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I am hoping some here can give their input and suggestions with a situation I might be in.

I’ve been dating a non-native English speaking cradle Orthodox fellow (I’ll call him CG - not his initials - to make referring to him easier) for a little more than two months. He’s an immigrant from Eastern Europe, but has been here in the US some years. He attends a parish of his nationality that is very ethnic and has services virtually all in Slavonic. A bit of English is only used on major feast days (Pascha, Christmas, for example) when there are people attending who aren’t usually in church. It’s also Old Calendar. He occasionally attends an OCA parish in the area, but it’s also Slavonic and Old Calendar. This is a very promising relationship.

I’m a member at a standard suburban OCA parish (our priest is wonderful and I love my fellow parishioners) that has services all in English. This just isn't my parish, it's also my family, since I'm estranged from my bio family due to someone with substance abuse issues. Convert (5+ years ago). I have no, absolutely zilch, ability for foreign languages. If couldn’t even learn *Spanish,* there’s no way I’d be able to learn one that has a different alphabet! It’s just the way my brain works.

I’ve told CG more than once (when it was appopriate in conversation) that I have no ability for foreign languages and that I’m staying with my English-language parish, from right when we began dating. At dinner the other night with several others, he told us about a married couple who are friends of his that attend different churches on different calendars (because they like different chant styles), and said he didn’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they do it either, because trying to figure out the cooking with regards to long fasting periods (outside of Great Lent which the two calendars observe together) makes me crazy just thinking about it, plus celebrating Christmas, etc.

I talked to a very trusted woman at church last night, about this situation. She essentially said that if things got serious & permanent between us, the only real solution would be for him to attend my parish (at least most of the time) and we be on the New Calendar at home. He could fit well enough into my parish (he would certainly be far from the only person whose first language is something other than English), while I could not fit into his parish. My parish is truly pan-ethnic, and has a pretty decent number of immigrants who come 1) because they want their young children to grow up understanding the services and/or 2) they’re married to an American.

I can easily name right off the top of my head at least 10 couples I know of, either at my current parish or the previous one, where a non-native English speaking cradle Orthodox husband and only English-speaking convert (or inquirer) wife, came to an all English-speaking parish and joined it to stay. I know that in at least 4-5 of the couples the wife told the husband she would convert, but it HAD to be an all-English parish. In fact, my parish has a new couple that’s a “poster child” for this situation. Eastern European immigrant cradle Orthodox fellow marries an American Protestant woman with a lower-grammar school aged daughter from a previous marriage/relationship. They marry in the husband’s very ethnic, non-English parish - but the priest there told them himself that they needed an English-language parish for the good of the wife, her daughter, and their future children together (she’s pregnant).

CG has told me that church is for church - it’s not for people who want to speak their native language - there are social clubs and such for that. He's also made comments that lead me to believe he's doesn't consider the calendar a dogmatic issue.

I am definitely planning on talking to my parish priest about this when he comes to do my house blessing next week. It does seem that CG coming over to my OCA parish if things got serious between us is the only real solution to this, as it’s been the only solution with the other couples I have personal knowledge of. I would want one calendar in the home for the unity of the family (holiday and saints’ day celebrations) as well as for smoother running of the household. I’d be open to him attending his current parish sometimes, while I was at mine. Of course, this would be different if children came along (going to separate parishes), but we’re “older” (early 40s), so I don’t know if we’d have them. He’s visited my parish once and really liked my priest and everyone he met. I’ve not yet visited his parish - what’s he told me makes it sound hardly welcoming to *any* outsiders.

Any thoughts? I’m taking this relationship very slowly. This has already come up in a way since he was invited by the friends I spent Christmas with (family out of town) to come, but he rejected it on the grounds of “there will be nothing there I can eat” (since he was still in the midst of the Nativity Fast). The wife later told me she’d have been more than willing to make him salmon or lentil soup or something else fasting, but he didn’t want to be the only one not eating the meat.