I was talking to one of my neighbours just now. Her parents are jws, but she never took to it, being a teenager when they started studying, and she went to see her mum and dad last night. Her dad is an elder in my old congregation, and I was good friends with him and his wife when I was a jw.
Anyway, her mum knows she lives near us, and asked if she sees us at all, which she does, quite often. Her mum asked if we were still together, and my friend told her that we are, and are planning to get married next year. She knows we don't mind her telling them our news, in fact we want them to know about it.
When her dad, who hadn't really been taking part in the conversation up to that point heard that, he immediately said "well that's a good thing for both of them, once they're married they can start working towards reinstatement. It's a pity that they thought they had to leave the truth just to be together. I don't know what gets into people these days, putting sex before the truth. You'd think they're both old enough to know better".
My friend was a bit dumbfounded by this statement, to say the least, and her mum looked a bit puzzled as well. When she'd recovered her composure, she said "dad, Trev and Linda told me they'd both disassociated because they didn't believe in the jw religion anymore. It was nothing to do with having sex. I don't think that applying for reinstatement is the reason they're getting married, in fact I know it isn't"
Her dad wasn't having that though, and said "well. everybody in the kh knows Linda only da'd because she wanted to be with him. That rubbish about doing research and finding that it's not the truth is just a cover story. She knows it's the truth, and so does he really, if he'd be honest about it. I've seen them together, drinking and smoking away. He's got her under his control, making her think she loves that sort of life more than she loves Jehovah. She'll see sense in time and come back, even if he doesn't, you see."
My friend said "well dad, I doubt you're right. Trev and Linda seem pretty happy to me these days, a lot happier than when they were jws, but we'll see" and left it at that. He was still rambling on to himself about our "sinful ways" and how no one can be happy away from the org when my friend left him and came home.
Apparently, that was the story that went around the congregations when I da'd - I left just to be with Trev, and for no other reason, and they haven't given up on seeing me back when I come to my senses and realise what I've lost. Okay, we are together now, but we didn't get together until a few months after I'd da'd, and I know neither of us expected it when I did leave, it just happened, as these things sometimes do. I'm not paricularly annoyed about this, and neither is Trev, we both think it's rather funny, and a little pathetic. I expected to be the subject of gossip when I left, it happens to everyone who leaves that congregation, but I just wonder if anyone else thinks, like him, that I'll "come to my senses" and go back. Well if so they're entitled to dream, but that's one dream that definitely won't come true. Reinstatement? That really would be the dog returning to it's own vomit!
Linda