Hi all,
I have been lurking for a while, just joined. Nice to see there are so many others out there who feel/felt how I feel...
Long story short - I was born into it, started having doubts about age 6, but what can you do when you have over controlling parents whose only goal is to make you a pioneer and ship you off to Bethel so you can be like your goody-two-shoe brothers. Suffered through my school years being bullied with no friends - parents made sure that I was very different from other kids inc how I dressed and even what I ate to the point where I was apparently known as the ugly hippie. Also made sure we lived far enough out of town so that I had no access to any potential friends, 'worldly' or jw. My parents decided I would be a publisher at age 10, no one told me except just before they announced it at the meeting that night - oh look at the good little PO's daughter. Hated going out and preaching by that stage... Had a brief respite from my parents at age 14, lived with another jw family who were quite nice, decided after months of 'subtle' pressure from my parents that I would get dunked, thought it would make them proud. For a moment perhaps, til alas, I didn't immediately drop out of school and pioneer, but went on to pursue the evils of higher education. I did however marry a jw which made them happy, until we moved as far away as possible from them! Now I am the one that left them and doesn't look after them in their old age... they have other kids to do that so why should I?? After a pretty long time of feeling unhappy and detesting the whole rigmarole I finally decided to do some research, and look where it brought me :)
I have told my husband that I am thinking of leaving, as it was never my thing, I was basically forced into it under threat of death. He seems ok with it, if it's my decision and it makes me happier. Most of his family are not jw anyway, so he doesn't have an issue with the whole divided household thing. It would just make it hard for him as all his friends are, he doesn't have an external support network. I have been slowly building mine up over the last year or two, so I'll be ok.
So yeah, hi, and see ya round!