NOM

Since I joined the LDS church as a young adult, having basically "side stepped" out of my father's evangelical style of Christianity, am I to blame for decisions I made due to church pressure?

I know the answer is more difficult than a yes, especially if one invokes philosophy (and why wouldn't a person do that?) But I'm curious to hear a variety of answers, especially about a particular area. I'm referring specifically to the church's admonition against dating outside one's religion and marrying within the covenant. Although I dated my share of women in the church, and even met one I came close to marrying, I feel like overall I cheated myself out of the kind of relationship I would have naturally had. I walked away from a number of interested young ladies that I worked with and also a number who trained with me at the Muay Thai gym, who all shared a lot more in common with me than most of the girls in the singles ward (which may be a biased assessment.) Can I blame the church for this one? I really did try to find a good match within the church, but I felt really disconnected to a large number of 20 somethings that attended my local singles ward. Far different life experiences I suppose, and I felt there was a naivety that I couldn't relate to very well (to put it into context, I was a combat veteran who had been to countries with open sex trafficking and other kinds of pretty cruel exploitation, had been in a number of street fights and other ugly situations, and dealt with SOs and friends who had gone to prison or OD'd on drugs or been killed, and had seen my share of the ugly side of life).

I know that I certainly could not have been alone. Nor was I the person who likely had witnessed or experienced the worst of it; a number of them had endured some pretty horrific sexual abuse, for instance. Yet it felt like to talk about a person's true experience was not really permissible except maybe with the bishop. It seems like... all those things are of the world, and therefore not spiritually uplifting, and not appropriate to bring up except maybe one on one. Which is a rare thing to get to do in a church oriented life. And so I feel like nobody really gets to know anyone. It wasn't an environment that really made me want to date what I saw... which probably doesn't speak well of me, but without being able to ever go outside of the "church approved" types of conversations, how do you ever know if you want to get to know someone? I only ever got close to a couple of girls in the entire time I was a TBM.

It's probably a biased way of remembering. I'm certainly using a lot of "felt like" and "appeared to be" type of phrases, so it's possible it's all a matter of perspective. At any rate, I probably can't "blame" the church in the same way as somebody who was gay, for instance, and how restricted they must have felt. I'm genuinely curious to hear what anyone else thinks of it.

The TBM answer is of course it's your fault. Just like it's my fault I undercut my career for a long time because the church insisted it was sinful for me to work outside home. It's not the church's fault if we listened and obeyed to the letter, it's ours for doing something not good for us.

A colleague remarked a few years back that we all lose our innocence at some point when our worldview shatters. I lost mine in some degree as a teenager, but not really until I was over 30, and a lot due to my faith transition. But I feel like I'm still reeling. I do see that the church system attempts to prevent this loss of innocence and recognition of reality just as you describe. Being free from the church is something that appeals because we can be real with people. I can go to a family reunion with people I've known for 20 years and not talk about anything in depth because they cannot be vulnerable and real. This was a gift from the church and its what BOM musical is making fun of, willful ignorance of reality, insisting it's sunshine and rainbows and saving reality for only the poor bishop who probably gets blindsided with everyone's reality, but also the shame they're carrying for having it.

It sounds like you're caught between two impossibly wrong answers: "It was all my fault" and "The church is to blame". Like you said, it's not a yes or no but a mixture of both. However, that's not really the answer you're looking for. It sounds like you're figuring out how to deal with regret and the "what ifs" of life. That's something I've grappled with myself, and I can only share my own experience with it.

Could life have gone differently? Sure, but the only reason you know now what mistakes you made then, was by going through the experience. You are who you are based on what's gone before. Things could have been better, but we can't change that now. All we can do is take what we've learned and move forward. You've got to accept it and let it go. Try not to frick up again like we've fricked up before.

Regret may be about things which happened in your past, but it will most certainly bury your present and ruin your future. We take stock, make amends, and do better next time. Accepting or assigning blame doesn't help much with that part of living. It's good to acknowledge the truth and not deceive yourself, but it's not good if you're looking for someone to punish. If you're to blame, then you punish yourself. If the church is to blame, then you punish the church. That may feel better in the moment, but it's a short term solution.

These are tough questions, Mad Jax. Placing blame is tricky in this case. The real problem is that you can't change anything that happened in the past. Regret will naturally be there, but at least you can move forward with the best wisdom you have acquired since then. I know a bunch of mistakes I have make throughout my life in and out of the church. But no one has a time machine so those mistakes will remain in the unalterable past.

Do you have a path forward based on the wisdom and experience you have acquired since then? I'm an engineer so I'm rarely interested in blame. Looking at solutions for the real world is far more interesting.

In answer to your question, I think doing as the church tells us is partly our fault and partly the fault of people giving us the bad advice. People have a tendency to want an authority to tell them what to do. We all do it to a degree. So, the more you fall into the profile of wanting the "right" answer handed to you, the more you are responsible. But it comes down to the Nuremberg defense. How responsible is an individual for following orders and how responsible are we for analyzing orders? It depends.

But when it comes down to it, I don't think it helps to even ask the question. The real question is "given who you are married to, how can you improve the marriage?"

I mean, if the answer is that yes, you are totally to blame, then what are you going to do about it? You have already "repented" of being Mormon. You have changed in such a way that you would never make that mistake again.

And if the answer is that it is totally the church's fault for indoctrinating you, then what are you going to do about it? Beat yourself up over joining the church? Not seeing sooner what a cult it was? Well, once again you have already "repented" of joining the church.

I understand that there is a wish to go back and find a nice nonmember so that you don't have to suffer the mixed faith marriage. I sometimes think the same thing. I really married knowing we saw religion very differently and knowing that if I had not been born Mormon, I never would have joined. So, you could say that I went into my marriage knowing we were going to have some royal fights over religion. So, why didn't I marry someone with the same religious views? After all, I had some liberal guy friends that questioned the church just like I did. Oh, yeah, he was gay, and.... so was he. Then I had some guys I dated that were nonmembers....oh, yeah I remember why I dumped his cheating ass. And, um no, not someone who buys booze for my underage roommates. And the guy who hiked by going go go go go to the top and never stopping to enjoy the journey. After running through the guys I knew, I confirm that I married the best of the lot. So, the hypothetical of "what if I married someone else?" always brings me back to the same conclusion.

And if you do conclude that you married for the wrong reasons, that you broke up with someone better suited to you because they were not members, and now wonder if they were really better matches, what are you going to do about it now? It come back to "what do you want to do with the marriage you are in.

Thanks for all that, very helpful all of it. "Blame" is probably the wrong word, but it turned out to be a useful introspective exercise anyway. It was something that just suddenly came to mind that I wanted to process.