Tonight I was out having dinner with a friend/colleague I've known for five or six years. The conversation turned to religion: first religion in politics, then his general distaste for religion, and then his lack of a religious upbringing. There was a lull for a moment, and then I said "it was pretty much the reverse situation in my household." And I told him I'd been raised as a JW. In fact, I'm still "technically one", as I'm baptized and haven't been disfellowshipped, just inactive for years. Telling him honestly made me feel really weird, because I've almost uniformly avoided telling any of my "post-JW" acquaintances about my JW upbringing. Now I'm kind of wondering if I did the right thing. He knew about the 144,000 and about family members not talking to you if you get disfellowshipped, stuff like that. I told him I'd really prefer it if he didn't talk about it with other people. But since, as I said, I usually tend to keep my personal life very close to the vest, it just feels weird. He's a good guy, very laid-back. He actually started laughing when he considered how some of my career choices might not jive too well with a JW background. I'm not sure what's bugging me, whether it's the possibility that he's going to look at me differently now, or that he could bring up this information sometime in an inconvenient social context (i.e. in front of Witnesses), even though I don't think we're ever actually around Witnesses together. What's been your experience in this area?
Telling someone you've known a long time that you were a JW
by comment 7 Replies latest jw friends
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Quotes
My experience in this area: most (maybe all?) of my friends know about my past, but that's becuase many of them were with me during my exit.
I make a point of *NOT* telling peple about my past; I feel weird about it too, and I don't know why either. My wife sometimes embarrasses my by bringing it up into conversation with friends that don't know, and that bothers me: I then have to take great pains to explain that I am NO LONGER a JW.
~Quotes, of the "It got weird, didn't it Frau?" class -
Lehaa
I know how you feel. I feel weird too sometimes.
Mostly people are really interested and have heaps of questions, it's interesting when they find out how weird it really all is.
I have not been out for too long though and not many non dub friends
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the_classicist
I felt the weirdness as a JW. I never admitted it to anyone else. Especially after getting beaten up in Gr. 1, from then on I was psychologically ashamed of being a JW (which was exacerbated by the fact I couldn't defend myself without displeasing Jehovah).
I pretty much gotten over it. But I do still have a knee-jerk reaction of embarresment.
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DHL
I never hesitated to talk about my religious background both with friends and others, because a lot of my decisions have been influenced strongly by my upbringing. It's a part of my personal history and I don't have any reason to hide it. It doesn't embarrass me a bit.
Mostly people are really interested and have heaps of questions, it's interesting when they find out how weird it really all is.
I found that to be true. People tend to ask me tons of questions about the WT. Many very interesting discussions resulted of it. People seem to appreciate the information and react quite shocked about the news, especially when it comes to medical questions (blood etc.). To me it seems there are still a lot of people who think JW are silly but harmless. It's an extra pleasure to me to get them to know better and it works as a warning, too. I hope they spread the news to others. (Speak of negative word-of-mouth advertising!)
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cypher50
I felt the weirdness as a JW. I never admitted it to anyone else. Especially after getting beaten up in Gr. 1, from then on I was psychologically ashamed of being a JW (which was exacerbated by the fact I couldn't defend myself without displeasing Jehovah).
I felt the same way and it was magnified when I was a teen because I was so different (couldn't do sports, dances, parties). I was never beat up but I just hated feeling so left out both at school and in our congregation since we were "spiritual orphans" (my dad wasn't a witness)...
I still bring up that I was a JW if it is appropriate to the conversation though because it explains a lot about my feelings on politics & religion. And the longer I am away from it the less I am embarrassed about it...in fact, seems like something out of a sitcom now.
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scotsman
I have no problem with people knowing I was a Witness, most are interested in finding out about a relatively unknown part of society. It's spawned many a dinner party discussion. And if it were to affect how someone percieved me, then that's their problem, not mine.
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Honesty
It was difficult at first but everyone has been so curious about the beliefs and doctrines of JW's that it is probably helping more people avoid getting involved with them when we speak out in truth about how destructive and spiritually damaging the cult is to the entire population of the world.