I'm Tired

Discussions about negotiating relationships between faithful LDS believers and the apostates who love them. This applies in particular to mixed-faith marriages, but relations with children, parents, siblings, friends, and ward members is very welcome.
User avatar
Linked
Posts: 1533
Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:04 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Linked » Tue May 01, 2018 8:13 am

No Tof wrote:
Tue May 01, 2018 7:42 am
I’ll add my condolences to the ones written so well previously. It really is a loss in a MFR. My advice is to remember it is the LDS ORG that is most culpable here; not you or your wife.
Sadly though, it is a hard colt to dismount from.

IMO there will be “sleepless tear-filled nights for your DW no matter what you do. It’s the nature of the animal. Years of mind shaping indoctrination won’t go away without them. 😢

If I could go back a few years I would have gone much slower with my DW. I was just so darned excited to learn the real story and figured she would find it the same.

Red Ryder’s advice rings true to me. If the tiredness threatens your wellbeing (and I think it will) it’s time to move forward. Baby steps are ok. It will be easier for your DW but move forward you should.
Sounds like she opened the door to ditching the g’s. Super. You’ll feel better immediately. When the tears come, give her a hug and let her know you love her more then ever and you appreciate her trust in letting you live your truth as you “investigate “ the church from a new perspective.

You know alcohol is a trigger. Good for you to be sensitive. Patience pays dividends here IMO. (Except being nice to see what the rest of humanity is up to, I haven’t found fulfillment in booze. ) In time she will be more accepting of your lifestyle.

I would advise being upfront with your DW. the things I did on the sly all came back to bite me. I believed it was shielding her in some way, and I was afraid of her rejection. In hindsight, it would have been better to explain my position and make the decision to move forward with her in the know.

This has become too long.

All we can give is our opinions and hopefully this will be helpful. Hope you can make it work.

The hippies were right all along. It’s all love.
Thanks, you are right, this is the church's fault. But that doesn't go over well with DW. And I find myself hating the church for it, which my wife sees as hating what she is.

I am trying to take baby steps forward, but I am a pleaser and my wife is not pleased. But you are right, it's time to move on the G's.
"I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order" - Kurt Vonnegut

Reuben
Posts: 1455
Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:01 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Reuben » Tue May 01, 2018 9:49 am

I can relate, though for different reasons. My wife is great about my disaffection and I'm not even attending, but I have a lesbian/bi daughter and, for reasons I don't want to hijack your thread with, I seem to be really sensitive to devaluation by a peer group. The church won't leave me and my family alone, and I'm obsessed with finding ways to protect myself and my kids from it. It's so tiring.

I can relate to this so hard:
Linked wrote:
Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:18 pm
We might be able to manage in our marriage if we didn't have kids. But she wants them to go to church and I don't want to lose my kids to the church. I have a justified fear that the church will teach my kids that I am a bad person. She has a justified fear that I don't want my kids to believe in the LDS church doctrines. There is no middle ground here. Just pain and being tired.
Meet my square pegs that the church tries to pound into its round holes.

DD1: Kinsey scale 5.

DS1: Autism spectrum. Shy and publicly shamed once already for being honest about P&M. Smarter than his youth leaders and doesn't know it yet.

DD2: Too smart to believe the bullshit and already starting to see through it, so odds are she'll get similar treatment to mine someday.

DD3: Church stokes fears very well; e.g. is currently (at 10) terrified of seeing naked people on the Internet, making it harder to function normally.

Despite this, I've recently found some peace with them all attending church.

First of all, here are my starting advantages over the church.
  • They're my kids. They love me more than they love the church.
  • They're my kids. My voice is, in the end, more salient and important than any voice at church.
  • They're my kids. Even at 10-18, they're displaying the modes of thought that eventually opened my eyes.
  • They're my kids. My different viewpoint gives them reason and permission to doubt. Certainty is required for Mormonism's spell to work, and they'll never be able to maintain certainty around me, even if I say little about the church.
  • They're my kids. They won't have to deal with the terrible loneliness I had to deal with if they stop believing, which reduces their motivation to conform to group beliefs.
The church starts with two advantages over me, though.
  • Like their mother, they crave certainty more than I do. (This made the early days of my disaffection especially hard on DD1.)
  • Their identities are entangled with it, though to less of an extent than mine was at my faith crisis.
Honestly, I think I have the overall advantage. Even with that, though, I didn't find much peace with them attending until I started changing my personal rules for living. Here's how the rules evolved, getting weaker over time.

1. Years ago: I must protect my children from all threats.

2. A year ago: I must protect my children from all threats that I can identify.

3. 6 months ago: I must protect my children from all threats that I can identify and act against.

Even this rule ended up being infeasible and caused me a lot of stress. The problem is that the church does such a good job subsuming their identities that acting directly against church-related threats makes them feel unsafe and uncertain, and then retrench. This is especially true of older children like my DD1. So for church-related threats, I changed my rule to something I thought was reasonable.

4. 3 months ago: Against church-related threats, I must preserve my children's self-determination.

Agency, right?

This didn't stop me from having a nervous breakdown. Here's why: it's also infeasible. I can't do it, and not doing it makes me feel like a failure. Every group someone belongs to takes some self-determination away; it's part of the deal. The church's sin is one of degree.

So I can encourage my children to keep their options open. I can give them my opinions. I can provide alternatives. I just can't defend them against church-related threats absolutely in any respect unless they give up their Mormon identities, which ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Here's my new rule:

5. I must try to make my children safer than they would be if I weren't involved in their lives.

I can do that, and I think it's enough. When I start thinking it's not enough, I remind myself of these two things:
  • As a TBM, I would have been living this rule even according to my current understanding, which helps me have compassion for my old self.
  • Compared to what I would be subjecting my kids to as a TBM without any opposing viewpoint, they're a lot better off.
I suppose I've finally seen that the only thing I can guarantee is an attempt at improvement.
Learn to doubt the stories you tell about yourselves and your adversaries.

Reuben
Posts: 1455
Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:01 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Reuben » Tue May 01, 2018 10:10 am

I just realized that I didn't address your actual, justified fear. Hopefully all that other stuff was helpful...

I'm a bit on the autism spectrum and was a hyperactive extravert as a kid, which is probably the best recipe for being disliked by both adults and peers that you could invent. I really didn't get along well with most adults, including (especially?) my parents.

There were a few adults and peers, though, that I couldn't get enough of. Without exception, they were the ones who accepted me as I was, without reservation. I would have followed any of them to the end of the world if they had asked. I could no more believe that any of them were bad people than I could believe that the moon is fluorescent green.

The church doesn't treat anybody like that.

As a TBM, I thought I was just as accepting as those heroes and best friends of mine, and I was... of everyone but my own children. I was doing what my parents had done and what the church had taught us all to do: hold back at least a little love and acceptance until the kids turn out like you want.

I'm not continuing that mistake. It ends with me. I think I can count on it to show the church's lies about people like me for what they are.
Learn to doubt the stories you tell about yourselves and your adversaries.

User avatar
Linked
Posts: 1533
Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:04 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Linked » Tue May 01, 2018 1:20 pm

Thanks Reuben, I appreciate your thoughts.

My parents have always been orthodox, so I was raised TBM. My uncles all left the church, they were my "apostate uncles". We were never close. I was afraid of them. We might have a nice time doing something, but I was always painfully aware that I couldn't trust them on a number of things because of their apostasy. I did not love them more than I loved the church. One of my best friends does not love me more than he loves the church. My wife does not love me more than she loves the church. I don't have much faith that my kids will love me more than they love the church (though all those situations are different than a dad).

I really liked this comment:
Reuben wrote:
Tue May 01, 2018 10:10 am
There were a few adults and peers, though, that I couldn't get enough of. Without exception, they were the ones who accepted me as I was, without reservation. I would have followed any of them to the end of the world if they had asked. I could no more believe that any of them were bad people than I could believe that the moon is fluorescent green.

The church doesn't treat anybody like that.

As a TBM, I thought I was just as accepting as those heroes and best friends of mine, and I was... of everyone but my own children. I was doing what my parents had done and what the church had taught us all to do: hold back at least a little love and acceptance until the kids turn out like you want.

I'm not continuing that mistake. It ends with me. I think I can count on it to show the church's lies about people like me for what they are.
I am trying to do that too. I am working a lot right now, but I am being paid for the extra work. I wanted a Nintendo Switch for me and the family as a reward for the time apart. So I told my 7 year old that if he is good while I have to work extra then we will get a Switch. It's probably not a big deal, but I wish I hadn't done that. He is usually good, and doesn't need extrinsic motivation for it. Can't I just give the family something because I want to? No need for manipulation. No need to threaten to hold anything back.
"I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order" - Kurt Vonnegut

User avatar
jfro18
Posts: 2064
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:41 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by jfro18 » Tue May 01, 2018 2:02 pm

Linked wrote:
Tue May 01, 2018 1:20 pm
I am trying to do that too. I am working a lot right now, but I am being paid for the extra work. I wanted a Nintendo Switch for me and the family as a reward for the time apart. So I told my 7 year old that if he is good while I have to work extra then we will get a Switch. It's probably not a big deal, but I wish I hadn't done that. He is usually good, and doesn't need extrinsic motivation for it. Can't I just give the family something because I want to? No need for manipulation. No need to threaten to hold anything back.
I think we all do this :lol:

There are so many times I will have a small thing for my kid and I *still* make sure to attach something to it. Sometimes I tell myself it keeps him from feeling like everything comes easy, but like you said sometimes I just want to give him something for just pure fun and of course with small things that's easier to do.

I've heard the switch is amazing - one of these days...

User avatar
Red Ryder
Posts: 4144
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2016 5:14 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Red Ryder » Wed May 02, 2018 10:08 am

Linked wrote:.... I did not love them more than I loved the church. One of my best friends does not love me more than he loves the church. My wife does not love me more than she loves the church. I don't have much faith that my kids will love me more than they love the church (though all those situations are different than a dad).
This is the toxic reflection of Mormonism.

The church invalidates dissenters.
“It always devolves to Pantaloons. Always.” ~ Fluffy

“I switched baristas” ~ Lady Gaga

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” ~Rosa Luxemburg

Margarita
Posts: 84
Joined: Sat May 06, 2017 4:21 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by Margarita » Sun May 13, 2018 12:58 pm

Please don't be angry with me..but you know what? If you are not true to yourself..you will lose your wife anyway. But I don't think you will..sometimes love has to be tested..you won't know until you try..be honest with yourself may bring many other kinds of blessings to you and your children. Hugs..I don't envy you here.

User avatar
GoodBoy
Posts: 410
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2016 8:32 pm

Re: I'm Tired

Post by GoodBoy » Mon May 14, 2018 6:40 pm

I feel your pain.

I really recommend that you make efforts towards finding non-Mormon friends and/or a non-church community. If your ward family is your entire world you will never be able to find peace because the cost of dissension is way too high. You need a good alternative. You need an alternate tribe. Knowing happy, well-adjusted non-Mormons or even (gasp!) ex-Mormons will help your wife to accept you and to allow herself to question and consider the possibility that it might not be true. The cost is too high otherwise and so her mind won't allow her to consider it.

You will have to be the awkward newbie for a while, but suck it up and stick with it for a while. I believe it will free you. It did for me.
Always been the good kid, but I wanted to know more, and to find and test truth.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests