It's been a long time but some may remember that I wrote part one of my life story a couple of years ago. I followed that up with part two a few months later. I have found that I have to be in a certain mindset to write about these things and only now have I been able to continue with the third part. I will probably have only one more to follow. Again, this third segment will mean little without reading the first two before it.
Part Three:
Young marriages are almost universal in the Watchtower religion. What choice does one really have? Even the Bible accepts this as the inevitable decision most people will make even though the “gift” of singleness is the preferred option. There is a natural curiosity about sex that, especially when combined with normal desires, is pretty much all-consuming. Factor in too that many young people live their lives mired in guilt because of just being normal and marriage seems like a way out in more ways than one. It would provide a sanctioned outlet for such urges and would remove the guilt and sin connected with being single and a Jehovah’s Witness thus opening the way for an approved standing both before God and in the organization.
So, like most of my peers, I looked to get married. I had had my first kiss at the age of 19 on a clandestine trip to a neighboring state. Nothing came of that or the couple other brief relationships I had in the next few years. I was in no position financially to provide for a wife anyway. But, as mentioned, I now had a real job so I had more confidence that I could actually make this work if I could find a suitable mate. Therein lies a problem. Not only do most Witnesses start married life very young and with little relationship experience, they also select their significant other from a very small pool.
Even for the socially gregarious, finding a potential marriage mate is hard work involving networking and being bold. This was before the internet became big and for the more socially awkward like myself, the only females readily available to get to know were in the local congregation at first and perhaps a few more in the neighboring ones. I was useless at trying to strike up a conversation at a convention with a total stranger though I did try occasionally.
I did have a decent circle of friends at the time including some that were pretty social. I got invited to get-togethers and various outings. I ended up meeting the woman who would become my wife at a beach where Witnesses gathered. I was 25 and she was 18 at the time. That was in August and we were engaged in November and married the following April.
This isn’t to say there wasn’t genuine love between us. We had that and decent chemistry too but the odds were stacked against us. I felt a certain desperation because I was not happy single and it seemed the only way out of the guilt was to get married. It seemed this current relationship might be my only chance to not only get married but also achieve eternal life through good behavior. Major issues between us were ignored. Everything was rushed and it wasn’t long after the wedding date that problems started surfacing.
Those problems, however, weren’t strictly tied to the relationship. I had begun to have serious doubts about the religion that had only grown since the generation change fiasco of November 1995. Faith had been important to me and to have the cracks forming in the very foundation of one’s belief system rattled and shook me. I became very disillusioned despite my initial efforts after getting married to assume the role of the Christian head of the household. My wife had never been that deep of a thinker about the religion but as I shared my feelings with her, I could see her zeal dissipate as well. She originally hoped to pioneer and that was quickly shelved.
I began to self-medicate, relying on alcohol to sleep and chase away temporarily the never-ending stream of questions in my mind. This, of course, further added to the problems in the marriage. It wasn’t always like this. We had our share of good times too but it wouldn’t be long before a new complication arose that would drive us very far apart.
My parents had battled cancer ever since my childhood. They both ended up relapsing, my mother for the fifth time and my father for the third time, less than two years after I got married. We were living in the apartment above them so there was no real escaping the pall cast over the premises. As their only child, I was responsible to help as much as I could. All the while my questions and angst over the religion only intensified and would accelerate even further as I discovered information on the internet. This potent combination of factors strained my marriage to the point that it never recovered.
At first I felt like I was holding Satan’s hand as I looked at various sites that were critical of the Watchtower. Interestingly, much of what I read was stuff that I had already thought of and questioned on my own. What was new was having access to the one chapter of Crisis of Conscience that was online at the time, “1975 – The Appropriate Time for God to Act”. That now familiar feeling of the ground moving out from under my feet that I had experienced with the generation change was there again. I was absolutely blown away by having the curtain pulled back and discovering some of the machinations behind organizational procedure. Some time went by but I decided I had to read the rest of the book. I was able to get it at a library a few towns over and secretly read it. I was appalled.
All the while, my parents steadily declined in health. It became all-consuming and for a time my research into the religion took a back seat. I have to say that both my parents’ congregation and my own at the time showed extraordinary love and support to us. I went into a holding pattern of sorts, pretty much going through the motions of being a Witness but also reaching for some kind of a hope at such a difficult time.
My parents died less than six months apart, roughly two years after getting sick. I went numb and was in sort of a state of shock. I was desperate for a sense of stability in my life and decided I would try to push aside all my doubts and give the religion another go. I wrote a long letter of confession to my local elders outlining some transgressions. I even mentioned that I had read the infamous Crisis of Conscience. My elders were compassionate and could see that the letter was written in good faith. I did try, I really did. But when something has been shattered, it’s hard to put back together. So it was with my attempts to believe in things that no longer made sense to me. Unfortunately, this was also ultimately true with my marriage. We had been driven so far apart. My wife felt resentful that she was being put through this trial at such a young age and she felt isolated from me as I dealt with grief and loss.
I think for a while she really did try too with the marriage but by this time she also had been doing a lot of thinking. She had grown disenchanted with the religion for reasons different than mine. She had begun to resent the young marriage and passing up an education. She began to no longer see a future for us. I don’t know at what point she really contemplated ending it. We were taking steps that at least appeared on the outside to be leading to a future together. We spent the next year after my parents’ deaths fixing up the house to be sold. We began looking to buy a new house together. Everything changed, however, 16 months after my mother’s death when my wife had me read a letter in which she questioned everything about our relationship and the religion.
We had begun to have sporadic meeting attendance for several months prior to this so the religion part didn’t come as that big of a surprise for me. The relationship part though did catch me totally off-guard. After all, we had been taking these steps to have a future together. I certainly knew things weren’t great between us but I chalked that up to the horrendous ordeal that we had both been through. I hoped that we could start new and that fading from the religion could be part of that process.
That day, now over ten years ago, will forever be etched into my memory. I hit rock bottom. I was still dealing with the grief over my parents’ deaths and the sense of loss over fading from the religion. To now contemplate losing my wife too, almost put me over the edge. I was desperate. Where could I turn? I hadn’t yet developed many real life friends outside of the religion though I did have quite a few online friends. In times of crisis, people often fall back on their faith, or what’s left of it. So, as I did after my parents had died, I once again came crawling back. This honestly had not been in my mind. It was only the feeling of being totally alone that sent me reaching for help in the only place I could think to find it.
I ended up getting my hair cut which had gotten quite long at this point. I went back to the Kingdom Hall and explained what had happened. I would attend meetings without my wife and tried to integrate myself back into the “theocratic routine”. About a month after her initial confrontation with me, my wife moved out. The situation had become intolerable as she was treating me very shabbily. She did agree to go to couples’ counseling and eventually agreed to move back after being separated for several months.
I took up scuba diving to get my mind off my problems. This was a very good outlet for me. It so happened that a Witness friend in my congregation also dove, so it was a support in that way too. Still, after the initial shock had begun to wear off, the old questions began reappearing and I became less and less whole-hearted in the religious activities. I began to meet “worldly” people through my newfound interest in the world of scuba diving.
The whole episode with my wife really only delayed the inevitable. Meeting attendance again started to be sporadic. I remember the specific moment that I came to a decision. My wife and I were traveling in California and it just came to me. I knew at that moment that no matter what, my life in the Watchtower was going to come to an end. Even if future crises developed, I wouldn’t be turning back to it. I planned to continue with the fading, hoping to pass relatively unnoticed out of the organization. As it turned out, there would be another crisis and my life would forever change.