The Runnells Effect

[JENuWIN]

So yesterday I watched or listened to everything on YouTube about the CES letter, his disciplinary council etc. The one thing that he never gets in to is how all of this affected his spouse and children. I think he alludes to the fact that his wife knows some of the issues, but remains pretty tight lipped about his spouse and kids. Coming out to DW is the darkest task I will someday have to embrace and I was wondering if anyone had any insight on this?

On a sidenote, I can't even fathom at this moment the tremendous amount of guts it took him to do what he did.

[Korihor]

It's hard to share this with your spouse. Really, really really hard.

My only regret is not doing it sooner. I should have been more willingly to trust her and more open with her.

Based on my experience, my double life was much harder for her than the reasons of the double life.

No amount of planning and preparing to share this will be sufficient, so get on with it. Whatever will happen will happen.

[Newme]

Coming out to DW is the darkest task I will someday have to embrace and I was wondering if anyone had any insight on this?

It's not easy - and don't expect it to be a quick discussion and that's it.
There may be many talks, tears and anger - not necessarily in that order.
She may threaten to divorce you as my DH did, but then again, he did that before my faith crisis - just a passive aggressive manipulation.
If you have kids -hopefully both of you understand clearly how important it is to keep the family together, no matter if you disagree about religion or not.

What I've found is that we get along well if we focus on common ground - on love, honesty, doing what's right etc.
Every now and then, other issues come up and one or both will step on the other's toes a bit, belief-wise.
And it can feel lonely - especially if they try to get a posse to back them up and bully - it can break trust that is hard to rebuild.
But again, you look at the options - and realize that sometimes you just have to deal with not having the best relationship - because you simply don't relate on every spiritual and emotional and logical level as you might have. But appreciate the times and ways you still relate and try to build on that. Hopefully, you have a good foundation of respect and love - which you can build on.

[Red Ryder]

Coming out to DW is the darkest task I will someday have to embrace and I was wondering if anyone had any insight on this?

On the old board we had a pretty good thread about regrets. Hagoth had a great post about his regrets for not including his wife along with him while going through his faith crisis. I agree with this because I didn't do it. I hid my disaffection from my wife out of fear of divorce and thought I could just pretend. Overtime I couldn't pretend any longer and eventually quit the tithing habit and funny underwear. That forced the conversation somewhat but by then I had processed some of the anger and emotional turmoil and no longer cared to research all of the issues.

This left me on the other side of the transition and opposite of my wife rather than working through it together. That was over 12 years ago. We are still divided because I hid it so well. Now it's like the boat left the dock for her to have a faith crisis and the opportunity to have one together is gone. Unless she independently has her own crisis, we will always be divided.

So my advice is to careful consider your situation and decide if you need to rewind your faith crisis a little bit and come up with a strategy to involve her. You newbies have it easy with the essays straight off LDS.org. 12 years ago we had to use "anti mormon lies" (facts) found on the internet. Today, these same facts are confirmed by the church although framed among carefully worded denials. So start with the essays and read them together. Then discuss and ask questions that require the church to carry the burden of proof. Slowly let the doubt (facts) creep in and hop on that slippery slope together. You even have the D&C and bad SS lessons to use to your advantage!

Now having said all that, you must first decide if you want to grab her hand and jump. Assuming you both go through it together, you'll get blamed for the loss of her eternal salvation but the reality is you're not responsible. The church is responsible because they have been institutionally dishonest all these years and have whitewashed and buried the facts.

Good luck! We've been where you are and it really sucks butterball turkeys. Yet none of us would want to exchange our new found world view and awakening for the old uninformed delusion that Joseph Smith actually saw Jesus and asked for repentance of his sins. Or was it that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared?

[Emower]

I appreciate all the good advice given on this forum. I agree with needing to include your spouse. The knowledge that you doubted and moved on with your beliefs without her will be damaging in its own right. We are supposed to share everything right? So share it! But figure out a strategy that works with how you know your spouse. Don't just hit them with a ton of bricks out of the blue if you know that they are not going to respond well to that. I don't know that anyone responds to a bulleted list of problems with the church without being primed somewhat first. You may want to take Redryders advice and wind yourself back a little when you approach things. I included my wife from the beginning. I told her that I was going to take a deep dive into anti-Mormon stuff but I was very clear about not wanting to do things she was uncomfortable with. She was uncomfortable with my searching, but my honesty was enough to allow her to let me run my course. My course has let me out, and she is still in and not at all interested in the issues the research brought up. This brings me another point. We all know people that will not be rational and logical about gospel stuff. Our spouse might be that kind of person. Don't hold that against them. I viewed that as a virtue when I married my wife. Just because what I view as virtues have changed is not her fault. My greatest wish right now is for us to be on the same page with our beliefs. It may never happen. Where I am right now is making peace with the thought that she may not ever share my views.

[Korihor]

Even if she doesn't share your views, it could be helpful if she better understands them.

I'll give you the same advice that someone on here gave me. The quickest way to get her out is polygamy. If you can discuss this subject with her more than any superficial level, it could work wonders. the Year of Polygamy podcast did more to Mrs Kori than I ever could.

[JENuWIN]

Thanks everyone for your advice up to this point. I think one of the better approaches these days would be to see if I can get her (DW) to read one of the essays. Perhaps start with the Polygamy or Book of Mormon Translation essay? Any other suggestions are appreciated. One thing I don't want to do is to take a passive aggressive approach (posting something on my Facebook page etc. that would draw attention to concerns for example).

My other idea was to make a list of some of my say top 3 doctrinal concerns let her know that some questions have come up while reading the essays and tell her that I am going to set up a time to meet with the Bishop. She is very much an "action" oriented person and doesn't like it when I just let things fester. If I am sick, she wants me to call the doctor, go out and exercise, take vitamins. Do something. So I think that she would be understanding knowing that I am trying to seek ecclesiastical support to my questions.

[Linked]

I don't know a good way to come out to your spouse. I did it horribly, my wife found out in an email to an exmo ex-girlfriend that she saw on my ipad (I was and am completely faithful to my wife, I reached out to this exmo ex-girlfriend because she was the only person I knew well who had left the church and I was feeling completely isolated as I had not found any of the online communities yet.) So she got to process my disaffection along with me lying to her and confiding in another woman and wondering if I was being unfaithful. I think we have gotten over her feelings of betrayal over the lying and confiding in another woman after a couple years, and now we are finally close to being able to deal with the disaffection.

I recommend you just give your DW your disaffection to process. And work through it together if you can. The essays would be a good place to start, as they are on LDS.org and considered safe. Be sure to use the footnotes and look at things in context. Like Kori said, Polygamy is a big shelf breaker especially for women. Something I am trying to remind myself of is that what broke my shelf may not be what will break her shelf, so don't focus too much on what bothers you, observe what might be bothering her and help her talk about it. There are plenty of issues with the church to choose from.

We recently had a discussion where I told her that I would like to deconvert her, so she knows exactly where I am coming from. She would like to reconvert me. With that on the table I am considering offering to do daily scriptures with her and the kids if she will go through the essays with me.

Good luck with the difficult discussions to come!

[alas]

Even if she doesn't share your views, it could be helpful if she better understands them.

I'll give you the same advice that someone on here gave me. The quickest way to get her out is polygamy. If you can discuss this subject with her more than any superficial level, it could work wonders. the Year of Polygamy podcast did more to Mrs Kori than I ever could.

I might be the guilty party who told Korohor that polygamy is most likely the best way to shatter a woman's testimony of the church. I know I have said that several times. It is one issue the eats at women already, and all it takes is really thinking about how it was lived to make many women realize that a loving Heavenly Father would never do that to his daughters and their small children. The church has no good answers, and promotes a lot of lies about it. Get a copy of "In Sacred Loneliness" and tell her you are reading it, and need someone to help you process things with because you feel confused. Ask her to read one chapter at a time, so the two of you can discuss what the book says. The author was not excommunicated for what he wrote and it can all be backed up through other church sources. Easiest way to break a woman's shelf is to pile on more of what it already is full of. And polygamy is a big shelf item for women.

[MerrieMiss]

My situation is a little different from most, from what people share online anyway. My husband is a believing member, but he doesn’t take a lot of it very seriously. He takes the TR stuff seriously, but not a lot else. He doesn’t “preside,” hasn’t read his scriptures in more than a decade, hasn’t attended the temple in over three years (only one time in at least five years), and only home teaches if he has a companion who nags him about it. An older Nom-ish family member of mine once observed that Mr. MM is more like members used to be thirty or forty years ago. This is one of the reasons I have not come out as a non-believer yet. I’m pretty lucky we’re so low key and I think he appreciates the “mellowing” that’s happened with me over the past few years.

The other reason I haven’t dropped it on him yet is that I’ve realized that this whole process for me has taken decades. It began when I was eleven or so and for years I’ve been balanced on the edge, almost going over but never quite taking the plunge. When the actual faith crisis came I thought it was just another one of those things and I kept it to myself.

I’ve rewinded quite a bit. I bring up subjects and don’t try to insist that I know more than he does. Sometimes I pretend that I don’t know much about something so we can work it out together. We don't always come to the same conclusions and I try not to press it. (I know that sounds condescending and I don’t mean it to be, but no one likes a know-it-all.) I try to go back to where I was as a teenager/young adult. My husband comes from a home that is intellectually shallow. They never discussed anything, so even getting a conversation going is a plus.

If I regret anything it’s that my husband and I never discussed anything church related. Not when we were dating. Not before kids. Not ever. I really believed that if I married a temple worthy man my life would be okay. Within a week of the wedding I realized we were in very different places spiritually/religiously. I should have discussed my transition with him from the beginning but I didn’t know it was going to be as big as it was and we had never discussed anything like it before.

I don’t know that he and I have to believe the same things. I can be okay with us having separate beliefs, after all, we always have - we just never talked about it. We are very different people and process the world in entirely different ways. I do want mutual respect for each other, and at this point, since I can’t trust him/myself/our relationship enough to be completely open and honest, the emotional intimacy is really low and that is the biggest threat to our marriage – more than the beliefs. In fact, I think if I could be more emotionally present and intimate, he’d probably have an easier time with me dropping the non-belief on him. I'm working on it.

As an aside, my husband has been looking for a new job and if he gets one far away, I’m going to drop it on him. There’s no way I am starting a new life in a ward as anything other than the happy inactive wife who shows her shoulders.

[alas]

Your husband and experience and conclusions are similar to mine. DH comes from a very non intellectual family. They none of them think more than an inch below the surface, and I don't mean to sound condescending either, but I have to remind myself that this is not because they are stupid or shallow. They are brilliant, just not in the same way my family used their intelligence.

One difference between you and your DH and me and mine is that we did try to talk about our spiritual differences. I am very much a humanist, with the only important morals is not to harm others. He is much more traditional in that morals are because God said so. All we did was fight over the differences in our world and spiritual outlook.

I also started seriously questioning as a child and never fully believed, but also had not concluded that the whole thing was false for many years. The disbelief snuck up on me, more as a growing suspicion rather than a faith crisis. By the time I knew I just could not believe Mormonism, I already knew I could never talk to DH about it. So, I stayed under the radar for years and never told DH that I didn't believe. Church was a ready made social group during frequent military moves and I didn't see any harm of just going along to get along.

What eventually changed was that I decided the culture of high expectations and perfectionism and the open sexism in the church were just plain emotionally toxic. So, since even trying to pass as Mormon just was not working out, I told DH that I didn't believe.

The adjustment has been that he examined some of the historical problems, the sexism, and the homophobia in the culture and the doctrine and decided that overall, he gets something positive out of church, so, he wants to keep going and still believe but accept that the church is not perfect, but is still good.

[GoodBoy]

My only regret is not doing it sooner. I should have been more willingly to trust her and more open with her.

Amen to this. Do it sooner rather than later.

Most people distance themselves emotionally from the church over time after they've determined it isn't true. You want to go through that process with your wife in the know and hopefully along side you instead of you doing it alone and her being forced to accept that huge leap all at once.

Be open, be honest, be vulnerable, tell her how this is killing you inside, tell her what your afraid of, but most of all reaffirm many times your commitment to her, your marriage, and to your children if you have any. She has been told, and believes, that if you go apostate that you will become a drunken reprobate and it essentially is the end to her marriage now, and especially into the eternities. She is going to worry about whether you are going to be a good father, if you are going to start cheating on her, if you are going to keep your job and continue to be productive. This is what she has been taught is on the line. Reaffirm that she is #1 in your book (if she is).

Also, she gets to believe whatever she wants to believe and you have to respect that. The more you disparage the church, push her to let go, or are disrespectful to things that mean a lot to her, the tighter she will likely grip onto those things and the greater the rift will grow in your relationship. Give her the same information and thought processes that you have, but give her the time and space to process it on her own and come to her own conclusions, which may not match yours. You do have the right to ask for the same from her though.

Finally I recommend taking a pragmatic approach to the church. Just because it isn't true, doesn't mean you have to fight against the church if you don't want to. I wear garments for example because it is just underwear and not wearing them causes problems in relationships. I have zero belief in any special powers that they may have, but I wear them because it makes my life happier and easier and that is what I want out of life. I have zero faith in pretty much anything nowadays, but I go to church sometimes because I want to see my friends there. I think those relationships are worth the one hour I spend in sacrament meeting. It makes my life better. I don't go to Sunday school because that makes my life worse and it isn't worth the time and effort I put into it. The church is just nothing. So do what works best for you. Knowing the church isn't true gives you the freedom to take what works and discard things that don't.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

My only regret is not doing it sooner. I should have been more willingly to trust her and more open with her.

Amen to this. Do it sooner rather than later.

Most people distance themselves emotionally from the church over time after they've determined it isn't true. You want to go through that process with your wife in the know and hopefully along side you instead of you doing it alone and her being forced to accept that huge leap all at once.

Be open, be honest, be vulnerable, tell her how this is killing you inside, tell her what your afraid of, but most of all reaffirm many times your commitment to her, your marriage, and to your children if you have any. She has been told, and believes, that if you go apostate that you will become a drunken reprobate and it essentially is the end to her marriage now, and especially into the eternities. She is going to worry about whether you are going to be a good father, if you are going to start cheating on her, if you are going to keep your job and continue to be productive. This is what she has been taught is on the line. Reaffirm that she is #1 in your book (if she is).

Also, she gets to believe whatever she wants to believe and you have to respect that. The more you disparage the church, push her to let go, or are disrespectful to things that mean a lot to her, the tighter she will likely grip onto those things and the greater the rift will grow in your relationship. Give her the same information and thought processes that you have, but give her the time and space to process it on her own and come to her own conclusions, which may not match yours. You do have the right to ask for the same from her though.

Finally I recommend taking a pragmatic approach to the church. Just because it isn't true, doesn't mean you have to fight against the church if you don't want to. I wear garments for example because it is just underwear and not wearing them causes problems in relationships. I have zero belief in any special powers that they may have, but I wear them because it makes my life happier and easier and that is what I want out of life. I have zero faith in pretty much anything nowadays, but I go to church sometimes because I want to see my friends there. I think those relationships are worth the one hour I spend in sacrament meeting. It makes my life better. I don't go to Sunday school because that makes my life worse and it isn't worth the time and effort I put into it. The church is just nothing. So do what works best for you. Knowing the church isn't true gives you the freedom to take what works and discard things that don't.

I like this approach. Very pragmatic to maximize your life returns, even if it requires being in the grey zones at times.

[MerrieMiss]

Your husband and experience and conclusions are similar to mine. DH comes from a very non intellectual family. They none of them think more than an inch below the surface, and I don't mean to sound condescending either, but I have to remind myself that this is not because they are stupid or shallow. They are brilliant, just not in the same way my family used their intelligence.

Thanks for your comments, alas - I appreciate them.

I hope I didn't come across as calling my husband stupid - he isn't. We do process the world quite differently - right brain, left brain type stuff. Part of rewinding for me is catching up on those conversations we never had and trying to engage him on a level that I can understand. I also want to have a family that talks about these things. I don't feel it's fair to dump my beliefs and feelings about church on him when we have never had these discussions before. I know a lot of people say things like, "just make them read the CES letter" but for some people it just isn't practical. It wouldn't mean a thing to my husband because...he's never engaged Mormonism that seriously.

I've never understood his family. They have never once had a conversation about something, it's always about people. In my family, we'll spin all sorts of theories and thoughts about whatever hypothetical idea someone has. Just Because. I got a lot of apologetics and inoculation growing up (not on purpose, it's just the kind of environment it was). His family never discussed anything, they just followed the rules and did the work. There are all kinds of Mormons.

[alas]

Your husband and experience and conclusions are similar to mine. DH comes from a very non intellectual family. They none of them think more than an inch below the surface, and I don't mean to sound condescending either, but I have to remind myself that this is not because they are stupid or shallow. They are brilliant, just not in the same way my family used their intelligence.

Thanks for your comments, alas - I appreciate them.

I hope I didn't come across as calling my husband stupid - he isn't. We do process the world quite differently - right brain, left brain type stuff. Part of rewinding for me is catching up on those conversations we never had and trying to engage him on a level that I can understand. I also want to have a family that talks about these things. I don't feel it's fair to dump my beliefs and feelings about church on him when we have never had these discussions before. I know a lot of people say things like, "just make them read the CES letter" but for some people it just isn't practical. It wouldn't mean a thing to my husband because...he's never engaged Mormonism that seriously.

I've never understood his family. They have never once had a conversation about something, it's always about people. In my family, we'll spin all sorts of theories and thoughts about whatever hypothetical idea someone has. Just Because. I got a lot of apologetics and inoculation growing up (not on purpose, it's just the kind of environment it was). His family never discussed anything, they just followed the rules and did the work. There are all kinds of Mormons.

I know exactly what you mean. I also got appologetics and inoculation and a couple of hints of outright disbelief. My parents were hiding their disbelief from everyone, even each other. They always pretended to believe, except for a couple of comments that when I look back, neither one of them believed. But we discussed everything, from critiquing the news on television to taking apart the plots of literature to poetry to discussing how the English language evolves and changed. The first time my fiancée had dinner with my family, he was shocked that we discussed ideas as a family. He had never had that kind of discussion. ever. anywhere. He was so intimidated because we had these deep intellectual discussions. So, imagine trying to get him to have that kind of conversation after we were married. He accused me of trying to make him feel stupid, because he didn't even know how to have that kind of conversation. Even now after 45 years of marriage, I come to NOM for my intellectual discussion. He is still content to follow the rules and do the work. But, I accept that we just can't discuss the plot of Shakespeare or why Romeo and Juliet does not qualify as a tragedy, or .... And he accepts that I have no interest in the details of electrical engineering or the mathematics behind the Benuli principle. If I try to discuss War and Peace his eyes glaze over the same way mine do when he tries to explain how electricity is both a particle and a wave. He needs things to follow concrete laws, except for electricity is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle and to me that is as ambiguous and confusing as saying well, yes, racism is both learned behavior and instinctive behavior, but I can understand how racism is both, where he can't and I just don't get how electricity is both a particle and a wave at the same time it is neither one.