Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: September 06, 2013 12:37PM
"We have to figure out how to move our own furniture"
Haha. For sure we do.
Getting along without a "built-in community" is also a good life plan. Anything over and above that is the cherry on top, as you say, Cheryl.
I wasn't BIC so didn't grow up with that expectation from any group, especially church, that they would instantly be there to help out. Rather, we learned to do things for ourselves and if we needed help we paid for it (i.e., professional movers) or if we were lucky friends did help out but it was never an expectation and we didn't often ask.
It does come across as strange to a non-BIC that people expect others in their faith to answer their life needs. I know that some Mormon men are busy every weekend helping other families as in larger wards someone is always moving.
Recovery from Mormonism doesn't mean finding the first group you come across and switching allegiance, and expectations, to them, which sometimes it does sound like some folks expect at first. It is definitely very difficult to change attitudes and expectations, I imagine, when that is the way you've been trained. It is a giant step even to see RfM posters as a large mass of individuals rather than a conglomerate, all thinking and doing the same.
Likewise, being friends doesn't mean, to me, that you ask for favours that are better left to non-friends/professionals to do, or that you have huge expectations about each other that tend to weigh the other person down.
There is a lot to be said for being independent, in my view, self-sufficient. That way, when you are with a friend you are enjoying each other's company without expecting them to build your house, move your couch or dig your potatoes. Knowing they won't be sentenced to a weekend of hard labour on your behalf keeps the relationship at the level it should be, nobody leaning too hard on anybody else. We all have our own life stuff to deal with. For me at least that means trying hard not to impose mine on the other person.
Of course, it's natural to want to whine and cry and shout about life's hills and valleys. Friends can be there to listen to each other, up to a reasonable point. But there have to be good times too. A majority of good times, here's hoping.
PS: I forgot to say that regarding asking favours, I had an encounter with the missionaries recently and uncharacteristically, because I was desperate, I responded to their ubiquitous query "Is there anything we can do for you?" in the affirmative, against my better judgement.
Never go against your better judgement! Of course, it didn't work out so well. Why did I do that, I keep asking myself. Talk about continually inflicting my own wounds.
But. Story for another day.
Moral of it: Hire working people. No friends. No missionaries. Especially not missionaries from a church you are trying to forget you ever knew. Not even their fault, some/most of it. But sheesh.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2013 12:42PM by Nightingale.