Praise the Lord I think I need to get my game-face on

Religion, Sex and Politics. Apparently you're not meant to talk about them. Not one to shy away from dubious topics I dropped a bombshell yesterday. "Dad, what am I mean to be looking for in a man I'm going to marry?" I mean he's always been ok at trying to represent the male way of thinking, so why not ask?

I realise it was a fairly serious question but frankly at this stage it needs to be asked, I'm no longer 12, I need to get my game face on. I'm pretty good at picking them short term, I know when I man is handsome, engaging, supportive, gentle, intelligent and kind. But I also realise I have no idea how to quell my fear of picking a husband who will still be all these things in 25 years. Entre the Padre.

One of his thoughts included choosing a man who doesn't have religious opinions too far from my own. Or at least one who isn't a zealot. Particularly relevant since I’m rather non-plussed when it comes to God being rather more fond of Beckett's Godot. Dad's advice mirrors what my maternal grandfather thought as well - 'Choose someone with the same social standing, opinions on raising children and religious views.' So feasably this religion saga has more importance than I've ever really paid it?

I wonder if I could perhaps find someone as blank as me and just pick bits from the vast array? The thick or thin vows of marriage and commitment in Catholicism, the uniting Friday Shabbat of Judaism, the humbling togetherness of Ramadan from Islam, the perfectly measured Yin and Yang of Taoism and the communal individuality of MTV. Yet, reflectively, the only thing I seem to admire in religion appears to be the ability to entwine. The ultimate ancestral justification binding one human to another.

Dad is pretty good at advice giving, but I think a family friend takes the cake. His daughter had been dating a man for near over 10 years. Post breakup, there was one line he could contribute to her floods of tears. "You know I'm emotionally challenged, but all I want to know is are you ok for money?" That statement may seem like a jump from all my talk of religion, but is it really that different? A religion of family and support and unity, however it's offered, as cash, as a hand out of a ditch, as a hymn or as a kick up the butt. The religion of family togetherness, that religion is the one that matters most.

And without reserve I can say I like that thought more incense waving, choir singing, chanting, twirling and star gazing. And so what if that wasn't what my father actually meant. Perhaps what I heard was that I should simply find a man with a similar outlook on the important bits of religion. Some one I can look at across the dinner table now, tomorrow, in 25 or 65 years and know that closure isn't always 'Amen' but hopefully it is 'A man'.