Thank you again to everyone for your comments in this thread! DW and I are speaking pretty well. She's further into considering divorce than ever before, but I think it's probably healthy. I had to stare at the precipice before I could really decide I would rather stay myself, maybe she needs the same. Or maybe she needs to leave for her wellbeing. I can make peace with that.
I told her that the freedom to get coffee is important to me and that I have to have space for that. I also told her that I will try to give her the space she needs to believe the way she needs to (i.e. not roll my eyes if I see her reading her scriptures. I'm not sure if I've ever done that, but she feels judged by me for reading scriptures because I don't believe.). She's not happy about my coffee, but I think it's a healthy boundary to set. She asked me if I'm addicted
Red Ryder wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:04 pm
If he’s drinking coffee in secret, what else is he hiding?
Alcohol?
Porn?
A comic book collection?
A girlfriend?
A LEGO set he wasn’t going to buy?
A polygamist wife?
That’s the thought process our TBM spouses go through. Just be honest and upfront. Let her know the prophet hasn’t authorized a second wife yet and no flaming angel swords have been drawn.
Yep, that sounds about right. And that's hard for my DW to live with. She relies on me for all of her social life, so if she can't trust me she is very lonely indeed. (She struggles to connect with people even in the best of times, but as a SAHM it's even harder. I try to encourage her social life, until she gets mad at me for encouraging her.)
wtfluff wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:04 pm
Seems to me the unrealistic/impossible expectations built into MORmONism seem to be a cause of this sort of behavior; and I'm not just referring to "mixed faith" relationships. (Or maybe it's just me...)
Hard agree. But getting a TBM to see that seems impossible. DW started talking to me again and expressed major concerns about how she and the kids will be judged for my coffee drinking, and how that makes me selfish and bad. I am trying to get her to see that she should be mad at the people judging her and not at me. Or at least mad at them too. And at the culture that created them. Like I am... And ultimately that these shared expectations are the root of the problem. (And where could a bunch of mormons in Utah have possibly gotten a set of toxic shared expectations???) So far no traction there though. I'm just a terrible covenant breaker.
alas wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:12 pm
Your spouse needs to see and accept “why”. Whatever your “why” is. Like with me, it was that the church is not good for me emotionally. He saw that. Then I told him and he was able to accept it.
So, for a lot of you it is going to be “truth.” The church was started by a con man telling a bunch of lies and it continues to tell these lies. Boy, those words are going to backfire. So, you need to find words your spouse can accept. Make it about you, not the lies. Something along the lines of, “I need a view of reality that fits together, logically, with all the facts lining up. God knows this about me, cause God made me.”
Your spouse needs to know you did your best to figure out how to be a good honest person. This idea goes directly in the face of the big lie the church tells its members. The church tells people that anyone who honestly investigates the church will see it is TRUE. But that is a bigger lie than trump winning the election. The truth is that the more you investigate, the more you see that the church is not what it claims. But how do you get you spouse past the big lie?
This is where some couples have a big advantage if they are willing to investigate the church’s truth claims together as a couple. Then each spouse sees the effort to find truth that the other person puts in. Factual truth has to matter to your spouse, or you have to explain to your spouse that while real truth may not matter to them, it matters to you. Some people really don’t care if the church is factually true. Them wanting and believing it is true is all that matters for them to enjoy all the social perks. Other people really need it to be factually correct. Your spouse needs to know that you need it to be factually correct and you have investigated as best you can and it is not.
They don’t need to understand your journey, but they need to see it. So, let them see you studying church history. Invite them to study with you.
Don’t lie about the stupid stuff. I know, water under the bridge, but repent. Drinking coffee is the stupid stuff. Her being upset isn’t about the coffee, it is about trust. Can they trust you? Not if you do things behind their backs or lie about it. They won’t think you are honest about the big things if they catch you doing stuff behind their backs or lying about little stuff. So, if you want their trust, earn it. If you have screwed up, apologize and promise not to ever do that again. You want their trust, so earn it by being 100% honest about your journey. Don’t lie or go behind their back or you lose trust. It isn’t about the coffee, it is about trust. How many times should I repeat this?
Your spouse isn’t your mother and you aren’t a kid. Your spouse is your equal and your relationship isn’t about avoiding getting caught. Earn their trust and they will believe you when you say that the church doesn’t work for you, and you have studied and it still isn’t working for you. But if they can’t trust you, no wonder they think you are being evil about your attitude toward the church. Act like a wicked apostate and they will treat you like a wicked apostate. Act like you are honestly trying to be a good person, and they will have second thoughts on the wicked apostate stereotype.
Good points. I would love to not lie about the stupid stuff, but I get in trouble if I don't
... It's easy for me to understand that the better path is to have the tough conversation, but it's like planning to stub your barefoot toe on a chair. I planned a discussion about coffee half a dozen times in the past year but couldn't pull the trigger. Time to man-up?
My journey is a little different than most as well, I started to notice that a lot of the church's and church member's stances were not very sound and that I disagreed with the methods used to maintain them. Also, that those stances were not fair. The in-group out-group stuff by claiming that "the world" was so bad and only our church can really protect you. The plight of realizing you were gay as a mormon. The frailty of mormon epistemology. The way faith is basically priming oneself for confirmation bias. Seeing people strongly believe something totally wrong about engineering stuff, and then thinking if people can be this wrong about something easy to prove, how can I trust anything people believe about something unproveable?
I did share these things with my wife as they happened, but they were mainly viewed as me being a negative nancy, and DW just got mad at me for being a bad person with a negative outlook when I would share. Then I realized I probably shouldn't believe anymore based on what I saw, and she found out, and now my opinion means less than nothing to her. And to her I am the furthest thing from a good, honest person with no path to fix it. Even if I proclaimed I refound my faith she would probably suspect I was lying until the day I die.
I've been a pretty damn good husband and father for the past couple years. She listed some of the things that she is frustrated with me about and as we talked about them she begrudgingly admitted that they do not apply anymore. But I don't think the intellectual admission has sunk into her emotions.
And I love the way you used "the big lie" here!
Reuben wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:28 pm
When the other spouse is being inflexible about it, not drinking the bean juice is the only option that doesn't result in damnation. Flying to pieces like glass is a tool people sometimes use to get what they want, whether they know they're doing it or not.
Yep. And when they don't realize that they are using flying to pieces as their tool to express what they want then they think that they never ask for or get anything that they want. There must be a better way to express what you want.
jfro18 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 6:02 pm
I don't know how this ties into Linked's issue, except that I always thought she was trying to catch me half asleep to say "yeah I had a few drinks tonight" or something, and I always wondered what would have happened had I had something to drink that night. It really bothered me because I knew she felt like if I had a drink I was totally betraying her, and it bothered me because she didn't have the trust or at least mindset to just ask me.
If she's like my DW she had been up all night stewing on it and finally got the nerve to confront you about it at 3am. It is super frustrating. The complete and utter lack of empathy is really painful. Especially when they tell you that you are the one who is lacking empathy by having a change in belief.
Hagoth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 6:48 pm
Clinging to the lifeboat kept me going for a couple of years before the final thread snapped and I had to let go. I told Mrs. Hagoth about what an eye-opening experience that was. I realized there wasn't a storm at all. It was all the invention of the other people in the boat who were jumping up and down and screaming about how much danger there is outside of the boat, and there I was standing in calm knee-deep water, out of the storm for the first time in decades.
Great analogy. The storm is all in the heads of the believers, and in a highly mormon community they create the storm for people who leave. Maybe he meant it as a threat?
It's telling that mormon leadership tell their followers that life is like being in a lifeboat in a storm, and the followers believe them. Because life as a believing mormon sucks. It is a storm. It's just a storm manufactured by the church that they use to convince you that things are stormy and they have the solution. It's a freaking racket.
Palerider wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 7:30 pm
Shouldn't a good Bishop see that a stable, loving marriage is better for the children than a single mom struggling to make ends meet?
My DW would rather not talk with me, the bishop, or anyone about my disaffection. She is deeply afraid of the social consequences for her and our kids. I suspect our bishop would give her the advice you suggest though, he's a pretty good dude from what I can see.
