Dinner and alcohol - what will happen next

by rockmehardplace 10 Replies latest jw experiences

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  rockmehardplace

  Last night, I had a friend over for dinner. Nothing major, just ordered a pizza and talked a good bit about his business, family, vacations coming up. Nothing really from a spiritual aspect, which was fine by me. Over the course of dinner, we had some alcohol and at one point he asked if he could tell me something that has been bothering him. "Sure, why not. What will it hurt?" He told me he was tired of being a JW. Tired of the hurdles he has to jump through, tired of the double standards, just reaching a limit. He said he did not want to tell anyone and that he cannot leave because of the relationship with his family. What do I say? Do I jump in and say I agree 100% because that is where I am at as well? Then once he is sober, he could take that back to others and then I am in a real spot. Do I try to give counsel about reading more, attending all meetings? Really, he is at every meeting, he reads daily, he has a family study and a few other Bible studies. So I just sat there and on the inside thought how wonderful to hear someone so close is experiencing the same problems. But on the outside, I told him that everything he told me was between the two of us. I would not share with any of the brothers what he told me. I also said that no matter how bad it gets, I would always listen and never rat him out to anyone. Strictly confidential. No matter how bad it is, even if it is involving evil apostate sites. I really thought that was my plug for getting him to start researching and that there would be no ill effects from me if he shared.

  With that said, if he is reading this, welcome. And to be sure it is me, I will share one detail no one else in the world would get. Stay off the goat, it is still a goat. He knows what that means.
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  Spook

  I recommend encouraging him to embrace these priorities. Tell him that while some or many things about JW's can be good, he does not have to take everything seriously. Even though I'm an atheist I told many of my friends in the same situation to just go and enjoy. Honestly, if you don't believe it, being a JW isn't all that bad in the grand scheme of things. Those who take it very seriously are most likely to become depressed and then pop out suddenly. Most of my friends who treated being a JW as just being like any other religion are mostly happy. They slack off and roll their eyes the way some Catholics do when talking about "confession."

  For the last year I was active whenever I went in the ministry all I did was say "I'm here to share a positive thought from the bible if you'd like to hear it." Not a very objectionable thing to do. I never went on return visits, it was my temporary status quo compromise. If he eventually tapers off he will probably start finding something new in life he is passionate about. Maybe that will give him the momentum to stand up to his family. That did it for me. I wanted to do big things with my life and eventually had to say take it or leave it to my parents.
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  mindmelda

  We have a friend who is the same way. He has a few snorts and he's groaning about how picked on he is and how much he hates the elders and how abusive it all is. Its' amazing how alcohol reduces some peoples fears and inhibitions enough that their real feelings come out. In vino veritas.

  I've even seen a few elders get pretty critical about some things after a six pack. *G* (I think there's a LOT of disgruntled JWS out there, many of them in positions of authority, just muzzling themselves because there is absolutely no safe place for this emotion to go and they just end up feeling more guilty and disloyal for their perfectly normal feelings that SOMETHING IS WRONG. But, the WTS allows no way to change anything, or to solve their issues. Change only comes from the top, and it may never come for your particular grievance if it interfers with the authority structure.)

  But, my friend, he keeps going back because he doesn't believe there is anywhere else to go for "truth". It's so ingrained in him, literally from childhood, to look at this organization as the only source of truth, to trust no one else, that everything else is from Satan and a lie and suspect that he just cannot break free. It's like trying to make a child believe that their parents are serial killers, because he's so dependent on them for everything.

  You just don't want to believe that your only support system is so dysfunctional, unworkable and awful and corrupt.

  He keeps thinking it's HIS fault it doesn't work for him and becomes more and more depressed, more joyless and yet, he can't figure out that he's drinking this poisoned koolaid and THAT's what's killing his soul. Again, it's like the abused child or woman who thinks if she's just "good enough" that mommy and daddy will finally love them and quit hurting them. But, it never happens because mommy and daddy are essentially abusive and have no desire to change...they LIKE things the way they are.

  My observation over 36 years of being in or around JWs is that kind of burn out is quite common but the essential cult "Stockholm syndrome/mommy-daddy/ programming instilled in the person is much more difficult to break down.

  The idea of actually leaving the WTS or disagreeing with their doctrine in any way or challenging the authority structure of the congregation and the GB leaves them pissing in their pants, sometimes literally.

  I remember the first time I deconstructed a WTS doctrine, the one about 1914, and it scared the crap out of me. I even desperately tried to put it back together because I realized it was like a house of cards. I was like Humpty Dumpty's men, trying desperately to put all the broken parts together again.

  Because I knew that without that essential doctrine that Christ's invisible presence began in 1918 after the war in heaven occuring in 1914, the other unique JW doctrines are also baseless. There is no "remnant of the 144,000 spirit annointed" no "great crowd of other sheep" (a phrase not even found in the Bible) ....none of it. It's all fabricated out of a few random scriptures backed up by less than adequate scholarship.

  I was shaking like a leaf waiting to be turned into a pillar of salt the first time I spoke to an "apostate", someone else who had deconstructed WTS beliefs. It's actually NOT THAT HARD to do once you break the fear of the authority structure of the religion. That's what has to happen to really free yourself from the whole thing. I had to do it gradually because I was so SCARED. I kept thinking, "I'm just one woman, what do I know? I could be wrong!" and I'd go groveling back trying to make it work. I did it twice after a long and actually relatively happy period of staying away, total inactivity.

  The only real weapon they have is shunning, but it's enough. And they wield it ruthlessly when necessary. The fear of finding a life outside of the one that the WTS constructs for you, finding new friends, thinking for yourself, and alienating JW family is the real problem with detaching. The teachings...they're as easily discarded as Kleenex with a bit of thought and little research.

  Spook, I love how you handled Field Circus....(I love calling it that!) and I did much the same. Never did place litter-ature. When I went, I just read an upbeat scripture or two and found some common ground with people who wanted to talk a little, never did RVs and I never had a Bible study.

  It was the only way I could go out in service without screaming. I felt like a hypocrite peddling WTS nonsense I didn't really believe.
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  oompa

  excellent post mindmilda......i hear ya and am there.....waking up was a bitch...and i wept bitterly..........letting go of the faith/lies was easy...but finding myself now so isolated while still in the midst of these people is awful...and my marriage to one is really messed up as well......i just dont know if i can let go of EVERYONE i have ever grown up with....including family......it is a lot to let go........oompa
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  undercover

  I sat in a bar one night till closing with a friend who had been DFd and was questioning the entire validity of the whole JW belief system. After several drinks we both loosened up and I started to give him things to think about. I told him to not take my word but look up what I was telling him.

  We talked again later on several occasions and he said that his eyes were opened and he was glad to be out.

  That was at least three years ago, if not more. I lost touch with the guy but I heard through the grapevine that he was going off the deep end. Left his wife, shacked up with some other girl, got her pregnant, lost his job, wrecked his car, got a DWI (seperate incidence from the wreck). The guy had found freedom from the JWs but he went nuts trying to enjoy all the things he thought he had missed out on growing up. I heard these things from worldy contacts and they were wondering what was wrong with him. Imagine what his former dub friends were saying about him...

  Anyway, I found out a few weeks ago something that kind of shocked me. He was going back to the dubs. A worldly friend of his that I knew had made a comment about him "going all Jesus freak on us" and was "knocking on doors handing out religious phamplets". I checked a couple of sources and though I'm not 100% sure, I've gathered that he has indeed gone back and has gotten reinstated.

  While I'm glad that he's crawled out of the self-destructive behavior pattern he was in, I'm surprised after all that we talked about and how convinced he was that the JWs was just a screwed up cult, that he would go back to it. And a small part of me wonders how much he remembers of our conversations and if he'll be able to keep his mouth shut about me since we both know some of the same people, both inside and out.
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  mindmelda

  oompa, I left you a private message. *G*
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  Quirky1

  Tread lightly..you never know when it may turn around and bite you in the ass..
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  mindmelda

  Undercover, that's not an uncommon thing that happens to people leaving a highly structured sect or cult like JWs. They throw out EVERYTHING having to do with it at once, and as you said, go kind of nuts trying all the "forbidden" things that they felt they were denied by the cult.

  They scare themselves with their out of control behavior and feel that they cannnot "behave" with out the authority of the cult again directing their morals,their thoughts, their behavior. They are like a guy who has been in jail for many years and cannot adapt to normal society, and so they deliberately committ a crime that takes them back to their relatively safe and comfortable prison, where life is predictable, restriction is imposed externally and everything is under the illusion of control.

  I suppose some people can't handle thinking for themselves and figuring out what is good and bad for themselves without a Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

  You know, that's how the WTS sells itself. "Quit thinking for yourself, it's not what humans were intended to do, that's why it's so hard and feels so bad. Let God do it for you." Except God is the WTS. And God doesn't do that anymore.

  Maybe people needed that for a long time. They needed hard rules written in stone and legalistic enforcement of those rules to keep them in check and from killing each other off the face of the earth when they were three hairs away from baboons. But, at some point, religion needs to evolve beyond that and be about an internalized set of principles that guide the conscience and allow for personal expression and freedom.

  That's what your friend never discovered. He needs the wardens of the WTS to make him behave...or so he believes.
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  undercover

  mindmelda - good points. I assumed, as you explained, that he went back because he felt he was no good on his own.

  I knew another guy who after he got DFd learned the scam of the WTS. He also went a little wild. I was starting to worry about him. I understood...I too had a "lost weekend" but did not go so far as to get in real trouble, but this guy was heading there. It was to the point that I was thinking about stepping in and trying to talk to him when he, on his own, realized that with new found freedom comes self responsibility.

  As a JW, we obeyed rules, we never really were responsible on our own. We obeyed out of fear and guilt. Take away the fear and the guilt, you experience new freedoms and from my experience and from watching newly freed ones, it takes some time to know your limits and to exercise proper self-control.

  I guess some people don't come to realize that they can, on their own, control themselves but feel the need to have someone else set the rules and standards.
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  happpyexjw

  This is a very good thread. I think a lot of us have some fear at first when we throw off the shackles. When I first left at age 40, I had been "in" since age 9. I used to say the dubs kept me out of trouble as a kid, but as time goes on I no longer think that's true. I was basically a good kid and just was never inclined to get into any trouble. When I first left I was a little afraid of my new freedom, and I tried out some new things, but really, I didn't do anything really foolish.

  I think a lot depends on how quickly you can develop new friends and get a feel for what the "world" is really like. We were all taught that the world is a scary, lawless, drug and sex-wild place and so that's what we expect when we get out there. The truth is that while that stuff exists, there are far more normal, decent folks out there who just want to have a good life. Unfortunately, the WT leaves us all a bit socially inept and it can take time to replace the "friendships" we had on the inside. I was never DF'd or DA'd, but I immediately cut myself off from almost everyone because I knew it would tough to break free from the organization. The most important thing for me turned out to be making new friends and developing my own interests.

  Undercover, your friend may have gone back to get some control in his life, but I'm not convinced he'll stay in. Maybe he just needs to get his bearings for a while. I suppose he could drop you in the fat and tell on you, but I doubt it.