NOM

Welcome! I completely know where you are coming from having gone through this same scary process myself.

I have found a lot of peace in accepting people's desperate need to believe in all sorts of irrational beliefs. It's OK. They have these beliefs because their emotions drive them to WANT to have them so that they can fit into their communities. So you cannot use logic to talk them out of beliefs that they did not use logic to adopt in the first place.

Trying to prove the church isn't true to anyone is a waste of time, and may not be very kind.

However, you get to now make a rational plan for yourself. You can draw some lines and say what you will do and won't do.

I highly recommend that you do something to get out of your current calling. You can either go tell the truth and have people judge you as a weak and a not-so-great person (neither of which are true of course), or you can come up with some excuse (can't fit it into your life), or you can just give them a deadline by which you will stop being in the bishopric and not explain why regardless of how many times they ask. Just repeat, "I just can't do this right now" over and over again, or whatever you want to say instead.

You also need to start looking for some non-member or transitioning friends or community. Meetup.com is a good place to start. You should also look at http://www.mormonspectrum.org/ for nearby support communities.

Sucks to be you right now. Good luck.

Welcome Graey. As you can see, you've landed in a spot where people can really relate to your dilemma.

I found the discussion about headaches particularly interesting because I recently realized that my weekly Sunday headaches went away once I could admit to myself that it's all make believe.

græy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:54 pm I appreciate the encouragement and advice. I can see my future looking a lot like yours, except more drawn out because I am too cowardly to talk to my wife/bishop/SP about anything right now.

It is not cowardice. It is the love and respect you have for your wife combined with not wanting to blow up your social group simply over religious differences. I won't deny that at some level you are "lying" to your ward leaders. I do the same thing. It's my longstanding science experiment to see if the "spirit of discernment" can detect that an unbelieving, sabbath ignoring, tithing non-payer is once again renewing his recommend to the temple of religious cosplay.

Mormons are rather thin-skinned over many points of doctrine and history and have built in social pressure that very few other faiths maintain. They don't want to talk about uncorrelated issues. If you were a non-believing Protestant, you could easily keep attending for years and quietly support a wife or children who was more drawn to religious devotion. The local pastor takes care of ordinances and is usually happy to have doubters respectfully attend without causing a scene.

By contrast, Mormonism insists on public displays of higher devotion with temple attendance and fathers involved in baptism and priesthood ordinations. It both shameful and your fault (and possibly your secret porn problem) if you can't ordain your son or baptize your daughter. The church will barge in and replace you as the father in your household if you fail to meet their belief requirements. If you can't attend the temple wedding of your son or daughter then it will be to your everlasting shame and disappointment, not the fault of church policies that are in no way doctrinal.

Full disclosure does work for many people and at some point you are maintaining integrity by leaving. That is still a weapon in my arsenal for the future. But, my wife does not want to be the "church widow" that sits alone in sacrament meeting without her husband. My wife still asks me for priesthood blessings even while knowing that I really do not believe. This is at least the outward image of the life she wants and I feel more free to say whatever makes sense in a blessing rather than hope for inspiration.

græy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:54 pm My wife has already turned out to be much more patient and willing to listen than I thought she would be at the start of this. But, while she does listen and doesn't get too defensive (yet), she doesn't really engage the conversation either. She won't internalize anything that isn't... uplifting.

This has been my experience also. As soon as my wife wants to talk about the issues then I will happily have a long, detailed conversation about doctrinal and historical issues versus her spiritual hopes.

Corsair wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:33 am It is not cowardice. It is the love and respect you have for your wife combined with not wanting to blow up your social group simply over religious differences.

Thank you Corsair. This is probably a much more accurate description of my situation.

Corsair wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:33 am By contrast, Mormonism insists on public displays of higher devotion with temple attendance and fathers involved in baptism and priesthood ordinations. It both shameful and your fault (and possibly your secret porn problem) if you can't ordain your son or baptize your daughter. The church will barge in and replace you as the father in your household if you fail to meet their belief requirements. If you can't attend the temple wedding of your son or daughter then it will be to your everlasting shame and disappointment, not the fault of church policies that are in no way doctrinal.

Addiction recovery programs teach how shame, caused by a fear of rejection leads to further acting out and pushes you further into the addiction cycle.

I believe social pressures from the church work similarly. If you're TBM you won't risk doing anything that could damage your reputation, or reading anything that could damage your belief, because if you do, you face instant rejection. If others find out about your mistakes, or if you're honest about any level of disbelief you are rejected and can't go on a mission, get married in temple, or perform or even attend certain ordinances. The social pressure and fear of rejection alone keeps you active in your addiction... er, I mean church attendance.

The prospect of rejection from the one society that should be striving to include you and build you up (sometimes including your own marriage) is a powerful weapon.

Of course, my wife would just say that the church is only trying to keep people on the straight and narrow so they can be together forever.