"What are you?" I asked on my first date with Andy.

"Nothing," he said. I took that as a good thing--not Jewish, but not anything mutually exclusive to Jewish. So we could continue dating.

I felt the need to convince myself that I could just convert him--then we could celebrate Jewish holidays together and our kids could grow up Jewish and our lives would have spiritual meaning. I started out trying to logically convince him that the only true way for him to be spiritual was through organized religion, and the best one was Judaism. Andy laughed, but when I gave him a fuck you look, he collected himself and suggested I explain to him why Judaism was spiritual to me.

I thought this was a good idea. I bought lots of books to compose a logical explanation. But every time I tried to explain Judaism to Andy, the task seemed too big, and I got frustrated. And when it didn't feel too big, it felt too embarrassing--like prayers that refer to God as "King of the Universe."

So I stopped dealing with the whole religion issue. But then I started to feel lost and lonely on Jewish holidays, and I started to hate Andy for not being Jewish and now I'm wishing he were a fanatic Catholic so I could just dump him.