Posts by Nickolas

But how does one tell? Any proficient recruiter will do what these two did with you. They will show sensitivity, compassion, understanding, patience and sincerity. The love bombing technique is used in many religious organisations, including the Watchtower. You would not otherwise be attracted to their religion. I am not saying either of these prospective "opportunities" is wrong for you - they may very well lead to a greater sense of peace and fulfillment in your life - but it could be you would be trading one set of irrational beliefs for another. I tend to get a little suspicious when someone representing some sort of product (in this case a different flavour of Christianity) disparages a similar product, simply because his objectivity is called into question. Even when what he is saying about the other religion is irrefutable, he will not be candid about what others might have found lacking in his own church. Maybe that doesn't matter, so long as the church you associate with does no harm to others. But by all means rely mostly on your own mind and intuition to find your way.

my 2¢

118

Question for the men

by SafeAtHome in

i'd like the input of the guys, maybe some of you who have been married or in a serious relationship for some time.

if you were having an affair and your wife found out about it, would you want her to tell you she knew?

would it serve a purpose, that is, make you end the affair, or on the other hand, push it over the edge to be with the other person?

Nickolas

It is scary sometimes, Shelby, how you and I can be so much on the same page.

Last post on this thread for me. Good night, all.

118

Question for the men

by SafeAtHome in

i'd like the input of the guys, maybe some of you who have been married or in a serious relationship for some time.

if you were having an affair and your wife found out about it, would you want her to tell you she knew?

would it serve a purpose, that is, make you end the affair, or on the other hand, push it over the edge to be with the other person?

Nickolas

Does anyone out there know about the software that can be installed on a computer to detect passwords? Is it safe or easy to install?

Do you really want to do that rather than just confront the situation honestly? In my estimation you're now getting into a higher level of mistrust between you and your husband and compounding the problem.

If this is what you want to do, as much as I think you're making a mistake, you can download and install a keylogger program. Keyloggers will record every single keystroke made on the computer and log them onto a hidden file that only you can access. They are very hard to detect but not impossible. Passwords will be normally recorded at the beginning of a session but you will also see every single word he has typed. It is a serious breach of trust.

18

Need some advice, PLEASE!

by TweetieBird in

jw
friends

i don't even know where to begin but i'm having trouble with my oldest son (grown) who just moved back home.

he recently got fired and kicked out by his roommate because he has (in my opinion and the rest of my family) an alcohol and pot problem.

he doesn't think he does because he can go days without either, a whole other story.

Nickolas

Cannabis is by and large a safe drug, inasmuch as there is no known lethal dose and it is not physically addicting. However, it can trigger psychosis in a small minority of users. This could be what has happened with your son, but it sounds more like clinical depression, as has already been suggested. Alcohol will most definitely exacerbate depression and simultaneously smoking or ingesting cannabis will greatly magnify the depression and will result in emotional outbursts and delusions. Someone who has an inherent problem with alcohol will find it almost impossible to not drink after having used cannabis. The only spice I am aware of that is smoked is mace, but its effects are rather docile and do not mesh with the behavour you are describing. I suspect the spice your son is smoking is not spice at all but salvia. It might be appropriate to find out for sure. Salvia is in many places much more readily available than cannabis and is much cheaper to purchase. It is an hallucinagen and the effects on users can be very nasty and manifested in like behaviour.

Be supportive and loving. Try not to lose your temper. Get some help. Talking to someone at AA would be a good place to start because they will have considerable knowledge of cannabis/salvia/alcohol interactions and problems.

Stay strong.

118

Question for the men

by SafeAtHome in

i'd like the input of the guys, maybe some of you who have been married or in a serious relationship for some time.

if you were having an affair and your wife found out about it, would you want her to tell you she knew?

would it serve a purpose, that is, make you end the affair, or on the other hand, push it over the edge to be with the other person?

Nickolas

I am reading between the lines that this is an internet affair - your reference to him not being computer savvy - but it really doesn't matter either way.

When the philosophical problem in my marriage remained unaddressed after festering for 20 years I struck up a relationship with a wonderful and beautiful young woman over the internet. I made no attempt to hide it from my wife and rationalised it away on the basis that the relationship was not physical. She was 20 years my junior, was married, although unhappily, and we were on opposite sides of the continent. But I have no illusions in retrospect - it was unquestionably inappropriate and it was only a matter of time before our conversations about meeting IRL were put into action. I was blind, ignorant and naiive about emotional infidelity and the relationship caused my wife a great deal of heartache. After nearly a year of long, daily internet chats and frequent telephone conversations with the young woman we got to be very close friends and my wife's emotional pain deepened, but she didn't take a stand because things were already tentative between us and she was afraid of losing me. I dismissed her concerns. I actually didn't realise that I had allowed myself to fall in love with the young woman until she was killed in an accident and my world imploded. My grief exposed me and my emotional betrayal, but my wife remained loving and supportive. She even accompanied me to the funeral, which was the first and last time I laid eyes on my young woman friend. That was 13 years ago. I grieved for a year. And for a decade my guilt caused me to put aside my resentment toward my wife for getting secretly baptised into the Watchtower. There, then, are my credentials for the advice to follow.

I am also reading that you and your husband are playing a game of cat and mouse. You are leaving broad hints that you know what's going on and he is pretending, probably as much to himself as to you, that he is getting away with it. What you are providing him, however, is tacit approval of what he's doing and you are opening the door for the relationship to escalate. Emotional infidelity is the first threshhold for a man, but not a point of no return. It is a fair assumption that your husband's love for you is his greatest restraint but the longer the relationship goes on the more difficult it will be for him to keep it in his pants. Once the relationship gets physical it will have crossed the line and there is a good chance that you may lose him. My advice, be loving and supportive and calmly tell him that you know. No more cat and mouse. It is you or her. He needs to make a choice.

81

What Actually Made You Leave The Organization?

by minimus in

jw
friends

many of us needed time to get away from this religion.

i took the course of fading and it's worked pretty well for me.

after i saw sooooo many silly rules being enforced, i needed to get out!.

Nickolas

Glad for you you made it out, TC. The Watchtower is a whitewashed grave soaked with the blood of innocents.

23

Jehovah's Witnesses: A family conversion

by discreetslave in

another piece on the joys of witnesshood.. http://heraldsun.com/bookmark/14860998/article-jehovah%27s+witnesses%3a+a+family+conversion#.tj2jip7llug.

unky punk is this swarm potential?.

Nickolas

Why would a newspaper run such obvious propaganda for a religious cult? There are zero comments posted on this article and no way to post one that I can see. There's an icon you can click on if you like the article, but no icon if you don't like it. Is the Herald-Sun owned by the Watchtower? It might make sense. The Watchtower is a publishing company with approximately $1 billion in annual revenues http://www.watchtowernews.org/Top40NYCcorps.htm). Publishing companies buy other publishing companies (like local newspapers) and these days newspapers are going cheap because they're all hurting from declining readership and lost advertising revenues. It seems to me it would be a wonderful strategy to buy up local newspaper publishers and slip in the odd fawning article about Jehovah's Witnesses. The newspaper staff wouldn't dare mess with their new owners and refuse to publish crap like this. Maybe more cost effective than going door-to-door.

81

What Actually Made You Leave The Organization?

by minimus in

jw
friends

many of us needed time to get away from this religion.

i took the course of fading and it's worked pretty well for me.

after i saw sooooo many silly rules being enforced, i needed to get out!.

Nickolas

Yeah. Probably a mixup of terms, unshackled. It was not too long ago ... a few months ... maybe even in here ... someone said that he had been excommunicated from the Society and I thought that was kind of strange, too. I have only heard the past participle disfellowshipped used in that context otherwise.