I dont know if it's due to the last convention, the recent broadcasts, the internet or just plain fatigue - but since the convention i've had a few people contact me via Facebook messenger asking how i am then cutting to the chase asking me what it's like "on the outside" or "how did you adjust after leaving?" and asking me how they can leave the WT but keep their families.
My reply is always the same, i show real genuine interest and concern and listen to their situation. Then i suggest a fade, how to fade, to ignore or reject elders visits, to not talk about their doubts to active JWs under any circumstances and finally point them to this site. I even have a folder on my laptop with Shepherd The Flock Of God and Crises Of Conscience in there, ready to email them a copy to read.
Since 1st Nov i've had two more. One is an active member of my old congregation who is fully awake (PIMO). After talking to him for a good while on the phone he said:
"But... if i leave, i lose everything." which is true. His wife is a full-time pioneer, his kids are best friends with elders kids, his family is in "the clique", he's being groomed to be an elder by his elder buddies, he's self employed and the majority of his customers are JW.
How sad that simply leaving a group that he doesn't agree with means his life would be destroyed.
Another person, a girl, even turned up at my door. Her dad in an elder and her problem is if she stops going to the meetings he'll know because they're in the same congregation. She's already secretly dating someone, the man she's dating is a Born Again Christian, so no worries about sex before marriage there. I'm not sure of the exact rule here, but i told her that she could argue that "marrying in the Lord" would apply here because he believes in Jesus wholeheartedly. Anyway, i told her if she does date him publicly she should expect elders visits, judgemental people and interference. She doesn't believe the religion but believes in God. My advice to her was to switch congregation then fade. But she reminded me that her dad is an elder and if she stops going he'll shun her. I know her dad, and she's right, he would.
As she was leaving (by the back door which leads onto a quiet street) she joked that if JWs saw her leaving my house alone they'd assume we'd had sex. I laughed and reminded her that, yes, that's true. And yet in the real world we're perfectly capable of meeting people of the opposite sex without ripping our clothes off. It's the Watchtower Society that's obsessed with sex.
What a sorry situation. The religion they were baptized into doesn't even exist. The "new light" has changed the contract as far as im concerned. Overlapping generation? I never signed up to that back in 2004 when i was dunked.