raising a child, saving money, starting a business.

In the wise words of my partner, the #1 goal of a couple is — staying together.

Having a common faith helps couples stay together in the long run. This happens in a couple of ways.

Setting priorities

Couples set priorities for their lives, be it for the future or even for the present. If you share a belief system, it will help you decide what’s most important to you when you’re setting priorities.

For example, maybe you’re planning to buy a house together, and you’re trying to decide which neighborhood is best for you. If you and your partner have a shared belief in collectivism (an imagined reality) and feel strongly about being close to family, then this sets a direction and priority for your decision.

Settle differences

No two individuals are the same. Even if you and your partner are meant to be, there will still be areas where you vehemently disagree with each other. At such points, a shared faith can help give some perspective about solving the problem.

For example, let’s say one partner wants to buy a new home theatre system and the other is against it. During such arguments, it helps to take a look at shared beliefs that you’ve developed together. Maybe you are both interested in adopting minimalism as a way of life. This zoomed-out perspective can help in defusing the situation and putting both partners on the same page about this purchase.

Simple ways in which two people in a relationship can find shared faith

The great thing about a couple is that there are only two of you. You don’t need to subscribe to ideals that a large number of people believe in. It doesn’t have to be at the scale of nationalism or anything.

It’s alright even if your friends and family don’t believe in the same things. It is enough if just the two of you believe in it.

Adopt existing faiths

Talk to your partner about your existing belief systems. Remember that it could be anything — capitalism, socialism, patriotism, feminism, even nihilism. There is no wrong answer.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a few that you have in common already. This is a great place to start.

Have more conversations about these belief systems and talk about how important each of them is. Chances are, you might just be following some of these blindly because your parents or teachers taught you to. Take this opportunity to rethink what’s important to your life and build a new set of beliefs together with your partner.

My partner and I have benefited greatly from this conversation, and we’ve found some great new faiths like minimalism and FIRE which drive us to make better decisions together every day.

Create new faiths

Since it is always just going to be the two of you, you don’t even need to stick to existing faiths. You can create entirely new ones.

For example, my partner and I are crazy fans of this author Brandon Sanderson. There’s a recurring line in one of his series (The Stormlight Archive) — Journey before Destination. If I said these words to anybody else, it would sound like a cliched dialogue.

But that doesn't matter. It works wonders for the two of us. We immediately relate it to our favorite characters in the book and the obstacles they overcame. Whenever we feel ourselves going into a spiral about the future, these three simple words inspire us to stay in the present and enjoy the journey.

This is probably how religious people feel when somebody quotes scripture.