I don't usually create threads so I'm sorry if my formatting is shitty. To clear up any confusion about the situation, I'll state before hand that I'm 18 and still in my senior year of high school and this girl I'm talking about is 17.
I recently went on a date with a very beautiful girl from my workplace. She lives on a farm with her conservative Lutheran family about 20 minutes away from my town. Naturally I was attracted to her. She's so sweet and innocent and I know she would make a perfect wife.
The day after our date, I asked her when she would like to go on another date. She told me that we can meet up again but we can't actually "date" as of now because her father doesn't want her dating anyone outside of their church. I can understand if he didn't want his daughter dating a non-Christian or someone from another denomination, but not even guys from different Lutheran churches? I'm not sure why she waited to tell me this until after we'd gone on our first date.
I looked up some stuff on her church to get some more context. She's part of the OALC, a conservative Laestadian church. At first I was quite worried by some of the stories about how legalistic they are but I calmed down when I realized that she must be from a more moderate church considering that she's allowed to own a cell phone, wear pants, keep her hair in styles other than a bun, and work outside of the house.
I'm not sure what to do /christian/. I feel like shit every time I think about her. She still wants to meet up with me but I want to actually date her. I suppose I could wait until we're both 18 but I don't want to cause problems between her and her parents and I don't want her parents to hate me, especially if I'm going to marry her later in life. I don't want to switch to her church when I don't agree with them, plus I feel that it would be dishonest to change churches purely because of a girl I'm interested in. I'm scared that if I can't date her, I'll never be able to find a girl like her again. I'm sorry if this whole story came off as autistic or whiny but I need to vent, plus I thought might get some useful advice or start some interesting discussion. Pic unrelated.