by Evidently Apostate 23 Replies latest jw friends
He said he will always be a witness, and if the witnesses don't have the "truth" then there is no God.
I would call his bluff on that one. I would see that as a threat if I was still a religious person. You should tell him, "Well, there are worse things than being an atheist. At least most of them have their own moral compass and a set of ethics."
My hubbys in. There has been a lot of compromise. We celebrate "so-and-so's happy day" instead of birthdays. We'll have a winter party instead of Christmas, and so forth.
He just went to a spiritual gathering with me. It wasn't a religion or in a Church.
We will give our daughter different viewpoints and ideas.
He has to meet me halfway and I have to meet him halfway on everything. It's worked so far.
Evidently Apostate and NiceDream, I am in the same boat as you.
I feel very alone in my home.
My wife does not want me to talk about anything anti-JW, yet she continues to talk about everything JW around me as though she thinks everything is going to be okay.
I have adult and minor children, I can't see staying in to keep peace in the family. In some ways I feel it is selfish of me to leave and disrupt their lives in such an extreme way, at the same time, I feel it selfish to not make the difficult choice to leave and face the difficult times to blaze the trail for them, so to speak. Tough love or hyopocrisy, which is better for their sake? Tough love, I risk losing them for the rest of our lives ... putting up the hypocritical front and I condone them throwing their own lives away.
The life of an apostate mate is very different from and unbelieving mate.
The other day I asked my wife if she thought our marriage could survive. She said yes. I asked her without any context to the question. A couple of days later she brought it up and commented how bad she feels that I am unhappy with her and am looking for a way out. I assured her that I love her and want to spend my whole life with her ...
At the same time, the tough love road mentioned above ... how does a marriage survive that? An apostate is so different than an unbeliever in Watchtower World. An apostate becomes the enemy, aligned with the devil, seeking to devour his faithful family, trying to destroy their hope of everlasting life. An unbelieving mate, even an opposed one, is just someone who hasn't been convinced yet and may come around in due time, they are welcome at social gatherings, they can be accepted in both worlds.
At the core, a believing mate does not trust the apostate mate, subjects must be avoided, communication becomes limited, social lives become separate ... how does a marriage survive that? If you do hold on to the marriage, what kind of a marriage is it?
"At the core, a believing mate does not trust the apostate mate, subjects must be avoided, communication becomes limited, social lives become separate ... how does a marriage survive that? If you do hold on to the marriage, what kind of a marriage is it?"
in my case, in 1980 i was declared an apostate, & this accelerated my wifes efforts to get a divorce, & i gave her grounds to get a scriptural one.
things turned out OK for both of us though: i married someone else & had 24 years together, till "death did us part"
i ve since married for the 3rd time.
my first wife also remarried, & as far as i know, still is.
My wife is afraid to "question my enlightenment." She knows that I will be able to debate in circles around her, so she attributes it to "the world." She isn't quite at feeling that Satan has influenced me, because she damn-well knows I am not evil. When I " let it fly both barrels" she actually put her hands on her ears and said "I can't discuss this." I had to learn to hold back and go the round-about way with her, discussing news and events and opinions of matters without directly challenging her beliefs. I had to encourage independent thinking without triggering her cult mode. Reading Steve Hassan's second book; RELEASING THE BONDS: EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES, helped a bunch to learn how to help a JW in the long-haul approach. In my opinion, if they don't quickly decide to leave on their own, the long-haul is the only way to go with JW's. Even if it never gets her out, my wife will be more and more prepared to think for herself as WTS deals out BS to her.
OTWO
Me and my wife are at the same empasse as you are. She knows I can turn all the faulty reasoning she uses to justify the WTS on its ear and expose it's self serfing nature. She also hasn't pull the "you're of Satan" card with me either, at least not to my face.
That would probably be THE last straw for me. If I am to be so Satanic as to have have provided her the privilege of not having to work for the last 15 years, she'd be challenged to see if her precious WT Soceity and her "friends" would be so benevolent.
I think I'm a rare case in that I left the WT some time around 1980 and we are still married. At first I would argue with her a lot reasoning that if I could see the problems she should also be able to see them. I found like others it is easy to back them into a corner but getting them realize it was checkmate is another matter. Eventually I had to admit that there was no point in bringing things up and if I wanted are marriage to continue we would have to drop discussing the WT altogether which we have except on rare occasions.
I think the only reason we have been able to work it out is first because we had no children. I wouldn't have allowed them to raise in the WT and that probably would have ended our marriage. The second reason I think we have been able to work it out is that neither of us is jealous or controling. We respect each other's right to be ourselves. Even as a witness I did a lot of things that Witnesses don't normally do. Not bad things just things witnesses don't do and she never made a big deal about it.
In a lot of ways it has been difficult but at least in my case it I feel working things out has been worth it. If I had been married to someone else I might not have wanted to put the effort into making it work.
My wife refuses to listen to anything specific. So the best that I'm almost ever able to do is to say things like, "You know that there are things in this organization that really bother my conscience. Do you think that I should just ignore my conscience?" Unfortunately my wife's answer is, "Yes." That's not my answer.
She has heard me, a few times, talking to other people about my problems with the organization. The latest situation was when her mom started telling me about her doubts and asked how I felt about it. I began telling her about cult mind control and the situation in Malawi vs Mexico and my wife stomped in and forced our conversation to an end. JW's are AFRAID of information. TERRIFIED of it. And my wife is in that boat.
So I've tried to strike a balance. I've been going to all the meetings with her, and keeping my mouth closed. But she KNOWS that I don't agree with it. Sometimes I'll give her looks during the meeting when something outrageous is said (happens QUITE often). And she gives me a disapproving look back and gets mad at me for the rest of the day. But I'm not pretending to agree. She knows that I am ONLY there to support her.
I KNOW that if she was to read CoC or Captives of a Concept she would see the truth about the so-called "truth". But she absolutely REFUSES to look at anything critical. She is terrified of not being a witness. To her, it is her entire identity. But the strange thing about it is that she disagrees with so much of it, and knows very little about it. She knows little about it even for an average JW. Her parents were alcoholics while she was growing up, so they were dealing with their own problems. They never studied the bible with her, and she couldn't even tell you the full story of Israel leaving Egypt.
So it's tough. I'm trying to temper my extreme desire to get out and put it all behind me with my love for her and my kids. I want to drag them out, but I know that it won't work that way. So I am literally STUCK!
One other answer to your question: How do they respond to your enlightenment?
My wife says that it sounds like I have a demon in me, because it's impossible to argue for the organization with me. She says that I'm just repeating things that I've been told (pot calling the kettle black much?). She says that Ray Franz was just a bitter, angry, sad man that had a fish to fry with the society. She says this having NOT read ANYTHING by him. She also doesn't know that we were email pals for a while before he died and I know what a kind and sweet old man he actually was! She also freely slings the term "apostate" at me. It's easy to discount EVERYTHING someone says when you give them a degrading title like that.
But through it all...I love this girl. So I hold on. I hold on and hope that somehow in someway she will see the truth and get to experience the kind of mental and emotional freedom that I am experiencing. It's amazing that I can feel so free when I'm stuck like I am. But it really shows how trapped we all were.
My situation is a bit different than someone like OTWO or others...
My wife is actually inactive...but is not free of the guilt/fear/control. She defends the WTS when push comes to shove.
I had hoped that being away from the constant indoctrination over time would free her mind to start to see through it on her own. She's smart, bright and logical...in most things anyway. We've had discussions about my issues over the WTS...usually not ending so well.
Over that time though she has kind of created her own version of being a JW. She may defend the hard core doctrines, yet she has become every bit as "worldly" as I have. It's amazing to see how far she's come as far as acting as a regular "worldly" person, yet identifying herself as a Witness. Stripping it to the core of the issue I have to admit that she's quite hypocritical. Defends the WTS, accepts it, yet doesn't follow their counsel/rules, doesn't keep up with serving them, doesn't have a clue about new doctrinal changes.
When I think we've turned a corner and she is finally to a point where freedom of her mind from WT control is imminent, something happens that creates guilt in her and she defends them to the hilt.
I think she actually shuts the conflict out of her mind. Discussions we've had in the past where I've made my position clear or I've cast reasonable doubt on a doctrine is forgotten and at times, we rehash the same things covered before.
Watching her day to day and then seeing a different person emerge when anything WT related is discussed proves to me that this religion is a cult. I can actually see her eyes change. I can see the smart, logical woman change to a zombie robot repeating buzzwords and WT propaganda.
I've tried the head-on approach, the sneaky sideways approach, the drop a hint here and there approach. So far none of it seems to have really made an impact. Which also proves the point that as long as someone wants to believe something they'll find a way to believe...contrary to any evidence presented that undermines the authority of that belief system.
For the most part the subject of JWs/WTS is the 800lb gorilla in the room. He's sitting in the corner quietly eating his bananas, but who knows when he's gonna go ape shit and throw down on something. We don't discuss it much. But when it does come up, it's a doozy.
edited to add: I have to admit, just having her physically free is something. When I first joined here, we were both active, though irregular. As I faded, she fell off attending and hasn't attended in sometime. I'm free mentally and physically. I've got her physically free... I just got to get her to think for herself in this area.
