....my final Jw relationship.
I did it. I killed the relationship.
My cousin Rick and I had been inseparable as Jw's. See one, you see us both. Rick is five years my junior, and in many ways I tried to look out for him like a little brother when we were younger.
I have wrestled with an on again/ off again attempt to stay in touch with Rick since I left Jw's. He has mostly been an asshole through the entire thing, but at times I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, that perhaps there was some thread of our former friendship that could be salvaged.
When I first read Franz' books, I called him. We spent all night walking around town, talking. I did most of the talking, he did most of the ignoring is actually how it went in retrospect. You see, to Rick the Watchtower was more than a religion. It was his Mother. He was tied to it as if he was hanging from her teat. In some ways I knew that he would never let go.
His is what I call an absolute 'dependent personality' - I don't know the clinical term. He was the kind of guy who would go to the elders about every problem in his life. He created an odd kind of bond with the elders in his 'hometown' congregation, just one small town over from mine. He could not make a decision in life without running it past them. But instead of being bothered with this dysfunctional adult, they seemed to encourage it, and Rick became somewhat of the 'charity' case among the congregation. They enabled his lack of maturity and personal ability to grow and develop. He enabled their desire to have a pet case to nurture. It was eerily symbiotic.
Rick married young. When the economy went bad in the early 80's both he and his new wife and my wife and I moved to another part of the country to obtain work. I ended up in Amarillo Texas, he and his family in Wichita Falls Texas. His was not a marriage made in heaven. He was immature, unskilled, and moody. His wife eventually could not take it any more, and after about 8 or so years of marriage she booted him.
I had returned to Indiana by this time and he called asking me for a job. He returned a few weeks later to start working. I fully expected he would get his emotional life together and return to Texas - where he had three very young children living with his ex. During his first few months here he was suicidal in my opinion. I can recall spending 4 or 5 nights a week, after work, just sitting with him in a restaurant, drinking coffee and assuring him that he would make it through. One night I recall him shaking and crying so intensely that it took him 15 minutes to get himself together enough to actually drive his car home after we left the coffee shop.
He never returned to Texas. I recall my wife and I talking to him about his plans, and his telling us that his elders had suggested he just 'let it go', meaning that he would not fight for custody of the kids, nor return to a geographical area that would allow him to keep a relationship with them. Once again he had curled up in a fetal position in the arms of his enablers.
Years went by. To be honest, I gave very little thought to his children during all that time. I was fully bOrged and had the party line. He was in the 'truth' and his ex was not, so therefore he was making good choices. He was always in a different congregation than I was, so over time I spent less time with him. I had my own responsibilities and didn't make his business mine. All along his little children were growing up in a home without much money, and no father image. I was wearing blinders to the entire matter most of the time.
Just an example of how his mind had been fully given over to the organization. He told me that while he lived in Texas he had been publicly reproved. I could not imagine his 'crime'. He revealed to me that he was PR'd for having oral sex with his wife. I asked him how the elders would have known such a thing? Did his ex turn him in? No. He turned himself in. He went to the elders and confessed oral sex with his wife. How unbelievable is that? I have since never heard of anyone else doing that. He was in full mind meld with the organization.
Fast forward to my leaving the organization in 2004.
I believed that I could hold onto our 'friendship'. We are after all cousins also, family ties and all. But I noted almost from the start that he stopped his routine of calling when he passed thru town, and stopping over for a visit. He stopped inviting us to his house. The week that I formally disassociated myself I saw him pass by within 15 feet of where I was standing uptown at a little shop. I know he saw me, and then made haste to turn the corner and head off. I nearly had to run down the street to catch him, and then found that he would barely speak to me. The 'shunning' had begun.
Next was email shunning. I would write to him, and perhaps every 5 or 6 emails he would answer. It would only be a line or two, normally no salutation beginning or end. He was clearly afraid that he would violate that scripture about 'saying a greeting to an evil man'. Then he would go large periods in which he would not answer at all. Finally, he must have just blocked my address, as he totally quit responding.
A couple of years went by and lo and behold, out of the blue he contacts me on Face Book. I respond with an acceptance of his request. But that was clearly the beginning of the end. Two or three times he would just send me a line or two in a message saying that he was removing me as friend. In every case it was because of things that I had posted to my wall, and he saw them. He was offended by what I said, even though I was not saying it to him. A week or two later he would put me back on his friends list. He did this again last week. And to be honest I was about done with him and his childishness by that point anyway.
I finally decided to end it. I sent him a message on FB this morning and basically told him that I had seen a pattern in his behavior that bothered me and that I wanted to air to him. That pattern was his willingness to throw anyone, his kids included, under the bus if they came between him and his enablers. I actually was quite kind in my letter. I was truthful, and blunt in places. I suggested that even now, at the age of 50 he had a long record of not holding a steady job, never being satisfied with his employer, mooching from his 'brothers' in his local congregation by getting them to provide him with free or inexpensive housing. At the time I wrote this letter he is living in his father in laws house, due to more of the same. He just can't make mature decisions in life. But I told him toward the end that I knew he would react like the immature person I had come to know - he would break off my ability to contact him, and he would be angry because he couldn't handle the truth of what I had said, and my opinion that it was his religion that had caused him to be unable to act in a mature manner in life. I told him that I believed that I had buried his immoral reaction to divorce [that is his actual abandonment of his children] due to my personal religious fanaticism as a Jw, but that my blinders were off now, and he was now throwing me under the bus in the same way he had done with his children. But I needed to say it. I needed to let him know that his poor choices, immaturity, and the pain that he had caused his children was unacceptable, and that it was his religious affiliation with Jehovah's Witnesses, his arrogantly believing himself specially selected by God, and his having embedded himself in the arms of those who would enable his poor conduct, that had created the situation.
Needless to say, the bullet penetrated, and the relationship is now dead. No autopsy is needed.
This bullet needed to be fired a long time ago. I just could not do it until now. No need to resuscitate.
Thanx for listening. This was a very painful death for me.
Jeff