While I don't have much time to give a proper response (it's late here, and I'm tired, got work in the morning), I can offer this advice:

If she wants counseling, sure, go for it, however don't let her pick the counselors. Tell her she needs to respect your beliefs as well, and that since marriage is a union, that the two of you should both decide together who your counselor should be. This will at least give you the opprotunity to have some input into the counseling your marriage is receiving. If it works, great, if not, oh well. I hate to say oh well, but I'm the product of divorced parents, and as long as it's handled properly there should be very few issues, and the kids should be fine. Plus if the marriage is that stressful, it can be worse for the kids than for you to be separated. (I'm not trying to imply that you should divorce, however the general idea I got from your post is that there are plenty of troubles in your marriage currently, and if it were to keep up would definately affect the kids as well as both you and your wife, while your own well being is important, I also feel that children are the most important part of a family, while you certainly seem to keep in mind what's best for them, I just wanted to reiterate).

-qwak

Bahahahahaaaa, sig material right there.

Take some control man, it is a union.

As a Lekis 101 Grad, all I can say is, "Dump her!"

http://leykisonline.com

http://leykisonline.com/leykis/viewtopic.php?t=15

Better yet, listen up: http://leykisonline.com/leykis/1_recordings/Critical%20101%20Shows/Leykis-2006-03-06_Hr4-KidsAreBaggage.mp3

In a way that's why I posted, to get some good things to say in a couple of therapy sessions that were dead before they were even born. Get 'em over with, then move on to something serious.

Thanks for all your input, everybody. It's a hard subject to think of, and divorce has been a topic of consideration for a bit, so we'll see. I don't want to break up my family, as I'm sure no one does, but we'll see if a healthy balance can be reached and maintained.

Here's a head scratcher. I used to look at interfaith marriage books, because there's always been a divergence of worldviews in our relationship. They're almost universally about christian, muslim, and jewish. No atheist, Buddhist, Zoroastrian. Why? I figured it out. When you throw logic and rationality into the mix, as I have in mine, it forces certain issues, and the theistic/irrationalist viewpoints just can't stand up to it. But then, you're on this board, right, so you knew that already!

My marriage (I'm an atheist since at least high school, wife was catholic forever - RC parents & extended family, RC high school & all girl RC college) was easier - NO KIDS! I dunno WHAT I'd have done if my wife was neck deep in it and we had kids. As it was I felt no pressure to convert her, so when she questioned RC, I suggested she...get this... find another denomination that better reflected her thinking.

...little did I know that would turn out to be the Mormon faith... For a few years, anyway.

Now, she's no longer theist. I can't say she's altogether atheist, but she's at least atheist WRT xianity.

So, theist & atheist marriage CAN work, but I think it takes special circumstances.

Just as a scientist can hold to a theism that doesn't contradict his scientific mind, an atheist can love a theist whose particular faith isn't in opposition with a peaceful coexistence - and vice versa. I truly loved my "sorta-catholic" wife, my "mormon" wife, and now my whatever-she-is wife. Her personal beliefs (that may have differed from dogma, but that's common) were that as an atheist I could be moral, I could truly love her, and that I could possibly be "saved" by accepting jeebus after my death (she knew that'd never happen during this life, given my need for evidence).

When she "went looking" outside RC to eventually run into mormonism, it was NOT because she disbelieved in god or jesus (else why accept the mormon faith?). Only that she disbelieved RC dogma. I'm not saying she thought as deeply on the matter as I or many others do, but to say she wasn't a "true theist" is baseless. And I was certainly as true an atheist as they come; but I knew that I loved her, and that her happiness was paramount - and for that reason I never sought to deconvert her, because atheism can be difficult as a practical matter.

Since we never REALLY know everything about a person, and that personalities are moving targets with constantly growing & changing natures, I think your concept of "love" is unnecessarily absolutist and possibly unworkable for many in the long term. Had I found theism a dealbreaker at the outset, I wouldn't have chosen my catholic wife. After 14 years of happy marriage to my now non-xian wife, I'm glad I was more relaxed on the matter.

Now, again - this doesn't involve kids OR fundamentalism, in which case the game changes.

Also, I would like to see any theistic view that does not fly in the face of science in some form or fashion. The notion of Deism may be compatible, but I have yet to find a theistic view that does not in some way contradict some aspect of science, thus making the idea of a theistic scientist a sort of paradox. I may be wrong though.

Untrue. Theism involves way more than Fundie Christianity, so a theist could easily believe in God, find comfort in the Bible, avoid going to church except on holidays, and be happily married to an atheist. No contradiction.

There are indeed many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scientists.

-=Grim=-

Actually, I'm going to argue with myself on a point. When I said that someone who picks and chooses what they wish to believe about a religion is not a true follower of that theism, a case could be made for the fact that since that very religion was founded on nothing more than man picking and choosing among beliefs, the person who takes what they need from orthadox religions and drops the rest would still be considered a theist. I made the conscious desicion to use the word theist, and I believe that may have been an error. I am not referring to someone who simply believes in a god, as a general blanket definition, I'm referring to belief in a god as having dogmatic ideals associated as in orthadox religion. My real argument does not lie on the person simply believing in some general god, it lies in the theist believing in a very specific, orthadox god such as the judeo-christian-islamic god. Along with such a belief comes a whole array of other beliefs that become necessary components of the religion. By saying true theist, what I really meant but failed to word correctly was true Christian. That goes for the idea of scientists as well, although grim specifically spelled out the three main examples already so I'll work with that. If a scientist holds a general belief in god that can be shaped and molded by new scientific discoveries, then no. There is no contradiction. But if the scientist claims belief in an orthadox god with definite attributes, a contradiction arrises. I gave the example of creationism over evolution earlier, another one could be found in the catholic belief that the communion literally turns into the flesh and blood of jesus. Whenever a scientist ultimately abandons reason in favor of blind devotion to an ideal that is not supported by science and reason or is in fact contradictory to current scientific knowledge, he has lost the privilage of calling himself a scientist. I'm not referring to what his colleagues may call him out of respect, or what society may wish to refer to him as, I'm talking about what it means to be a man of science.