This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
Enoch Witty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2017 2:00 pmOn the other hand, anything that conflicted with the Mormon church I lied my ass off to my parents. I didn't feel that I could trust them or confide in them at all, so I avoided these subjects as much as possible, no matter what needed to be said to move on whenever they came up. My dad, like you, would probably have been more understanding than my mom, but I didn't have half a hope that he wouldn't tell her any and every thing I told him, so I clammed up around him just as much as my mom. If he had told me things were being held in confidence, I don't know that I would have believed it, and I probably still wouldn't have told him anything. (Not that you should do that; it could drive a wedge between you and your wife.)
This is a huge part of the problem in LDS culture. As Zadok has stated on several different forums, "Never confess". Confession in the LDS church leads is permission for them to exercise more control over you rather than just a way to truly improve yourself. The potential fallout from having parents or church leaders freak out over moral sins is immense.
The penalties imposed after a confession are not limited to simply reading scriptures, fasting, prayer, and skipping the sacrament for a time. The shaming social pressure of parents, leaders, and friends is crushing when they see someone who doesn't take the sacrament or has to carefully turn down saying a prayer in class. This is magnified 100 fold if you enrolled in a church university and your tuition and educational career is in jeopardy.
I trust in the conversation with the son, you guys are talking about consent as well as safety. The landscape of consent has really changed socially in the past 30 years. I have been discussing consent with my kids. Being really drunk doesn't mean consent (for example), and that was not always seen that way socially ( think 16 candles).
This stuff is difficult even for non Mormon parents.
It is scary to see your kids as autonomous beings, developing into adults. But while there are definitely emotional consequences to pre marital sex, they are not as bad as some lds leaders would have a person believe. Many, many adults have consensual sex, and may or may not be mature enough or fully emotionally ready.
Fwiw, Glenn from IOT had a great discussion with his daughters about this some years ago. It inspired me to have the same discussion with my kids, probably in a few years or so.
First of all - kudos to your boy for having a condom! Most kids just jump in there with that stupid ignoramus LDS dogma attitude that they will somehow resist the temptation and never go all the way; that's just time waiting to prove them wrong. If he has a steady gal he spends lots of time with and they've been together for a while, it's very likely happened.
When my boy left the church when he was 10 and moved out of state with my Ex I was still a TBM. But I also had a realistic view of the situation and that is that my influence had been diminished significantly. He'd still come out to UT for the summers, but my relationship with him was more important than letting the church become a wedge between us. So I changed my strategy from preaching dogma to just quality conversations about life, talking to him like he was an adult, offering advice from lessons I'd learned as at his age without too much parental spin on it. Our relationship flourished and when he hit his teen years he would call me when he was going to tough times.
When he started dating in HS we would talk about the consequences of sex, not the eternal ones, just the social issues and drama and possible life changing situations he could face if he got someone pregnant. We also had to talk about his grades when he was smoking too much pot and hanging with the wrong kids. I was basically just a voice of reason and mostly just there to listen. It was all very non-religious. Because he didn't have any pressure from me about church stuff the trust was strong and we could talk about anything. We talked openly and I could relate to him the drama I had with girls at his age, as well as smoking pot and hanging with the wrong kids; it gave me credibility in his eyes that I was not just preaching to him.
So my advice is to have very open conversations with him about his situation, his opportunities in life and leave the church completely out of it. It's never helped me with my kids to try and throw guilt or eternal consequences down on their heads like fire and brimstone. He's likely in the thick of the relationship, so logic may not stick very well through all those emotions, so the best thing to do is mostly listen and bite your tongue, just let him know you are there for him and try to open the door for future dialog. You might even consider buying him a box of condoms and let him know you appreciate that if he has or is deciding to do that, he is thinking about the consequences. Try to help him see he has so much opportunity to live a happy and drama-free life right now without getting bogged down in a serious relationship. Plus, having mom riding your assets all the time is never fun.
One more thing - when my son got mixed up in a best friends x-girlfriend drama situation and was threatened to get beat up and the girl ended up being a emotionally unstable, it caused him much grief. We coined the phrase "Never stick your d*** in crazy." I know it's crass and even a bit misogynistic, but it worked; it's more about the situation you can get into. It just served as a reminder that with causal sex, especially with teens, there is lots of potential emotional and social drama you have to deal with. Post HS, he's met some nice girls, nothing serious, and he seems to have great manners and treats them with respect. Ya see, you don't need all that law of chastity TBM BS to turn out good kids!
“Sir,' I said to the universe, 'I exist.' 'That,' said the universe, 'creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.”
--Douglas Adams
Maybe not soon, but at some point this all may provide an opportunity for your DW to gain some new perspective.
For example, my son is a little older than yours and is special needs. The fact that he has masturbated for years now used to horrify my wife. She still doesn't like it, but he's special needs and that gives her something to think about relative to the black and white "sin" nonsense. DW and I have been very open about our religious disagreements. The family knows I think it is all demonstrably a pile of dung and they also know that DW doesn't want to know what can be demonstrated, she just wants to keep and live her Mormonism in ignorant bliss. This is just one example of why our disagreements are so out in the open, since psychologists (unlike Mormon ecclesiastical types) have a valid basis on which to make an opinion and consistently espouse the value in dear son's behavior for his psychological health.
Also, your DW can consider the case of Elizabeth Smart. According to SWK she was a licked cupcake that should have lost her young life in the struggle to protect her virtue. I know she was raped (by one of those self appointed "prophets", no less) but in the black and white world of Mormon condemnation, she was still used goods. I haven't followed her every move, but from what I have heard she is a wonderful young woman that has publicly addressed the fact that she is indeed NOT better off dead, which means she disagrees with an inspired and beloved Mormon profit on the matter. I'm sure her family and her husband disagree too, as possibly would your wife.
When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest. - Anonymous
Say what you want about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying. - Kurt Vonnegut
aerin wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2017 8:02 am
I trust in the conversation with the son, you guys are talking about consent as well as safety. The landscape of consent has really changed socially in the past 30 years. I have been discussing consent with my kids. Being really drunk doesn't mean consent (for example), and that was not always seen that way socially ( think 16 candles).
This stuff is difficult even for non Mormon parents.
This.
I don't think I've even mentioned this to the boy, but I've been thinking about it and you are spot on with how important it is to educate our children about consent. Maybe part of why it's so difficult for us parents is that we'd like to think our kid should just get it--that the empathy they have should just lead them to understand that "no" means "no" and that lack of a "no" from unconsciousness does not mean "yes." But, our young ones just don't get a lot of things, and I'm sure consent is one of those areas where they need us to spell it out. I'll be doing just that in the next little while. Thanks for the encouragement.
aerin wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2017 8:02 am
It is scary to see your kids as autonomous beings, developing into adults. But while there are definitely emotional consequences to pre marital sex, they are not as bad as some lds leaders would have a person believe. Many, many adults have consensual sex, and may or may not be mature enough or fully emotionally ready.
