Husband and I were in from very young ages. He served as an elder (and worked his ass off for the Borg I might add) for 26 years. Then when we attended the backyard wedding of my daughter, who was disfellowshipped, my husband was removed as an elder. Much backbiting, gossip and general nasty behavior by the self righteous ones appointed to clean up Dodge. The whole matter went back to Brooklyn, and some committee there decided we had put family ties over loyalty to Jehovah.
I decided to read the bible to really understand if there was any basis for this kind of thinking - I really read it with a bible dictionary, commentaries, an interlinear and different translations. I realized that what I read in the NT had very little to do with what was taught at the Kingdom Hall. My epiphany was that the parable of the faithful and discreet slave was just that - simply a parable, only one of maybe 30 or so that Jesus gave about personal behavior. Not a prophecy telling Christians they had to look for an organization to be "saved" and certainly not a reason for a small group of men, the GB, to seize power over their fellow slaves and steal the position of mediator from Jesus. You must be associated with THEM to be saved. That is unscriptural and blasphemous, in my opinion. After that, I decided to work up my courage and read everything I could get my hands on and it all fell like a house of cards.
Jehovah's Witnesses are a high control and dangerous cult. So, oddly enough, the last straw for me was reading the bible and, after 42 years, understanding what it said didn't jive with JW doctrine.