Eli

Thanks so much for taking my call and giving me some time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't have a great way of wording my question.

Every time I try and write it out, it feels a little bit like too specific to one thing.

But I think a general way to start would be I feel a conflict in my situation between my desire to have integrity and my desire to maintain relationship.

Yeah, well, so I'll give a little bit of a background, and I might ramble, so feel free to stop me anytime.

Cool, yeah.

So I was raised Christian, and my dad was a pastor of a non-denominational evangelical church.

And growing up, me and my family were super involved.

All the way through high school, I was super involved.

Anyways, while I was off in college, I went through some kind of church hurt and also just a lot of experiences that were new and came to the conclusion that I was better described as an agnostic.

But I didn't really identify that way to my family.

I was kind of

you know, just like not explicitly lying to them, but also not like outwardly telling them, you know, or standing up and saying things that would be super uncomfortable for me.

And so, uh, you know, when topics of religion or things like that came up, I just kind of like, you know, said like, or, you know, like nodding along.

Um, and then fast forward, you know, at the end of college and going into my first year of like being a professional, um,

I just really struggled to connect meaningfully with people, whether that be deep friendships or any meaningful dating relationships.

And so then fast forward again, about a year and a half after college, I reconnected with a childhood friend of mine from my hometown and

And I fell in love.